Let Me Tell You A Story: Healing Our Relationships With The
Earth, With Others, and With Ourselves
The following is a segment in the multi-part Let Me Tell You
A Story series. This series is focused on identifying, describing, and
understanding aspects of my culture(s) that are largely invisible, but that are
traumatic to the earth, to out-groups, and to ourselves. I am not the only
person to have noticed that our society is sick, and I am not the only person
to explore this sickness in the hopes of healing. This series is as much a
personal exploration as it is a critical examination of our society. This
series is a starting point for consideration and conversation. You are invited
to come along.
Come in, sit down. Let’s talk.
Let me tell you a story: Wealth disparity
I heard this story about 18 years ago in the dining area of
a Jack-in-the-Box in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It was told to me by a man named
Rocco. Rocco was a retiree, living (I assumed) on Social Security and/or some
other fixed income poverty in which many of our elderly exist. He came to
Jack-in-the-Box every morning and had a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich for
breakfast, a meal carefully chosen because of its very cheap price, cheaper
still with his senior discount, and paid for with carefully selected exact
change.
My then-fiancé Michael had developed a relationship with
Rocco on these mornings and had invited Rocco and me to share breakfast
together one morning so that we two could additionally develop a relationship.
I was working a late shift job at the time, and only made it out to breakfast
with Rocco this one time, but the story he told me has stayed with me. I have
shared it with friends and family. I share it with students in my university
classes. It is a powerful story.
On the day I met Rocco, he was rather poor, he was elderly, and
he had multiple health problems. His clothes were not quite fresh. His hair and
beard were unkempt. He had food stains and crumbs from the meal we shared, and
some prior meal, down the front of his shirt. He was the classic picture of the
Invisible Elderly in our society – the elders who, like the poor, the homeless,
and any other group that gives rise in most people to simultaneous emotions
like empathy and disgust, cause people to feel bad for them but look away,
ignore them, and allow their existence to continue in this way.
But that morning Rocco told me a story about the high times
in his life. He was a very wealthy businessman for a time, cutting deals,
jet-setting around the globe, partying with alcohol and drugs with the wealthy
elite, throwing money at the world and living in a never-ending whirlwind of
expensive adventures and high luxury. One night, he and his business partner
came back to his insanely fancy condo after a night out drinking and carousing
with partners and clients. They were drunk and high, and continued the
celebration of a deal that had been made. At one point in the night, Rocco’s
partner wrote him a check for $10,000. Rocco put the check down on a counter and
forgot about it. It got covered over with mail and papers. Many weeks later, during
a clean, the check was uncovered.
Rocco slapped his head in amazement at this point in the
story. He had completely forgotten that this check existed, that he was owed
the money, etc., etc., etc. Ten thousand dollars had so little worth to him at
the time as to be completely forgettable.
Some years later, his life had fallen apart. He had no job,
no home, no wealth, no family. He had come to a point where he didn’t know
where he would sleep at night, didn’t know where his next meal would come from,
didn’t know if there was a way he would get to keep living in this world. He
went to his brother, from whom he had become estranged, to beg for support – a
place to stay, a helping hand to get back on his feet. But his brother
declined. But still he begged, because he hadn’t eaten and had nowhere to
sleep. Just $20, he asked. Can I just have $20 to get me through the night?
Rocco looked me dead in the eye. That is the value of money,
he said. It is not constant. That $20 was worth infinitely more to him than
that $10,000 had been years earlier.
I have never forgotten this story.
I’ve worked with Invisible People for much of my life. And
while I understand the sentiment among people in the middle and upper classes
that giving money and support to those Invisible People is tantamount to
throwing money away (who knows where they’ll spend it?), I disagree entirely.
To me, it kind of doesn’t matter where they will spend it. These days in my
life, a dollar has basically no worth to me. It is worth far more to others in
this world.
But this is not the wealth disparity I want to talk about.
The difference between me and a homeless person in the United States is a
pretty big difference. But the difference between me and the wealthiest in our
nation is an unfathomably, insanely
huge difference. It’s hard to comprehend the amount of wealth held by the few
wealthiest individuals and families in our world, because the difference between
them and the rest of us is just so large.
In my economic stratum, I often hear people talking about
the difference of $10,000 in annual income being the difference between someone
paying their bills comfortably or living on the cusp of poverty. Here in the
median, the difference in tens of thousands of dollars feels like the
difference between upper and lower class. Here in the median, the difference
between bare survival and comfortable living can be a $1.00 raise. Here in the
median, a $10,000 difference in income is closer to the value of Rocco’s $20.
It makes a big difference in our lives. We look to each other and compare
ourselves to each other on the scale of tens of thousands because the value of that
amount of money is so great.
