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Wednesday, October 28, 2020

DEMOCRACY NEEDS INEQUALITY NARROWED

 Which of these two thoughts do you experience as truer?
"If everyone had 'enough' money anyway, who would work?"
"Is no good to have too much time. Must have work."
I experience the latter as much, much truer and I don't think I'm alone in that. I say, nearly all of us hoomins want and need some kind of regular work, even if we don't necessarily need the pay, although nearly all of us do need that too.
Let's pause and ask ourselves here: what do each and all of us need from our work? Certainly we all need to be able to support ourselves and, if we're lucky enough to have one, to at least help to support our families. But don't we all really need more than that from our work? I suggest that the following are things we need from our work, each and all of us:
1) We need to feel that we make a positive difference for our jobs, workplaces and workmates.
2) We need the mix of routine and novelty with which our work often presents us. We need this in our overall life and, ideally, our work should be of a piece in that.
3) We need to feel the dignity work gives us. This is why tyrannical bosses are such a spoiler and bearable only under severe threat of privation without that particular job or that the job offers high chance for advancement. Sometimes both.
But most of us have  known bosses who enjoy being unaccountably tyrannical, haven't we?
Let me make something clear here: a boss who drives herself at least as hard as she drives her underlings is not necessarily a tyrant. I've had two such bosses and was married to one of them (she died 11 years ago) and I would've followed either one down Hell's mouth!
It seems to me that a tyrant's perverse joy in his tyranny is in direct relation to how wealthy that tyrant is. When power, especially the power of the purse, is accountable to no one else on any regular basis--it is then that Lord Acton's dictum about power's tendencies are the most true.
And does anyone remember a survey about how much satisfaction money affords most of us, pun partially intended? I remember it quite well. It was done some years ago and it showed that, after money allowed enough to be well-clothed, sheltered and nourished and enough so that neither serious illness nor educating the children would be a financial catastrophe and to take decent vacations twice a year, the satisfaction money gave dropped pretty sharply for most people who lack the lust to be among today's slave masters. Back when this survey was made, that meant for most of us, $75,000 per year would be enough for everything. And perhaps when we've made it really possible (meaning without incurring a mountain of debt) for everyone to get the education they want and to have the health care they need, maybe that figure will drop.
One saying too many of the already-too-wealthy seem to disregard but is none the less true is, when we all do better, we ALL do better. This means that, so far from employment going down when the minimum wage goes up, it will likely go the other way. Spending is what drives the economy, and when more people have more money they spend more. Especially on things which they couldn't afford before. And, in absolute terms, the wealthy actually do better too. But when they feel too many others, perhaps especially those with darker skins, do better, the already-too-wealthy seem not to want to do that much better themselves. It would seem that they'd actually be content to be, in raw numbers, less wealthy provided that the non-wealthy were either abjectly, wretchedly poor and under the cruel necessity of being toadies, servants and slaves to them!
Could there be a clearer picture of the corrupting effects of gross inequality?!
Theology common to (at least) the Abrahamian faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) speaks warningly of the corrupting effects of too much wealth, especially wealth which is unaccountable to other humans! Who has the chutzpa to stand and tell me, or anyone else, that they are any less corruptible than the rest of us? We used to believe that the rich, because they had what they wanted, were less corruptible than the poor or middling. What I see before my eyes in this year of Grace two thousand and twenty gives me very, very serious doubts about that. Now, it looks as if, for a few anyhow, riches do not dull the lust for more power, which makes the riches they already have very, very dangerous to democracy. Very possibly, they could prove lethal to democracy and indeed to human civilization as well.
We need some new criteria for leadership. Bernie is a good prototype; so might Joe and Kamala be. In any case, they are far better than the alternative which stands to prove to be cyanide to both democracy and civilization. But I cite Bernie because he is one who shows he really understands that politics is not all about him, it's about US and the programs we need to, really, stabilize and strengthen both democracy and human civilization. We need more leaders who understand that and who are far more activated by the desire to serve rather than their own greed for wealth and/or power. And bear in mind that leaders of small parties might be ego-driven too. But if I have any way to 'spot' them, that'll have to be in another post. Do I hear sighs of relief?



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