When I was a kid, the predictions for the future, factoring in increases in productivity and labor-saving devices, were for 4 day, 6 hour workweeks with long vacations. Unfortunately, the wealth has not gone to the disappearing middle class but to the top 1% and overseas. Instead of an easy life, the middle class is facing extermination.

A minimum wage upon which one could live is philosophically desirable. After all, a burger flipper is devoting the one thing they have that is the equal of someone managing a hedge fund - their time. And is probably more productive than the hedge fund manager. There should be some basic equivalence in compensation for spending time on a job. And if it can't be made to pay, then it shouldn't be done.

That's basic. A janitor's job is as honorable as a stockbroker's, and the wages should have some relationship to each other's. And if each works 8 hours, it takes each of them a third of a day of their life.

The American economic engine should benefit more than the super-wealthy. It used to be that a kid who didn't like reading all that much could become an apprentice, learn a trade, buy a house and put his or her kids through college. No more. That kid now can flip those burgers or deal drugs. I can see why so many choose the latter.

When all the money goes to the top, with relatively low taxation, all that's left for the rest of the folks are social programs. While there are many who would watch them starve and make medical care inaccessible, I'm hoping that's not the American Way. The American Dream is gone, American idealism is gone, and the fight against Universal Health Care is an argument that the American Way is next to go, hopefully it's not yet.

Oddly, the Conservative agenda is to concentrate all the wealth at the top and starve the folks at the bottom. Sort of a banana republic. That is as obvious as the sun coming up, yet they don't admit to it.

Nope, it would be nice to see an equitable distribution of wealth in this country. Unfortunately, the trend is the opposite, and as the man said, "When the laws can be used to plunder, the plunderers will make the laws." That's our reality.