gnucash 1.6.1 questions

[Haines Brown]

I've sort of stimulated an off-list dialog and written to several
individuals in its connection.

Let me take this opportunity to say that I don't want to appear
difficult. I don't use a new feature, and just wanted to know how to
avoid it. So the discussion of why we should or should not use that
new feature must be OT for the list, as interesting (to me, at least),
as it may be.

The gist of what I've been suggesting as I enter these off list
dialogs is that the feature implies a particular model of behavior
that I tried to suggest was not universal, but rather associated with
the so-called "middle class" and capitalist ideology. But I don't even
think much of the middle class actually behaves in terms of such a
model.

The issue is not whether or not we try to be sensible about how we
spend money, but whether we as individuals define our needs or whether
it is our peers that define them; also, are the needs individual, or
are they really social objectives? While there are no simple answers
to such questions, and they have been debated now in Western circles
for two centuries, it is the implicit behavioral model associated with
categories of income and expenditure necessary to achive optimal
economic outcomes that implies a rigid behavioral model that
unrealistic for most people.

I won't venture to criticize people who think in terms of investment
and economic returns, but I also won't venture to criticize the far
greater number of people I know who try to achieve the same end by
playing the numbers, praying in church, or visit a casino. We have the
kind of society that makes fools of us all.

Haines KB1GRM