The New World Order
Our Income Inequality Is An Existential Threat
Neither the haves nor the have-nots are in shape for the coming battle
You’ve read the descriptions of what the people of Ukraine are dealing with. Most of them were not prepared for their comfortable Western lives to collapse into a fight for survival. Now try to imagine the people you work with and live near going weeks without showers, melting snow to drink and sleeping in underground parking garages.
Does your neighbor Ted know how to prepare food without using a freezer and microwave? Does Lauren in accounting even know how to start a fire?
If the water stopped coming out of your faucets right now, how screwed would you be? Do you have any idea what you’d drink once you finished off the case of Diet Coke and the carton of milk in your fridge?
Oh, it won’t come to that, you think.
That’s just what the Ukrainians with lives very much yours thought until about a month ago.
A great deal of things people never thought could happen here have already happened here. Remember that time we elected an inept conman/reality TV star? Remember that time you went to the store and the shelves were bare? Remember that time you had to stay home because a deadly disease was going around and at first we had very little idea how it spread and how to treat it? Remember when everybody got a raise but inflation was so high that it felt like a pay cut?
I’m sorry if this hurts your feelings, but as a sometimes working-class and sometimes middle-class person, I have long secretly considered most of my fellow Americans soft and spoiled. I’ve heard too many people airily suggest they couldn’t live without fast wifi or daily Starbucks or a dishwasher. They must drive big SUVs with heated seats and live in houses so large they require two heating and central air units. Some of these people have a very long list of must-haves.
This is why Americans, with 5 percent of the world’s population, consume almost a quarter of the world’s energy. If everyone alive were to live a typical American lifestyle, it would take about five Earths.
Meanwhile, about half of Americans are living in poverty. (Forget the official poverty level. It is bullshit. The government sets the 2021 poverty threshold for a family of four in the contiguous United States at only $26,500. Get real. A family of four with double that income will likely struggle.)
Unemployment is way down and pay is rising, but so are energy, food and housing costs.
Impoverished people are in some ways tougher, because they’ve had to be, but they are also more vulnerable. Some of them have been doing without things they need their whole life. This impacts their physical and mental health, and people who don’t eat well and are stressed to the max are not in an ideal position to adjust to dramatic changes in the world order. If you have neglected and painful teeth, untreated high blood pressure and multiple nutritional deficiencies, you’re not an ideal warrior.
It’s a real problem that almost half our people are spoiled and unprepared for the slightest hardship while many in the other half are compromised by having so many of their needs unmet. Dealing with income inequality is now a matter of national security.
Of course, many people have found that when they have no choice, they are able to do what must be done. When my daughter was severely burned while a college student, people often told her they “could never” deal with injuries like that. Well, that’s bullshit. When bad things happen to you, you have no choice but to figure out how to manage. So maybe we actually can toughen up.
Some of us are at this point thinking, “OK, I can conserve energy by throwing on another layer of clothing in winter. I can eat more beans and less meat. I can stop buying excess clothing and try to drive less. Maybe I can plant some veggies in the backyard, too.”
But don’t kid yourselves. Plenty of others are thinking about guns and ammo. They like being able to thoughtlessly consume resources to excess regardless of how it affects others. They’re OK with going to war to make sure the oil spigot stays on full blast, and if/when things begin falling apart at home, they’re equally OK with shooting anybody who might threaten their stock of MREs.
It’s very easy to think, “Well, maybe things might get bad, but I am sure I’ll be able to cope. I’ll deal with it when I need to.” But why wait until things are absolutely dire to toughen up? It’s time to toughen up now. Right now.
If you don’t know how to cook, you better learn how. I mean real cooking, not combining a box of this with a can of that.
If you have any room to garden at all, start planning your garden now. It’s a useful skill. Even if you don’t need the extra food to survive, you may need it to save money on groceries. And if you ever do require your garden to survive, you’ll be glad to know how to do it. There’s a learning curve. Start now.
If you live in an area where you can hunt, that’s something to consider learning to do. I grew up in a rural culture in which hunting and fishing were favored pastimes. I haven’t done either in years, but maybe I should ask my dad to help me brush up those skills. (Yes, even though I’m married to a vegetarian.)
When I was growing up, it was pretty normal for people to butcher chickens and can vegetables. Those are things worth knowing.
I can cook anything. I bake simple sourdough bread weekly, grow some of my own herbs and make cheese. I could brush up on hunting, fishing and food preservation. I wish my yard were not so shady; I have only a very small area suitable for gardening and am contemplating a couple of different options.
The unequal allocation of resources within America is hurting us, and it’s hurting the world. Greed is not good. Caring about other people is. Self-reliance used to be a core American value, but it’s been distorted into toxic individuality.
We need to start caring about the people around us, and that means not losing our minds if a poor person is helped to get an education or afford groceries and daycare. Not to mention healthcare.
How could the pandemic not have taught us that we are all better off when the people surrounding us are healthy?
When I hear privileged people claim they are entitled to their lives of luxury because they “worked for it,” blind to the fact that many others work just as hard for less reward, I want to scream. Inequality is just as harmful for the rich as it is for the poor. It is breaking down our country, and we are making ourselves vulnerable.
This winner-take-all system is disgusting, and it’s absolutely unsustainable. We will be destroyed either from within (torches and pitchforks) or without (war with Russia/China).
We all depend on each other more than we seem to realize. Let’s start acting like it.