My Email from President Bush

I took my own advice from yesterday’s post and went to CareUSA to email President Bush. Here is the response I received:

On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence. We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions. The President is committed to continuing our economic progress, defending our freedom, and upholding our Nation's deepest values.

Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House cannot respond to every message. Please visit the White House website for the most up-to-date information on Presidential initiatives, current events, and topics of interest to you.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

Now, I wasn’t expecting a personal reply from W, but I did hope for a slightly more tailored form letter. After all, I hadn’t written about any of the three things the President is committed to doing. Of course, I had only sent him a form letter from a web site. Interesting how the internet allows us to simulate communication: our computers respond to each other, but no people need get involved. I can only hope my concerns got added to a tally somewhere. I wonder whether I would have gotten a more personalized response had I written Bush a letter pouring out my deepest concerns, or whether it’s just as well I conserved my time and effort.

My friend Karen, responding to the idea that most Americans are wealthy, sent me a link to the Global Rich List. You type in your income and it will tell you just how rich you are compared to all the other human beings on the planet.

Part of the problem is that wealth is relative. Studies (and I’m too lazy to look them up at the moment, so you’ll have to take my word for it) have shown that we feel rich or poor in comparison to the people around us. So if everyone in my neighborhood has a big house and new car, I’ll feel poor in comparison if I have a small house and used car—even if I’m actually wealthier than 99% of the world population. It’s good to occasionally step outside our everyday points of view and see things from a broader perspective. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves we are global citizens, and our concerns should be broader than our town or state or country.