GOD BLESS THE GREEDY!

The absurdity of rich people's greed describes the United States. We are a liberty-first country, not a society at all. We are united, not socially, but by our greed. Greed is the one great American virtue. And if it sounds odd to hear Greed called a virtue, then you--like me--are unAmerican.

Many of my oldest friends no longer speak to me because I oppose Greed, and they know that they are greedy. I have never called them greedy, but they know they are. Not like the big-timers, but greedy. And as long as there in anybody else who has more money than they do, they will remain greedy.

Will any of them object to the executives who last year received from $5,000,000 to 54,000,000 in "compensation? How many unemployed people could $54,000,000 provide jobs for? Only 2,000. There are a lot more than 2,000 unemployed people in this country. But if you add up the "compensation" of the 2,000 highest-paid executives-- you get salaries for 200,000 jobless people.

Now, if we tax the wealthof all the greedy Americans who have more than $10,000,000 in real estate, stocks, hide-away bank accounts--tax them at, say, 90%--then we will have changed things enough that maybe America can be called a society.

Oh. Another tax: let's impost a 50% socialtax on the Defense Department's budget. And divide that money up among the nation's poor.

I'm serious. If I were the head of a family that had made such a mess as has been made of what could have been--maybe once was--the American family, I would expect one of my daughters or sons to take over, and implement just such a plan to save us.

Greed is just like cancer: stupid. Cancer keeps eating its host until it kills the host it fed on. And then the cancer dies. Greed suffers from the same damnable stupidity--and it and its practitioners are eating--greeding--this country to death.
The military is what it is because military spending satisfies a lot of our greediest Greeds. Military contractors--ask Dick Cheney--are leaders in the Greed business.

I hope that some day the greedy have to eat all the ugly, soiled, dirty, and worthless money they have hoarded. The rest of us may be dead by then--but we will have died as decent humans. The greedy aren't decent, and they disgrace humanity.
Well, let them try to live on dollar-bill salad.

Bert Hornback