The Man

I want to know...what is America's obsessive, compulsive infatuation with what CEOs make? What celebrities are worth?

I'm pretty sure that at least one monthly lead article per year in Forbes, Money Magazine, SmartMoney Magazine, Kiplinger's...all of them, have an article on what the top dogs are making. My newspaper ranks the top 500 in the US, the top 100 in the world, and the top 50 in the Sacramento region.

Why, exactly, should I care?

Why do I need to spend time understanding the bonus and stock option structure for the CFO of Pfizer? How, exactly, would that make a $50 dollar an hour electrical engineer better able to manage his own finances?

I've often wondered, as well, why ordinary folks, you and I, why we subscribe to Car and Driver, and read about the handling characteristics of a $239,000 Gallardo 850 twin turbo. What the fuck is that all about, huh? You don't even know a guy who knows a guy who has one.

I'll tell you what it's about. It's about our American ethos of fame without effort, luxury without sacrifice, wealth without risk. We drool at the Man's salary and tell ourselves that if we had that much money we wouldn't be working any longer, while claiming that the Man is holding us down. We loudly bawl when we can't get past the first American Idol audition. We put blinkers on and intentionally ignore the true percentages of fraudulent workers compensation claims. All these things, all of them, are part and parcel of why we live in such degrading, unfulfilling environments. We've eliminated the role of what the dignity of work brings to us, what it brings to our society. We drive out our garage doors, past the landscape guys edging our lawns, and don't even bother to acknowledge their presence. Never a kind wave or nod to the lineman or janitor; we're too busy twittering.

Now that there are a few million, a few million and rising, Americans out of work, perhaps we might finally develop some respect for the dignity of employment, that perhaps Homo Consumerensis is not what we should be striving to be, that to struggle and save are worthwhile virtues, that we can be measured by more than our paychecks & our possessions, and that there's no need to escape our own realities and live vicariously through CFOs, NASCAR drivers, and American Idols.