Thought I'd share an excerpt from an e-mail sent to me by a friend who lives in Zurich and has his 16 year old son staying with him for the summer.

"The city government issues holiday passes for kids up to 16. It gives them

unlimited rides on any public transport in the canton, free entrances to pools,

museums, zoos etc, and offers participation in courses and activities like

rafting, go cart driving, golfing etc. It's an amazing offer for just over 20

dollars, and allows me to focus on my work..."

Any working parent can vouch for the beauty of this one! Your smaller children never pay when you (or the sitter) take them places, and if they're older they have healthy productive things to do (say, rather than drinking alcohol and doing drugs like many bored American teens). To me this shows a society that truly values their children (and its working parents), not just in words but in action.

And in the end it makes the whole society better.

The shame of it is that in the US we have enough money for our cities and states to do the same(God knows we pay enough in taxes, as in- kiss 1/3 of your check bye bye) but for the greed and waste of those in charge of them. Nipping off the old public coffers is just too damned tempting to many. May they rot.

But there's still hope. Perhaps they could borrow from our enormous military/defense budget.

The American Middle Class, the backbone of this country, is becoming extinct. And it's tough to survive without a backbone. Who can spend time with the kids? Most of us have to work 2 jobs just to pay the bills because the cost of living (or at least rent and health care shall we say) goes up by 10-15% yearly yet salaries go up 2 or 3% if at all. It doesn't take a mathematician to realize that the budget gets tight after a few years. Working harder, getting less. The quality of our lives and most unfortunate of all, our family life is slipping because of an overabundance of greed and waste.

So I say borrow bigtime from our enormous military budget for some decent social programs and some lifelines to the middle class, like a college education that’s within the realm of affordability. Otherwise what is it we're defending by spending all this money on defense? Our superior quality of life?

If we like to call the United States the greatest country in the world(and I hear it all the time), then we have to be the greatest, not just talk about it.