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aylinnThe following is refined from some of my posts on FB inspired by this picture:
http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/310637_2401946404850_1136777814_3897571_1123034735_n.jpg
I wasn't saddled with loans because my PARENTS worked their @$$ of for my college education. I also chose to go to a reasonable school.
Since then, I got into trouble because I'm stupid but I learned my lesson & got back out of trouble. The only debt I really have is one card for dental/medical emergencies and our mortgage.
HOWEVER - I'm one or two paychecks from trouble and possibly facing unemployment so danger is looming and it's scary. The fact that I don't feel comfortable about finding a new day job and have only a razor thin safety line despite my best efforts to weave a net (and the fact that my husband HASN'T found a new day job) I DO blame on that 1%.
And, as a friend of mine said, It's a safe bet the person in that picture hasn't had any major medical issues. Just about everyone on my list has been hit either personally or in their immediate family w/medical bills. It's the absolute worst kind of debt. Because of that looming danger and my own medical issues, I might end up back in debt again. or worse.
Now, I'm middle class and I've never pretended to be anything BUT middle class. I've gotten screwed as bad as everyone else. My father was a teacher for 35 years & managed to support us on his sole income by working everything he could. Just like HIS father. Although even my grandfather had some help from my grandmother. However - I don't even have kids and I'm barely squeaking by. The only time I came even CLOSE to the same standards of living enjoyed by my great-grandparents was when both my husband and I were both working our butts off. But, let's be realistic folks - even what we have today is still a good bit better than what his family came from. So we still average out to middle.
But the problem is that folks as a whole aren't learning. This is the 1920's all over again. Back then, folks counted on the stock market & credit & got screwed when that 1% got stupid. Our parents & grandparents learned from that. They put laws in place to keep things running smoothly. The boomers & our generation & gen x did NOT. They felt entitled to keep everything they earned & to chase after pretty toys. (I work in tech support. I can tell you EXACTLY how entitled a lot of people feel they are today!) So I do sympathize with and agree with some points of the http://nycga.cc/ group. Especially this one: Exercising personal and collective responsibility; (from http://nycga.cc/2011/09/24/principles-of-solidarity-working-draft/ )
I do feel that Glass-Steagall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act ) or something like it should be put back in place. BUT. I've been saying since 1980 when I was graduating high school that my generation was going to get screwed. WHY? Because we would be supporting our parents (via social security, etc.) and our kids would see us doing that & go "NOT ME, Baby!" and screw us over so THEY were comfortable. Because that was how THEY were raised by us - to be out for themselves.
Elizabeth Warren talks about social contracts. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20110042-503544.html
The 1970's & 1980's blew social contracts out of the water. HOW TELLING is it that COMMUNITY SERVICE is now a state mandated requirement for graduation in several places? I know it wasn't when I was growing up. nor when my folks were. But you helped out anyway. NOW students have to be reminded to consider someone outside themselves. AND - if their parents don't like the state curriculum - why then, the kids never get exposed to even THAT! Thank you Home-Schooling! (I have nothing against Home education as a supplement to public school/parochial school/private school. Heck, I even consider it a necessity! But it's not a full blown replacement.)
and as a result, we are losing connection to each other. and we aren't taking responsibility for our actions. We can always negotiate a way out. (and yes, despite my best efforts, I admit to sharing some of this fatal flaw.)
While I am part of the 99% that the actual original graphs refer to, that 99% group is made up of many different percentages:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/09/the_rich_getting_richer_in_one.html
http://www.epi.org/publication/a_long_and_persistent_middle-class_squeeze/
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
and I'm not part of all of them.
But - I have always tried to reach out and help where I could. I've seen first hand how little support there is for, as Alfie P Doolittle phrased it in "My Fair Lady", 'the undeserving poor'. There we were, both unemployed & this close to losing our house & we didn't rate help from all the social services because we were still on unemployment and "made too much money". We survived because of the kindness of our friends & our family. Noblesse Oblige isn't just a fancy way of saying "donate just for the tax break" - it actually means "you have money - DO SOMETHING WITH IT. Pay it forward."
THAT's the objection that I as part of the original 99% have with every part of the 1%. They want the "Noblesse" but they aren't being "oblige"d. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige
or to put it another way in more pop-culture terms - "With great power comes great responsibility." If you're going to take the power of wealth, you have the responsibility of spreading it around.
