I recently got back from a vacation in Mexico. Cancun to be exact. It had always been a dream of mine to see the Mayan ruins, and on my birthday this year, that dream was finially fulfilled. We had a fantastic time at Chichen Itza. The ruins are astounding. The mathmatical aspects of how they built them are still a mystery to this day.
I recently got back from a vacation in Mexico. Cancun to be exact. It had always been a dream of mine to see the Mayan ruins, and on my birthday this year, that dream was finially fulfilled. We had a fantastic time at Chichen Itza. The ruins are astounding. The mathmatical aspects of how they built them are still a mystery to this day.
On the way to and from the ruins, we went through impoverished village after impoverished village. I always knew that Mexico was a very poor country in parts, but was still surprised at the level of poverty I saw.
In our group, we had three families. My family is pretty middle class. My wife's best friend and her son were with us. She is a dental assistant and single mom. She manages her money very well and has a great boss. Again, she is also solidly middle class.
The third family with us are friends from club sports in the area we live in. They are great people, but are far above our socio-economic level. The husband is a doctor with a high paying specialty. On the way back from Chichen Itza, we saw a man on a motorcycle talking to a lady on the side of the road. Our driver explained that the man on the motorcyle was collecting a payment, because many of the villagers buy their durable goods on installments.
The part that shocked me was that my friend who is a doctor said "well, at least capitalism is doing well somewhere outside the United States." The irony, which was lost on him, is that he's very wealthy and is doing extremely well in our "socialist" country. He has 10,000 square foot house that is to extravagant to even describe. It just blew me away.
The second and related issue I wanted to address is rise of social darwinism again. One of my friends on facebook, a fitness trainer I have never met, posted an article about taking control of your life and stop making excuses. That is all well and good, who doesn't agree with that?
His post was about a book called Scrath Beginings, and how it was a rebuttal of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed. The writer of Scrath took 25.00 and took up residence at a homeless shelter, and worked his way up and out of there in a year.
While I agree with many of his points, I responded that it was an apples and orange comparison because the writer of Scratch Beginings had a college education and an easy way out if things went south. Most of the working poor do not have a college education and too me, that is a huge disadvantage. Education is an enormous resource and certainly helped the author of Scratch, even if he never revealed it.
Anyway, his response to me was that his grandpa was born in a cabin and became a millionaire. I bristle at people essentially saying that the poor and unemployed are just not trying hard enough. I know that is true of some, but is that a fair generalization?