David-- How many cards are there in the American deck now? We've long heard about the "playing the race card"; now you talk about playing or mis-playing the class card. Denying the issues of race and class or to belittle them as "playing the x card" is the rhetorical mark of dishonest social and historical analysis. True to form, you've not only raised the Marx bogeyman, you've followed up with the hollow chauvinistic claim that the United States has the "the best standard of living yet known to man." I'd like you to substantiate that claim. The US often ranks high, but has not been at the top of the standard of living indexes in quite sometime. In 2006 the US ranked 8th on the widely regarded UN Human Development Index. And in the UN Human Poverty index, the US ranked 16th, right behind Great Britain. The data for 2007 is likely to be markedly worse with the devaluation of the dollar and the instability in the financial markets as only a couple of factors. As for the American middle class, it's shrinking--it's been in all the papers. The income inequality in the US is now the worst of all developed countries--that's some classless society we've got here. Cite the sources of your data, please (no attacks on the UN allowed). --Larry Howe