You know, it’s a good time to be alive. I recommend it highly.

Not that everything’s perfect, mind you. Instead it seems like everywhere you look somebody’s worked up about something.

Take those fired up about illegal immigration. Some of our fearless leaders want to restrict those “we” let in the U.S. to those who can afford to live here.

I think the term was “economically self sufficient.”If that doesn’t make it sound like bankers are running things, I don’t know what does. You know how it usually works.

If you really need a loan because you’re broke chances are you won’t qualify for one (at least not one you can repay in a single lifetime), but if you’ve already got wads of money in the bank bankers will beat your door down to offer you a loan.

Same with immigration, I guess. If you’ve already got a good gig where you are, come on in. If you don’t, stay home and starve or get shot up or buried in a mudslide or whatever, just whatever you do, don’t come running to us. This is a business, not a country.

Still, I get those whose families came here legally saying those who want to come here now should do the same. But there was a healthy woman in hot pants with a sign on TV at some sort of event the other day hollering “OBEY OUR LAWS” over and over again at illegal immigrants or somebody and I thought, hold on a second.

If we started requiring people to “obey our laws” just about every driver in Bryan County would be in court - unless the speed limit isn’t a law. And if you don’t think people speed, try driving the speed limit, or even better, go about 5 mph slower than whatever’s on one of those metal things with a number and mph on it sticking up out of the weeds up and down Highway 144.

You’ll be hated. People will give you dirty looks from real close to your back bumper. And they’ll be doing it because you aren’t breaking a law.

We Americans tend to send conflicting messages, sometimes.

All that aside, life’s certainly better than it could be, though I suspect we might be leaving our ancestors with a mess they won’t be able to sort out.

Naturally, if us media types (that’s what I am, apparently) went around writing about all that’s going well, we’d get accused of being PR folks. That happens to me a lot these days, even though I’m too dumb to do PR.So here’s something I find wrong: It’s called the five day work week. It wears me out. Mondays, especially.

Were the titans of industry really interested in the common man and woman such as you and me, then we’d work two days and have five days off to go fishing, or sit on a beach and ponder life’s great mysteries. Or at least get to sit still and not have to drive anywhere.

Think how much happier the world would be if we came to work on Monday and by Tuesday it would be time for the weekend again? I’d be the happiest camper on the RV lot.

And think how much less would get done. And how that would probably be a good thing, especially if you prefer trees and rivers and unspoiled nature to asphalt and strip malls and subdivisions with names that pay tribute to the things that just got bulldozed into oblivion.

Of course, thanks to the self-esteem movement there’s no such thing as a common man anymore. Or there is, but it’s always the other guy.

Actually, there are plenty of exceptional people out there who don’t brag about it. I can think of a dozen or two right off the top of my head, but they tend not to promote themselves so you don’t hear about them. And that’s too bad. It means the people who should be in charge aren’t, while the busybody know-it-alls and self-described smart people are out there messing things up and blaming it on somebody else.

Me, I blame money. Money screws up everything, unless you have it, and in the great scheme of things most of us don’t have all that much - me included. I’m certainly not sure I’d have enough to immigrate to the U.S. nowadays, not that I ever immigrated here before. My ancestors did back in the 1700s at some point, per my buddy Frank Grimm - one of the wisest of the wise and another of those who doesn’t blow his own horn.

I digress. Back to money. If you look at how wealth is divvied up at present you’ll see about 1 percent of the world’s adults in 2018 had more than $1 million, according to inequality.org, a website that tracks where the money ain’t. Another 27 percent of adults had between $10,000 and $100,000, and 64 percent of adults had $10,000 or less.

In short, the richest 1 percent owned nearly