I went to Target this morning and picked up some stuff I forgot the other day. I noticed a few guys working there, decked out in khakis and the red Tarjay polo shirt, who seemed to be my age or close to it, hauling around hand trucks loaded with garden supplies and Skil saws. Every time I see that or something like it, I have to ask myself what circumstances led them to where they are and led me to where I am.
My recently-retired boss hired me when it would have been in her own self-interest to choose someone else. I was, in most respects, eminently qualified for the job. But a more popular choice would have been someone maybe 70% as good, twenty years younger, a lot better-looking, and with a more energetic personality. (I do a lot of work; it's just that I don't look busy when I'm doing it. This got me into all kinds of trouble in my TV career, where the image is vastly more important than the reality.)
In fact, she could have found someone just as good and twenty years younger and a lot better-looking. But she chose me instead, and as a result, I have a job I mostly enjoy, with decent pay, a great vacation schedule, and a fairly conventional 8-to-5 40-hour week.
But it's Sunday morning, I'm off, and the Target guys –– who work just as hard as me and are probably as smart as me and maybe even better-educated than me, a college dropout –– are hauling around dollies and hand trucks.
And I don't know why. The natural flow of the Tao? Bad karma?
After leaving Target, near my own neighborhood, I passed a man with long, dirty hair, and a huge untrimmed beard. He was very thin, but not emaciated, shirtless and wearing a pair of dirty jeans. He was hauling a shopping cart which held a battered and obviously no-longer-functional window air conditioner and a few other pieces of scrap metal. I assume he found the air conditioner on someone's curb, awaiting bulky waste pickup. As I passed him he stooped and picked up a discarded Dr. Pepper can and threw it in the shopping cart.
Why is he where he is, scavenging (I assume) to survive, while the Target guys are working in an air-conditioned building with regular pay and some benefits, and I'm off for the day altogether? Tao? Karma?
On a somewhat, but not completely related note:
Most of us come face-to-face at some point in our lives with the dicovery that our national 'meritocracy' is sort of like the idea of Santa Claus or his second cousin, a compassionate loving God: it would be great if it were true. Certainly our national culture has some meritocratic aspects –– moreso that Victorian England, for example –– but to say that it's based entirely on merit is foolish. Moreover, it's becoming less based on merit with each passing day.
iTunes: Maha Shakti, Debashish Bhattacharya
3 comments:
In my book, it's never a good idea to compare/contrast one's own life with another's. Everyone and anyone you choose will either be better off or worse off -- IN YOUR EYES. Thus, you will ALWAYS have an excuse to make yourself unhappy. Life will always SEEM unfair one way or another.
An existential way to view the situations you describe is to simply ascribe the "fate" of the people you see as a product of a zillion choices they and you made along the way.
However, your essential comment on whether CAPITALISM is fair is valid. A great many people are born on third base (due to the choices of their parents) and wake up thinking they hit a triple and are entitled to their privileged position. For example, it would be great to be the grandson of Preston Bush, one of the richest people in the world in his day, and the son of a president of the United States and a very wealthy man in his own right. The lucky sperm club, as they say.
Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" says that the "hand of God" moves across the marketplace to provide fairness.
We KNOW this is not true.
We KNOW that capitalism tends inexorably toward monopoly and oligarchy.
It's just that we forget sometimes and get all confused with the discredited Spencerian notion of Social Darwinism -- the idea that the rich are rich because they deserve it.
Lately, Congress has made things even more unfair, in my opinion, by allowing huge estates to be passed from generation to generation by the elimination of the estate tax ("death tax"). Only about 2800 people in the United States must now face the estate tax, but to repeal the final part would cost the treasury billions because the estates are so large. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are not being completely honest with us about WHY they are setting up foundations and giving away huge sums during their lifetimes. They get the credit and avoid the estate tax by doing this, in addition to doing "good" by their choice. Had they died without making these gifts, the combined fortunes of those two men would result in $90 billion going into the federal general revenue fund. They are only two of the 2,800 Americans who could pay an estate tax under current law.
And, of course, it's not just that some people inherit vast sums. There is also the educational and nutritional and health inequities that are built in obstacles to the monetary equality of adult lives. All this before we start talking about parents with books in their homes vs. parents who have no books.
About one third of my graduating law school class took the very first jobs of their entire lives upon passing the bar, generally at pay scales ranging upwards of $45,000 per year. They never tried to live on minimum wage. They never had to struggle to make a car payment or feed children. Now, undoubtedly, they vote Republican and believe the rest of us should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps as they did. MLK Jr. remarked that it's hard to do that if you don't have boots, but nevermind that, it's justice for just us who can afford it.
As long as the almighty dollar has no morality, is as comfortable in the purse of a prostitute as in the pocket of a priest, it will always be so.
Then, I'm just an old lefty and the progessive movement died long ago.
Blogblah!!!
The real problem is going to Target, or much much worse Wal Mart, on a Sunday morning. Don't do it! Put your hands up and walk away from creepy, depressing capitalism. Besides, you should be in church.
Anonymous #1 sounds like he's been reading Marx, who, according to my EuroTrash Girlfriend Unit, predicted all lot of what A#1 points out...150 years ago.
There are tremendous social inequities in the American system that ought to be overcome, but probably won't before the whole thing implodes on itself and we must become accustomed to a very unfamiliar (for us) new social norm, that of packing iron and dodging others' bullets as we go about our daily bidness. Imagine present-day Baghdad.
Many years ago I met a guy who organized USO shows during WW II. One day a Really Big Star (wish I could remember who) asked him: "Jack, do you know the difference between me and, say, a second tier or third tier act?"
"No, what?"
"Luck," The Really Big Star said. "Don't bullshit yourself into thinking I'm any more talented or capable or determined than those guys. I'm just luckier."
And what do you do about THAT?
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