Making Up the Difference
As I wrote the title for this piece, it gave me a different perspective. I’m going to try to weave a couple of themes together. Let’s see how it goes.
Many years ago, I was asked what motivated me to serve as a volunteer for various organizations. At the time, I was serving on a Red Cross Board, coordinating blood drives, coaching children’s sports, and working with Habitat for Humanity. As I considered the question, I realized then that since some of us can’t or won’t carry a fair share of the load, it’s up to the rest of us to make up the difference. I now realize the same goes for class structure. In order for us to progress as a society, those of us who are able and willing to contribute must provide a surplus. Unfortunately, we often do so against significant headwinds, generated by those who seek to divide us into the “haves” and “have nots,” by making up differences that shouldn’t exist.
For most of my life, I’ve tried to live by three basic tenets: 1) Give more than you take (be generous); 2) Leave each place or thing better than you found it (optimize things); and 3) Never leave the toilet seat up (be considerate)! I previously wrote about this in Whatsa Motto F’You? I’ve recently come to the conclusion that these tenets fit neatly under the umbrella of “Nothing worth anything comes at the expense of others,” and have added a fourth: “Take care, not advantage, of each other.”
Some of us are born to privilege, some are born to disadvantage, and most of us are somewhere in between. How we respond to our heritage is what defines us; what we are is more important than what we have, and opportunity is more beneficent to society than opportunism. Among those who won’t carry their fair share of the load are some who bear resentment for their personal situations, some who feel entitled to consume more than they produce, and some who are resentful of “freeloaders,” justifying their lack of generosity by claiming that they don’t condone handouts.
Those who are born to privilege seem bent on excluding others, by expanding their influence and wealth, and perpetuating the self-preserving nature of generational wealth by passing it on to their heirs. Those who are born to disadvantage are sometimes resentful of the “haves,” and struggle to escape their own circumstances. Those of us in the middle range from ones seeking greener pastures to ones seeking to help the less fortunate. The barriers of exclusion and resentment hinder class mobility. Thus the middle class tends to remain static, and provides the needed support for the less well off, and in effect subsidizes the stinginess of the wealthy.
One of the greatest distinctions between the privileged and the disadvantaged is education. Even among the educated, the quality of their education is dependent on the eliteness of the institutions they attend and their benefactors. Educational opportunities for the less fortunate diminish as the costs increase, and reduced support for scholarships and student loans exacerbate the problem of natural inflation caused by the need for expensive technologies, facilities, and staff.
In my own family, almost all of those from the prior generation were not college-educated, and few of us from my generation broke free. But those of us who did paved the way for our kids. Despite my belief in equality of opportunity, I can see how success breeds success. That, in itself, is not a bad thing, as long as it doesn’t limit opportunities for others. The Republican elite, and pmurT in particular, seems bent on limiting those opportunities and inbreeding and perpetuating their own success. Attacking DEI and education, suppressing voters, and disingenuously espousing kitchen table issues are their well-honed tools.
It's beneficial to society as a whole for the poor and uneducated to be given reasonable opportunities to fulfill their potential and improve their standards of living. Our Gross Domestic Product is not a fixed number, or limited by some small growth factor. Increased productivity benefits everyone in the chain. As noted earlier, some among us are unable to carry their fair share of the load, and some are unwilling. To grow as a society, the rest of us need to create a surplus, and make a difference by eliminating the differences between us. The place to start is by supporting opportunity over opportunism.
Great article Bob, and one which a lot of people would benefit from reading. Not enough of us realize the impact on each of us when all of us are doing better and not just in this country, but throughout the world.
Soapbox alert: I'm in the midst of re-reading John Dewey's Democracy in Education for the first time in about 50 years and disagree with this statement: "Even among the educated, the quality of their education is dependent on the eliteness of the institutions they attend and their benefactors." The quality of one's education depends first on the aim of the education and second on one's ability and willingness to take advantage of the resources, both innate and provided that one has. What is impacted by the elite nature of the school one attends is the potential economic value of the associations and networks that are developed while enrolled. An attorney who goes to the University of (state of residence) Law School is quite possibly just as well schooled in law as one who goes to Harvard or Yale (even discounting the public faces of those schools as represented in Congress) but lacks the almost automatic entree into government or government-related positions and firms if that is what one seeks. It's a small difference, but one that is very important to some people. This holds true of every profession that I'm aware of; it was my misfortune to work with several graduates of the Culinary Institute of America who not only couldn't cook but couldn't even follow a recipe correctly. That the school took their money and provided a credential despite their demonstrable failure to acquire even the rudimentary skills on offer is an effective critique of the priorities our current education system holds and the impact on the progress we may make as a society.