Editor,
After returning from a 3-week, 5000 mile jaunt to Oregon I read T.A. Laughlin’s rich vs. poor tirade on Trump and Abe Lincoln’s party.
Through Nebraska and Wyoming and back via Colorado and Kansas, I witnessed lots of rich and poor. Former sagebrush, now millions of acres of producing grain, corn and cattle irrigated by huge wheeled sprinklers invented in 1952.
The farmers and ranchers with beautiful homes with a nice boat and motor home. The poor in junker, single-wide trailers with trash all about.
T.A. Laughlin mentioned the literal word of God and within the commandments is a hint, “work six days.”
The human race has proved itself both sinful and lazy. Worse than being poor financially is being poor spiritually.
John D. Rockefeller recognized his grandfather Gaylord and father William as scoundrels and determined to be otherwise. He was a Baptist who gave to home missions. Presbyterian Carnegie built libraries. To be a giver, you first have to be a getter.
My great granddad got shot in the throat at Gettysburg at 16 years old. Speaking with a whisper, he retied at 47 owning a convention center, scrap business and 11 paid for rent houses in Pittsburgh.
My grandfather with a 4th grade education was a machinist who turned the front porch into a barbershop and cut hair evenings and Saturdays for 35 years.
As maintenance boss of a school district from 1984 – 2001, I had the weekends off. From August 1985 to January 1993, another 40 hours was spent as the evening shift supervisor at drug and alcohol rehab. My three teenage sons ran the farm while my wife finished her nursing degree.
It doesn’t take a research scientist to figure out why there is poverty.
Loss of parents, divorce, ill health, residing in an area of little resources, avarice spending, unwise operating expenses, dope, tattoos, plus a percentage of income being sucked off by various levels of lawyers and other paper shufflers, plus whacko taxation, i.e., each vehicle being taxed each year.
Richard Waxenfelter
Berryville