Pamper away

Seems social justice could be achieved, poverty could be conquered, if New Yorkers only stopped pampering their dogs. Or so suggests Francis X. Clines in his Times op-ed.

While behind every luxury is money that might have been given to charity, this money is also leaving the wealthy and going to the presumably less well-off employees of dog-grooming salons and the like. But more importantly, to take a relatively minor, if silly, splurge and identify it as the first thing that has to go in the name of helping the needy is, well, silly. The typical person spending a ton on a dog is spending a ton more on cars and houses, investments, and private school tuition, not to mention his own grooming and dining. To say that dogs are being spoiled while humans suffer, though technically true, does not mean that the former is contributing to the latter.

And, when the paper includes articles accompanied by photos like the one below (the article is about a man being pursued by the BBC for not owning a television), how could anybody not put dog-pampering on his list of most worth-it luxuries?