How we got here is easy to figure
Matt Pearl
My musical tastes have always included the singer/songwriter greats from the 60s and 70s, and the song title from one such artist’s debut solo album sparked my thinking the other day.
Paul Simon recorded a song — an obscure one of any one but album-listening fans — called “One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor.”
Before you listen to a word of it, if you ever do, the title speaks volumes, and remains a pretty indicative statement of the way we live well over 40 years after Simon penned the deep LP cut.
The thought that the pinnacle of life for one man, his ceiling, is simultaneously the bottom step for his neighbor, his floor, simply states an inevitable truth of our existence: some have much, and some have little.
And the ceiling representing an elemental barrier for one man serves as a lowly walking space for the man above him on the social ladder.
I always have to laugh or shake my head when I see one of our small communities trying to maintain a serious social hierarchy. A wealthy city tycoon could sweep in and buy out any of us, yet we fixate upon the difference between the socially elite and the lowly.
It’s our fault — but not entirely — that such social divides occur. Mankind just drifts into them, as if gravity possesses greater power over some than it has over others. I can’t explain it. Be it money, race, family connections, or some other factor, we always s find a way to create our dividing lines.
The strangest part? For most of us, whichever side of the divide upon which others place us, we tend to accept it and stay there.
In education, we call it the self-fulfilling prophecy. If a student is led to believe for long enough that he cannot succeed, he or she generally won’t succeed.
The opposite is true as well, with many of the students who hold the confidence of others taking roles of success and leadership.
The political philosophes being designed today (or recycled from Sir Thomas Moore’s Utopia or Marx and Engels’ writings from over 100 years ago) are intended to close the income gap — essentially bringing the divided economic classes together again.
It’s a noble thought, but the application of it is akin to Congress outlawing gravity or inertia.
It’s not an issue of brains — there are plenty of smart folks in every class of the social divides we face. It’s a complicated brew of upbringing, natural disposition, strength, weakness, and circumstance. Accounting for every factor that shapes a person in a society would be impossible, so when I hear these master plans for solving the wage gap, I find myself responding with pessimism.
I do not approve of there being loopholes that essentially allow the middle class to subsidize ridiculous tax breaks for the super rich. But the next question I would ask Bernie Sanders would be “And how did those laws come into being?”
We know the answer.
We elect rich people to sit in Congressional chambers with other rich people to make decisions for rich people. Blame the House and Senate all you want, but you and I did this.
The day we all learn to vote on merit rather than on familiarity will be the day we see real reform in our government.
And Bernie would agree with all of that.
But his solution would be to enact immediate tax reform for the wealthy, leaving their Congressional enablers in place to continue the same corruption on new bills and decrees.
Where does it leave us? “One man’s debt ceiling is another man’s Senate floor.”
