The Duc Pond

It’s funny how I vote against myself. It’s no secret that I love the stock market. I encourage anyone and everyone I can to make long term investments to secure their retirement (I’m quite serious too; contribute to your 401(k) and a Roth IRA now). And not just retirement too. I invest outside of tax-sheltered accounts. But does that mean I favor Bush’s capital gains tax cuts? No thanks! Use my money to set up a system for universal health care or something.

My employment works the same way. My office was mostly pro-Bush thanks to vague and misrepresented talk about Kerry making program cuts. You know, I hope that defense budgets, especially in areas that are wastes of taxpayer money (ballistic missile defense, anyone?), get cut! I can only justify my job so far. Jeremy is among the few who agrees with me: “I always tell people I hope that my job isn’t around in the future.” Yeah.

It’s not easy. For example, I can’t help but be in favor of free trade and globalization, but it’s tough to think that way when programming jobs are being moved over to India and China. To me it’s a challenge, though. We American programmers simply have to be the best and most innovative in the world. Likewise, our society needs to be able to help its least fortunate while at the same time maintain its global competitive edge. It can be done.