Don't you know, you're just supposed to be happy?

In general, I agree, but. . .

So I was at bar tonight and got into a discussion with some random person who had decided to come over to the table where I was hanging with my brother and his buddy. She worked for Verizon and had seen me talking on my cellphone, and used that as a talking point to strike up conversation. I asked her how well she thought Verizon treated its employees, and then I asked if she knew how much the CEO was paid.

She immediately replied by asking, "Why do you have a chip on your shoulder?"

OK, so we now were clear on one thing: That we stood on opposite sides of the aisle. At that moment, I was pretty sure that she supported the war in Iraq, thought that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 911 and Al Qaida, and that there are terrorists who want to kill Americans because they hate Americans because they want to be Americans but can not be.

It turned out that she did.

So I asked her if she would like to know why I, personally, was curious to know how well she felt she was treated as a Verizon employee and also why I wanted to know how much the CEO and other top-dogs at Verizon made; she said sure. So I explained to her that from my understanding, the gap between the rich and the poor in the US has been gradually widening since 1900, but that post-WWII, the gap has been growing exponentially. I explained that in 1969 the average middle class American family required one working parent that worked around 40-50 hours a week to maintain a middle class lifestyle, and that today, well. . .we all know that it requires two working parents who work between 40-50 hours a week each to afford an average middle class lifestyle. I asked her where the money for all those extra hours is going--could a lot of it not be going, in many cases, to the increasingly outrageous "compensation" paid to executives? I asked, why have wages fallen (adjusted for inflation) since the 1960s? Could it have something to do with the greed that has driven, and the deregulation that has allowed, companies to ship jobs abroad and to drive wages downward, EVEN THOUGH globalization has taken place at a time in which so many major companies were already making plenty of profit?

I finished by asking where deregulation of the economy has gotten Americans.

Her response was to turn to her friend and say, "Soapbox. He's on a soapbox."

I have never thought very highly of the following bumerpsticker, but at that moment its message popped into my head and so I though to say to her, "Well, if you are not outraged, you're not paying attention."

But that's not true. She has been paying attention, enough at least to have just recieved a promotion from Verizon, and was on a business trip to Minneapolis in her new position. As far she was concerned, she was getting what she deserved for all her hard work. Also, as far as she was concerned, there are no disadvantaged people, just lazy ones.

Perhaps this person does deserve what she got as a promotion; I don't know. What I do know is that America has lost ALL $EN$E OF PROPORTION and necessity. Not, however, that there has ever been a consensus in the US on how much those higher up the corporate and business ladder deserve in compensation for greater risk and responsibility that was as just as that in the Europe of the post-war Third Way orientation. Kenneth Lay is just one character among many in a society that has become held hostage by greed and that rampantly produces pundits who announce that the Kingdom of peace and happiness will be realized by unleashing one's inner consumer. Dream Big, Think MTV Cribs!

I very much like that the Green Party has had in the past a platform about wage caps: no CEO or business owner should be allowed to pocket more than such and such a percentage of his/her average worker's daily take-home.

We also discussed the matter of Bill Gates' wealth, as she brought up the issue of philanthropy. She used the argument that someone like Gates was doing more for the world than someone like me, who has a chip on his shoulder and likes to preach from a soapbox.

Though I am not well enough armed intellectually to argue about the injustices of the joint-stock company that places profits for shareholders first and foremost over all other, nonmarket values and therefore to the detriment of the environment and numerous, previously-cohesive communities worldwide, I could engage with her in the following way (which I mention here, since Gates' great wealth comes primarily from his stock options and his company's monopolistic behavior):

Bill Gates' philanthropy vis-a-vis Africa and the AIDS problem protects his business interests, and thus is not sincere philanthropy. For the best explanation, check out the book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast. In short, there is a big fight going on over generic drugs for AIDS, all of which comes under the rubric of protecting intellectual property rights. Big pharmaceutical companies in the North and West want the WTO to punish countries (mostly in the South and the East) that allow companies to make cheaper generic versions. Bill Gates wants countries to crack down on knock-offs of Microsoft products. He wants property rights to drugs and Windows to be protected at all cost. Coming under fire for this stance, he has decided to spend whatever-amount-he-has-offered on name brand AIDS drugs for Africa. But how many more people could be treated on his dole with generic brands? If he was really sincere, he would declare, "I am FOR generics and will still spend this much money on GENERICS." Many more people would be treated and many more lives would be saved--I forget exactly how many more, but I think it was 2 to 3 times more (check out Palast's book for the details). This is not a negligible amount of difference.

It is negligent not to pay attention to the increasing gap between the rich and the poor in today's world in which globalization and free trade are supposed to be reversing the situation.

Furthermore, corporations must either be forced to or learn to place nonmarket values on equal par with profits for shareholders; or rather, capitalism must be regulated in order that the importance and integrity of extra-market values are appreciated and respected. In other words, companies should not be allowed to continuously externalize the risk and costs of their business to the human community and environment; it all should be internalized and profit and prices made to reflect the real social and ecological cost of doing business.