I like money.  With money I can clothe myself, pay for my grandchildren’s piano lessons, drive a reliable car, eat some great food, and visit friends in faraway places.  I don‘t want a barter economy, especially since I have nothing physical to barter for necessities, unless you count the endless reams of paper I can generate.  But this American drive to get rich, and get rich now with a minimum of effort, is doing us in.

Some people use the lottery.  Lotteries, or gambling in general, do not particularly offend me.  I do think they are the resort of people who failed 6th grade math, and I dislike the false advertising claiming the lottery benefits our school systems (the percentage going to education is way too low to make that an advantage of lotteries).   But I don’t think they ought to be illegal (funny how they don’t pass laws requiring that we eat our Brussels sprouts, everyone is too busy trying to outlaw the fun things, like alcohol, sex, etc.).

Some people “collect” things, believing that if they buy every coffee mug with a logo on it, someday their ‘collection’ will be worth millions.  I think collections are junk that gather dust and requires me to buy shelves or boxes or storage space to put it (think of George Carlin’s monologue on buying so much stuff that you have to buy stuff to put your stuff in or sell some stuff to buy other stuff).  That doesn’t seem to be …