rollin’ in an escalade

The 2010 Cadillac Escalade ESV is an $80,000 automobile. Eighty-thousand dollars. For a transportation vehicle. I am told that, as Americans, we have the "right" to purchase such obscene automobiles. Just as we have the "right" to purchase trash food like McDonald's Big Mac or KFC's Double Down. Yet as Americans, we do not have the right to quality, affordable health care. (Although I believe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law earlier this year, is a step in the right direction, I believe true reform begins with a government option; the health-insurance industry should not be a for-profit industry.) And as Americans, we do not have the right to food and shelter. According to a recent Harvard study, nearly 45,000 Americans die annually because they lack health insurance. A 2009 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that 49 million Americans, including nearly 17 million children were food insecure. (Food insecurity is defined as the availability of nutritious food and one's access to it.) And a 2007 study by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty found that approximately 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, are likely to experience homelessness in a given year. The world's wealthiest nation allows its own citizens to suffer and die because they lack access to the fundamental services of survival. Yet Americans have the right to an $80,000 machine whose sole purpose is transportation? A society that allows such egregious expressions of wealth is corrupt to the core; such societies care not for those who suffer without, but cater to those whose cash serves as an accessory to their gluttonous lifestyle.

The higher class view those without not as victims of capitalism's vicious dog-eat-dog mentality, which they are, but as victims of their own circumstances. The poor are poor because they lack the initiative, the desire to better themselves, the higher class will claim. This theory certainly holds true for a minority of the lower class, but to claim that every being living in poverty is deserving of such status is absurd, especially in 2010 America, in which millions are struggling with the harsh realities of unemployment and millions more are underemployed. Further millions have been raised in poverty – before they were of the age to differentiate a spade from a diamond they faced a stacked deck. Again, the privileged see the gulf between classes in very simplistic terms: those who can do for themselves have achieved their status, and those who fail to do for themselves – never mind the psychological implications of a poverty-rich childhood – have chosen their lower-class reality. It is not a coincidence that many who hold such ignorant perspectives align themselves with The Right; further, many who align themselves with The Right are Christians, who, not coincidently, view the very existence of our species through the simplistic prism of the Bible and creationism, believing that "the heavens and the earth" were created in six days by the hand of a supernatural creator. Viewing life through such a naïve lens is ridiculous: life's color extends beyond black and white, it is not separated into right and wrong, heaven and hell; a mindboggling number of variables has brought our species, our planet to this point in history, and a number of variables results in who and what we become. It is far more complicated than simply applying one's self, which is why capitalism, viewed by some as "the great equalizer," is so barbaric, because it is based on the inevitable conclusion of internal warfare: man will battle man, exploit him and, if necessary, slaughter him, to better himself. It is through this brutal oversimplification of success and failure that the values and concerns of the lower classes are sacrificed.

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