…or at least I am, and I suspect many of the rest of the QT3 hivemind fall under that description as well. Probably this isn’t a great surprise to anyone. I knew it, in a cerebral sense. But this last week, some things happened that kinda hit me at a gut level.
- One of the kids I work with at the summer education program tore his pants. It happens with kids, no big deal. But he was seriously upset because that was his only pair of pants. This being a refugee program, the permanent staff there was prepared and we were able to get him a new pair. But it really hit me, there’s people that don’t have the resources to deal with something as simple as torn pants.
- I met up with three friends that I used to work with on Thursday, the day after the fourth of July holiday here in the USA. One of them works in Seattle, and had flown back to West Michigan to spend the (very) long holiday weekend. None of us were hurting by taking off Thursday and Friday as vacation days (particularly my retired ass). No one lost significant income from not working on days that aren’t official holidays. All of us were fine spending $50+ on beer and bar food, on no special occasion, just a chance to see one another and catch up.
- I went to Meijer (our local superstore) and picked up various groceries and household stuff. I’ve done this a gazillion times and never really noticed my fellow shoppers, but for some reason this time I did. A few were wearing the “Shipt” green shirts that showed they were shopping for wealthier folks that were willing to pay for having their stuff delivered. Most were people of color. Many had several small children. I picked up an apple pie just because it looked good, didn’t even think about the price. Just about everyone else was carefully looking at everything they picked up, as far as I could tell to check for the best prices. When I hit the checkout, everyone but me had a sheaf of coupons. (To be fair, I did have a digital coupon.) I was the only person I saw that used a smartphone pay option.
- I pulled out of the parking lot of that shopping trip in my 2017 Chevy Cruze. Most of the other cars in that lot weren’t anywhere near a 2017 model. Many had rust, dents, and other noticeable flaws.
And that’s not even touching stuff like availability of health care, housing, educational opportunities, etc.
All this is anecdotal, I know. For whatever reason, it just hit home to me this week that I’m way up in the upper middle class. I may not make the top 1%, but I’m certainly in the top 10%. I try to give back in various ways, but I can’t imagine that any of the stuff I do is even close to making up the difference between what I have and the situation of someone on the bottom end of the wealth distribution.
This kind of realization is why I’m center-left on the American political spectrum these days. (Despite starting way over on the right-hand side in the way I was reared.) The ideals of “personal responsibility” and “level playing field” that makes up the core of true conservative thought (not to be confused with Trump “conservatives” that are just out to expand the inequality gap) just doesn’t sit well with me any more, because so many people simply do not have the same resources that I do. I still like the concepts of those conservative ideals but I just don’t see how they can be properly applied when the starting points for many people are so far apart.
Am I alone in this? Presumably not, but I’d love to hear other thoughts. Is there a logical reconciliation of the vast wealth/opportunity divide and the conservative ideals that try to treat everyone equally?