(Not) Understanding

  Some years ago I wrote a song titled "I Don't Undeerstand" with one of the lyrics being: I don't understand all the rich and the poor, some people want, some just want more.  Having just finished a piece on "big money" in The New York Review of Books, I find that I now understand even less.  This was a review of two new books which basically tells of the efforts by some wealthy families to eliminate or reduce government aid to those in need, all while increasing their (or their corporations) wealth: The many goals of this agenda can be summed up in a few words: lower taxes, privatization of public services, and deregulation of business...The tobacco industry opposes anti-smoking legislation.  The fossil fuel industry wants to eliminate state laws that restrict fracking, coal mining, and carbon dioxide emissions.  The soft-drink industry opposes taxes on sugary beverages.  The private prison industry advocates policies that increase the population of for-profit prisons, such as the detention of undocumented immigrants and the restriction of parole eligibility. Industry lobbyists oppose paid sick leave, workplace safety regulations, and minimum wage laws.  They support “right to work” laws that undermine unions.  They oppose teachers’ unions and support the privatization of education through charter schools and vouchers.   Much of this is accomplished either by penetrating high government offices via lobbyists or by actually being elected directly: These are not sporadic efforts to affect state policy.  There is an organization that coordinates the efforts of industry lobbyists and turns their interests into legislation.  It is a secretive group formed in 1973 called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  It is sponsored by scores of major corporations, which each pay a fee of $25,000 (or more) to be members.  Lafer (Gordon Lafer, author of one of the books) lists the group’s current and past corporate members, including Alcoa, Amazon, Amoco, Amway, AT&T, Boeing, BP, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Corrections Corporation of America, CVS, Dell, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, Facebook, General Electric, General Motors, Google, Home Depot, IBM, Koch Industries, McDonald’s, Merck, Microsoft, Sony, the US Chamber of Commerce, Verizon, Visa, and Walmart.  In addition to these corporations, two thousand state legislators are members of ALEC—collectively one quarter of all state legislators in the nation.  They include state senate presidents and house speakers.

    Mine is not to judge, and I certainly don't begrudge those with money.  But what puzzles me is not the drive for wealth, but the drive to also take away from those just struggling to make a living.  The Koch brothers, the Sackler family, the Walton family, Vice-President Mike Pence (I purposely left off Donald Trump due to his wealth being mostly trivial and artificial): Lafer contends that ALEC and its compatriots are engineering what he calls “a revolution of falling expectations.”  They have cynically played on the resentments of many citizens, purposefully deepening antagonism toward government programs that benefit unspecified “others.”  Many people are losing their economic security while others are getting government handouts.  Why should others get pensions?  Why should others get health insurance?  Why should others have job protections?  Why should unions protect their members?  “We are the only generation in American history to be left worse off than the last one,” reads a post from the Kochs’ advocacy group Generation Opportunity urging young people in Michigan to vote down a ballot proposal to raise the state’s sales tax.  “We are paying more for college tuition, for a Social Security system and a Medicare system we won’t get to use, $18 trillion in national debt and now an Obamacare system -- all that steals from our generation’s paychecks.”  It is ironic that this fraudulently populist message, encouraging resentment of government programs, was funded by billionaires who were, Lafer writes, “willing to spend previously unthinkable sums on politics.”  The Citizens United decision allowed a tiny percentage of the population, the richest, to direct vast amounts of money into political campaigns to promote privatization, discredit unions, and divert attention from the dramatic growth of income inequality.  “For the first time ever,” Lafer writes, “in 2012 more than half of all income in America went to the richest 10 percent of the population.”  This concentration of wealth has produced a new generation of megadonors: “More than 60 percent of all personal campaign contributions in 2012 came from less than 0.5 percent of the population.”

   Okay there's that.  New laws are being made and old laws being removed, something that has happened throughout histroy from pharoahs to tyrants and from megalomaniacs to ruling politicians.  And to be fair, each likely believes in their heart that what they are doing is for the greater good and that in the end, all those affected will see that they were right (the current target of the ruling Republicans in the U.S. is now privatizing governmental social programs such as schools, prisons and Social Security, the latter having been done in Chile which the article states "...was a disaster for many."  But such efforts come and go as times and dynasties change.  But in the end, age besets all of us and even the wealthiest king or business tycoon (or dictator) passes away empty-handed.  And with that, a new generation begins...which brings me to what social tracker Jean M Twenge calls the iGen crowd. 