The point I'm trying to make is that we have lost touch with the values of community - not family - COMMUNITY. Yes, the community is made up of individuals - and each individual should do the best they can for themselves. There is nothing wrong with that. And yes, the community should be there to help if you overreach and fail. or to help if the environment does something that you can't control and you then fail because of that. BUT you have to nourish the community so it HAS that ability. You have to care about your neighbors and your friends as well as yourself and your family. It means you do things like vaccinate and donate and recycle and share and vote and BE RESPONSIBLE. The person in the picture I referenced above has PART of it right - they aren't adding to an already overburdened community. But where they are failing is what are they doing FOR the community besides not being a burden? see the above point I mentioned:Exercising personal and collective responsibility. The person in that picture exercised their personal responsibility - where's their collective responsibility?
I'm not willing to blame it on JUST the 1% - they might have done it - but the middle class enabled it.
BOTH the 1% and the 99% told the government they didn't want to pay taxes. And the government listened. from the local school boards to the feds, oh boy, did they listen. and that's why everything is literally crumbling under our feet.
Because if you won't CONSCIOUSLY nourish the community, the community has to find another way to do what we ask of it. It thought it had a solution. We wanted it to handle it without bothering us. The community's original solution was through taxes of all sorts and payroll contributions. (Look at when income tax started. it started when we had to fight wars & rebuild from those wars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service )
We told them not to do that but we still didn't pick up our fair share. So the community is failing. Because we haven't given it the answer that it needs to handle the burden we've placed on it. The real problem of the 99%? We trusted that 1% to find that answer that all of us could live with. We forgot to make sure they weren't as selfish as the rest of us. Who watches the watchers? Answer: nobody. Especially if you do things like repeal the laws that make them watch. Like the EPA. Like Glass-Steagall.
Humans are lazy. We don't take responsibility for what we do and we've hamstrung the ability of the community to deal with the responsibility we asked it to deal with. TO be our parents and our caretakers and our watchdogs and our protectors because we don't want to be bothered by doing ourselves the things we should.
And that's why I sympathize with the NYC General Assembly at #OccupyWallStreet protest and support them doing it. Because they are doing it PROPERLY. Legally, civilly, peacefully & totally within their rights as American citizens. Because they are stepping up and making the rest of us put eyes on a problem we don't want to see. Ourselves. Just like other important organized efforts have done.
http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/310637_2401946404850_1136777814_3897571_1123034735_n.jpg
I wasn't saddled with loans because my PARENTS worked their @$$ of for my college education. I also chose to go to a reasonable school.
Since then, I got into trouble because I'm stupid but I learned my lesson & got back out of trouble. The only debt I really have is one card for dental/medical emergencies and our mortgage.
HOWEVER - I'm one or two paychecks from trouble and possibly facing unemployment so danger is looming and it's scary. The fact that I don't feel comfortable about finding a new day job and have only a razor thin safety line despite my best efforts to weave a net (and the fact that my husband HASN'T found a new day job) I DO blame on that 1%.
And, as a friend of mine said, It's a safe bet the person in that picture hasn't had any major medical issues. Just about everyone on my list has been hit either personally or in their immediate family w/medical bills. It's the absolute worst kind of debt. Because of that looming danger and my own medical issues, I might end up back in debt again. or worse.
Now, I'm middle class and I've never pretended to be anything BUT middle class. I've gotten screwed as bad as everyone else. My father was a teacher for 35 years & managed to support us on his sole income by working everything he could. Just like HIS father. Although even my grandfather had some help from my grandmother. However - I don't even have kids and I'm barely squeaking by. The only time I came even CLOSE to the same standards of living enjoyed by my great-grandparents was when both my husband and I were both working our butts off. But, let's be realistic folks - even what we have today is still a good bit better than what his family came from. So we still average out to middle.
But the problem is that folks as a whole aren't learning. This is the 1920's all over again. Back then, folks counted on the stock market & credit & got screwed when that 1% got stupid. Our parents & grandparents learned from that. They put laws in place to keep things running smoothly. The boomers & our generation & gen x did NOT. They felt entitled to keep everything they earned & to chase after pretty toys. (I work in tech support. I can tell you EXACTLY how entitled a lot of people feel they are today!) So I do sympathize with and agree with some points of the http://nycga.cc/ group. Especially this one: Exercising personal and collective responsibility; (from http://nycga.cc/2011/09/24/principles-of-solidarity-working-draft/ )
I do feel that Glass-Steagall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act ) or something like it should be put back in place. BUT. I've been saying since 1980 when I was graduating high school that my generation was going to get screwed. WHY? Because we would be supporting our parents (via social security, etc.) and our kids would see us doing that & go "NOT ME, Baby!" and screw us over so THEY were comfortable. Because that was how THEY were raised by us - to be out for themselves.
