Glorious! .... yet

Another glorious weekend down by the water.  This time down at the beach house watching the tide go out.  We sat with friends, eating and drinking, discussing not much of anything. Again, in my life, the world seems to be doing what it should, pretty much.

It's at these times that I realize how fortunate I am that my wife and kids, and their spouses, and soon their kids, and I are all healthy, and even somewhat prosperous.  I look in the paper and often see that people my age are dead.  I walk down a winding path through scrub pines, go up a sandy hill, and  from there, on a bluff, I can overlook the entire expanse of my favorite beach, with it's large curve, and it's small, but rolling and lapping waves. Except now, I realize that it was not only me who felt that this spot was so special.  For now there is a new bench to sit on, and linger and watch the sunset from this spot.  The bench has a plaque that says it was dedicated to a great guy, someone I never knew.  He was eight months older than me, and now he's a bench.

I read something else in the paper today also.  There was a line that mentioned that the top twenty hedge-fund and money managers in the US made in ten minutes last year, the amount of money that the average American worker made ALL year.  Something is wrong there.  It is psychologically de-stabilizing for that to be going on.

What's worse is that these people --- and they did nothing wrong or illegal (probably, well maybe), didn't really produce anything that did our society any good.  They just moved money around, mostly following the directions of computer algorithms. 

Something is not good.  that should not be valued more than nurses, scientists, business people who actually make something, or deliver a service someone wants to pay for, or even street cleaners and garbage collectors, who work hard to keep us healthy.

Not good.  What do you think Justice Roberts?