So, you think you worked hard and that is why you have what you do. Indeed, it may be true. But that is not the entire story. That is not all there is to your "success". MANY, MANY people work JUST as hard as you do, some even harder. They are not bereft of your perks because they are lazy or uneducated. They ARE perks and YOU are lucky. YOU are one paycheck away from being in the exact same shoes they are in. Do you actually think that there is no one working one of these shit jobs who has education, experience and/or work ethic? MANY people work long, hard hours for companies that offer ZERO sick days, ZERO raises, ZERO healthcare, ZERO opportunity for advancement and a ZERO percent chance you will have anywhere close to either a steady schedule or consistently sufficient hours. Suggesting they work harder, get more education or find a better job shows the depth to which privilege has infected you. Yes, infected. You poor slob...you just don't see that your attitude is one of the main reasons things ARE this way, and that they continue to worsen.
After the 2008 crash, jobs in sectors that pay a decent salary and include benefits were decimated. 7 million jobs were lost by 2010. This level of employed persons was not fully recovered until January 2014. The savings and retirement funds, the housing and jobs people had worked for their entire lives were simply gone through no fault of those who lost them. The vast majority of jobs added since then have been in the low wage sectors such as fast food and retail. There were three job applicants for every job available and this means that it was mathematically impossible for everyone who wanted a job to have one, much less a decent one. This glut of workers enabled companies to opt to offer fewer to no benefits. Many of the jobs in the higher paying sectors were adversely affected as well. Many people in those sectors found themselves making 30% less in the same jobs they had before the crash. Same level of education, same amount of work, same amount of experience, FAR less money and far fewer benefits.
After the pandemic lockdown, many, many people once again lost their jobs, with any accompanying benefits the self same employers as before saw fit to give. While employment had reached levels surpassing the level of 2008, after a peak of 153 million in November of 2019, the job market once again began to shrink, falling steadily to 130 million by April 2020. These are numbers based on the government supplied stats. What you need to know about unemployment figures supplied by the government is that they don’t actually count all unemployed or underemployed people. Jobs that were added back to the economy after 2008 consisted of even more low wage jobs than in 2008 before the crash, and after the effects of NAFTA had already skewed them that way. By January 2015, nearly 60% of jobs added after the crash were low wage jobs with few if any benefits. In 2020, the total income of those in the country's top 20%,incomes above $142,501, exceeded the total income of those in the bottom 80%, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Today's housing market is not much better. In 2021, 19 million (22.7 home owners were cost burdened, and the affordability was even worse. 26.1 million renters were paying almost a full half of their income on housing.
People aren’t being lazy, they have been thrust into unstable financial situations through no fault of their own. Meanwhile, corporations have reported record profits, after once again, being bailed out to the tune of $4.7 trillion as of June 2023, with only a small percentage going to the public in a typically named Covid Relief Plan.
Your failure to recognize the role good fortune plays in your ability to have perks is one of the signs of your privilege, and one of the main reasons it continues to worsen. It is the very same attitude shown by those who actually caused the crash and have refused to share in the recovery. 95% of the gains made since the crash have gone straight to the top. Business is doing better than ever with their record profits, and our citizens are doing WORSE than ever with record poverty and stagnant or declining wages/benefits. Buying into the corporate line of "if you don't have, it's because you don't work" makes you complicit in this marginalization of a great many people. Congrats...YOU are a willing stooge for the status quo. You are the sort of person corporations love...but not enough to see you continue to have what you have. Count yourself lucky and when the same fate befalls you, I hope people have a smidge more empathy for your plight...which was forced upon you through no fault of your own.
For clarification, my family is solidly in the middle class. We have plenty of food to eat, excellent health coverage, plentiful sick days, paid vacations and no trouble with transportation or with paying our bills, and still are able to save a pretty good chunk. We are not "jealous" of you. I imagine you would be jealous of us. The difference is that we know how lucky we are. We also know how quickly things can change for the worse. If you think you deserve what you have any more than millions of other hard working Americans, you are deluded. WAKE UP and smell your privilege. Your denial does not make the true false, it just makes you a horrible person and complicit in the record number of American children starving, hard working people running themselves ragged trying to make it in a rigged economy, and dying with no health care. YOU are what's wrong with America.
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