Stoning
Glad to see that Mr. Stone is going to take the high road and wave his right to that 90 percent retirement! (“Democrats for Wasserman,” News, July 21.) Kudos to you! That is, are you going to practice what you preach? Or are you going to be like Pete Constant? You know, a hypocrite …
Jack Hawksmoore | San Jose
Entitlement
Its not really being hypocritical to refrain from turning down money one is legally entitled to, even if one doesn’t think the law entitling them to that money is a very good idea. Especially not in a society where you basically can’t live without money. How about people who voted against building Highway 85? Are they hypocrites if they drive on it?
Kevin O’Keefe | San Jose
To Half and Half Not
“Why Work?” asks Leilani Clark (Cover Story, July 7). Why not just cut the 40-hour workweek in half, and everyone will be happier? A basic law of economics is that our standard of living depends on our output of goods and services: we can only consume what we produce.
Reducing by half the hours we spend producing useful things will halve the number of useful things for distribution. That will halve the standard of living for everyone. There is just no getting around that. To even maintain our present standard of living, we need to increase production, not decrease it. And no, we can’t make everyone work harder and do the same job in half the time. That is not realistic; that is not human nature.
Garrett Toren | Santa Cruz