Elizabeth Warren talks about social contracts. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20110042-503544.html
The 1970's & 1980's blew social contracts out of the water. HOW TELLING is it that COMMUNITY SERVICE is now a state mandated requirement for graduation in several places? I know it wasn't when I was growing up. nor when my folks were. But you helped out anyway. NOW students have to be reminded to consider someone outside themselves. AND - if their parents don't like the state curriculum - why then, the kids never get exposed to even THAT! Thank you Home-Schooling! (I have nothing against Home education as a supplement to public school/parochial school/private school. Heck, I even consider it a necessity! But it's not a full blown replacement.)
and as a result, we are losing connection to each other. and we aren't taking responsibility for our actions. We can always negotiate a way out. (and yes, despite my best efforts, I admit to sharing some of this fatal flaw.)
While I am part of the 99% that the actual original graphs refer to, that 99% group is made up of many different percentages:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/09/the_rich_getting_richer_in_one.html
http://www.epi.org/publication/a_long_and_persistent_middle-class_squeeze/
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
and I'm not part of all of them.
But - I have always tried to reach out and help where I could. I've seen first hand how little support there is for, as Alfie P Doolittle phrased it in "My Fair Lady", 'the undeserving poor'. There we were, both unemployed & this close to losing our house & we didn't rate help from all the social services because we were still on unemployment and "made too much money". We survived because of the kindness of our friends & our family. Noblesse Oblige isn't just a fancy way of saying "donate just for the tax break" - it actually means "you have money - DO SOMETHING WITH IT. Pay it forward."
THAT's the objection that I as part of the original 99% have with every part of the 1%. They want the "Noblesse" but they aren't being "oblige"d. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige
or to put it another way in more pop-culture terms - "With great power comes great responsibility." If you're going to take the power of wealth, you have the responsibility of spreading it around.
The point I'm trying to make is that we have lost touch with the values of community - not family - COMMUNITY. Yes, the community is made up of individuals - and each individual should do the best they can for themselves. There is nothing wrong with that. And yes, the community should be there to help if you overreach and fail. or to help if the environment does something that you can't control and you then fail because of that. BUT you have to nourish the community so it HAS that ability. You have to care about your neighbors and your friends as well as yourself and your family. It means you do things like vaccinate and donate and recycle and share and vote and BE RESPONSIBLE. The person in the picture I referenced above has PART of it right - they aren't adding to an already overburdened community. But where they are failing is what are they doing FOR the community besides not being a burden? see the above point I mentioned:Exercising personal and collective responsibility. The person in that picture exercised their personal responsibility - where's their collective responsibility?
I'm not willing to blame it on JUST the 1% - they might have done it - but the middle class enabled it.
BOTH the 1% and the 99% told the government they didn't want to pay taxes. And the government listened. from the local school boards to the feds, oh boy, did they listen. and that's why everything is literally crumbling under our feet.
Because if you won't CONSCIOUSLY nourish the community, the community has to find another way to do what we ask of it. It thought it had a solution. We wanted it to handle it without bothering us. The community's original solution was through taxes of all sorts and payroll contributions. (Look at when income tax started. it started when we had to fight wars & rebuild from those wars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service )
We told them not to do that but we still didn't pick up our fair share. So the community is failing. Because we haven't given it the answer that it needs to handle the burden we've placed on it. The real problem of the 99%? We trusted that 1% to find that answer that all of us could live with. We forgot to make sure they weren't as selfish as the rest of us. Who watches the watchers? Answer: nobody. Especially if you do things like repeal the laws that make them watch. Like the EPA. Like Glass-Steagall.
Humans are lazy. We don't take responsibility for what we do and we've hamstrung the ability of the community to deal with the responsibility we asked it to deal with. TO be our parents and our caretakers and our watchdogs and our protectors because we don't want to be bothered by doing ourselves the things we should.
And that's why I sympathize with the NYC General Assembly at #OccupyWallStreet protest and support them doing it. Because they are doing it PROPERLY. Legally, civilly, peacefully & totally within their rights as American citizens. Because they are stepping up and making the rest of us put eyes on a problem we don't want to see. Ourselves. Just like other important organized efforts have done.
