Ch. 24

Ch. 24

Strayer’s final chapter left me with feelings of some hope, but mostly despair.  Despair for our future generations where the rich rule the world.  I also fear for my family.  Our country’s political choices have made us targets for many organizations and countries.  Debt has become astronomical and yet we continue to spend with reckless abandon.  Politicians are more preoccupied with matters of religion and women’s reproduction than with stabilizing the economy and making the “American Dream” attainable for more than just 1% of the nation.  Things seem pretty grim right about now.

The world has seen staggering global economic growth in the last century.  The problem is the disappearance of the middle-class.  The ratio of income from the top and bottom 20% of the world’s population in 1820 was three to one and in 1991 it was eighty-six to one.  What this says, is that the rich are getting filthy rich and the poor are still just poor.  This is not to say that there has been no improvement in the lives of many of the less fortunate.  The UN Human Development Report tells us that “in the past 50 years, poverty has fallen more than in the previous 500”, but the great divide between the “haves” and “have nots” is growing with no real end in sight.  I was born and raised in San Francisco and now rent a house on the peninsula since my divorce.  My plans were to rent for a little while until I could qualify as a first time buyer again and buy myself a little house for me and my two young boys.  In the last year or so I have seen home prices and rents skyrocket to the point where if I am forced to have to move from where I am now, I will either have to move in with my parents or probably out of state.  I make a decent wage and live paycheck to paycheck, I don’t understand how people survive on minimum wage.  My favorite quote in the book was by the Mexican Subcomandante Marcos, who described globalizations as a “process to eliminate that multitude of people who are not useful to the powerful.”  In my estimation, that would be the middle-class as the rich need the poor to exploit.

What also makes me uneasy about the future is the position of the United States and its “informal empire”.  The nation has spent so much money over the last century in maintaining order all over the world that we are now massively in debt to other countries.  In maintaining order we have effectively stuck our nose into so many peoples’ business that it has literally bit us in the behind.  We know that the attacks on the twin towers on September 11, 2001 was in response to the United States’ military presence in Islamic holy lands.  It scares me that we have a constant target on our back.  It frustrates me to think how that money could have been better spent.  Our education system in the United States ranks pretty low in comparison to most countries.  It seems like at least once a week I see a headline about how seeking a higher education in this country will most likely put a person into debt from which many people will likely never recover from.  I act very positive for my kids, but deep down I worry about their future.

One ray of hope is our environment.  I do believe that all nations will eventually come to the realization that we need to come together and be proactive in caring for the earth.  The wealthy are smart enough to know that without a healthy planet, all their riches would be for not.  I know that many nations have seen a slowing in population growth and an increase in education.  I am confident that new forms of energy will eventually replace fossil fuels.  At Oracle, where I work, I received an email last week announcing the installation of electric car charging stations at multiple Oracle facilities around the Bay Area and the intention to install them in many other locations around the globe.  Employees will be able to charge their cars for up to 6 hours for free with a minimal fee for every hour thereafter.  This is the wave of the future and employers are now giving us employees the ability to make the switch to these alternative fuel vehicles.  Pretty awesome and a definite move in the right direction!