The Poverty Gap

I have just begun reading the following book:
Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2012-06-04). The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future.

I have, of course, seen the statistics, and read about the research that verifies, quantifies, and of course "lies" about the unsustainable poverty gap currently existing in the United States.

I threw "lies" in there, because that is the standard reaction the right wing (Republican Party) uses to depict what quite frankly is the greatest single threat to our democracy in the United States today.

I am less than amused by the volume of denials that emanate from the Republican Party right now. They deny everything from Global Climate Change, to the accurate and startling economic analysis of the book and other studies I cite above.

Study after study substantiates the demise of the middle class in the United States. The "poverty gap" now includes college graduates, who simply cannot find their promised careers, and enter adulthood saddled with impossible college debt.

This poverty gap is the most distressing. The Arab Spring, has been led by disgruntled college educated elites, who have been disenfranchised politically and economically by economies that are performing better than the United States! The United States continues to DROP relative to economic opportunity when compared internationally!

In short, there are not enough good paying jobs and careers to absorb career entrance middle class college graduates.

There still is "opportunity" for the Mitt Romney's of the world, there always will be in any banana republic, "opportunity" for the rich; they just get richer, and take care of their children.

Mitt and I present a contrast that supports my premise that this "poverty gap" is real, growing and dangerous to our Republic's survival.

Mitt Romney and I were friends during my freshman year at Stanford University. Mark Marquess, who is at present the University's baseball coach, was Mitt's roommate. That was the connection that got me introduced to Mitt.

In those days, 1965 to 1969, Stanford was very different from today. In those days a large majority of underclassmen were men, of privilege. Athletic teams were about the only place you could find middle class students.

The few of us that were in Stanford, were constantly reminded of our lower class. In conversations, "Preppies" (like Mitt) made sure to establish that they were products of private education that was superior to the public schools I attended. Many preppies had been to Europe, had been to places I could only dream about, had maids and butlers; in short, were RICH!

And they were right. They were rich and better educated.

I struggled my freshman year, although I had almost a straight A average in high school. I did not know the "code" for example, to write an essay in a Blue Book, nor did I have the Prep School Study Skills, that allowed my freshman peers to breeze through introductory Freshman English and Western Civilization Survey History.

I was drowning, until my best friend, a preppie himself, sat me down and showed me how to construct a Blue Book, "bull shit" (as he put it) essay.

I was regurgitating memorized facts, after studying for hours, but was not showing I had a general overview of the information. My preppie friend called the "secret code" "bullshit", essay writers call it finding and explaining the main ideas of the information.

Mitt Romney knew the code very well. He told me, to my amazement, that his prep school history classes were harder than Stanford's dreaded "Western Civ".

I was on football scholarship, and needed tutoring only once in all four years at Stanford: and that was to pass Western Civ.

Western Civ. was a liberal arts survey class, including Political Science, History, classical education, English all together. This class uncovered inadequate public school preparation big time. And I had to work three times as hard to basically catch up with my preppie peers.

But I did catch up, and ultimately passed some of them by. My freshman roommate was a preppie, born to wealth and privilege, who dropped out of Stanford, because he really didn't need Stanford, because his personal wealth was so much he didn't have to EVER work.

I was a mechanic's kid, the first of my family, and extended family on his Cherokee side, to EVER graduate from college. I had to WORK, use my college degree, and later advanced degree, to make a living.

Mitt did not. He really didn't need to even go to college, because his wealth was already there.

I know, I have read that he did make it on his own, but with an enormous head start, that I saw every time I entered his dorm room to visit. Mitt, I remember, had an beautiful stereo system, that turned on when you clapped your hands. I had a transistor radio, that was taped to the window sill, so I could hear the news. I did not get an equivalent stereo system until I was 35 years old, and had been working for years.

But there was a huge difference back then. At the end of the 60s, those who had dealt with the draft (I joined, Mitt dodged using his Mormon faith to get a religious deferment), still emerged into a job market that was opportunity plentiful.

The United States was rife with opportunity in those days. There was a recession, but hardly noticed. Corporate recruiters came to Stanford, and literally begged seniors and graduate students to join their firms. There were dozens of them at the yearly job fairs.

Today, the recruiters are not there. Middle class, American dreamers, like myself, often find that their degrees count for nothing. They need advanced degrees, and then need to "know someone" to have any chance of getting a job.

The Mitt Romney's of the world, preppies who had a huge head start in life just because of who they were born to; have no problems. The rest of us, no chance.

This is not healthy for the body politic. The Arab Spring violence, the terrorism bubbling over from the Middle East that killed thousands of Americans in New York, partly developed from frustrated college educated men who saw their hopes for advancement based on their educations thwarted.

An educate elite, that cannot get a job, is a revolution waiting to happen. Every banana republic has endured countless violent upheavals, when highly educated people cannot realize their dreams.

And that is not to minimize the under-educated's role in revolutionary movements; the French Revolution comes to mind.

No nation can long endure, that allows its best and brightest, to be constantly frustrated, and held back from their opportunities to succeed by an economy that is fixed to aide only the rich.

The Poverty Gap, that has saddled young bright people with eternal debt, and low wage, dead end jobs, is a ticking time bomb that threatens our nation.

But, we still hear conservatives insist there is no problem, just cut taxes, raise the rich even further, and the poverty gap is a figment of liberal's imaginations.

"Let them eat cake" seems to be their position. "Off with their heads" will be the response!