Economic thoughts

An extremely low median wage, the mounting costs of higher education, and the destruction of the middle class are all part of why the American Dream is dead. For a majority of people working hard is not a guarantee of upward mobility let alone raising a family in the modest, comfortable surroundings that inhabited so much of the postwar 1950's landscape of optimism.  And if you still think that pulling yourself up by the bootstrap - that great Hortaio Algers myth - is still possible: it never was. The only way to get ahead in the US is through the help of others with influence, and if you are not already wealthy, chances are you're not getting that help any time soon. The other option is white collar crime. 

Several years ago,  I wrote an email to someone in reaction to their complaining about the homeless to explain how this system works: "you cannot just leave the poor to themselves, expecting them to die off because of their condition (not being able to afford healthcare, living in violence, poor diets, living in low rent districts surrounded by the highest levels of pollution and toxins), saving the elite from the burden of having to deal with the situation, because as long as there is a culture of 'more' there will always be people with less. And as long as we are part of that culture of 'more,' expecting larger profit margins every year and aspiring to the level of the elite, we are complicit in the poverty of those at the bottom." In the midst of the Occupy Wall Street movement I think it is even more relevant to consider. 

Barbara Ehrenreich talks cogently about the homeless in her article "How Homelessness Became an Occupy Wall Street Issue." She says, "to be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. The destitute are our own native-born “illegals,” facing prohibitions on the most basic activities of survival. They are not supposed to soil public space with their urine, their feces, or their exhausted bodies. Nor are they supposed to spoil the landscape with their unusual wardrobe choices or body odors. They are, in fact, supposed to die, and preferably to do so without leaving a corpse for the dwindling public sector to transport, process, and burn."

This is something that ought to scare us all. Because as the rich in this country strive for even more riches, they drive more of us into this state. As Ehrenreich says, "It’s where we’re all eventually headed -- the 99%, or at least the 70%, of us, every debt-loaded college grad, out-of-work school teacher, and impoverished senior -- unless this revolution succeeds." And a revolution, as I see it, means overthrowing our system that promotes wealth of 1% at the cost of impoverishing the rest of us. It also means no longer sympathizing with and rationalizing the behavior of the extremely wealthy because we aspire to one day be like them if we work hard enough, because we won't (check out "Don’t EVEN Get Me Started, Mythical Bootstraps College Student").

To quote, but not name a friend, "Leave the millionaires of the private sector alone, most of them worked hard to get where they are (this is NOT France in 1789!) and deserve their rewards. " I ask do their rewards include screwing the rest of us? And does that mean the rest of us haven't worked as hard (I think of those working two or three jobs -- if they are available -- at minimum wage)? Maybe we should all just go eat some cake and drink champagne.