I tell you what, I’ve been struggling with this piece for two days now, and it’s just not happening. I keep running up against the barrier of what everybody knows.
Everybody knows that if you live long enough you’re going to peg the needle on the scale of indignities at some point. Everybody knows that if you fall hard enough to warrant the mercy of the state, the state will probably have to scrape you off the pavement first.
Everybody knows that our system has enough money sloshing around in it to feed everybody, house everybody, give healthcare to everybody, guarantee a job for everybody who can work and wants to, guarantee a retirement untinged with desperation.
(Maybe everybody doesn’t know that one?)
It’s a testament to the power of mythology, and lifelong teaching about how we fit into the framework of it, that everybody knows this stuff and we think doing something about it would be sacrilegious, or blasphemy, sometimes literally and sometimes substituting capital for god.
I am blaspheming.
People look at people like me, successfully scraped off the pavement, housed, fed, doctored, and a lot of them think it’s unfair; they’ve worked hard to get by and I seem to have not. They think I’m competing with them for resources, and cheating.
It is unfair, it’s screamingly inequitable, but of course it’s not me they’re competing with, or you.
I do feel sometimes like I’m cheating, but I remember a few years ago, I think in 2016, hearing that five billionaires controlled as much wealth as the bottom 50% of our economic heap. Now it’s three billionaires and the bottom 60%.
Everybody knows, everybody knows, everybody knows, and everybody knows you can’t just hang yourself out there alone, maybe risking everything you have.
Which I understand. Everybody’s vulnerable but rarely more than someone on the dole.
Anyway. Apologies for beating an obvious horse. I just wanted to make sure you know.
(Musical contributions to this post include Fantastic Negrito, “White Jesus Black Problems;” Gogol Bordello “Pura Vida Conspiracy;” The Bridge City Sinners, “Unholy Hymns;” Red Elvises, “My Name Is Elvis!;” Woodkid, “S16;” Big Thief, “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You;” Real Estate, “Half A Human;” Animal Collective, “Time Skiffs;” Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, “Temple.” As always, leave your music recommendations in the comments if you got some.)
I am not sure where you are in life, Weldon. I am retired now, maxed out on Social Security as has my wife too. It is livable for the two of us. There are funds set aside for us. My last few years I was paid extraordinarily well. My wife drew off of my SS and we banked it and I banked a portion of my salary. Not a millionaire and we get by.
Topic switch: We (AB) did submit a plan for SS and how to fund it going forward. They agreed with our findings in a note sent back to us and Representative DeFazio. It is simple and it works with small incremental increases over 10 years. The same holds true on Medicare if you wish to eliminate General funds from it. Of course, the problem with the latter is a runaway commercial healthcare industry.
Some people are incredibly determined to be ignorant. I am beyond being nice to them or tolerant.
I fall to see your survival as being unfair. We give away or allow more to support the 4 tenths of 1% who have an average income of $3.3 million (2018). Tax Policy Center and I am too lazy to look at an updated chart. So, I am low . . .
I will join your merry group here shortly. Thanks for writing. Some worthy reads.