The Mark(ings) of Zorro

The Mark(ings) of Zorro

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
H.L. Mencken

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What's the Matter with Kansas?

Saturday, October 26, 2002

by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

For Richer

Sometimes I dispair of keeping up with life. It seems that there is never enough time to do everything I want or, more importantly, should be doing. Like, for instance, defragging my computer's HD or reading the weekend (notice that it is no longer the "Sunday") Times. I mention those two activities since I attempted to undertake them both today. I got as far as cleaning out about 20meg worth of unused bits and bytes off my "C" drive in a so far futile attempt at bringing my free space back up to 10%. While things were erasing and being moved to Zip disks (just in case it turns out that they were actually needed by some program that I use from time to time), I read some of last week's Sunday Times Magazine. And that is what I want to touch upon today.

The cover article last week puts into words something that I have been intuitively feeling for some time now. It is a chilling portrait of our country and the decline of our guiding ethos. And, although I know the author has an obvious ax to grind, that ax does not erase the underlying reality of his subject. This article should be must reading for all of us if for no other reason than to stimulate discussion.

In essence, the article is a polemic about the decline of the American Middle Class and the resurgence of the plutocrats. The author, one Paul Krugman, argues that since the early '70s this country has seen the great egalitarian social push falter and die to be replaced by a new concentration of wealth and power in a relatively few hands. If his underlying statistics are to be believed (and I don't think they have fudged), there can be no denying the fact that, while a few of us are much better off today than we were 30 years ago, the vast majority of our citizenry are either little or no better off or they have actually lost ground.

I think we can all relate to this thesis at least anecdotally. Think about the average middle class family in the '50s. The norm was a single active member of the workforce who normally put in a 40 hour work week. This average family owned their own (modest) home and drove a (relatively) new car. They took vacations and looked forward to putting their children through college without going deeply into debt. Compare that to today where the norm is for all adults in the household to be working. The work week now routinely takes up 50-60 hours. Vacations become fewer and less elaborate affairs and an offspring going to college can sink a family deep into debt. Meanwhile, that top 1/10th of 1% of the population is living higher and higher off the hog. This, my friends, is a dangerous trend that does not bode well for our democracy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005

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