Estranged Bedfellows: We’re NOT “All in This Together”

If you and another person are adrift at sea in a lifeboat, it makes good sense to conclude that you’re both “in this together” and act accordingly.  You share food and shelter, take turns sleeping and standing guard and do what you can to keep each other’s spirits up. In other words, you give equally of what you have to survive equally.

But in the sea of economic distress we’re all floating on these days, a fortunate few are riding out the storm in well-provisioned yachts while the rest of us are desperately testing the buoyant properties of kelp.  The only thing we who work for a paycheck have in common with the always undeserving rich is inhabiting the same planet.

“When the few assert economic control over the many, a state of class warfare exists.”

Pre-purchased politicians and corporate apologists speak to us soothingly of the need for “shared sacrifice” from all the economic classes. OK, so tell me what are the rich willing to sacrifice that will be as painful and life-threatening to them as the loss of a dollar an hour in wages is to those of us who are barely getting by?   Let’s see, even if they gave up their second and third homes, yachts and private aircraft, private schools for their children, long and frequent vacations in exotic places, all but one of their cars, designer clothes, spa treatments, golf and country club memberships, lavish parties with valet parking, cooks, maids, tutors, gardeners and pet groomers—even if they gave up all these things and just kept the money they have in banks, they still wouldn’t come close to knowing the daily misery and fear for survival that confronts a paid-by-the-hour working person.

If you can’t buy what your family needs in spite of your hardest work and thriftiest habits, if you can’t find a job at all, if you’re old and have only Social Security and Medicare to keep you alive, then you’ve already sacrificed more than your share.  Don’t give into the “we’re all in this together” malarkey and let yourself to be browbeaten into surrendering even more of the little you have. When the owner of the yacht is willing to abandon ship and jump into the lifeboat with you, then you can talk about togetherness and common sacrifices.