Survival of the Fittest?

(Intro of this new guest series is here. - Leigh)

"If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin."   - Charles Darwin

In 2001, when Bush took office, I was almost middle class at $35,000 a year. Every year since I have fallen deeper and deeper into the abyss of poverty, dragging my now teen aged child with me. My annual income is now less than half the official poverty line of $14000 per year for a family of two. I have no medical benefits, though my child does qualify (sometimes) for SCHIP. I work at a local college tutoring students. I am not unskilled, but I am un(der)educated. I cannot afford the quarter's worth of classes that I need to finish my AA, let alone to go on to my BA, even with Pell grants.

And I am not alone. There are millions (17 million and climbing) of poor people just like me who have been quietly squeezed to death over the last 8 years. We are not lazy or stupid or shiftless. We are unlucky and have fewer resources when trouble comes. And because we are poor, trouble comes more often. Our jobs are less secure. Our health is more fragile (either from stress or poverty or being the people that envirnmental sludge is pawned off on). Our children are less safe and their futures are certainly nowhere near as hopeful as they should be. Some of us have been telling anyone who would listen that it's bad all around. But no one gave a damn till the banks started to fail.

Our economic system has cancer, systemic, metastasized cancer. And it will not be cured with a does of TARP radiation to the big toe that is the banking community, or the finger nail that is the automobile industry. We must target the medicine at the vital organs of this country, the average, everyday people who keep going to work even though working full time is no longer enough to pay the bills.

The cures are pretty simple. We need jobs that pay living wages. We need safe homes that we can afford. We need good educations for our children (and for us). We need universal healthcare so that an abscessed tooth doesn't equal death. We need our government and our businesses to realize that they work FOR us, not for each other.

That quote by Darwin gets to me. But screw the moral issue of sin. Sin, goodness, morals, ethics have nothing to do with fixing our broken system. Thinking about it in that way is as useless as thinking about the reality of Santa Claus. Our country fucntions better, and we are more secure economically, physically and politically when everyone gets fed, housed, educated and treated. It is in our own best interest to make sure that everyone has the basics. Just ask the French nobility circa 1800 or the Russian nobility of the early 20th century if feeding the peasants would have been in their best interest. People cannot keep quietly struggling forever. At some point the poor will pick up a pitchfork (or a cheap handgun from a pawn shop- they are doing brisk business these days) and fight back.