An Interesting Insight from ETR

How is it possible that billionaires have the best employees, contracts that favor their companies, and business strategies that bring them tangible financial benefits year after year? The answer is simple: They see more in people, contracts, and the various business strategies that are offered them throughout their careers.

I don't think I should quote overmuch from Early to Rise, since they charge for their services [Maybe not. They seem to have gone FREE on me since I subscribed. Hopefully they'll renew me at that rate, but I don't regret having paid for what I got.], but this goes well with a point made the other day in a letter to another contributor:

From a letter written to Bill Bonner at The Daily Reckoning...

"I'd like to share a grammar school lesson I got in the fifth or sixth grade of Catholic elementary school. Bear in mind that this was the fifties, and the boys were taught by the Christian Brothers. These guys were tough. Many of them, if not all, were WWII or Korean War vets. And, they had answers for most tough questions. They also were pretty blunt. And, not a lot of patience for distinctions that did not make a difference. Strangely, they took a pretty strong position on [the subject of equality].

"Jefferson wrote 'all men are created equal.' To these battle-hardened vets, there was nothing 'wrong' about this assertion. Quizzically, they would say, 'All men ARE created equal. But, all men are NOT born equal.'

Whoops! I got my dates backwards. This one is from today, the first quote is from 7/22/06.

They also have a nice quote by Ben Franklin:

The Quotable Mr. Franklin: On Doomsdayers ...

"I saw in the public papers of different states frequent complaints of hard times, deadness of trade, scarcity of money, &c. It is always in the power of a small number to make a great clamour. But let us take a cool view of the general state of our affairs, and perhaps the prospect will appear less gloomy than has been imagined."

(Source: The Compleated Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin, compiled and edited by Mark Skousen)

I'm a big fan of Skousen as well as Franklin.