Taking Ruby to Her Friend’s Visitation

Earlier this week, when Ruby came down for dinner, I mentioned that her friend of 40+ years had passed away from cancer.  The visitation was tonight, and she didn’t want to drive through Kansas City during the rush hour traffic, so she asked if Aaron would take her.  

We agreed, of course. I went with him and we hung out at a Perkins restaurant, where we both read and, later, had an impromptu business meeting, setting our goals for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarters this year.  

For the first 30 to 45 minutes, though, we sat in silence, each reading our respective books.  As I looked around, I was thinking about life in middle America, in average suburbs; watching the people, catching bits of their conversations; the folks who make up the very heart, both in spirit and in population, of the nation.

This site is made up of minorities within minorities.  On the whole, you all are vastly better educated and make far more money than the typical American citizen.  You are also more likely to be in the 18-44 age group, male, and count your race as Asian or “other”.  You are scientists, journalists, business owners, accountants, lawyers, engineers, and executives.  Statistically speaking, the world you and I inhabit is incredibly different than the one in which these folks live, work, and exist.

I don’t want to sound like a luddite.  I love technology.  However, with the automation of processes, and the productivity gains it is driving causing  income inequality to increase while the United States splits into a nation of cognitive and financial elite versus everybody else, I don’t know how we restrain the forces that have aligned to destroy the middle class.  Not everyone can be a heart surgeon or a rocket scientist, yet anything less than that is rapidly becoming obsolete as machines, globalization, and immigration among the lower classes conspire to drive down wages and real standards of living for menial, repetitive work, which forms the backbone of the labor classes.  We don’t need as many people to build lightbulbs, anymore.  We don’t need as many people to build washers and dryers, anymore.  Machines have made the output per worker explode over the past 30, 40, and 50 years.

I think politically we’re in for a rough time unless something is done to address it.