We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Income inequality is a crazy subject for too many reasons. Sure, single motherhood plays a role but, importantly, government help is not counted as income. And to further mess things up, incomes change. Entry level jobs pay little, but people can advance. And what about people who make low-paying choices, like those people whose dream is to be a Maine Guide? Or a poor Adjunct Professor? And aspiring artists and actors?
... the bad faith of his antagonists exceeds even Mr. Trump’s defects and vices. The plot they concocted to get rid of him failed. And, yes, it was a plot, even a coup. And they fucked it up magnificently, leaving a paper trail as wide as Interstate-95. Now all that paper is about to fall over the District of Columbia like radioactive ash, turning many current and former denizens of rogue agencies into the walking dead as they embark on the dismal journey between the grand juries and the federal prisons.
"Conditioning" is about speed, agility, HIIT cardio, endurance, explosiveness, and muscle use. Energy, stamina, and get-up-and-go. It is not about strength or strength-training, which is why lots of calisthenics are involved. In a tough conditioning hour, you can never catch your breath so it is intense cardio. Good stuff for life.
I am in the sorry 10% who routinely flunk our Sat. AM calisthenics ("Athletic Conditioning") class. By flunking, I mean being unable to complete the trainer's expectations on at least half of the exercises in the time allowed. I hate failure, so I give it my all and come up short. We are calling ourselves the "Masters Class" and we are all age 45 or more. However, several 50+ and 60+ do make the passing grade. Bravo for them because this sort of thing is great to prevent physical deterioration.
If it were high school or college, we would ask for extra time due to disability but, instead, we do our best and accept the fail. Reality is a bitch. Do better next week, or just give up and rightly despise yourself forever for being a loser.
I am not sure what is meant by the quantity item, but these seem like, as we say, ordinary, cultural bourgeois values/standards/expectations, which are not endorsed by everybody. Fortunately, they are endorsed by enough people to provide for those who can not or do not.
"Since the discouraging fiasco in the Garden of Eden, all the world has been a place conspicuous in its scarcity of resources, contributing heavily to an abundance of various sorrows and sins. People have had to adjust and adapt to limitations of what is available to satisfy unlimited desires. Some individuals and societies have been much more successful than others in thus making do.
The study of economics deals with this yoke of scarcity and the modes of behavior intended to minimize the pains and maximize the gains of getting along—behavior which is restricted and channeled, sometimes helpfully and efficiently but often hurtfully and wastefully, by the social ground rules and institutions we adopt and have had imposed upon us.
To survive (much less to prosper a bit) in this vale of tears has required enormous, unrelenting effort. The vast variety of economic activity—bidding and offering in the market, producing and consuming currently, and saving and investing for the future—typically entails coordinated decision making and labor. But even seemingly simple operations of production and distribution can require contributions by many people, most of whom never meet or directly communicate with each other and are located in scattered corners of the world.
Consider this book. Thousands of people—in addition to the authors—contributed to placing this book in your hands. Some made paper; some made ink and glue; some edited the manuscript; some printed, warehoused, promoted, and distributed the product. No single person completely planned and supervised all that, and no one was a specialist in performing each of the myriad tasks. Yet, you have the book."
From the opening paragraphs – of Armen Alchian’s and William Allen’s Universal Economics (2018; Jerry Jordan, ed.)
Why, in the US, do Asians show higher levels of achievement than native whites? Why do African-Americans achieve less, on average, than whites? And why do immigrant blacks achieve at a higher level than US-born blacks?
I wish that we in the US would just stop categorizing people by race and, if social "scientists" want to study things like achievement, they would apply their time to studying the cultures and subcultures in which individuals develop.
It's an open secret that there are far more whites living in poverty in the US than blacks. That's culture too. Murray's Coming Apart portrays it well. Not everybody has either bourgeois values or conventional aspirations.
"I think then that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world. I am trying myself to choose an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it, but in vain . . . I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. . . . Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing."
Four climbers die on Everest 
Cold Brew’s 
