I started my Christmas Cards, and I wondered if it was an ecologically good idea to send actual paper cards. I will do e-cards as well - maybe I should phase out paper cards and only do e-cards in the future? What do you think?
It's barely 4:30 and it's dark already. Winter is such a dreary season here in the Paris region - no snow, just gusts of wind and lashings of rain. Everything is gray - the sky, the buildings, and people's faces. We're all tired, it seems. It almost feels like too much to smile at everyone. Usually I walk around like the village idiot with a huge grin pasted on my face, Auguste dragging me along on his leash. Even Auguste is feeling the weather - he is limping more and more, I think he has a bad shoulder from old age, poor chap - but it means that instead of pulling me along, I'm practically dragging him. I get broken hearted when I think of how old he is, so I refuse to think about it. To cheer myself up, I bought a "pain chocolat" at the bakery, and made myself a cinnamon tea. August is in his new bed in front of the heater - he loves to sleep with his head pressed up againse the radiator, so I can't put it on very high!
When he was little, he slept on the bottom shelf of our hallway bookshelf. We used to keep the shoes on the bottom shelf, but Auguste decided it was just his size, so he pulled all the shoes off and went back to the kitchen to get his little doggy bed, and dragged it to the shelf and then pushed it to the wall, climbed in, and went to sleep on his back. The shelves were right next to the radiator, and since then, his favorite place is cuddled up to the heater. I'll have to look and see where my pictures of Auguste in his shelf are. Somehow, I have to keep him off our couch, because he's making his shoulder worse by jumpig up and down. (The problem with dachshunds - they mustn't jump up and down from any heights!)
So what else is happening in France? The government is debating the new law that made getting into the universities more difficult for students. They tried to make it a lottery system, but that meant that no one could be sure they got their first or even second choices, or even choose what they wanted. The arguments being not enough room and too many students. A good idea would be to create more classes and hire more teachers - after all - this is tne next generation we're talking about, and we don't have the right to take their future away from them just because our generation screwed up the economy so badly. Yes, Piketty's report has been published, and I think it should be required reading for just about anyone over the age of 12 (here is he article in the Guardian talking about it with links) -
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/dec/14/inequality-is-not-inevitable-but-the-us-experiment-is-a-recipe-for-divergence
If I were in charge of the world, I'd give Piketty free rein to redress the economy - for everyone.
(Elect me - I may not know about much, but I'd hire the best!)
I'd close tax havens.
I'd hire Piketty.
I'd raise minimum wage and tax capital gains until they squeaked, and I'd fix a progressive all the way to 90% estate tax for any inheritance over 300k. Only family owned businesses taken over by direct descendants and family owned farms would be exempt... Well, a girl can dream. Let's revise the tax system for Christmas in the right direction - kick the Repblican's idea out the window and bring back some fiscal sanity. And ecological sanity too. Next year, it's going to be e-cards for everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment