Tioga Herald

For many of us, we are not able to afford an electric car and wish we could.  The key statement in the report about the cost of the cars is the paragraph which contains the following: “They [the carmakers in the past] introduced technology at a luxury price. With time, the features and gadgets make their way into cheaper cars.” 

Such information is analogous to other historical evidence.  For instance, there was a day when computers were not affordable by most people.  Over time, this changed. Patience is a virtue and we need to stop with the “instant gratification” attitude in America. 

Other examples.  Even in more recent years, as a professor at a college, I had many students who were STILL not able to afford computers when I taught online classes.  In fact, we hear all this stuff about tuition costs which are high.  Working as a professor, I discovered many students were unable to afford the textbooks.  Add to that the fact that many were not able to access e-textbooks because they were not able to purchase the computer equipment of have access to internet.  Professors get blamed due to tuition costs, even when Florida professors made diddly squat in salaries, compared to many other states.  Thank God for the library, which many educators with six figure salaries wish to decimate. It was the academic library which provided access to computers, Internet, and textbooks on reserve. 

I could go on and on with examples.  The bottom line. The capitalist economics run as they should, supply AND demand, not just with the recipients of corporate welfare dictating the supply-side economics, and the prices do come down, but we need to have patience and have the better attitude with regard to long-term investment and return on investment.  We have thrown much of that away with credit card instant gratification and no thought about long-term savings and investments.  We need to do this by making money the “old-fashioned way, we earn it.”  Many people in America need a lesson in this attitude.  Why? Because it DID work, even with its imperfections which need reform, not destruction of the entire process. 

One final note.  (I once was able to sing up to a high C; LOL!).  There was once a computer company called DEC. They produced minicomputers in competition with IBM.  Purportedly, some executive at DEC once remarked that “there will be no purchases a computer for each individual home.”  Where is DEC today?  Pessimism.  Open mouth and “eat crow.”  Working collectively is better than working according to the dictatorial ways, top-down, of the CEOs who benefit from embezzling funds and getting away with it. 

Murder and thievery, among other human acts, are defined in the Ten Commandments as wrongful human acts. It was some men who proposed that the church consider such sins forgivable but being gay as being unforgivable.  And with this among those who are pushing against being gay, is the push for instant gratification to make the deliberate acts – I said, deliberate and no differentiation from errors which are NOT deliberate – of embezzlement acceptable to those who do it and have plenty of money to protect themselves, that lower class people don’t have. Such things become examples for people to attain instant gratification. 

The electric car example is just one more way to push the idea of instant gratification.  “Gotta keep up with the Joneses.” (Is that not the similar to unacceptable acts identified in the Ten Commandments, too?). Thanks to Mr. Ewing (writer of this article), we learn a bit of history regarding how, over time, items become more affordable.  What has happened with the prices of big pharma, protected by lawyers?  Another topic for another day.