Originally published on Facebook 4 November 2014.
Last night, somebody I like said something extremely fatuous, and I find I cannot sit by and let it go without challenge.
That was, “Vote as if you’re going to get the job you want, not as if you will stay stuck in the job you have.”
Gee, that sounds great. That sounds absolutely peachy.
Except that like most bumper stickers, it is empty and meaningless at best and a pernicious evil lie at worst.
Even in the greatest economy in the world, there’s no such thing as unlimited upward mobility for everybody. There cannot be. In any office of fifty people, not everybody can be office manager. In any factory of two hundred workers, not everybody can be foreman. In any community, the “next job” for many will be public school, or retirement. Not everybody’s going to open the next hot restaurant. Some people will have to be busboys in that restaurant. Even for those of working age, most people will rise only so far, and no farther; and there will never be the magical Randian economy where everybody’s a billionaire, keeping the economy going by selling manipulated stock to one another.
What that bumper sticker says is:
If you’re in an Union and the Republicans in your state wants to take away your right to collectively bargain, you should vote as if you’re in management.
If you’re a miner and the Republicans in you state want to slash the safety regulations that help keep you alive while giving the fat guy in the front office tax incentives for doing it, you should vote as if your life doesn’t matter.
If you’re a woman and the Republicans in your State want you to continue earning 77% of what men earn for the same work, and further say that you shouldn’t be working anyway, you should vote as if you have a penis.
If you’re like my wife and your Governor has already cut your salary by thirty percent and has said that he wants to go after your retirement next, you should vote as if you’re the rich people that kind of austerity benefits.
If you’ve suffered catastrophic medical reverses and the Republicans in your state want to punish the President by blocking your insurance while calling you names and implying it’s laziness and not infirmity that makes you too sick to work, you should vote as if you’re a marathon runner.
And even if you are fortunate enough to have reasonable expectations for that magical job which will elevate you from the middle class to the ranks of the wealthy, you should vote as if all the people stuck behind you don’t matter, as if they should have the minimum wage slashed and their workplace safety gutted and their pensions raided and their Social Security privatized and so on, because your ambition should be getting to the point where you no longer have to look on them as people.
“Vote as if you’re going to get the job you want, not as if you will stay stuck in the job you have.”
The argument that the Joads should vote like the Gatsbys because they can expect to someday be the Gatsbys. Which has resulted in a couple more Gatsbys, a lot more Joads, and the steady disappearance of the Cleavers.
Great aphorism. But it’s a lie.
Comment By: David Vineyard
November 5th, 2015 at 9:21 am
The myth that hard work will make you rich has been put to the lie by every coal miner who ever lived. The bigger myth that somehow people in service industry jobs don’t deserve medical care or a living wage and should have no social net when disaster strikes is the Republican Party Platform.
Comment By: Steve Parady
November 5th, 2015 at 1:18 pm
What do you get when you keep your nose to the grindstone? A very sore nose.
Comment By: Jim Thompson
November 5th, 2015 at 1:18 pm
Work your fingers to the bone and what do you get?
.
.
.
Boney fingers.
Comment By: Janice Gelb
November 5th, 2015 at 5:17 pm
“Most people would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor” — 1776 musical, Sherman Edwards