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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

lunarchick - 01:51am Aug 13, 2001 EST (#7854 of 7905)
lunarchick@www.com

MD spending is MONEY TO BURN .. when a quarter of Americans live below the poverty line. The minimum wage is $5.25 way below the $34.000 required by a single parent to minimally raise a family of three.

May 21, 2001 'Making it on minimum wage; women describe their struggles to care for their families on low-paying jobs'
~ http://www.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/tows_past_20010521.html

BOOK: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America By Barbara Ehrenreich From the show: Making it on Minimum Wage

From The Publisher

Our sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity.

Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job — any job — can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour?

To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity — a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything — from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal — in quite the same way again.

lunarchick - 01:56am Aug 13, 2001 EST (#7855 of 7905)
lunarchick@www.com

Gisteme way above thought that $5 from each American per month for MD looked good. Having noted the poverty of a quarter of Americans, it seems that the $5 might be better transfered to make improved provision for struggling members of the USA community.

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Lots of low paid jobs - wonderful?
Or, a hinderance to real prosperity.
If wages go up, then process is reworked!

Reworking process may mean that the same (or better) satisfaction for a customer is given at the same price via new process.
The workers in the system also getting improved pay.

Pity Bwsh doesn't show LEADERSHIP via lifting the minimum wage - why not?

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