Land of Opportunity

One of the things I love about this country, and California in particular is that a person can do anything. I have recently been taking some classes from the College of Community and Public Service at the University of Massachusetts, where the professors seem. universally, to be convinced that "the system" is stacked against the little guy. Thankfully, my classes were full of 30 to 50 year old students who have spent their careers in the private sector. For the most part part, they agreed with me on the imprtance of Liberty and the hazards of regulation.

Another time, about 15 years ago, I was taking a business ethics class at San Jose Stae University. Most of the students in the class had escaped, as small children, from communisim in Vietnam and China. Most of their parents were small business owners. They knew the value of Liberty. So, when the professor (who had only ever worked as a teacher in government schools) tried two nights a week for the entire semester to convince the students that government-set production quotas, minimum wage laws, and agriculture market orders (which have noting to do with markets) were good things these students became very angy. My favorite moment in that class was when a young man said, with a think Vietnamese accent, "All of this is un-American." If i remember correctly he was majoring in accounting. I hope he is successful and that his opinion has not changed.

Today, I read something about another immigrant from Asia. This particular woman came here on a ship as a young girl and now sits in President Bush's cabinet.

"My sister fell ill during the ocean journey," she told me on a recent afternoon in her spacious office, a short walk from the U.S. Capitol. "Seventeen hundred nautical miles, there were no doctors on board and my mother sat up for three nights and three days, just continuously soaking my sister's body, little body, with cold water" to break her fever.
"So I see opportunities in this country, perhaps, in a slightly different way. . . . America really is unique," she says. "It's really a land of meritocracy, where it doesn't matter where you were born, who you know. If a person works hard, most of the time . . ."
"On this last point, Ms. Chao's words trail off, as the current state of the economy seems to be weighing on her mind. There is widespread speculation that the economy could soon slip into recession as the country sheds jobs and faces a slumping housing market. Still, Ms. Chao points out that the national unemployment rate remains below where it averaged in the 1990s (5.5% today versus 5.7% last decade). "People forget that," she says." (Read the whole story)