I've had some emotionally disturbing encounters in social media over the past few days. Some old friends looked me up and invited me to join them in some conversations about some really important issues we're facing in this country. And in the course of those conversations I met with some of the most derisive vitriol I've ever encountered anywhere ... and this was coming from the privileged people I grew up and went to school with for years.
You're NUTS. The wealthy bankroll this country and you try to make them the evil ones. You're so backward it would be funny if it were not scary.
Employers PAY the workers. Without them the workers are unemployed. Get off your horse trying to make the employers out to be bad guys. They PAY you and me and everyone else. People who try to denegrate successful businessmen are jealous. ... Stop coveting your neighbor's stuff. It really makes you look stupid. Stop drinking the liberal Koolaid and use your own brain.
In the real world, wealthy people start businesses and hire others to do work for them. Those workers gladly take the jobs at the pay rates offered. ... If those workers don't want the job, because they are jealous of their boss, they don't have to take it. There are others there who will.
It was so stunning in its hateful disregard for the average working person, it inspired me to write this.
I'm white; grew up in a solidly middle class family; went to top-notch, well-funded public schools that weren't surrounded by gang violence or other bad influences; had parents in a happy marriage who lived "'til death do they part"; who put a premium on a college education and saved so my sisters and I could attend without having to hold down jobs or take out student loans; I have a name that isn't a barrier to getting job interviews. And most of the people I grew up with had all those same advantages in life, and more.
The list of things that were not the slightest in our control, but which gave us a leg up in society is expansive. I honestly don't understand people who think everyone has the same opportunities for success we had. Tell that to the black boy whose father abandoned him, who lives in the inner city with a drug-addicted mother. He lives in a world filled with barriers to success that most of us couldn't even begin to fathom.
I'm calling upon people to stop expecting everyone in this country to do as well as you've done in life just because you think you've gotten where you are by hard work alone. And even if you've overcome adversity or handicap, recognize that you may still have had other advantages that set you apart.
Stop blaming the poor for being poor. Stop telling them they should suck it up and be grateful for any job at all, at any salary at all. Everyone who is willing to work hard for a living deserves a wage that will allow them to thrive in this country. As Teddy Roosevelt reminded us 100 years ago, "We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life by which we surround them."
There is NO reasonable excuse for corporations to be underpaying people when they are more profitable than at any time in our nation's history. None. It's offensive and insulting to insist on paying a hard-working American a wage that's "competitive" with a worker in a third-world country when we have more cash in our economy than we know what to do with. We are the richest nation on earth, yet we treat workers with enormous disrespect.
All people deserve the dignity to earn a wage that will allow them to thrive; to build their own safety nets through savings, to set aside college funds for their kids, to invest for retirement, to use for leisure activities, and to contribute to their communities and to charity. Embracing that philosophy doesn't make you "anti-business," it makes you pro-America.
Think of how much more financially secure we'd be as a nation, with a strong working and middle class driving demand for more products and services because they have a good paycheck going into their bank accounts. There'd be more jobs because of the greater demand, more tax revenue from more people working and earning better wages, less dependence on taxpayer programs for low-income earners, more small businesses could be created, corporations could actually become even more profitable with more buyers with greater buying power in the market, and we'd pay down our debt in probably half the time! This basic courtesy of treating workers with dignity and respect for their labor is a win/win/win/win/win for all of us and for the entire country.
Think about that for a while.
And when it's time to vote in November, ask yourself which political party is striving to make that image of America a reality for all of us.
Thank you,
Jill W. Klausen
Now read the plea from Elizabeth Wilke; Dear Conservative Friends: We Can Do Better »