Sunday, December 8, 2013

The Street

3 jobs.
The guy who sits behind me at work has three jobs. His wife asked "what are we doing wrong?" She's a school counselor. They are both educated, smart people. 
They can't make ends meet. Together they have 4 jobs. 
That's why employment is up!
I'm not an economist, but I am thinking temporary Christmas jobs might have bounced the jobs numbers. 
Nobody is talking about the kinds of jobs people are getting.
Did anyone notice the fast food workers strike on Thursday? I never buy fast food, so I stayed away from McDonalds like I always do.
McDonald's and Wal-Mart depend heavily on taxpayer subsidies to underwrite their profits. Without food stamps and other taxpayer-paid benefits, most of their workers wouldn't be able to cobble together a living from day to day. 
When I told my friend that the system is rigged, he didn't say anything. He can't understand why he is failing after he has done "everything right."  I hear stories like this all the time. People who just can't get ahead, who can't save a dime. People who work fulltime who are living paycheck to paycheck, very few of these people ever think about why that is. They are too exhausted from working so hard to think about what is happening all around them.
I think about it all the time.
I think about 2008 and the banks that got their government welfare queen handouts. Isn't capitalism great?
While everyone was sleeping off their Thanksgiving turkey coma, this happened; Another Batch of Wall Street Villains Freed on Technicality | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone
Yeah, it's good to work on The Street. On my street, things are very different. 
We are living through a huge transition much like the when farm workers were told to work in factories. Then we didn't need factory workers, so they had to become office workers. Then we didn't need office workers, so now everybody is supposed to be a university-educated professional. 
I know lots of college educated people who can't get a decent job with decent wages. 
They all bought into the American dream that broke.
It broke when an economy that was built on a cheap oil post war boom, crashed. We still have billions to give to oil companies. Oil Companies Reap Billions From Subsidies - NYTimes.com
But politicians can't wait to take away food stamps from the poor, including the working poor. We need to start a sustainable economy that isn't hell bent on giving corporations carte blanche and taking everything they can from working class Americans. The status quo lie of hard work leading to a comfortable lifestyle is over. But we are supposed to keep marching into a dystopian future and not even question the capitalist nightmare that has gone into overdrive with a huge economic disparity.
 Nelson Mandela may have brought an end to Apartheid in South Africa, however, there is an economic ghetto that has exiled millions of Americans.
Until my friend behind me wakes up and his wife realizes that they are NOT doing anything wrong, wrong will continue to be done and the people doing it need to be held accountable. We have to stop thinking society exists to meet the needs of an economic system. The economic system must exist to serve the needs of the society, not The Street.

1 comment:

  1. The outrage will keep building with greater inequity – and spreading to more and more people, until finally it blows. God help the one percent when it does.

    Very crankily yours,
    The New York Crank

    ReplyDelete