My aunt and uncle from Austin are visiting my parents here in Dallas and I hear my dad lament to my unc during conversation that “The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer”. Hooey. Big fat hippie propaganda class warfare mythology-grade HOOEY, I protested. Everyone is richer. The end.
Pop says not true, as evidenced by how way back when he could travel abroad and spend money there like it was nothing, come home and drop 2 thousand dollars on a giant home movie camera the size of a small chair and now everything is expensive. Now everything costs so much. Bills are higher and the worlds millionaires have multiplied and bumped up into being billionaires.
The truth though, like I tried to explain, is not that the poor are getting, have gotten or will get any poorer but the rich are always getting richer. Welcome to capitalism: when you provide a good or service that people want, you become more successful. It’s what made the giant ass home movie camera that required a 10 pound battery belt that the camera operator had to wear in order to use the device away from a power plug and evolved it into a camera smaller than a pack of cards that records high definition audio and video with a battery smaller than Lady Ga Ga’s self respect.
My dad, while a conservative fascist at heart, can’t get past the liberal Union anti-corporatism brainwash he was drilled with as a working class man who was often screwed by the higher-ups (he originally worked for TWA, which went out of business due to crap money management and was bought by American Airlines, his current employer). He keeps up with the “everything costs more and the money to buy it is worth less then the old days” thing and I remind him that we have so much more than back then. Just 20 years ago, he would have shat his MC Hammer pants if I told him we would be having this conversation amidst high speed internet (or any internet) on flat panel monitors with tiny computers containing Gigs of data, the capability to create your own compact disc’s at home for cheap – DVD’s even, and then watching them on another flat panel monitor that gets HD channels that you can digitally record and pause live tv with the use of another device.
America’s “poor” have cars, tvs, telephones and subscriptions to Penthouse. This countries poor is upper middle class compared to the rest of the worlds poor. And there always WILL be poor people because there will always be selfish, lazy, unmotivated people willing to settle as well as people who make bad choices that come with economic consequences. So while the motivated, smart, brilliant and hard working people keep innovating, creating and serving the public (including the poor), there’s always going to be super rich people (with daughters) to create the impression that there’s a huge ass gap of greedy ultra-ricos and dirt poor street urchins.
It’s male cow dung and it always has been in this country.
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