    Looking back at any of our lives, we would likely all have common ground in feeling that our parents just didn't "get us," whether it was our learnings or our views or our friends or whatever.  The generation gap, as timeless as that song from the 50s which echoed: What are we going to do about the other generation; how will we ever communicate without communication?  In a piece in The Atlantic she writes of the generation below the millennials, those who grew up with iPhones and iPads and made it their world.  Said author Twenge writes: I’ve been researching generational differences for 25 years, starting when I was a 22-year-old doctoral student in psychology.  Typically, the characteristics that come to define a generation appear gradually, and along a continuum.  Beliefs and behaviors that were already rising simply continue to do so.  Millennials, for instance, are a highly individualistic generation, but individualism had been increasing since the Baby Boomers turned on, tuned in, and dropped out.  I had grown accustomed to line graphs of trends that looked like modest hills and valleys...Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states.  The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear.  In all my analyses of generational data --some reaching back to the 1930s-- I had never seen anything like it...The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers’ lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health.  These changes have affected young people in every corner of the nation and in every type of household.   The trends appear among teens poor and rich; of every ethnic background; in cities, suburbs, and small towns.  Where there are cell towers, there are teens living their lives on their smartphone...Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011.  It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades.  Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.

   So what's happening, or what happened?  Faced with a world rapidly becoming unequal in income, are people (or an entire generation) just giving up?  Local Utah columnist and realtor, Babs Delay wrote a column highlighting the difficulty for many to just afford to live: It sucks to rent these days.  Prices are high and pickings are few -- unless, perhaps, you make more than $60,000 per year.  According to a study done at Harvard University, the U.S. poverty rate is rising -- and low-density suburban neighborhoods are feeling the brunt of it...Honestly, every time I drive up to a fast-food joint and order an iced tea, I think to myself, "If they're working full-time for $10 per hour, or about $1,600 per month, how are they able to affording to live anywhere these days?  Certainly, they have to live with one or two other wage-earners to have a decent place to live."  In another column she wrote: We love to hear about rich people, but how often does the harsh reality of the minimum-wage worker come across your news feed?...If you're a full-time fast-food cook, you're pulling in about $52 per day.  Now let's use that daily figure along with some estimated monthly living costs to see just how hard it can be for some of these Utahns: A one-bedroom apartment downtown is around $900 a month.  And let's say your utilities on said apartment, Wi-Fi and cell phone bill come out to $250; and car payment, including insurance, is $200.  Groceries and other spending money are budgeted at $400.  That totals $1,750 per month.  Thirty day's pay at an average of $52 per day is $1,560.  That would leave you in the negative of about $190 each month.  But, hey, maybe you get a roommate.  Getting help with half the rent and utilities would save you maybe a few hundred, but these estimates are assuming you don't have any other expenses, which is likely not the case.  What about those with credit card debt, student loans or those with kids?  These figures all assume working without a day off, seven days a week.  Health care, overtime, sick pay...generally no.  Miss a day or get in an accident and, well, what do you do?  So getting back to the start of this post, why would those super-wealthy want to knock this group down even further?   I don't understand...

    But here's what I do understand.  Almost daily, the resilience of people is out there.  You still see the hard workers and the smiles and the people volunteering and the caregivers and the givers in general...and most of them will probably go to their grave without a whimper or a quest for recognition.  That is just in their nature, their place in life is just how the cards were dealt.  For many, helping others --humans or animals or the planet itself-- is not a question of why should I but rather one of an inner belief.  I watch my wife do her daily rounds with feeding and sheltering her group of feral cats, the stress of wondering if they have shelter or food during these bitter months ahead all visible as she returns.  And she is far from alone.  There are those waiting tables and cleaning bathrooms and scanning groceries and driving shuttles.  There are those caring for parents or children or themselves.  There are those disabled or those so mentally stressed that they might feel disabled inside.  Some will turn to an outlet, a pill or a bottle or a smartphone.  But for the majority, there is that resilience to just "keep on keeping on," even if there is not much of an end in sight.  I can't pretend to understand the iGen generation any more than I can pretend to understand why some of the super-wealthy would want to take away even that small glimmer of hope for those struggling.  So I try to tip more, and to smile, and to just acknowledge these everyday workers, people who make the world work, who don't have time for a smartphone, those who toil away in yards and laundries and hotels.  Rather than staring at a screen we might need to stare at a face, for underneath that face there might be anguish and problems and stress...but there might also be a treasure waiting to be discovered.  bottom line, we came into this world the same way we'll go out, and as Norman Cousins wrote: Death is not the greatest loss in life.  The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.