One of my favorite heroes has always been Robin Hood. I imagine that has something to do with the fact I have always struggled financially. To put it politically incorrect, I’m poor.
Poor in the sense that if I stopped working just for a couple of weeks, many things in my life would come to an end ( food, shelter, etc.). Life is bounced paycheck to paycheck. I can’t imagine how those at or below the poverty line make a living. Making minimum wage and working 40 hours a week one makes $14,872 a year. Working full time rarely happens however because many employers would be forced to pay benefits.
In “War of the Worlds,” H.G. Wells wrote, “Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”
This would be an accurate description of how the rich cast their intentions towards the poor. More now than ever, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Everything ever designed in the spirit of equality and fairness has been slowly degraded in this country by greed. These days I can’t even look America in the face and say “democracy” without laughing.
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country,” Thomas Jefferson said over 200 years ago and prior to the industrial revolution. We are failing.
Economic slavery propelled through rampant debt, low pay and rising costs is the best way to ensure a “freeman” remains a hard working man. It is the delicate act of keeping a person just desperate enough to trudge on demoralized and dependent without pressing their economic shackles to the breaking point. Someone with nothing to lose has little to fear. Death at times can be quite a comfortable solution when faced with an utter lack of control. What they fear is change. I find this idea of being trapped a prelude to an inevitable end – a fate predetermined by man and machine counting finely type numbers on a quarterly report.
