We had a big snowstorm this last week (January 11th and 12th, 2011) and so I had to suit-up and dig out the driveway again. I found my neighbor Jim out there and we dug our driveways side by side separated by a long pile of snow from previous storms. When the first rush of enthusiasm weakened in the face of the daunting job, we slowed down and began to “shoot the breeze” between our efforts to toss the snow up onto the growing pile. The topic on all our minds in early January was the awful tragedy in Arizona, just a few days earlier (Jan. 8), where nineteen people were shot including US Rpresentative Gabrielle Giffords who was greviously wounded in the head, and six shot fatally, among them US District Chief Judge John Roll. At one juncture, when were were half-way down the driveway, Jim broached the subject.
“Waren’t that a terrible tragedy”, he said, puffing, as he tossed a big shovel full of the white stuff up onto the massive pile between our drives. The tossed snow-remained coherent and broke away to roll down a little way, then hung up in a little snow-gully between our two piles.
“Yeah….terrible!” I said, pausing to watch the unstable ball of snow. The snow clump shuddered then rolled over the top, then picked up speed to cascade down the opposite side of the long pile making a minor avalanche that spread out over my partly dug-out driveway.
“That state has gone too far in a lot of ways,” I said, turning away from the avalanche and continuing to dig. “Too many guns allowed, too few regulations, too little of a safety-net to help those in need....” I trailed off and went back to the digging.
“But, hey the Constitution says”…began Jim, then he paused as he focused on pushing his shovel-blade deep into a big drift, “they have the right to carry a gun,”he grunted, as he sailed another over-loaded shovel-full up to the top.
I paused to watch the snow land and stay in place. Then I replied, “But, had there been some better social outreach --and fewer guns available in that state, maybe that tragedy might not have happened.” I said firmly, as I finally reached the apron of thick snow that Jim caused to toppled over to my side.
Jim reacted to my comment rapidly...his words were carried on his breath which condensed in the cold air and drifted down the driveway. “We can’t afford all those social programs. Most of them kind o’ people are just lazy. They take them benefits—like--like free healthcare, free college, and, and food-handouts, then they take off and head back home to God knows where. Leavin’ us to pay the tab.”
I was preparing a response, when Jim’s wife Doris called from the opened garage door. “Jim---your brother Marty’s on the ’phone. It’s somthin’ about yer mom!”
Jim stuck his shovel deep into the snow-bank, waved to me, and turned on his booted heel to disappear into the cavernous garage. He said nothing, but when he waved he had a “Well, I-won-that-one!” smirk on his face.
I continued shoveling… and thinking.
I first wondered where he got the patently erroneous idea that someone in Arizona was getting free health care and a cheap college education?
But what irritated me more was: why couldn’t Jim see into the lives of others…and perhaps have a little empathy for those that were less well-off, not so smart, or didn’t have a well-to-do developer for a dad, like Jim had.
The rhythmic scrapes of the shovel on the finally exposed asphalt and the deep breathing must have helped engorge my tired brain cells with plenty of oxygenated blood--for as I dug an idea came to me.
Perhaps the cause of Jim lack of empathy for others, is rooted in the fact that he himself is working hard each day, competing avidly for a smaller and smaller part of the economic pie! Jim’s thinking is, why should some Hispanic or foreign kid get “benefits” when he (Jim) was "bustin' his butt" to make his life a little better, and finding that it was a distinctly uphill battle.
It’s true, Jim and Doris do have a nice house, two new cars and two kids in high school. But to support that life style, both have full-time jobs and take overtime when they can get it. I also know that Jim’s house is mortgaged to the hilt, and he has thick payment books for those two new cars. Jim and Doris did work hard to keep up their lifestyle--that was true.
They had to struggle, because it has become more and more difficult to attain a “middle class” life style in America. Over the last several decades the middle class has been competing for a smaller and smaller piece of the economic pie. Since the 1970s the situation of those in the middle of the economic scale has deteriorated. In order to maintain their lifestyles these folks have had to resort to working a second job, remortgaging their homes to raise cash, and encouraging their wives into the market place too.
