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The 'Stalinist' Who Came In From The Cold

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Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus11/19/2011 10:37:57 pm PST

re: #517 austin_blue

A living wage? From your mouth to God’s ear.

Well, I don’t think I mean that, in particular.

I’m taking a bit of a bigger picture, standing back and looking at our lives collectively, in our society.

Tonight’s “debate” had lots of talks about “values”, but I contend that you can tell what a person truly values by watching them, not necessarily by listening to them.

The choices we make as a society reflect what we “value”, and what we apparently value is lots, and lots, and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of trinkets, often poorly made and not original.

E.g., we’d rather have 10 white resin chairs than one solid wooden chair. We buy 64oz. of colored sugar water than buy a single fig* We hold “debates” with 7 cartoon characters rather than pick between two solid leaders.

And so on.

If we take and accept this type of thinking - more and more of cheaper and cheaper things rather than perhaps fewer, maybe even one, high quality things… we apply that to other parts of our lives too.

WalMart became so huge by employing an army of Chinese workers making less than, we shall say, High Quality products and selling those cheap goods at prices so low that the (often) better products made locally could not compete. This was a collective choice of values, though the candidates tonight were not willing to even broach the reality of American society (probably because they rarely broach any reality unless pressed.)

When I go shopping I don’t always look for the cheapest product. My (self conscious) buy habit is to look for the very best quality I can find. If I can’t afford that (heh) then I find the next best thing (and I’ll go down the list if I have to.) For example, I have no problem buying milk and eggs at a store with a better product, though more expensive, than the cheapest I can get at my local Safeway-owned mega-store. I do the same with chocolate (as everyone here knows by now.)

A “living wage” implies a culture in which everyone acknowledges that a person’s wage (salary) is reflective of needs of life in the society. Wages are normally tied to productivity (and I’m not saying in general that wages ought not be - it is important), but as a society we need to make daily decisions that allow our society to live as a group at a level that minimizes pain in the group as a whole.

And that means making daily choices with more thought that we normally give.

Yes, I’m asking for a lot.

*Insert any nutritious fruit here.