I love Matt Taibbi’s articles. He stands up for the workers in this country with so much passion. Instead of railing against workers as whiners and low-lifes, he values the contributions they bring to the plate, and seems to know that the working class is an essential part of the whole of America.
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p>He admits he’s a man without financial worries, yet for the sake of enlightenment or curiousity or a broader world view or whatever, he has dropped himself into the circles of a worker’s life, as he states in this example in the article you link to:
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I was on a demolition crew when I was much younger, the kind of job where you have to wear a dust mask all day long, carry buckets full of concrete, and then spend all night picking fiberglass shards out of your forearms from ripping insulation out of the wall.
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p>There is a lot to be said for walking in other peoples shoes. It changes you.
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p>He responds strongly to David Brooks’ assertion that the wealthy got that way by being “more industrious” and that “for the first time in history, rich people work longer hours than middle class or poor people,”
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p>Taibbi:
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I would give just about anything to sit David Brooks down in front of some single mother somewhere who’s pulling two shitty minimum-wage jobs just to be able to afford a pair of $19 Mossimo sneakers at Target for her kid, and have him tell her, with a straight face, that her main problem is that she doesn’t work as hard as Jamie Dimon.
Only a person who has never actually held a real job could say something like this. There is, of course, a huge difference between working 80 hours a week in a profession that you love and which promises you vast financial rewards, and working 80 hours a week digging ditches for a septic-tank company, or listening to impatient assholes scream at you at some airport ticket counter all day long, or even teaching disinterested, uncontrollable kids in some crappy school district with metal detectors on every door.
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p>It seems to me that the great argument against validating the complaints of the working middle class is that we all had opportunities to do better, be richer, and succeed. We should just shut up and suck it up because it’s our fault that we didn’t do better. But the truth is that over the course of decades, even highly educated individuals are earning less than $20. /hr. These people prefer to be called professionals, and they are professionals, but if they work Mon-Fri for someone who pays them less than what they are worth, they are in the same boat as the more traditionally described working class. The other truth is that we need the laborers, assistants, waitresses, bus drivers, store clerks, etc. They are an important part of the functioning of everyday life. They should be valued, not ignored. So I thank Matt Taibbi for valuing and defending America’s working class. It’s appreciated more than he can imagine.
I love Matt Taibbi’s articles. He stands up for the workers in this country with so much passion. Instead of railing against workers as whiners and low-lifes, he values the contributions they bring to the plate, and seems to know that the working class is an essential part of the whole of America.
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p>He admits he’s a man without financial worries, yet for the sake of enlightenment or curiousity or a broader world view or whatever, he has dropped himself into the circles of a worker’s life, as he states in this example in the article you link to:
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p>
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p>There is a lot to be said for walking in other peoples shoes. It changes you.
<
p>He responds strongly to David Brooks’ assertion that the wealthy got that way by being “more industrious” and that “for the first time in history, rich people work longer hours than middle class or poor people,”
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p>Taibbi:
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p>It seems to me that the great argument against validating the complaints of the working middle class is that we all had opportunities to do better, be richer, and succeed. We should just shut up and suck it up because it’s our fault that we didn’t do better. But the truth is that over the course of decades, even highly educated individuals are earning less than $20. /hr. These people prefer to be called professionals, and they are professionals, but if they work Mon-Fri for someone who pays them less than what they are worth, they are in the same boat as the more traditionally described working class. The other truth is that we need the laborers, assistants, waitresses, bus drivers, store clerks, etc. They are an important part of the functioning of everyday life. They should be valued, not ignored. So I thank Matt Taibbi for valuing and defending America’s working class. It’s appreciated more than he can imagine.