Sacramento Bee 1/21/06
For years, the Gap stores have made money on kids, on coaxing parents (especially first-timers) to drop big bucks on trendy little outfits with matching hats and socks and shoes and other perky accessories.
So it's interesting, to say the least, that the son of Gap Inc. founder and chairman emeritus Donald Fisher - whose family fortune was built on outfitting young people - is opposing the new Preschool for All initiative.
There is no irony in a captialist opposing socialism, but for Ms. Lundstrom to understand that she would need to understand the concept of free enterprise. Perhaps if Ms. Lundstrom understood that Gap stores have been successful in a competitive marketplace; that they have provided a product that people choose to purchase over other possibilities, she would understand why Mr. Fisher opposes a state-run preschool monopoly funded by confiscating money from a small number of people.
Perhaps if more people clothed their children in products from Walmart and not from the Gap, they could afford to send their children to one of the many preschool choices they already have available. But, that would require people to value preschool more than fancy brand name clothes. As I have previously written, the only reason the socialized preschool initiative has a chance of passing is because people will vote to get something that they want if they think they do not have to pay for it (see Econ 101 - TNSTAAFL).On another note, Ms. Lundstom fundamentally misunderstands irony. Irony illustrated: a man is on an airplane that crashes, all passengers parish except him because he was in the bathroom. Two weeks later, while sitting on the commode in his home the same man is killed when an airplane crashes into his house. That is irony. Mr. Fisher’s position on the socialized preschool initiative might be interesting, but it is not ironic. In fact, Mr. Fisher's position on socialized preschool really isn't all that interesting, it actually makes sense.
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