Janet Nester's column Monday (Classism sending U.S. down the toilet) bugged me more than the typical annoying Post opinion piece because of its condescending tone toward the two plumbers in her story -and toward blue collar and average workers in general. If any working class person picked up a copy of last Monday's Post, I hope he or she considered the source and went on a living perfectly happy life, not caring what some save-the-world college girl thinks about his or her supposed sad state.
Nester said she wasn't feeling pity
but her column was not ambiguous -we should feel sorry not only for the workers in her story, but for other working class people in jobs that are beneath Nester.
While I respect the plumbers in the story, I, unlike Nester, don't feel bad for them. People don't clean up sewage for nothing. Nester wasn't calling on her servants and forcing them to do her dirty work; these men were making an honest wage doing an honest job. For the record, I guess I'm considered a working class kid. My dad worked in a factory most of his life and most of my uncles and cousins are still blue collar. I have friends and family who farm, work construction, are plumbers, electricians, toolmakers, truck drivers, etc. Even I have spent plenty of summers working construction or in a factory. I know plenty of working people like the poor plumbers in Nester's story, and trust me, they don't need her sympathy; they're doing just fine.
(And a quick aside: assuming these two gruff-looking men were plumbers, they very well may be making more money than Nester could hope to anytime soon, or at the very least, they're making a lot more than plenty of OU grads ever will.)
In addition to her patronization of the working class, Nester provides zero evidence, not even an observation, for why she thinks the poor are getting poorer that class divisions are getting worse, or that people are working harder and getting less. None. Sure, for some reason she compares the salaries of the top CEOs in the country with those of firefighters, but considering the CEOs she speaks of comprise the tiniest percent of the American workforce, she may as well compare the salaries of Major League baseball players with those of barbers. It's absurd.
People 100 years ago who busted their humps from sun up 'til sun down just to get by would laugh their heads off at the suggestion that things are worse off today. Our grandparents' and parents' generations would do the same. Even in our short lifetimes, the amount and quality of affordable goods available have improved remarkably. In terms of how economists define goods (e.g. a functioning color TV without the bells and whistles is still a functioning color TV), gaps between rich and poor continue to converge.
Even social mobility studies with negative spin show that a majority of people who are in the bottom quintile will not be there for long. Add to this just a simple observation on generational mobility. Anyone can find innumerous examples of families -including my own -in which every generation provided greater opportunity for the next. Walk around campus for a few minutes and it won't take long to find dozens of first-generation college students. In fact, according to the Brookings Institute, the United States is on the verge of becoming the first society in which a majority of adults are college graduates.
Furthermore, if Nester bothered to read, listen or watch a business story in the past two years, she'd know that the economy hasn't been slipping for quite some time. And if she bothered to understand any sort of historical context of the unemployment rate, she'd know that it's quite low, lower than it was in 1996, the heart of the booming '90s.
I feel fortunate that I have seen real work; it gives me perspective and understanding that apparently Nester, and plenty of others, lack. I'm sorry Nester feels guilty that her parents pay for everything. If it makes her feel that bad, I'm sure I can find some working-class guys or girls that will gladly take the guilt-money off her hands.
Capitalism is not taking its toll on America. Despite what the gloom and doom nay-sayers try to claim, capitalism is why we live in the most plentiful society in the history of civilization -for any class. If it weren't for capitalism, I wouldn't have opportunities to build on my parents and grandparents hard work, Nester's parents wouldn't be able to pay for her college education, and a couple of plumbers wouldn't be making good money cleaning up Nester's watered-down poop.
-Phil Borger is a journalism graduate student. Send him an e-mail at pb275304@ohiou.edu.
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