A think tank established for the creation of “closed, holistic systems.”
The Greatest Indicator of the Income Gap: What it’s like to make it through the day
by Yasha Husain, Director, Holistic Solutions Think Tank, www.closedholisticsystems.com
May 22, 2013
The greatest indicator of the gap between the rich and poor is arguably what it’s actually like to make it through the day…
Economics are, in any case, the study of social factors that contribute to and spawn the exchange of goods and services.
Are you someone who has enough money so you don’t spend the hours of the day thinking where will the money come from to pay the bills or get by, instead knowing you’ll have sufficient funds to cover your cost-of-living and payments due? Or, do you experience, throughout every passing day, concern, even tension, related to the fact you don’t know whether you’ll have enough money to cover the next rent or car payment, let alone meal?
It seems the indicator is a reflection of how we each live according to the first or second set of circumstances, while the second set seems, comparatively, onerous, and with consideration of the big picture, unfair and unnecessary.
Extrapolating on the same premise, this also begs the question, with the current socioeconomic climate, is the well-known, and well-loved, “American Dream,” as we so often think of it, that is, we can all make our way, and fulfill our potential, playing out according to its principles?
We attain to our dreams, no matter what we choose to do, by way of equal opportunity. But what opportunities must exist, with the current socioeconomics being what they are, so that we each can attain to a feeling and understanding that completes our promise?
Following our dreams, of course, doesn’t need to mean a career with an important title, or becoming a movie star of well repute, it simply means becoming our personal best, with our rights to choose what we want to do and be intact, while we are able to be happy, or experience happiness, and contentness, since, and I should add, we are happy when we have the freedoms to pursue our dreams.
But what is the meaning of economic hardship?
There are probably many different variations of it, the out-of-work college grad; the poor, single mom; the invisible homeless.
Are we ensuring each of these individuals and members of the community are also enabled to pursue their dreams? And do we have the safeguards in place, in the first place, to prevent the insipid poverty that might put a hamper on the dream?
Are there proper job opportunities for the grad to pursue his/her passions? Is the single mom living in an economy that will accommodate her, whilst affording her and her children the right, to not only dream, but pursue those dreams? Do the homeless have justice to report their grievances, inadequate schooling, difficult family life, inequitable society, so that they may at last be lifted up? And what of the poor boy or girl joining a gang out of rebellion?
Where is the American Dream for the disadvantaged, and effectively, disqualified, dare I say?
The indicator would suppose what it takes to make it through the day determines whether you are afforded equal opportunity, and via natural, democratic rights.
Economics shouldn’t be labeled simply capitalism, democratic socialism, or an ism, but perhaps utopianism. This was the ultimate dream of Keynesianism, to attain to a level of equality and sufficiency, that we each do not harbor illusion, but opportunity, to just be.
Today, making it through the day should be about American justice, that we each truly have equal opportunity to pursue our dreams and loves.
Yasha Melanie Husain. Copyright 2013-14.