Who makes money and who cares? What is money? A symbol of wealth as described in text books? Congealed energy as I’ve heard it described in think tank circles? However it is explained, money cannot be eaten. For protection from weather, one newspaper outranks a hundred-dollar bill.
Mostly, we could agree money needs the helping hand of a number to make it relevant and a country to make it real. Countries can be relevant only as long as they have a currency. Be it cruzeiro or yen, we identify with a qualifier in front of the currency’s name (Brazilian and Japanese). Currently it takes less than .80 Euro to buy a US dollar.
We used to hear about “the almighty dollar” but not now.
All Americans do not think the same about money. Some, with piles of it, worry that if they don’t watch out, “the government” will write laws to tax it. Those most covetous even worry about what the government wants to do with it after they die.
Some of us have enough to “get by” but are afraid of falling behind. Our table talk is filled with “what ifs.”
And then there are those who scarcely have money. They live from paycheck to paycheck, hoping there’ll be one. In their world, they hope the lights stay on so they can watch beautiful cars hug the curves of American scenery and movies where there are other curves to be hugged. To break their trance, politicians come on with flashy ads to tell them how their troubles will disappear if they vote for them. They can’t buy cars. They can’t buy beauty products, and they don’t fall for politicians who “all sound the same.”
I’ve been thinking about LBJ and JRE lately. President Johnson, who is remembered first for the Viet Nam war and second for such legislation as the voting rights act, put in place through his Great Society many safety net programs which those caught in poverty turn to.
I jokingly considered running for president until I found out that Lyndon Johnson was more deprived than I was when we were growing up. John Edwards had it a lot easier than I did, but I take him at his word that it was hard to graduate from the school of hard knocks. I settle by giving presidential candidates my two cents’ worth--about all I give them.
I’ve observed what closing textile factories did to people in my hometown. In 1988, I took a two-week vacation and came back to find the Levy’s plant up the road was closing. Iraq, with two President Bush wars, impacted Tennessee. Families have to adjust while someone is sent overseas when they thought they were hired to be “weekend warriors.”
ALCOA used to be a mainstay for good jobs. They automated. But not nearly as much as Nippondenso. Denso is our premier job provider, but they do not countenance unions, and my friends who work there describe how brutal the hours can be. You work as needed or you don’t work. Tennessee is a “right to work” state, which colloquially is called right to starve.
We’re the Volunteer State. If a child has something serious like leukemia, someone puts an article in the paper. For five dollars you can have a plate of pinto beans, some cornbread, some pickin’ and grinnin’ and get that “good feeling.” Before Christmas, groceries set out barrels so that we can buy a jar of peanut butter or can of tuna for the mountain folk. All the while, someone will pipe up with the customary observation: “It makes me feel so good. It does me more good than it does them.”
When ARC was in its heyday, things were easier in the hollers. Senator Howard Baker was sure to get good appropriations for the Appalachian RC (not sure of what the initials stood for).
There are two ways to study about poverty in my view. One is to be helpful when one sees a need and not be crowing about it. If one toots one’s own horn, I call that “noblesse oblige.” I am not a person of royalty and I feel no obligation to give a helping hand. It’s just practical with me. Practical in the sense that if you teach a man to fish you won’t have to keep giving him your fish. I can’t adequately describe how my hackles stand up when I hear someone say that the best way of reducing poverty is through entrepreneurship, thus providing jobs, thus ending poverty. “A hand up instead of a hand out” can be good, but not if the “trickle down”doesn’t work and the government has to give tax breaks to the trickler.
I get back to the second definition I gave. Money is congealed energy. If someone puts out real energy, there should be more than a trickle to keep the national economy afloat. We can opine over China and illegal workers. I stick with the people in my neighborhood. They must learn not to be grateful for not starving.