The Kids Story

 Out in California....the state Community Care Licensing Division (CCLD) sent out a letter and basically asked folks who were on the foster parents listing....if they'd consider taking in 'unaccompanied Central American kids'.....who were recent 'cross-the-border-kids'.

The number asked here....one to twenty-six kids.

I sat and paused over the story.

Generally, people who were doing the foster parent thing....were fairly enthusiastic Christian-types, who felt they were doing a good deed and being compensated for their action.

The general problem here, if you sat and thought about it.....foster parents generally were doing something for a limited period of time.  In this case, it really does look like you'd be talking about three years minimum....and maybe on up to seven to ten years. In some of these cases....I've noticed the border patrol folks talking about kids being six and seven years old.   

A mess with no logical or sensible outcome?  That's the chief issue I'd see.  Maybe across the US.....you might find a couple of thousand 'couples who'd take a kid or two.  But if this got up into the 80,000 range (just for 2021) for unaccompanied kids? 

The only sensible 'fix' here is to round up the political figures of Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador, etc.....to write up a 'return-the-kids' script, and pay the countries $5k (for each kid) to take back 'their kids'.  Getting the Biden team to admit they screwed-up?  That probably has to happen as well.  

My 'Two-Cents' on Income Equality

 Over the past five years....this topic seems to come up almost weekly via TV or the internet.  People are continually trying to refocus the audience upon the 'evils' of income equality.  Generally, I don't buy it.

Five generations ago, my family would have been set to a 1-room cabin, with water drawn from the local creek, and it wouldn't have been a shock for someone in their 30s or 40s to pass away because of a 'fever' or a snakebite.  

Just the mere idea of traveling more than fifty miles in one's life would have been a fantastic thing to consider. 

But things came along to change, and income revolution was one of those things.

An example, I have a relative in the period of the 1890s to 1925 who lucked-out upon a store that thrived, and this guy retired in his mid-50s.  He was literally set for the rest of his life.  If he'd wanted to take the wife and travel from NW Alabama to Chicago for a week....he could have done so without thinking over the financial cost.

Today?  I'm at a level where I retired completely at age 55 and the wife does a three-quarters type job, with financial values at such a rate....that if we weren't challenged with Covid problems....we could travel off to Auckland, the Pyramids, or Cape Town....without a lot of financial concern.  I admit....I won't be staying at five-star hotels, or driving luxury cars....but I could see the world, if I desired.

I'm just not buying into the income equality discussion because I've seen the better path.  The effort to suggest we are a society of 'losers'?  It's just not working on me. 

What bothers me on this entire discussion....there's some set of folks who want to be the 'guardians' of society, and just say the even amount that we are justified....is some magic number in their mind.  There's no real rhyme or reason to this magic number, and that fact ought to worry you.  So I'd just rather 'fire' the guardian guy and get him out of the middle of this discussion.  Let me do my own planning and money-management..