Letters to the editor 7/13

Dear editor,

Like Tracy Call-Keagle, I have often lamented the uneven distribution of wealth in this country. I particularly wonder about the value our society places on various professions. We pay men millions of dollars to chase a football or a baseball around a field, yet our teachers to whom we entrust our children have to get second jobs to afford houses. We pay actors millions of dollars to play make-believe, but nurses, firefighters and police officers, who have peoples’ lives in their hands every day, are paid a very small fraction of that amount.

Laborers have things even worse, and yet their jobs are critical to our functioning. Have you ever considered how quickly life as we know it would unravel without garbage collectors, janitors, waste water processors, road graders, oil and tire mechanics, or construction workers? We would rapidly suffocate and drown in our own filth, head to hell in a handbasket, and have no vehicles or roads to get there with.