This is my first economic depression, and I must admit to finding a little secret joy in it. My 93 year-old granny has been here before and remembers the bad days with a bit of fondness: people working together, folks showing generosity with what little they had, a free market that was really about creating new jobs and financially secure employees. In my almost-half-a-decade, I have seldom witnessed such things. My generation has been mostly devoted to the almighty “me”-- to an individualistic spirit of competition for a rich reward and out-of-control spending as a form of worship.
We weren’t going to change for any altruistic reasons, though there are plenty to choose: our country has the second-highest infant mortality rate in the industrialized world, 47 million of our workers are uninsured, and our country’s children are threatened not only with poor educations but also poor physical and emotional health. The growing number of homeless families was not enough to move us until our own homes were threatened by foreclosure. And there’s the rub: now we are becoming a growing part of the statistics we hear bantered on CNN. Now those sorrowful numbers are devouring us and our proud families.
The upside is that when pushed to the brink of poverty, we do change. We revolt. We refuse to purchase gasoline at $4/gallon. We are done with CEO’s who maneuver around the country on private jets. We are sick of bailing out the rich. What may be around the corner, then, is a return of the middle class. The pendulum swings, and if you’ve been living high on the hog, you may be about to suck hind tit. At least that’s my little dream. I’m fine living through this depression, as long as we share the consequences with our brothers and sisters up in the big house.
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3 comments:
Hello
Everyone around here seems to be doing the "Sky is Falling!" chicken dance over the perceived Robin Hood taxes Obama may or may not be proposing, as if we are the rich who will be paying for those people who are "lazy and so poor by choice". Most of these right-wing neighbors are either on farm subsidies or make their living from folks on farm subsidies. Maybe the only thing rich about them is the irony of the situation! Or perhaps, because they are the ones in the big house, the ones with the gas-guzzling Hummers, the ones government has bailed out for so long, they are nervous about some tough accountability issues in their futures.
Amen, Sister!
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