In truth, the majority of Americans make less $100,000
annually and have less than $100,000 in wealth. The economic reality for the
majority of us is that we are not wealthy and we never will be wealthy. We
struggle and work hard to achieve and maintain a level of comfort that is above
mere survival. Some of us achieve that. Many of us don’t. We look to each other
and point fingers and make judgments as though the difference between those of
us who achieve comfort and those of us who don’t is a difference in personality
or persistence or hard work, but this is a lie told to us generation after
generation by the wealthiest among us.
Here is my finger-pointing judgment – the wealthiest people
in our world have an unconscionable and immoral amount of wealth. They have so
much that it has no value to them, and yet they hoard it. They lobby and pass
legislation that keeps it out of our hands and puts more and more of it into
theirs. They say these rules benefit everyone who works hard, but this is a
lie. It benefits them, the wealthy. It maintains and supports a system that
allows them to stay wealthy. The money in our society flows upward into the
higher strata. This means that people in my stratum will argue with each other
about $1.00 raises and whether we should have compassion to provide a meal to
the homeless or provide health care to the poor.
The amount of money that would
meaningfully raise us in the lower and middle strata to a comfortable life is a
meaningless amount of money to the insanely rich. It is an amount of money that
flows in and out of their hands in hours, in minutes.
How rich is insanely rich? I live in the median. I am just
about exactly at the median in my country. I live a pretty comfortable life.
Sometimes I get to have luxuries. Sometimes I worry about bills. I don’t have
to worry about where my next meal comes from, and unless I am hit with
unforeseen medical bills (the leading cause of poverty in the United States), I
can anticipate continuing to live in roughly this level of comfort for a long
time to come.
Take my income, or more precisely my wealth, and multiple it
by a thousand.
And then take that number, and multiple it by a thousand.
What you get is still not quite the wealth of Bill Gates,
the wealthiest man in the world.
You could take Bill Gates’ wealth and divide it amongst a million people and they would then
have the comfortable life that I have. If you divided my wealth between two people
you would have two people living in poverty.
Take the wealth of Bill Gates’ family members and divide
that up too. Take the wealth of Warren Buffett (#2) and his family members, the
wealth of Jeff Bezos (#3) and his family, the wealth of Amancio Ortega (#4) and
his family members, and so on and so forth.
Take the wealth of Donald Trump and his family members, his
lawyers, his global business partners. I mention Donald Trump here specifically
because he is known for particularly awful business practices in which he
actively steals money from or refuses to pay contractors and partners so that
he can accumulate more wealth. I am two degrees separated from multiple people
who have lost their small businesses or suffered extreme losses because of
Trump’s willingness to find legal loopholes that actively harm people who are
not wealthy like him – or, he simply illegally takes their money or refuses to
pay them and has his lawyers embroil his victims in expensive legal battles
until they run out of the money and/or the will to keep fighting.
Some people came to hate Trump and feel the tar stain of his
name/brand with his presidential bid or the subsequent damage he has caused our
country. The hipster in me says, naw, I’ve hated him for decades, long before
it was cool.
Poverty is a lie. The wealth exists for us to have clean
drinking water and food and health care and education – everyone on this
planet. But this wealth is hoarded and is not available to 99% of us.
Many times in our society when people talk about
redistributing wealth, we get caught up in our different understandings of the
value of money. Because if you talk about raising taxes to pay for services for
my country – which I personally feel is a civic duty, and a bargain – I think
of my taxes and my perspective on the value of currency, which is set within
that $1.00 raise/$10,000 annually being make or break. But remember, you can
multiple my wealth by a thousand and a thousand again to hit the truly highest
stratum. And hell, even those who are only a thousand times wealthier than me (only) are not going to hold the same
value for money that I hold.
Increased taxes to the wealthy to pay for medical care or
education or roads or clean energy subsidies would create extraordinary benefit
for those of us in the median, and for those of us below the median, and even for
many of us above the median.
These increased taxes would not actually harm the
wealthy; it would not make them un-wealthy. These increased taxes could
actually benefit the poor and make them un-poor.
Tax dollars could be taken
from those for whom it holds little value and used to support those for whom it
holds great value. The only value it holds to the wealthy is a sense of loss as the number signifying
their wealth becomes slightly smaller. This is not actual loss. To the poor, it
is the difference between medical debt poverty and a comfortable life. This is
a real value.
Decreased CEO salaries and shareholder profits would likely
result from increased wage-earner salaries and environmentally/socially
sustainable business practices. These results would not actually make the CEOs
and shareholders un-wealthy. But these results would actually raise the
wage-earners out of poverty and drastically reduce pollution-related illnesses
(and therefore medical debts) for the majority of people in this country (the
wealthy tend not to be exposed to the same level of their pollutants as the
rest of us). The “regulations” that the wealthy are constantly lamenting are
basic environmental protections that keep the rest of us drinking clean water
and breathing clean air. They do indeed cost money and may indeed reduce CEO
salaries and shareholder profits, and you know what? They’ll still be wealthy.
And we’ll be healthy.
This has value. This is worth it to me.
