A Dickens of a system
Since the 1960s the proportion of the wealth that goes to the rich has risen steadily. The top 1 percent now captures 20 percent of our wealth, while the bottom 50 percent get a measly 13 percent.
It is a deplorable distribution of wealth and it is only getting worse. Is there any limit? We are turning into India in terms of rich and poor.
Republicans respond with tortured logic, that, after all, the rich pay most of the taxes. It is poor people’s own fault. They should have picked richer parents or not be so lazy.
A man who earns $55 million a year, or about $150,000 a day, is worth every dime, but his employee who earns $20,000 a year is a leech and is overpaid because his job can be shifted overseas for much less.
Some hundred years ago, Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol.” It pointed out the terrible inequities of the distribution of wealth of England in the 1800s. Its main character was Ebenezer Scrooge, and to this day the name is synonymous with cold-hearted misers.
Dickens died in 1870, but Scrooge is still alive and healthy, and he votes a straight Republican ticket.
D. Neil Fitzgerald
Spokane Valley
Jan Quintrall wrote an amazingly accurate account (Dec. 12) of her observations as a health care consumer. In 30-plus years of nursing, I can confirm her statements are what most nursing personnel deal with on a daily basis.
I thrived in emergency nursing until recent years. I was verbally/physically attacked, called unspeakable names and generally expected to be patients’/families’ “private slave,” as Jan eloquently stated. I am now in a kinder realm of nursing but no less exempt from demanding customers. As she stated, “even more basic is how to behave as a patient/medical customer.”
I do hope our American culture soon recognizes that health care is not a perfect science. And we all will end up leaving this life, regardless of how much effort and expense is devoted to a wishful alternative. I would encourage state nursing associations to reprint a full informational page with Jan’s observations highlighted for the general public to see.
To the health care customers who do appreciate the usually good care they receive in the hospital setting and demonstrate their appreciation appropriately, thank you very much. Your well being and acknowledgment are the reasons most nurses go into the profession.
Vickie Nostrant
Post Falls