JUST A THOUGHT #4

      I performed a Google search this morning: how many commercials do young children watch in a year? Estimates ranged from 20,000 on the low end to 40,000 on the high end. Now, I know that kids learn, early on, that they can't have everything they see on those commercials. But that misses an underlying  truth. Virtually every commercial viewed by the children has an underlying message. Consumption improves your life.

      Restraint, thrift, postponing satisfaction? These traditions, the Republican virtues urged on us by Benjamin Franklin, are absent. The inevitable result?

      Stuff.