Last year I made $16,000

The older I get, the sicker the practices of big business in this country make me. I've had the opportunity to see what life is like for factory, fast food and retail clothing store employees and what I like to term, because I felt like one myself, sub-atomic office particles -- the people, mostly women, who do the busywork required to keep the great hungry engines of business running.

I've also worked alongside incredibly intelligent, Ivy-League educated movers and shakers. One thing I can tell you for sure is that many of the members of one of these factions of the American workforce have no fucking clue what life is like for the other. Barbara Ehrenreich put it best in this quote (which is also mentioned in one of the articles I've linked to below) about have-nots: “They neglect their own children so the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect.”

This article is what set my blood a-boiling. There's also an excellent
Book excerpt.

What's to be done about all of this? I honestly don't know. I will say -- and with the full disclosure that I've seen more extremely lean years than not -- that I've never bought into the need to accumulate endless amounts of stuff. This doesn't mean I am anti-feathering your nest; not all. It's more that I am unwilling -- utterly and completely -- to kill myself at work so I can have, have, and further have. I don't say this much in mixed company because I think I'll be looked at as very anti-American, but I think it's disgusting the amount of pressure there is to give so very much of yourself to your job. Why? So the company you're working for can make ever higher profits? It's pointless.

Anyhoo, happy Patriots Day!