I've read so many conservative blog posts about individual responsibility that the words are beginning to lose meaning to me. Sometimes I imagine there are large groups of people gathering a patchwork of fraudulent social security disability, food stamps, whatever is left of regular unemployment, small time drug sales (the small time drug sales should be legal, and untaxed for anyone making below $51,000 a year earned wages), and under the table work, and calling it life.
It's become such a dead horse to say that many people have lost a sense of individual responsibility that I feel tired of thinking it and saying it.
I can well imagine the challenges of being in Detroit, Baltimore, Boston, Miami, or Los Angeles, and competing with a huge pool of workers for the same minimum or low wage jobs. Say from $7.40 to $10.50 an hour, mostly part time jobs with minimal benefits or paid time off.
And it's not so much that those jobs don't pay well or that the benefits aren't great. I mean, people can accept that. It's that those kind of jobs are so rarely a window into a more prosperous economic sphere, that for the worker it can compound the sense of isolation that started with earning barely or not enough to live on.
To say nothing of if you have kids.
I feel, very, very strongly, that for all his failings, Donald Trump is the better candidate for what we now call 'the working poor.' I don't think Donald Trump really knows it, and I can't credit him with anything like real compassion. But by circumstances and being washing-machine wrung through a Republican primary process, he has been bonked closer to positions of what we call economic liberty.
I'm tired of wishing and hoping for a better life for people at the fringes. I know - and I've repeated this to myself until the thought is just as threadbare as all these others - that people have to work hard, that even in the best circumstances we can create, there may still be injustice, and that in this life there is no certain rest.
Neither candidate can change the existential state of human nature. And truly, neither really acknowledges a higher power beyond themselves, the one Power that really can.
And that might be the most sad of all.
I think what you're looking for is 'don't work hard, work smart' but I'll add that even smart people have to work hard sometimes. Being poor sucks, to quote many I know in that position. In many ways money doesn't by happiness it buys opportunities or second and third chances. Money buys less anxiety as you don't have to worry about money and make rational decisions that can help you in the future.
ReplyDeleteIf only I could shake people in developed countries like America and say that they have it so great. As in with stability we have growth and that makes such a huge difference. If you're in China or a developing country you don't have stability as you have to always worry about personal safety, your boss that wants you to work 60 hours a week of tedious boring labor, and failure is punished by food not on the table. Failure is much more severe in places that aren't America.
Sorry Ben, but I don't respect Trump when he's born with a huge advantage in financial security and expect him to understand the poor. Even more I don't respect him when he doesn't win that he blames some external force making him lose, but it can't be him. Part of adulthood and maturity is accepting responsibility for your actions, i.e. not saying it's rigged! As they say life isn't fair, and trust me for the working poor it sure isn't as they are the ones that have to come home with back pain with no medical insurance. They don't get to throw up their hands and say 'it's rigged! it's unfair' because no one will listen to them or take them seriously. I feel when Trump does it, it comes off as weak and childish as so few poor people have a voice like him and all he does is blame others for his lack of judgement and deflect when asked about his character.
It comes across as petulant when Trump says that "it's rigged", but apparently there are some very serious vote fraud tactics that both parties use. I think people should have to show ID when they vote and that voter rolls should be carefully scrubbed for dead people.
DeleteBeyond that, yes, first world people are very spoiled and don't appreciate what they have, that's why it's so odd that you would bonk out of a first world economy and try to collect benefits rather than work.
Don't apologize, I'm not looking for you to respect Trump, I don't respect him either. The problem is less that he was born rich and more that he doesn't seem to understand that a little common courtesy would go a long way in the election, and that you can't do all the research you need to on Twitter.
Some of the other problems are minimum wage, taxes, union rules, and excessive regulations keep so many people out of the economy to begin with. But yes if you plug away at it you can eventually win and it's important to get that message out there.