So, what are you going to do about it?

The America of our collective imagination is dead. That upwardly-mobile, egalitarian paradise where all you needed was a dollar and a dream no longer exists; these days it takes more than that to worm your way into a homeless shelter. Show me 1 working class kid who graduates from Harvard Medical School, and I’ll show you 100 high school dropouts; show me 1 middle class kid doing better than his parents, and I’ll show you 100 who are un- or underemployed. We have to do better. My generation deserves the shit we were made to believe we were entitled to – a living wage, a house, a car, a family, a decent education, healthcare, etc. – and there are two things standing in our way: old fucks’ greed and their constitutional inability to admit they’re wrong.

Let’s start by discussing the greed. Although to the broke masses it may appear otherwise, there’s still plenty of money in the United States. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the money is all in the grubby hands of a few greedy, reprehensible, middle-aged white dudes, and Oprah. This, according to fiscal conservatives, is the system our Founding Fathers – and maybe even Jesus Christ himself – handed down to us. Bullshit. This country was founded on a wave of Enlightenment republicanism, and “republicanism” with a lower-case r is more about preventing tyranny by the rich than tyranny by the queers.

And tyranny by the rich is, by the way, eminently preventable. We tend to erroneously view the economy as some sort of mythical beast beyond our control. We forget that we ARE the economy. We made it, we sustain it, and when it plummets, it’s because we let it. It’s not difficult to unearth the reasons we find ourselves where we are today. Take our ill-advised, quasi-religious reverence for free-trade. The outsourcing of labor to overseas sweatshops where foreign workers are paid pennies on the dollar is why America no longer produces anything tangible; since the manufacturing sector was a major employer up until the 1980’s, its dissolution has had a pretty devastating economic impact.

Of course, the government could regulate this kind of thing; they certainly used to back in the age of American prosperity. They simply choose not to because they exist in a climate of covetousness and cronyism and secrecy. As long as robber-barons have the legal right to donate money to elected officials – bribe them, to use the vernacular – corporations will have the legal right to maximize profits by any means necessary, profits which they need not share with rank-and-file employees. Greed is socially corrosive, and not the natural order of things. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Now on to my second point: it’s time for fiscal conservatives and proponents of laissez-faire economics to admit defeat. Obviously the privileged few players in this game who are winning won’t give up their money bags without a fight, and why should they? The system worked for them. For those of you who are losing, it’s time to reexamine your political positions. It’s time to realize that you’ll never be in the top 1%, that you’re closer to a bum on the street than a millionaire. Most of all, it’s time to be held accountable. You’re responsible for the fact that the country’s deficit is skyrocketing while corporations and rich people remain criminally under-taxed; for the existence of the Rust Belt; for the 85% of recent college graduates who have to move back in with their parents after failing to find adequate employment; for the under-funded public schools that fail children so badly that fewer than 50% of them read at grade level. Your votes brought us here, and you were wrong. It’s as simple as that.