pbleighton

"Peter, speaking very late night, after midnight, they are almost always far better than me" Mike, you must draw good players to you by magic. Peter

"Then you'll have investment bankers looting Tiffany's!" High concept, dude! Peter

"Any decent pickup must play this as a splinter for clubs." Ummm... Mike, what percentage of pickup partners are "decent"? I would NEVER use a splinter over a minor suit oening with a pickup pd. It is a reasonable choice with a regular 2/1 partner, though I prefer 2C. I play splinters as minimum GF, and this hand's a little too good for that. Peter

"30 years ago, I think it was more common for Daddy to make a phone call and get their "C" student into USC with a donation to the b-school. I don't think much of that happens anymore since the applications process is a lot more transparent." It still happens, but much less. My dad was a "legacy" ;) I wasn't :P On the other hand, how far you go in school and where you went matter more than ever. There are enough college graduates to make corporate opportunities minimal for the rest. At the lower end of the spectrum, failing schools screw most of their graduates for life. This to me is the real scandal and tragedy. It's not just inner-city, majority-minority schools, either. This is a broadly based problem. "But going back to the original post about the disparity in incomes. I'll reiterate my feelings. I don't think we have such a widepsread problem that rioting in the streets is imminent. This seems like rhetoric to me." I think rioting is very unlikely. I think raising taxes on upper-income people is very likely. You gotta preference :lol: Peter

"Peter I think ur looking at the wrong side the 1H was bid with 3 cards South was 4423" Yes, I did. Now I'm really confused. Why did North respond 1H with 3 hearts? If you are playing 2/1, aren't you playing inverted minors? If you are, then in my methods: 1C-2C-2NT(12-14 balanced, doesn't guarantee stoppers)-5C. I would bid 3NT at MPs, and get screwed. Peter

oops, got the hands mixed up.

"If we ignore Iran, Ahmadinejad will run out of steam because he will notice that no one listens to him. He feeds on his diplomatic game with Bush." I firmly believe that Cuba would be (at least partially) reformed if the U.S. government had stopped treating Castro as the next whatever. A foreign threat is a huge boon to any dictator. Peter

No way at IMPs. I'd think about it at MPs, but still probably bid 6C. Peter

First of all, good for you Phil, and for everyone else who rises above their parents' economic level. I know many of you, and I know that you mostly had to work harder than people like me (father went to Yale, I went to Harvard) have had to, to get to the same places. That being said, I've worked with a lot of upper-middle plus folks (say 80K in today's dollars), and most of them have parents who were either affluent or well-educated (i.e. children of school teachers seem to do quite well), or both. Upward mobility is quite possible. It's just not that likely for a lot of people. Some people start out with a big head start, and it's mostly those people who wind up with the best jobs. Peter

"EU is very applicable, they may call for trade sanctions or do nothing." Given the U.N.'s lead on sanctions, not very applicable. Peter

"Is the EU doing anything to help out the British in this standoff with Iran? Are they saying anything? What are the British saying or asking of the EU?" The EU is not a military body. NATO would be the applicable entity. "Does the majority of the EU ultimately blame the USA and its policies and actions?" Perhaps not solely, but it's obvious that if Bush hadn't started this lunacy (and if Blair hadn't gone along for the ride), which most Western European nations disagreed with, this incident wouldn't have happened. Peter

" Our local schools seem great, but I still notice many of our closest neighbors send their kids either to Christian schools and the two next to us to the Latin School about a mile away that costs 15-20 k per year for grammer school." Nice for them that they can afford it. Relevant to the thread, too :P Peter

2D. 1D seems pointless, for the reasons others have pointed out. In my experience, the unassuming 2D preempt can create a lot of problems for opps, even good ones. Peter

I would double as North, as imperfect as that call is. If you really need to pass, stop playing a strong club system, because the opps will eat you alive. 3S by South is pushy but OK. Most of the blame to North. Peter

"How to do that and reduce "Moral Hazard" the negative consequences of overprotecting people from loses is a very important second step, but a second step." Yes, but let's do step one first :P In any case, the biggest, toughest issue here is about the gradual income loss of the bottom 70%, not the relatively small fraction of the long term unemployed. Peter