What went wrong with the American dream? A good part of the discontent in America is related to our present unequal distribution of wealth. You (reader) may not realize it, since the super-wealthy represent only one in a hundred of us, but they are sequestering a larger and larger part of the economic pie every year. As Americans, we believe in free-enterprise and a fair chance for everyone. We envision ourselves (and our kids) with a fair chance to grab the brass ring on our only go-around on the economic Ferris wheel. We imagine each of us having the same chance to climb up the economic ladder. But that view is outdated and is not the reality of the game we are playing now. How can it be, when the part of the pie middle class Americans are all competing for gets smaller and smaller each year? When the kids of the rich start their ball game from third base and our kids still must begin their run on first—and the distance to first base is getting longer and longer each year.
I read not so long a go an interesting piece by Steven Pearlstein “The Costs of Rising Economic Inequality”. (Wednesday, October 6, 2010, The costs of rising economic inequality, in: www.washingtonpost.com). Pearlstein pointed out the disturbing fact that the top one percent (1%) of families in economic ranking took home more that 23% of the nation’s wealth. That is right! One percent of the population has sequestered nearly one fourth of the Nation’s wealth, leaving the remainder--the other 99% left only with 77% of the total. (In another analysis of the data we learn that the top ten percent (10%) command more than two-thirds of the nation’s wealth. Thus if the top ten percent takes home 66 2/3 %, that means the bottom 80% must be scrambling for the remaining one third of the nation’s wealth.) These figures are the type of monetary wealth distribution you would not expect to find not in the USA--the largest economy in the western world, a nations which spends more on their miliatary than all the other nations in the world combined, but in a mid 20th century banana republic like Honduras or Guatemala (sorry to remind you Hondurans and Guatemalans!). How can that have happened to the USA--the oldest democracy in the world and the world’s wealthiest market economy!
Not so very long ago…in good economic times too…in the 1970s, the top one-percent earners garnered only nine (9%) percent of the total wealth (not 23%). It is important to note that that level of inequality (about 9%) is about where most modern industrialized countries in the western world are at now. Life is not so bad for their "economic royalty". Yet their middle class can live a reasonably full and healthful life. And the comparative figures on longevity, health, and childhood mortality support the fact—that the US with its high wealth inequality lags far behind in these measures of a nation's well-being. So in the last four decades (the period of Republican ascendancy and the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II regimes) the “take” of the oligarchs more than doubled. Is there any question what the Republicans have been attempting to do? Or that they are mostly responsible for these changes?
Today the USA stands out as a great place to be wealthy----if you are! But a bad place for the middle class, and for workers in general. Is that the way we want it to be? Would you want to see your children and grand-children grow up in such a place? I think not.
As Perlstein and others have pointed out, there are some very undesirable results of such inequity. For America which prided herself on her “freedom and equality for all” there can be no equality when we are creating an economic overlord-ship, or an economic “royalty” who live, think, act, and spend their money very differently than the rest of us. The establishment of a class of “economic royals” skews “opportunity, social standing and political power” (as Perlstein states so well). In the face of these facts, can we still honestly proclaim and actually believe our most deeply cherished tenets about “equality for all“? (And that “equality” was always interpreted and understood only as--an equal chance at success. But that equal chance we all hope for may not be there today.)
There are moral and political reasons for caring about this dramatic skewing of wealth, which in the real world leads to a similar skewing of opportunity, social standing, and political power. But according to Perlstein there is also an important economic reason: Too much inequality, he concludes, just like too little, appears to reduce global competitiveness and long-term growth, at least in developed countries like ours.
It’s important for our future and our children’s future that we recognize the pitfalls of economic inequality. Perhaps when we do we will have more empathy for the “other guy” who is struggling too. We must be aware of the economic and political costs of putting too much money in the hands of a few. Perhaps some of these horrible tragedies –often the result of despair and hopelessness-- would fade away too.
Get the picture?
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