Our poverty rate has dropped to 11.7 percent (as of 1999) according to the Census Bureau. In 1998 it was 12.7 percent. If you want to be a skeptic consider all that unreported income and the effect of all those new immigrants.

The poverty level for a family of four is $17,029 and that is arbitrarily fixed. Median income was $40,816. Every racial and ethnic group showed improvement.

James Bovard wrote a column in the Investor's Business Daily which contained starting statistics. Since 1973 the number of people in US prisons increased by 500 percent.

In 1996 over 15 million people were arrested (about 6 percent of the population), and arrest is not conviction. However, some 10 percent of American males will spend some time in jail, according to a 1997 Justice Department report.

Some of us might be outraged, but others may celebrate the simultaneous decrease in the crime rate. The imprisonment rate surely played a part in that decrease, but so did a thriving economy.

PUPTUCKT (Obscure message, but a dog lover for sure)

THE WASH (Must be a car wash owner)

Be kind. Every person you meet is fighting a hard battle.

That assessment becomes more and more obvious as we age. Deaths and serious diseases become more prevalent among our contemporaries. Financial and marital problems seem more frequent all over as time goes by.

The human condition has been ever thus, but we live longer, are healthier and have more physical assets than any people in past history. So, perhaps we are quite lucky.

Old friend Dr. George Acs of South Strathmore was moved to call by a recent mention here to report that he is no longer a tireless tennis player but now is a tireless golfer (that is deterioration).

George, a leading medical science researcher, confirmed that he usually said "Bah" or its equivalent when I mentioned medical discoveries reported in the NY Times (and other publications). He added that a cancer cure is reported in the Times about ten times a year.

This premature reporting may have the effect of giving false hope to gravely ill people. Maybe that's good and maybe that's bad. False hope could be better than no hope.

Those long living rats and Alzheimer cured mice just might give an indication of longer life and brain health for some of us. But I won't ask George.

Some things are just complicated.

The oil shortage is blamed by the Democrats on "big oil" price gouging.

The Republicans blame a lack of pressure (diplomacy) on the OPEC countries.

Our refineries operate at over 95 percent of capacity and we haven't built a new one in 25 years or more. More and more oil fields are off limits because of concerns over the ecology.

And you. You drive a huge gas guzzling motor vehicle (many of you, anyway).

We optimists think technology will bail us out of such dependency on oil before it runs out during this century.

Are you a devotee of the "robber baron" families holding sway in the United States? Check these items:

A 3 percent share of gross domestic product is controlled by the top 15 families in the United States. In Taiwan it is 18 percent and in Indonesia it is 82 percent.

Sixty-four percent of total corporate assets in Indonesia are owned by five families and 20 percent in Taiwan.

Source: Journal of Financial Economics (and how about Europe?)

5.4 percent of 24-year-olds in the United State have science or engineering degrees. That compares with 5.8 percent in Germany, 6.5 percent in Japan and 8.5 percent in England.

Forty percent of United States PhDs in engineering and computer science were earned by the foreign born (in 1999).

Source: Stanford University study, via Investor's Business Daily.