It makes me sad to go to the “We are the 53%” website, and not for any political reason. Just because, if you go there, in between all the high schoolers and college kids who don’t know their asses from their face holes (no offense kids, none of us did either at that age, it’s not a crime), you’ll find…
First of all, a lot of really inspiring stories. Do they, whoever they are, think we, whoever we are, don’t think it’s inspiring that someone from a poor or difficult background worked their way through college and made a big success, persevering for obstacles?
Second of all, you’ll meet people like the girl whose dad has thyroid cancer but went back to work working twelve hours a day, six days a week, despite his still-growing cancer.
Or like the girl who says that she chose to go to an in-state public school for economic reasons, worked hard in high school to earn a 90% scholarship to said public school, and so long as she works 30 hours a week and doesn’t go to eat every week, or even every month, she’s just fine.
Or the ex-marine who worked 60-70 hours a week to pay his way through college (in 8 years), now works two jobs, hasn’t had a vacation in four years, and can’t afford health insurance.
The general sentiment is “my life is pretty tough, but I will keep above water so long as nothing terrible happens like getting laid off or some major health issue, since I can’t afford health insurance.”
It makes me sad, because that doesn’t seem to me to be the American dream, which they are nevertheless justifiably proud of having lived. I mean, would even those people disagree that working ANY job 60-70 hours a week should afford , I don’t know—college? Health insurance? Basic things you need to survive, and thrive, in American society?
It’s the very fact that these people ARE so talented and plucky that it makes me sad. It doesn’t seem like there should be a disagreement between these two groups on this score. ‘
Hell, half of all the Right has talked about for the last year is the fact that there aren’t any jobs. 14 million people in this country are out of work, nearly ten percent of the work force. How can the same people that are so upset about that believe that these people protesting for jobs are just whiny hippies who need to go out and get a job? Do we have 14 million unemployed, entitled liberal arts majors in this country? Is that what John Boehner was doing, fighting for their rights and their rights alone? That seems charitable.
But really, no. And no on other levels, too. It’s not the Tea Party posting on the 53%, right? Because they hate the bank bailouts and Wall Street as much as these guys do, don’t they? Or do they only hate it on their own time?
So, I don’t know. What has stirred up whatever thing thing is?
To me, the basic place this comes from—other than a very understandable urge, if you have made your way in American society to success, not to want to hear someone telling you you’re lucky–is, very simply, that there is something unmanly and un-American about asking for help.
That quintessentially American hero Snake Plissken didn’t ask for help when the guys with the machine guns told him they’d kill him if he didn’t score 8 points on two different backboards within a minute, or whatever it was, even though he’d never played basketball before. He just sacked up and hit a 75-foot three-pointer at the last second.
We see it in sports all the time. As a Dallas Mavericks fan, I saw it first hand. It didn’t matter how terrible Dirk’s supporting cast was over the years, a real man would have found a way to win–until he did, at which point everything is fine. Ryan Braun’s probably going to win the NL MVP over Matt Kemp, even though Matt Kemp led everyone in everything, because Braun’s team made the playoffs. If Kemp, who was .13 batting average points from the Triple Crown, wanted that award, he should have led everyone in everything even more.
God, do I understand that. After all, I was born and raised a Texan. But it’s just not RIGHT in this case, and I mean that in the sense of justice—it breaks my heart.
Persevering through great obstacles when you HAVE to—that’s heroic. And I have little doubt that most of the people who posted on the 53%, or the family members they discuss, are the kind of people who would rise to that occasion and there’s not a thing that I want to take away from that. I’m legitimately proud that they’re my countrymen.
But when you don’t have to?
There seems to be this idea that the salary that you get paid for work is something that God built into the fabric of the universe. Like Jesus came down and said, listen buddy, that 60 hour a week job you’re working? My Father says it shall not pay you enough to afford health care. Try not to get sick.
But it’s not. Not even close. That’s what the protestors are protesting about, and that’s what’s changed in American society. Those jobs–the kinds of jobs available to average Americans– don’t pay you enough to live. And they used to. That’s what the Wall Street protestors want.
