There has been a lot of talk recently about the growing inequality in income between the very rich and everyone else, especially the very poor. Also the very rich have accumulated more money. Their wealth grows from generation to generation, according to Thomas Picketty, a best-selling economist. This disparity strikes some people as unfair. Advocates of the very poor are especially upset. Actually, the ones talking are neither the very rich nor the very poor. The very rich are content, as long as the government leaves them alone. They are preoccupied with living their elegant and refined lives in exclusive country clubs and on sea-going yachts. Besides, ordinary speech strikes them as vulgar. They have servants for that sort of thing. The very poor, on the other hand, spend every waking moment searching for scraps of bread to dunk in their gruel and otherwise pursuing their grubby little lives. Or they are running around and flapping their arms in order to keep warm. They have no time for loose talk. It is those in the middle class who complain the loudest.
The middle class has become discouraged by the recent Great Recession. No matter how they struggle, no matter how many extra jobs they take on, no matter how many night courses they enroll in in an attempt to improve their skills, such as mastering Windows Fourteen, they find themselves pulled down in a vortex of debt. (They don’t think of debt in terms of vortices, but I think the allusion is apt.) They see themselves sinking into the abyss of poverty. In a vortex. Their children will be even poorer than they are, they think, and forced to marry beneath them because of their impoverished circumstances, although by that time there will be nobody beneath them. At the same time they see the top tenth of the top one percent getting richer and richer, generation after generation. No excess is beyond them. Fancy banquets with breast of guinea hen and top stars for entertainment. Diamond belly-button rings. Fur diapers. How painful it is to watch them brush past on the sidewalks with their perfumed entourages pushing everyone else carelessly to the curb.
And that is the problem. It is the close proximity of the middle and upper classes that is so galling to the ordinary man in the street. The middle-class guy. Poor people stay with their own kind in the slums. They never see any really rich people, and so they are content. I, myself, did not realize I was only, at best, lower middle-class when I was growing up. I hung out with others who also wore corduroy pants and hand me downs. I didn’t know I was missing anything until I came across a copy of The New Yorker in a doctor’s office, where I used to hang out in those days. I looked at the advertisements, and I realized my family could not afford to buy anything nice, like round-the-world cruises, or fur-lined mink coats, or diamond earrings to go with a diamond necklace, or expensive porcelain etc. It was only then that I felt diminished, left out, deprived. For the first time I looked at the long strips of second-hand carpet that my father brought home from the bank in which he worked. There was no inconvenience in walking the length of the carpet, but jumping from one strip to another in order not to trip was an indignity, I suddenly realized, that rich people did not have to endure. I sunk into a vortex of self-pity.
A topical note:
It has been recently reported in the newspapers that a new-high-rise apartment building is being put up in New York. An interesting innovation of the plan is to put in separate elevators for those who live in the less expensive apartments from that of the really rich who will live by themselves on the top floors. There will be a fancy entrance for the rich people and a different entrance for those who are only middling rich. A “rich door” and a “poor door,” otherwise known as the “po’ door,” (not to be confused with the “po’ boy,” which is a kind of sandwich.) In no way are these entrances smaller or more cramped. They are separate but equal. I thought at first that this was simply a strategy to save the rich people from having to look at the less rich when they were together in the elevator. They would be freed at the end of a busy day making money from having to stare at these others with their big soulful eyes and their ready-made clothes. But I see, now, that this was a subtle plan to reduce the level of discomfort of the middle class guys and gals, to free them of the envy which so distorts and discolors their lives—which spoils for them all of the other satisfactions of life, such as T.V. and frozen dinners. Spared the propinquity of their betters, they can settle back more comfortably and contentedly on their over-stuffed couches. (“Propinquity” is one of my favorite words, although it does not have the universal appeal of “vortex.”) With that theory in mind I suggest:
A Modest Proposal
The middle-class do not feel deprived as long as they do not see rich people strutting about. Therefore, the clever idea behind the “po’ door” needs to be expanded. Simply having separate doors would not be enough. Some of these buildings have service entrances. There should be an equal service entrance serving the poorer people in the building, placed somewhere discreetly out of sight. Perhaps underground in a basement. Since some uppity service people might attempt to sneak into the rich service door when no one is looking, the doors may have to be locked with a special code. Or, alternatively, the service people may have an imbedded unlocking computer chip implanted under their skin.
This plan would need to be carried out on a city-wide basis. And not just separate but equal entrances. Separate streets seem reasonable. Otherwise, inevitably some people from the bottom 99% are likely while taking a stroll to run into the rich people on the street and feel disadvantaged. An underground passageway can be constructed to run directly from basements of the high-rise buildings to the subway. The tunnels can be lit with those new-fangled lights that simulate sunlight. Meanwhile, for the luxury class, taxis and limousines would have easier access to downtown without impoverished pedestrians littering the streets (literally.)
I foresee a golden time when everyone will live together harmoniously, each class happily by themselves in their own schools and barbershops and restaurants. (Some of this has been tried already in New York City and works really well.) That green-eyed devil called “envy” (or is that “jealousy”?) will be banished forever from our troubled lives and we will be at peace with ourselves and our neighbors. As long as our neighbors stay at a proper distance. (c) Fredr Neuman Author of “Come One, Come All.”