I find myself recently uncomfortable with the growing divide between those who "have" and those who do not. I was fortunate in my life, I never wanted for anything as a child. In my twenties and thirties I found out what it was like to struggle to make ends meet. My children well recall the days before pay day when all that was left was pasta and cereal. I learned from those days, I still struggle financially moving from month to month. I am, I suspect, like the majority of working middle class. I live pay check to pay check.
I am fully aware that I am only a few paychecks away from disaster. Having experienced unemployment once in my lifetime and the devastation that it creates. I applied for unemployment, having worked over 25 years paying taxes and social security since the age of 14. I was at first denied and it took six months to receive my first unemployment check. I was denied because my employer had gone out of business and did not want to pay anyone unemployment who had been part of his poorly run business. It was the most depressing and horrible time in my life. It also was the time that led me to my faith and my second half of life healing.
Today I find myself looking at a struggling economy, people who are becoming the new poor and those who may never climb out of poverty...there are so many. The extremes I see here in Los Angeles ---the very wealthy...seems in this neighborhood there are many and the very poor. The chasm between them so great. It causes me concern and pain.
Somewhere in the Political Science recesses of my mind I recall that the loss of the middle class creates significant instability...yet we seem to becoming lost. Houses foreclosing, jobs being lost and a cost of living that continues to be a stretch. Gas goes up and those of us living on budgets suddenly have to shift our monthly payments. Anger and violence erupt as the frustration grows.
I feel the anger and outrage at the ridiculous payments for high level executives in companies that were bailed out by my federal dollars. I am angered at the medical insurance that covers nothing and denies medications to my mother and to me. Impossible to correct without spending hours and days which I do not have, that one denial can leave me defeated. I feel the angry at the billions of dollars spent to advertise products when I am ill positioned to buy but will surely feel less than adequate without. I feel all those things. Who does not wish they could afford the IPAD? I am certain I should own one.
I see few remedies. Lately I have met many who are financial planners or wealth advisers or wealth managers. I am always curious whose wealth they manage. For me listening to financial planners tell me about savings and retirement creates enormous insecurity. I have no savings. I own a house with some minor mortgage company (the fourth or fifth to own my mortgage), I owe more now then when I bought the house. I survive, week by week...month by month helping now to take care of my mother, my adult children and their children. Ah but if I just put that $100 a week away! Alas I want Indian food tonight. I deserve it.
Still more...The numbers, if they are believed, would indicate that I am not alone. There are very few wealthy people.
So where does that leave us? Those of us, like me who have been the working middle class? I suspect the wealthy folks, as small a percentage as they are, need me healthy to keep spending on their products...or their stock portfolio products. But do the wealthy understand that? Do they care and should they?
I worry that the middle class is shrinking. But we are educated folks who have a glimmer of the other side. We see injustice and we can speak the injustice. If we are not ashamed to admit how difficult it is to be middle class perhaps we will speak it. Do I have the courage to be honest, to be rejected as irresponsible or unworthy? How will I respond to this chasm? How will I behave when oppressed? So far I have done little. I have experienced a growing discontent that leaves me with anger and sadness.
I am left to wonder. As a person of faith who cares for the Poor beyond the New Testament. Who would give any attention to Mary? Or the women who touched Jesus robe Mark 5:21-34? Does the faith that pulled me from my despair earlier in my life still exist within me? Is it convenient here, now?
I am fully aware that something must be done. It is not healthy nor right to feel angered by those who have greater wealth and seem unaware. It is not right in a society of great wealth to allow people to go hungry and without medical care. It is not right to hide that denial behind the pretense of a service system. It is not right to hide behind the knowledge that businesses use unethical tactics to take your money and not provide the service or product promised.
Perhaps the wealth is not with a very few if the wealth is not dollars. Is wealth in knowing? Does it reside in a faith that binds humanity in love and compassion seen in all world religions? Could we be richer in our poverty? Am I capable of letting go of my own resentments and frustrations? If I am not then where will the anger take me?
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