The Rich Get Richer
CEO’s ‘wages’ are going up faster than skyscrapers in Seattle and Gomorrah, the paper said yesterday. This is good news indeed if you believe in trickle down economics, not so good if you have to scrape for rent and groceries. Like my old Uncle Bernie used to say, ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’. Course, now that he’s one of the richer, he figures we all can get there too. The poor? Well, all boats rise in an incoming tide of wealth, which might’ve been truer when wealth was more evenly distributed.
Little Jimmy, an auto body worker at O-Zi-Ya Body and Paint, makes a little more than minimum wage but not much more. He’s got a wife, Lisa, who works part time at Jolene’s Gift and Boutique and she does make minimum wage, no more. They have three kids and a second mortgage on their double-wide over on the east side of the island. One of the kids, Julie, has a congenital heart condition which requires surgeries and medications. They’re in debt up to their collective eyeballs. You might think they’d be all for Obamacare, cut into those expenses. But you’d be wrong.
Jimmy got into it with Two Toke Tom the other night at the Pilot Lounge. Two Toke was celebrating the Supreme Court’s latest decision that turned back the move to kill the Affordable Health Care Act. Little Jimmy was positively livid. “Socialized health care!” he fairly screamed.
“What the hell, Jimbo?” T.T asked. “You don’t have ANY health care.”
Jimmy, red in the face and pounding his fist on the table, spilling beers, cried, “I pay my own way, Tom. I’m not a #@*&)*!^ freeloader.”
“Okay, okay, Jim. Settle down. They aren’t handing out free beer,” Tom said, “and I’ve lost about a buck’s worth on the table here.”
Jimmy went for a bar rag, shaking his head. Two Toke drew circles in the foamy puddles, tasted a finger, then smiled sadly in my direction. “I know,” he whispered, “let it go.”
I knew he was thinking about Julie. Me too. What neither of us knew was whether Jimmy was.
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