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Today, a microcosm: a single floor in a single workplace. Seven years ago, their salaries were steadily growing, and gas was less than $1.50.
"I keep the heat off in the winter and wear sweaters and blankets, and leave the car parked in the driveway all weekend."
Since then, pay cuts, almost no raises, gas is around $2.90, and co-pays have climbed.
"He doesn't want anyone to know this but he had to file for bankruptcy."
A little shift in the economy, a little shift in management styles, a little shift in the competition. It all adds up.
One floor in one building, all "management employees". Responsible long-term jobs at an employee-friendly company, believe it or not. They all make much more than 'minimum' -- well, except perhaps the invisible janitors who come at night, but that's a job that's "outsourced" to some other company, and hence they ought not be considered "one of us"...
"I don't want to complain, I'm grateful for a job, but they took these medicines off the list and they cost me $200 a month now and it's really hard for me to afford it."
I saw Sicko last week. In a staff meeting today, I opened my ears and eyes and saw it again all around me, on my own office floor.
The one who told me of her year of hunger actually cried.
I am a little different from these long-term employees, hard-working, dedicated people. I worry about politics, and the state of the country. They worry about paying for gas, food, heat and medicine. The trouble is, I know it doesn't need to be this way. I know what it's like for the favored few. I can grasp what a 15% tax on capital gains means, and that brokerage accounts usually yield more than checking accounts. And I can somewhat grasp what it means for a country to be spending a trillion dollars on a war over there. What it would mean for the country to be spending a trillion dollars here, on infrastructure or clean energy projects or health care. What those kind of projects would do for the job market here.
Quite a bit came pouring out when the floodgates opened today. But I happened to hear another story today, earlier in the morning -- a more upbeat story of a young relative, a college grad in a different, more "favored" industry, who had just received $90,000 in severance pay plus 4 months worth of paid time off when she was laid off, and she bounced into a better job at another company in the same field. She is in one of those few industries where the money is really flowing because the industry -- indeed, the company -- has simply bought and paid for the government, and is raking in billions from .. well, from the former middle class. Well, from people like the desperate staff that I was just mentioning.
And yes, this particular lucky young person is not only lucky but hard-working, beautiful and smart, I believe. The go-getters that I regularly meet in business who 'do the big deals' for certain large companies and make six figures are also hard-working and smart -- and completely vested in a system where the best and brightest work frightfully hard to make money for their companies, for specific companies that have become more powerful than "the government". A system that finds me frequently in meetings where 10 or 15 of the best and the brightest figure out ways to eke out an extra few million dollars here or there from a contract, or how to properly count the beans, or how to "improve productivity". That sometimes finds me observing presentations where the best and the brightest are trying to sell nearly-useless services to us at exhorbitant prices using fancy presentations and fifty-dollar words. In my lovely office, I sometimes get phone calls from those who suggest that I should follow the latest management trend; that I should, for example, use the services of Arthur-Andersen-reborn-as-Accenture (in Bermuda-to-avoid-paying-taxes) in order to outsource the entire floor, to cut labor costs in half or in thirds, and to take advantage of tax loopholes. At this, I have to admit, I simply laughed.
But back to those big meetings where the bean-counting and productivity sessions occur. I suspect that many of those best and brightest feel some kind of discontent, in spite of their six-figure salaries; some inner spirit in them would prefer to be using their talents finding ways to reduce malaria or poverty or traffic accidents or homelessness, or to truly improve health care or education or the environment. I find myself wondering, as I look around and think about the thousands of other conference rooms also filled with similarly privileged, talented, and bored people: what kind of country or world would we have, if half of this talent had a better chance to actually focus on -- forgive the overstatement here -- purely human problems, rather than purely corporate ones?
Inside those big meetings all across the country, the Multinational's fortunate ones are engaged in tug-of-war or in "brainstorming sessions" to increase the pot of gold and security for the various owners -- including, admittedly, some middle-class 401K plans and small investors, but largely for the benefit of the 'most fortunate ones'. Outside those rooms, or on a floor below, the squeezed "middle class" is becoming fearful of the precipice, when the paycheck runs out, the car breaks down, or the job is lost and the health insurance along with it. At night, the "invisible ones" come to empty the trash cans, wipe the tables, vacuum the carpets, and clean the bathrooms. The "most favored ones" are busy buying the politicos, to ensure that the goodies keep coming, whether to themselves or to their corporations (and to their "privately held" firms), and trying to keep criminal elements from stealing their money -- which admittedly can be quite a pervasive problem for the semi-rich, as they must trust others to manage their accounts and their businesses, and there are many opportunities for fraud and theft.
Purely speaking, I am not communist, socialist, anarchist or libertarian. I believe in balance and community. I believe in cleaner government and funding basic infrastructure. And I believe that people who show up to work every day and do a decent job sure as hell ought not have to worry about paying for food, health care, heating bills or transportation.
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