: : ---But what about all the other anecdotes? You know, the other some 200 million Americans, most of whom drudge entire lives through jobs that are a static horror of ingemination, that pay barely enough to feed their children and satisfy their many creditors? What about those vast masses? Where are their stories?: Gosh, 200 million? My spider-senses are screaming "hyperbole!"
75% of the population work jobs that do not require a high school level of skill or intelligence.(1) 75% of the population---roughly 261 million---is about 200 million people. Their jobs pay about $32,000 per household.(2)
How are those spider senses now?
: I am going to add yet another anecdote to the list...
Didn't read it. See the first two paragraphs of this for the reason why.
: I am not sure where you live, but every place that I have lived in the U.S. there has been computers in every library available to the public. Do you know what made this possible? Hefty grants from Bill Gates. Do you know where those libraries came from? Andrew Carnegie.
Good points, well worth discussion.
Firstly, I advocate libraries and other public institutions. They show the potential for socialism!
Secondly. At this time, libraries and other public institutions are conspicuously underfunded. To research and write consistently on a public library computer at this time is a near impossibility. Try to regularly contribute to this board on a library computer. It will remind you of...public transportation---a strong incentive to buy your own!
Lastly---the charitable deeds of megacapitalists. The objectionable thing about such acts is that these 'public gifts' are created out of the unpaid surplus labor of the working people who make the Carnegies and the Gates' of the world rich in the first place. However benevolent the charity might be, they redistribute the surplus of the proletariat to other proletarians---but without consulting them!
When the 'liberal' state does that, you guys freak.
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Notes:
1. Business Week, 1 September 1997, p. 67.
2. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1998, table 740, p. 469.