People tell me it’s supply and demand. It isn’t. I should know, I was working a private tutoring job while dating an elementary school teacher. I saw way less students, who needed my help way less (if I weren’t there for my students, they’d only have their grades and slightly less high SAT scores to go on, if she wasn’t, they wouldn’t have made it through high school) and got paid way more per hour.
And you’re working 60 hours a week—it sounds to me like your time is in pretty high demand. But it’s not demanded by the rich, and so you don’t get paid enough to live. What you do is presumably very much demanded, but not demanded by the rich. That’s the real supply and demand.
Many more of us need elementary school teachers than will ever need stockbrokers. There’s just not much a stockbroker can do with my income. And just for the record, private schools—those schools where you get to send your kids if YOU’RE rich—pay their teachers much worse, on average, than public. That’s not supply and demand.
I mean seriously—seriously, seriously, seriously—the American dream is only needing to work 30 additional hours a week to be able to attend a public, in-state university, the cheapest kind of university they make, at a NINETY PERCENT DISCOUNT as long as you make some sacrifices?
The American dream is, after serving your country, AND getting a college degree , to come back to work a 60-70 hour job and not be able to afford health care, which is a ticking time bomb if ever there was one?
That’s what drives me nuts about this counter-protest, if that’s what it is. One guy says he’s upset because there aren’t jobs for regular people that pay a living wage, and he’s at Occupy Wall Street. The other guy says that he’s managed to get two jobs for regular people and almost gets a living wage and that’s a good thing because That’s What You Have to Do, and he’s at the 53% protest. All the first guys want is for the second guys not to have to do that. And why the hell shouldn’t an honest day’s work yield an honest day’s salary?
Remember, Snake Plissken can’t say no to the guys with guns, so he’s a hero for getting it done. But Superman was invented by two Jews on the eve of World War II. It is possible, you know, really actually possible, for the costs of things no longer to measure up to the salaries of people and for that to be a solveable problem.
These protests are directed at Wall Street for one simple reason. The people who control the money and set the prices have rigged this game so that THEY are compensated way more than supply and demand requires—what else do you call 15 million to get fired, the ultimate in lack of demand—and YOU are compensated way less than a fair market price. They have set up the basketball game where you have to make 8 points in one minute on two hoops. Life is amazing for them.
You say times are tough, and they are, but not for them. That’s why this isn’t a Great Depress-sack-up-and-do-what-you-have-to moment. NO ONE in the upper financial class is suffering. In fact, every study has shown they’ve never had it better.
That’s why you and I, even when we can find jobs, can’t find jobs that pay for what we need, not for things like new cars and iphones and cushy lifestyles where we don’t have to do anything, but for things like education, health care, or even a nice meal out with your family.
If you have made it in American society, be proud. My family is very comfortable, and that’s because my grandfather, the second to last of twelve kids, became a doctor and his son became a doctor, and their money comes from saving lives. I have no debt to my name because of the generosity of my parents, one, and because rather than choosing to pay for an extremely expensive American masters, I got a pretty cheap one overseas, and now they pay ME to go to school. A little choice, and mostly luck.
If you are a doctor, a computer scientist, an engineer or a financier, you might easily think that everyone who didn’t find a way to being as comfortable as you are made bad decisions. The problem is, in American society, there are way, way too many bad decisions. Almost any normal job is a “bad decision” these days because it doesn’t result in the ability to pay for a decent lifestyle.
That is all they’re saying. The want more good decisions, more options that afford a decent, not extravagant lifestyle. It sounds to me like a lot of the 53% DESERVE the same whether or not they think they should agitate for it.
if you didn’t think that the unemployed were all liberal arts grads who went into debt for useless masters there months ago, you’ve got no right to think it now. And if there’s no hope for the middle class, then there really is no hope for the 99%–whether they want any help or not.
When the guns are pointed at Snake Plissken, he has to do what he has to do. You don’t have to do this, and that’s because this IS America, not a third world country where there is no infrastructure and no ability to change, because this is a recession, not a depression, and because it’s just prices and salaries–which God didn’t write any where in the Bible, I promise–and jobs. Everybody needs jobs. Even liberals.