And these guys vote!

I am writing this while sitting in McDonalds working on some homework. I have come here many times as I wait for my son to do his high school program. This McDonalds has a group of “older” men who come together every weekday morning for coffee. They have a specific table they sit at and obviously have known each other for longer than I have been alive. Generally they are a very pleasant bunch who discusses sports, weather, and farm crops. Today they cover a topic that caught my ear – President Obama and the economy.

There was a general consensus that the economy was bad (no, that is not what drew my attention), and that the government was considering another stimulus package. The general disapproval for this initiate was not very surprising, but what did make me put down the books was when one of the guys started talking about Japan in the early 1990s and their efforts at stimulus. So I was beginning to think that I had run into a well informed bunch, and my ideas of their simple conversations (and by default their thoughts) was incorrect.

I was about to berate myself for being judgmental and something of an academic snob until one of the guys started to talk about economic theory. He explained that if you took all the money in the world and divided it up equally among all the people, within 5 years the current wealthy would again have 90% of the money (and they were talking about wealth not cash, so don’t bark at me about that). This collection of wealth was due, in their opinion, to the natural (read God given) talent and intelligence. They continued by saying that the poor of this country were poor because of a “lack of smarts.” The people with money have it because they know how to manage their money. The people who are poor are poor because they don’t know what to do with their money.

At this point a couple of the other “older” gentleman started to list reasons poor people were poor. They cited drugs, “all the things they do to their cars”, not investing anything or saving money, and just not working hard enough to have any money in the first place. Another one indicated that poor people make bad decisions and money is near the top of the decision list. Yet another one added that these “people” just have too many children, “children they cannot afford.” To top the whole list off this group came to the conclusion that poor people just won’t work hard enough to be wealthy.

At this point the men realized that I was listening to them, as I was unconsciously shaking my head and laughing at them. So they lower their voices and moved on to greener conversational pastures. These people vote!

On a side note they have returned to louder voices and are talking about weather assassinating president Obama would be a good thing or a bad thing. God bless the first amendment. By the way, their bad part of a dead president would be martyrdom and all the commemorative statues they would have to see.