1950s Education Planning Tool
In Case You Don't Recognize The Object In The Picture. It's an education planning tool and it's called a wheelbarrow. My Dad started using this in 1946 when he got home from WWII. At the age of 15, when I progressed from farm labor and dishwashing, it was the main planning implement until I graduated from college in 1960. The wheelbarrow in the picture was given to my dad when the greenhouse where he worked for 34 years closed. Believe it or not, it is more than 50 years old. As Grandpa used to say, "They just don't make 'em like that any more". For 7 years, between the age of 15 until I graduated from college at age 22, I funded my education behind one of these.
It's Different Nowdays. Certainly most people aren't as poor as I was when I came into the world. Yet, we didn't expend our energies with futile efforts like gathering in massive protests because we were underprivileged. They would have laughed at us as they threw us in jail. I guess you might use a term I learned in graduate school. It's called relative deprivation. We didn't know we were poor because in the 40's and 50's there were few, if any rich. If you will indulge me to relate another story from the 40's, I recall an apple orchard across the street from our place. It was one of my favorite places. I would lay in the grass in the fall and eat apples that fell from the trees while I marveled at the magic of trees which provided shade from the sun and dropped apples far faster than I could eat them. One day I got a terrific idea. I ran across the street, into the house, and yelled to my Mom. "Mom, let's gather up all those apples and take them to poor people."
She got a big smile on her face as she said, "Son, we are poor people." I was totally shocked. I had never found about other folks who weren't as poor as we were. We didn't worry about a remote control for our TV. No one had a TV. We didn't have a snow blower to clean our sidewalk because no one had sidewalks. We bought used cars but so did just about everyone else. My Dad's first new car came when I was 16. It was a 1954 Chevrolet purchased from Jim Flake Motors for $1695. It had no radio or CD player. It had a heater for the cold Colorado winters but no air conditioner. (What's an air conditioner?) Now days virtually everyone has those and we find out about it because everyone has a TV and sees pictures of the kind of luxury that they can't afford. Many believe ownership of these things to be a right and should be provided by the government. The government tries hard to provide those things by taxing the more affluent members of our society (and taking a relatively large portion of those of those taxes to fund operating expenses).
Most Of Today's Poor Can Afford The Necessities of Life. But they want more and I don't blame them. They think the government can, and should, provide them with more. They think the government can get the money by taxing the rich. The problem is that no one can give us everything we think we deserve by taxing the rich. The rich didn't get that way by being stupid. They will always find ways to avoid taxes, if nothing else, by not working or investing. Many of the truly rich can live off their assets for the remainder of their lives. They will not use these assets productively, if the benefits produced are confiscated by the government and given to others who did not earn them. We cannot build a strong society by trying to make poor people well off with government handouts. Of all the things I am thankful for in 70+ years on this planet, the opportunity to earn my way out of poverty is the most important. Let's build a strong economy so that more poor people can do the same thing.
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