sirblob2@hotmail.com wrote:

Oh, boy. I love these...

There are probably more than 61m Americans of French descent today. How
come the French do so much better here than there?

So, if you want to live a loooooonnnnnnggggg, miserable life....

Yeah, their birth rate is down the toilet. Apparently the fabled French
romantic culture does not extend to actually making babies.

46 hours?!? You've got to be kidding me! Do you seriously mean for me to
believe there are Americans working only 46 hours a week? Where are
they? Let's go light a fire under their lazy asses.

I just started work in the IT department of University of Phoenix --
yeah, the online school. Everyone is salaried exempt -- for those in Rio
Linda, that means they get paid the same no matter how much they work. I
just attended their new-hire orientation yesterday (Wednesday). One of
the points covered was that management was encouraging employees to
limit their work week to *no more than* 50 hours. There was actually a
bullet point on one of the slides: "Go home. Watch TV. Meet your family."

Man, I am going to /love/ working here!

Well, yeah. But in France poverty means, well, actually being poor. In
America, something like 45%% of people living in poverty own their own
air-conditioned homes, with washing machines and dryers, microwaves,
color TVs, etc.

Btw, for the past four years, my family was one of those that have been
"living in poverty." Not saying it's been a cakewalk, mind you, but we
really haven't been doing without much. We own three cars, all paid off,
so the mortgage is the only really big bite.

This year, we should be out of poverty and well on our way to becoming
wealthy.

And, no one here has gotten any form of welfare. The "worst" I've done
is gotten Sallie-Mae loans to put my daughter thru college.

Hey, I've worked long and hard and would have been happy to make minimum
wage. Now I'm making $25/hr and by the end of the year should be up to
around $35/hr. Then I'll start making investments and start rebuilding
my portfolio -- in four years it went from over $60,000 to $946 (we had
to live on something!). Give me another four years and I'll have it back
up to over $6ok again.

I keep hearing comments like, "People making minimum wage haven't had a
raise in over 10 years!" WHAT? Show me the loser that has worked a
minimum wage job for ten years. Show me the loser that has worked a
minimum wage job for over a year. If you should happen to show me such a
person, I will want to know what the hell this guy does when he gets off
work: does he read? does he attend a local community college? does he
download one of the millions of free tutorials from the Internet and
practice learning a skill? Or does he pop open a cold one and plant
himself in front of the television?

Ask me how sorry I feel for him. Go ahead, just ask.

Come on. Who wants to retire? I'm 55 years old and am basically starting
all over again, financially. You think I'll be retiring in 10 years?
Have you heard me complain? Have you heard me express a desire to move
to France??? Yeah, right!

Well, I could say a lot about the true cost of the Drug War (and I
have). But, in general, a spirited, free people like Americans are going
to cross the line a little more than others. A free society is a bit
more dangerous than an unfree society -- what with all those people
thinking nothing of pretty much doing whatever they want. Take, for
example, the hip-hop "gangsta" culture. You're less than a dweeb if you
haven't served some time.

Wait a minute -- only about triple the murder rate? But we have *all
these guns*....

It's all this raging poverty.

All us poor people would rather drive our cars directly to where we want
to go, when we want to go there. The highly efficient mass transit
didn't move French people out of their cars... they were never in cars
to begin with.

Pack up th' kids, Hun. Thar's a big permafrost front movin' in and it's
due t'hit early in the mornin'. Whar's mah gun...

Don't forget heat waves. How many people died in France the summer
before last? Something like 6000 in Paree alone....

In America, the poor live in A/C. In France, even the middle class don't.

Want a statistic that actually means something? List the countries that
have, as a matter of ongoing policy, forcibly limited emigration /out/
of their borders in the last century? Now list the countries that have,
as a matter of ongoing policy, forcibly limited immigration /into/ the
country.

You think that there just might, maybe, kinda, possibly be just a slim
chance that we have /something/ going for us?

TommCatt