THE TRUE MEASURE

 

Yesterday I went to the big-box Costco store. It’s a wholesale warehouse like Sam’s Club (Walmart) only they pay employees a living wage and hire them full time, with vacations and medical insurance. Costco’s CEO made about half a million dollars last year compared to high end Walmart exec’s tens of millions. So I shop at Costco, part for the good buys and part for their principle of investing in employees. The humus or the toaster oven may not be any better but I’d rather have that portion of my dollar going to employee’s benefits than to Walmart stockholders. 

I was pushing my empty cart up a main isle when I heard someone call my name. I glanced around but didn’t recognize anyone. Then it came again. A smiling lady was approaching me, she said, “You are Frank Stevens.” She told me who she was; I would not have recognized her without help. We went to school together, she married a friend of mine, they divorced and then he died; gotta be more than 40 years. 

Our conversation moved predictably. It didn’t take long before she alluded to the good old days and how the world has gone to hell, undeserving people work the system, kids are bad and schools are no better. I made a career of kids and schools and couldn’t let that insult go unanswered. I reminded her of a famous quote that lambasts youth in general for their self centered ambivalence and disregard, paralleling her just uttered feelings. The source was Socrates 420 BC. I said, “You know, what made the good old days good was that we were young.” Our parents thought our generation was on the fast track to hell. Nothing is more normal than old people resenting youth and resisting change. I went on to defend the education business. Kids are just like we were, they test the boundaries. Teaching is like carrying water in a leaky bucket; we do our best with what we’ve got. She didn’t really want to fight and we moved on.

Within a few sentences she began to unload on freeloaders who play the welfare system, food stamps and medicaid, making babies just for the welfare check. I tried to shed light on that common but distorted view. Nobody choses poverty for the sake of a welfare check. For that matter, nobody gets pregnant for profit. Babies are the result of something much more inherent than beating the system. We are high functioning animals but not clairvoyant. If people could predict the consequence of their well intended actions, we wouldn’t need welfare. Of course people cheat. What I don’t understand is why we want to punish the poor for working the system when billionaires manipulate tax loopholes so they don’t pay any tax at all. If that’s not beating the system I don’t know what is. Instead of taking them to task, we elect them to high office. When I said that she shrank. I hit a nerve and her body language betrayed her. She had voted for the tweet-man. We managed a civil, friendly exchange for a few more minutes and resumed shopping up different isles. 

Time will fly and I’ll change along with everything else. But I won’t blame what I don’t like on rude kids or people who simply want a better life but lack the means to make it happen. The underlying prerequisite of free market capitalism is that we compete on a level playing field. But that element is the first to be ignored or dismissed when there is a dollar to be made. I think it was Gandhi who said, “The true measure of any society is how it treats its most vulnerable members.” I didn’t share Gandhi with her; I think she had had enough.