I’m not going to noodge, yeah I’m envious of the rich, especially since while they were slaving at a ‘hot’ desk and pinching secretaries asses, I was shoveling dirt in deep holes, lifting thousands of pounds of stinky mulch from cargo containers that were around 110 degrees inside and filled with cooking cypress stink and dust, working 10 and 12 hour days with no overtime (managers did not make overtime), delivering papers in the worst weather of the years, saying 'yes sir and yes ma’am to petty tyrants, kissing customers asses to have them buy suits and chasing shoplifters across parking lots, being lowered into narrow sump manholes on a chain to fix the pump in stinking water and low light, climbing ladders to pound in nails on some guys $200,000 house in 90 degree heat and 74% humidity, driving fork lifts in the rain, handling the problems of morons at a desk, night patrolling a building to check for damage while the neighborhood erupted in New years Eve gunfire and my staff cowered in the windowless sections, chasing escapees on foot through high crime minority areas, and all in all, at the most making $24,000 a year back then.
Then I run into folks with more money than they can possibly piss away while I help evicted friends move from their houses, drive by homeless camps, get to watch people digging for food in dumpsters, watch friends working three jobs and into exhaustion just to pay the rent and power bill and know of acquaintances who steal food to feed their familles with or both parents working 50 hour weeks to pay the day care center and put money on the side to try to rent a new home in a low crime area while driving cars that should be junked but they cannot afford to get them fixed or buy new ones.
I’ve watched good people go bad because they cannot make enough money to keep their kids well clothed and fed, and have given thousands of dollars away to companions who needed it for food, rent, medical assistance or bill because I make more than they do.
Then I get to go into a house where some rich bastard spent $200,000 on a shitter! His hands are soft, his complexion comes from sun lamps at the spa, and he got into his business through his daddy and climbed the ladder by slitting the throats of his companions at work. He’s got the best of insurance, the best of doctors, and can afford Viagra and other expensive medications and I’ve had to drive friends to different emergency rooms because some hospitals will not take them without insurance and took others to Public Health departments to wait among a stinking, rude, crude, bitchy crowd of the working poor for haphazard treatment.
My town has a great series of luxury communities and as each new one goes in, the rents on roach infested, rundown homes and apartments go up because there is no rent control here and you wait a year to even be selected to be considered for possible housing assistance by the State.
In the 70s, when the gas crunch hit, common folk were in block long lines to get gas, hoping the stations would not run dry, but these rich fuckers showed up in enormous, gas guzzling trucks towing ocean liners and pumped 100 to 150 gallons of precious gas into the tanks so they could go fart around on the water for the day. Behind them, folks like me were digging into the rent money to fill up the tanks in order to go to work and often, after sitting for half an hour, watched the station close because it was pumped dry before we got up there.
It was kind of funny because we have a section for the Rich-Rich in town, and one of the US’s greatest religious leaders had an exclusive home right next to it. Billy Graham. Big money for that place and the security! He certainly was not ‘giving until it hurt.’
When beef prices soared, and everyone was getting screwed by the meat sellers, the rich were in stores buying prime cuts of the most expensive beef while the rest of us bought fatty hamburger and crappy stew meat. Then they went to the local butcher and bought his finest cuts and drove happily past floundering soup kitchens and homeless shelters without a care.
Whew! I better shut up. Too much vitriol here. Me and my close friends are average people yet we give much more of our income to local charities percentage wise than the wealthy do because we’ve been there, done that, got out and feel we have a duty to the less well off.
Ya know, I know a disabled girl that raids dumpsters and when she strikes a big haul of bruised vegetables, bread and unsoiled pastries, she shares this bounty with friends of hers who are even worse off. She cooks on a cheap BBQ grill outside of her home because firewood is free and gas for her stove is expensive and has run out.
Then there’s this rich-rich lady who, every Halloween, spends 3 or $4000 having her house painted Orange and a few grand more on decorations to impress the folks in her gated community and afterwards, $3 or $4000 having it stripped and repainted back. Pocket change to her. I know of no charities locally which have her as a donor.
Think I’m being too bitter? Drive on down to your local Public Health and stop in to look, then check out your homeless shelters and soup kitchens. Check out any large patch of woods behind any stores in shopping plaza’s in your community and see who lives there or go out early in the morning and drive by the dumpsters of grocery stores. Check out your local Salvation Army shelters.
Better still, locate the busiest hospital in your city and it will probably be the one which takes in anyone from the street, insurance or not, and will probably be somewhat rundown and under funded in comparison to the others. Don’t go into the ER because you might have to sit there for 5 or 6 hours to get treatment because they are busy and unless you’re dying in your chair, you have to wait.
Yeah. I suppose I have just a little problem with the Rich.
