Pedrogas. That sad state between slack and emptiness, stale, impure, yet filled with an anxiety that few survive. I am there. I spent today building a metal shed, screwing in screws again and again; it reminded me of the erector set I had as a kid - so many screws, so many... Anyway, while the shed is not quite completed, I believe that it will survive a few days in it's current state, despite the warning in the instructions that it must be finished once the walls go up or it may be damaged by wind.
I was listening to Bobby Jindal (governor of Louisiana), as he was "interviewed" this morning (I would have called it more a game of "evading the questions"), but amongst all the rhetoric and evasion, he did admit to being against re-distribution of wealth in any form (including Obamacare, but also extending to really any taxation of those who have more in order to help those who have less). I keep hoping that logic will eventually prevail and all those non-0.01%ers will realize that having an essentially untaxed hyper-rich class is not actually doing them any good. But logic does not really seem to enter in to political decisions, at least for the bulk of the population. I suppose it doesn't really matter, but I do find it irritating when rich and hyper-rich people discuss lack of health care and homelessness as if they understand what it's like. Even if they rode from poverty to their high status, it's extremely difficult to "imagine back to one's former state" in order to really feel the fear and pain caused by poverty. And that makes it hard to really feel the need to change the world. Of course, exactly how to aid those in need is a viable debate. And I do understand that politically conservative theory is generally some kind of variant on, "let's not give the poor what they need and somehow they'll become dissatisfied enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps" - but that seems to work as poorly as Johnson's War on Poverty did. Welfare, free or discounted housing, food stamps, WIC, those programs seem to institutionalize the state of being poor, rather than help people out of poverty. I have heard many people say "if you don't need to work in order to eat and have a home, why would people work?". Maybe many wouldn't - but would that be such a bad thing? What if we instituted some form of Basic Income, like they are planning to do in Switzerland, where being a citizen of a country means you are given enough each year to have a modest room to live in and sufficient food and medical care to stay healthy? If you wanted more - a guitar, or a bike or a car, you would have to find a way to earn additional income, but your basic needs would be fulfilled. Would this be the end of our civilization, with some tiny percentage of people working, and everyone else sitting at home napping? Perhaps. But the current system is so cruel, and so many people suffer under it, perhaps it's worth trying a potentially civilization shattering change in order to make the world (or at least this country) a better place.
I have heard that archaeologists have determined that contemporaneously with the formation of the very first city, the first homeless appeared. It seems that as soon as there is a society, an under-class immediately installs itself at the bottom. Perhaps there is no hope for the downtrodden, maybe all the conservative pundits are correct, and we should just let poor people be poor. Certainly being rich doesn't appear to make one any happier. But being poor kind of sucks, too. Perhaps the best path is to not worry about rich or poor, but to find another way to be.