[lbo-talk] Re: gorgeous moscow subway stations

[Carl Remick]

>From: snitsnat <snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com>
>
>... I don't see any despair going on. They want what you have: a decent 
>job, an affordable roof over their heads, health and retirement benefits, 
>an opportunity to get out of a small town, the chance to learn, and a sense 
>of meaning and purpose in their life.
>
>Those aren't unreasonable things to want and a $10/hr job at Goodyear or a 
>minimum wage job at a junkyard does not afford those things. R's friend, 
>Shane, works in a junkyard. He has a four year-old from his marriage, who 
>he raises by himself. He can only survive because he lives in a trailer on 
>his dad's property. It's a modest property and they managed to pay it off 
>10 yrs. ago --when they both worked at a Tupperware plant and had benefits. 
>These people do not aspire to have designer clothes or status jobs. All 
>Mike wants to do is keep his repair shop running and his wife would like to 
>have hands that don't ache from the factory work so she can do something 
>she enjoys--upholstery work. These folk can't imagine wanting these things 
>because it is not their lot in life. When they see fancy schmancy homes on 
>the TeeVee their response is, "Yeahsureright. Who can possibly afford 
>that?" This is because no one in their circle afford that." To them, the 
>idea that plenty of people live in those fancy schmancy homes is not real. 
>...

I hate to be crude, simplistic and "unrealistic," but I don't see any 
solution to this problem other than socialism of some type.  Without strict 
controls on disparities of income and wealth, there can be no genuine social 
progress.

I don't think the problem for most Americans is aesthetics at all but a 
deepening sense of *material* insecurity -- the problem of having an ever 
dwindling number of constants in your life (steady earnings, fringe 
benefits, SS, etc.) to help in planning for housing, healthcare and 
retirement needs.  Adding more agita, amid all those anxieties over life's 
essentials one is constantly being clobbered over the head with news of the 
latest gargantuan rewards being lavished on the celebrity class for no 
goddamned reason at.  My latest pet peeve is the $38 million dollars that 
Sarah Jessica Parker got paid for doing an aborted *failed* ad campaign for 
the Gap.  Reportedly SJP is PO'd at the Gap for terminating her campaign 
early and hiring a younger pitchperson, Joss Stone.  SJP is said to have 
considered Gap's handling of her dismissal "a bit of a snub."  Shed a tear 
for SJP!

Carl