It's May Day, Not My Day

It's May Day, Not My Day

We got the word today that our store will close on May 18. I have been looking for a job with no luck. Well, I have had a couple of nibbles for jobs that pay enough to support me, but I have been rejected. I was offered another job that pays only two thirds of what I get now and I barely get by as it is!

I'm trying to stay positive but if I don't start working at a new job by June 1, I'm in trouble! Send me all your positive vibes and prayers. I need all the help I can get!

It's a holiday in Europe. They get way more vacation and other days off than we do in the USA. We are brainwashed in this country to believe that we have it good. Relative to the whole world, that is true. Relative to Europe, not so good.

The U.S. ranks 4th in GDP, yet it is 92nd in distribution of wealth—UN measurement. In other words the top 5% of people live the best of all nations, and the bottom 25% of people live worse than in countries such as Greece, and all the ones in between just get by with an average quality of life. This disparity explains why the U.S., with the most expensive medical system in the world, is counted as 37th as to quality of care by the World Health Organization. Instead of addressing this disparity, the Republicans have been handing out tax breaks to the top 5% of people and corporations. Without election finance reform, we can expect this trend to continue. WAKE UP AMERICAN PEOPLE—the politicians are serving themselves, the rich, and big business to the detriment of 95% of us!

Some people say that because of this, all politicians are corrupt. I don't think that's true. People just naturally tend to believe in things that serve their self interest. If they made a law tomorrow that all citizens with any Italian heritage get $1,000,000, I'd take it. And I would not try to find reasons to give it back, like, it's not fair. A politician needs to get reelected and because of the way the system works, he needs money, a lot of money! He has to take it, and he will take it from every possible legal source.

To me, a perfect example of what happens to people is a study of my brother and me. We both grew up with Democrat parents and, as might be expected, by the time we graduated high school, we were both Democrats. We both dropped out of college and we both worked in retail becoming store managers. Store managers get lower middleclass pay; Democrats.

My brother married a girl from a family that had upper middleclass money. They gave him money for a down payment on his first house. And in the biggest break of all, he was sold an established, multi-million dollar business for no money down. He has a big house worth $750,000 and a summer house on a lake in Wisconsin. He drives a Mercedes Benz. Over the last twenty years he has worked hard and is worth a few million dollars. Me, not so good, I work hard too, but I live in a studio apartment and just get by.

Can you guess what political party my brother prefers now? Some rich people, who earned their wealth, can see back in their lives and realize that the financial place in which they used to live is still there, and a majority percentage of the people in this country still live there. They understand that they owe something to all the little people that make their wealth possible. On the other hand, other rich people, like my brother, have a philosophy with a mantra that goes something like this, "I earned everything I've got and if you work hard, you can be rich too." To him I say, "If everybody was rich, a loaf of bread would cost $1000, because nobody would want to bake it."

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