We Got Ours, Then Got Greedy

This is in response to Robert Eisner’s suggestion (“We Can Begin to Tackle Income Disparity,” Times Board of Advisors, April 28) that the country can well afford an education bill of rights on the scale of the GI Bill after World War II.

As a reporter in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, I interviewed several successfully retired businessmen who were proud of having been in the CCCs, a government program designed to take unemployed young men out of pool rooms and off street corners and put them to work on public works projects. Without exception, they praised the CCCs. Without exception, they were opposed to starting it again. They didn’t think the country could afford it.

As an idealistic and naive young reporter, I wondered how a little success made decent, hard-working men so damned greedy and cynical. Skip to 1996. I now live in a neighborhood stuffed with retirees who, like me, received college educations via the GI Bill, which enabled us to get jobs to support our families and retire with our golf carts and three-bedroom homes filled with food, drink and prescription drugs. We profited heavily from the GI Bill and so did the country--yet not one of us will vote for a politician who supports an education bill of rights for today’s youth. We don’t think the country can afford it.

It’s been 30 years, and I’ve learned nothing. I still don’t know why a touch of success makes us so damned greedy and cynical.

What the hell are we afraid of?

DICK TAYLOR

Desert Hot Springs