The universe is not unfolding as it should

There have been many stories in the news lately, about the increasing demand at food banks and soup kitchens.  About people who have not only lost their jobs and their homes, but who aren’t even able to provide the basic necessities for themselves and their children.

This got us to thinking… it feels like there’s something amiss in our society. Like somehow, we got off course.

After World War II, when our young men returned from the war, we seemed to be heading for an egalitarian, classless society.  In 1950, the average working American man brought home about thirty-two hundred dollars a year. A pro baseball player started at fifty-five hundred.  Today, the average American earned about twenty-seven thousand… and the LOWEST-paid Major Leaguer gets four hundred thousand.  Corporate CEOs, Wall Street traders, and hedge fund managers earn many times that, before bonuses.  People who haven’t had to break a sweat on the job a single day in their lives, collect tens of millions of dollars annually. 

The gap between the rich and the average working man if he’s lucky enough to have a job is no longer a “gap”. It’s a chasm.  One so large, and growing so fast, that it seems the “war on poverty” looks about as successful as the war in Afghanistan.  The average North American worker survives by shopping for shoddy Chinese-manufactured cordless drills at Walmart or Target, while the elite drive their Porsches and Bentleys to buy Burberry coats at Neiman-Marcus.

Our public school systems are rotting away while the rich stash their children to private academies in gated communities.  Reinforcing the class system, and keeping “outsiders” away from the elite. There’s some irony in the fact the US broke away from England largely as a revolt against a plutocracy, and just a few generations later, we’re moving towards our own.

Women may be shattering the glass ceiling and the President of the United States may be a person of color, but the lineups at the food banks are not getting shorter.  About 12% of Americans and 14% of people living in the UK live below the poverty line. 

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not advocating punitive taxes for the wealthy, or massive estate taxes, or a socialist system.  I’m a capitalist all the way, and understand that earning the most you can for your labors is capitalism at its purest.

But the Ayn Rand “Captains of Industry” were supposed to build a better world for all of us, and I just don’t see that better world.   In fact I don’t see many “Captains of Industry”.  All I see are hotshot Hedge Fund Managers whose sole motivation is a bigger house in the Hamptons or a townhouse in London and retirement by age 30.  

Somehow the universe does NOT seem to be unfolding as it should.    Somewhere we took a turn off the road and if you have any suggestions how we can get back on the right road, please... let me know.  I don’t have the answer, but I sure hope there is one.  You can write me at feedback@nakednews.com and give me your ideas on how we can improve our society.