A NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION!

A NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION!

(SOCYBERTY, Al Jazeera, Peter Moskowitz)

(Paul Ryan, J.E. Stiglitz, John Christoffersen, Paul Krugman)

(Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, Frazer Chronicle)

I have a really novel idea, in fact it’ll be one of my New Year’s Resolutions, (I’ve got a few,) let’s all petition employers to pay honest, decent wages to their employees…..you know, an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. Forget the benefits, except overtime, and a week’s paid vacation, all the rest of the benefits, six days, personal days, health and dental insurance…..those items are up to the employee…..not the employer!

Oh I know I’m dreaming, neither side (employee-employer) would be willing to make concessions like that…..but think about it for a minute, doesn’t it make perfect sense, you get paid in hard cold cash for what you accomplish during your eight hour shift. No more paid breaks, no more paid lunches, and no more company parties, picnics or holiday cheese boxes…..(I always hated them anyways).

This isn’t revolutionary thinking, hell, it’s what employers want to do anyways, they’ve always hated to pay for health insurance, paid sick days, holiday pay and the like. Just negotiate an hourly rate of pay, and get all that other crap yourself, it’ll make you more self efficient anyways (it’s what my mother used to tell me).

This is the time of year when the president, political figures, the Pope in Rome, the preachers in their pulpits, and all the other do good groups lay on everybody. What happens the other eleven months of the year…..huh? People who are taken advantage of every two weeks at the pay window hurt just as bad during the holiday season as the rest of the year.

What happens is that those that have, kinda feel a bit antsy about how good they got it, and how bad most of the rest of us have it. So they talk a little more benevolently for a month, throw a few bucks into those bell ringing people with the little red pots and go on about their business.

LET’S GET DOWN TO SOME BASIC FACTS OF LIFE

There aren’t any statewide, nationwide, and for sure, no world-wide move to help the poor and starving, I had some hope for the Occupy Wall Street movement, but the New York City cops effectively quashed whatever that move was about when…..under the protection of dark, and a media blackout protesters were forcibly removed from Zuccotti Park.

Talk is cheap, so when some help group shows a small movement to help people, or politicians preach the perils of inequality in people’s pay envelope…..remember this, it’s the holiday season, and it’s what politicians do…..at Christmas.

President Obama in an early December speech called inequality “the defining issue of our time,” what exactly is Mr. Obama talking about? Inequality is on the shoulder of our democratic system of government, inequality goes hand in hand with how our country operates under a Capitalistic mindset.

Inequality has been around, more or less almost since our founding as thirteen colonies in the 1700’s, when a bunch of Englishmen, Spaniards and some French dudes decided to settle on America’s East Coast, and begin pro-creating…..and like the man said, the rest is history.

Inequality has been our Achilles Heel here in the United States, but ease up on the concern; inequality has been the Achilles Heel for the entire planet since the dawn of man himself. Racial inequality, pay inequality, living conditions, access to some of the finer services in life…..these things that have been taken for granted by some, throughout history will, down at the end of our collect roads, come back to haunt us when each one must stand before his/her supreme being.

YOU CAN’T HAVE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER

Equality attained is really 95% of the people of the planet’s goal…..few reach it, although most attempt to reach that goal. Just think about it, everybody with a chicken in their pot, a refrigerator, air conditioner in the summer, furnace in the winter, a car, garage, and a three bedroom home for the FAM.

People in the middle class have, for years been sold a bill of goods, that BOG dictates that kids have it better than their parents, and then those kids need to offer situations where their kids have it better than their parents. (Are you confused yet?)

It’s all a big fat load of horse pucky, what you owe your kids is a roof over their heads, three square meals, decent clothes, and your best effort, and the advantages that a proper upbringing means. Warmth, love, and the ability to detect right from wrong, and know the difference between the two.

There’s no secret to this old life that we are given, there aren’t any hidden easy paths to take, to succeed is simple…..you keep your nose to the grind stone and keep it clean, and if you’re lucky, maybe, just maybe you’ll achieve a measure of human equality.

Inequality is, well…..inequality, it’s wrong in every sense of the meaning of the word, and it should repulse every one of us. Because to truly achieve all that we can be there aren’t any shortcuts, and everybody needs to be treated equally, in every way.

I guess that would be my new year’s resolution, that we treat everybody equally.

HAVE A NICE DAY!