"Economic mobility is certainly of utmost importance. If this study is saying there is less mobility here in the USA than in many other countries I would be shocked. I am not quite sure what the study is really saying or what it studied and how immigrants were factored in. In any event mobility is crucial." You're shocked because our mythology says we are the most mobile society in the world. We are not. Actually no society is very mobile. "As for economic success, I wonder if simply the IQ one is born with is the overriding and perhaps unjust key factor." Based on my 30 years working for many companies, this is quite counter to my experience. There is some intelligence/financial success correlation, but "overriding"? Nah. "As for public schools, having lived in Chicago gone to public schools there( years ago) and also living in LA. It does seem as if the public school system in major metro areas is broken to the tipping point. I can only surmise they can continue to exist in any successful form by somehow being more independent. Yes that sounds pretty vague. How we can be one nation with similiar values and common backgrounds needs to be solved without the current public school system." I agree with you here completely. Educational opportunities are hugely unequal. Peter

Globalization, the decline of private-sector unions, and immigration of people from low-wage countries combine to put huge downward pressure on wages. This has been true of blue-collar factory jobs for decades, and has fairly recently been extended to (gasp! horror!) professional jobs as well. I'm a systems analyst and programmer, and I've been personally touched by this :P This is the primary cause of large numbers of people below and near the poverty line, as well as the sinking real median income in the U.S. I understand that the problem is not (yet?) as acute in many European countries. Greater levels of unionization (pre-tax) and a stronger welfare state (post-tax)seems to be the reasons. Strange that countries with stronger welfare states have lower levels of income inequalaity. Someone should call Mr. Limbaugh and tell him. Oh, he's too busy using his illegally obtained drugs? Never mind :P In the U.S., private sector unions seem to be on an irreversible decline. There's not a lot that can be done about pretax inequality. This, along with the fact that mobility has always been far less prevalent than our national mythology would have it, means that people whose parents aren't well-educated (including a disproportionate number of black people) will continue, as a group, to see their pretax incomes drop. OTOH, there will IMO be a groundswell of opinion (you can see it now on health care) for post tax support of the bottom 70%. This will of course upset the hard core right-wingers, but no matter. Peter

"Did you look at the statistics? What is your reason for the discrepancies?" There are many complex reasons for income inquality between balcks and whites. Nonsense like "a disdain for intellectualism and laud for the dream of an athletic career" doesn't even make the list. "What you are saying can trap you. I can ask you...what do you think of German culture? If you say you like it then I can accuse you of being a Nazi because at one time Nazism was the dominant culture of Germany. If you say no, then I call you a racist for disliking an entire country. Personally, I believe it can be consistent to say you like the German culture today but dislike the culture 65 years ago. Cultures change and the values change, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. Do I hate Germans because I think Nazism was bad? Call it what you will but look at the statistics. I don't believe it is something external forcing them into this situation so it must be an internal cultural thing and something in their culture is causing this." Huh? I'm not the one making b******t generalizations about black culture. Peter

DrTodd: Since the subject of the post was: "The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen." why did you immediately start talking about the supposedly inferior black culture (which BTW you display total igorance of), when a substantial majority of those below the poverty line aren't black, and most of those above but close to the poverty line aren't black? Why did you immediately see this in racial terms? I believe your rant: "Somehow the black culture has lost its way. 50 years ago there was a desire to integrate and succeed but this has been replaced with a disdain for intellectualism and laud for the dream of an athletic career." gives you away. Peter

"Well I thought it was the title of this thread? Not my thread. I just stole the title from Peter who started it." ROFL. Did you read the link? Peter

IMO, little can be done about pretax inequality. Post-tax, however :) Peter

"Interesting that a member of The Council on Foreign Relations would admit that the sloganizing was politically motivated - and also interesting that this author would distance the Council from the Bush/Cheney administration." Well, he is a Democrat :) And the New Republic is feeling just a LITTLE defensive about being wrong about Iraq :) Peter

4S. 3S is quite reasonable, but it's not my style. Peter

Interesting article by a hawk: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7033001923.html

Thurston is what I started with. It is a good place to start, though it lacks later continuations. I's make sure you understand what he says before going much further. Peter