Real Life and Hidden Videos

I haven't been sure what to make of the video in which Romney speaks his mind.  I mean it just confirms my biases.  Yesterday, I witnessed an incident which put what the candidate said in perspective and it's not a good one.  I got my car washed yesterday.  I use a car wash down the road.  Car washes in LA are serious things given our love affairs with our cars.  I mean Freddie Mercury got nothin on us.  Twenty bucks gets me what most other locales would call full on detailing.  Shell out detailing bucks and you get the 'clay bar' treatment whatever that is.  The staff is largely Mexican.  That's not very special in a city with a Spanish name though this ethnic group still holds more than its fair share of unskilled jobs like car washer.  Things have changed a lot since I was growing up, but what has not changed is the work ethic I see in this group.  These guys probably don't make much more than minimum wage I'm betting.  And this means their wages don't go very far in West LA.  I have to remember bring cash to tip them next time because they go over the car with an eye for detail.  They work very hard for their meager pay.  Harder than I've had to work since I worked as a brick layer to pay off medical bills close to 20 years ago.  I drive a VW Jetta that's only a couple of years out from being collectible.  I'm watching the car washers in awe as they take a scratched beater and make it look like it rolled off the showroom floor.  Car in front of me is a new Mercedes.  The washers there are giving that one extra attention because it is a brand new Mercedes.  The thing looked amazing after they got done with it.  The owner, one of the 1% class if anyone ever was, comes out.  He goes over the car, literally, with a magnifying glass.  He makes the washers do it over again.  Once... Twice... Three times.  He does this while verbally abusing them the whole time.  Were I a washer, I would've keyed his car in front of him and told him to kiss my hairies.  But, I'm electively poor right now, and I've generally had options in terms of work owing to a diverse grab bag of skills.  These washers?  Not so much.  Again, they work hard.  Very hard.  And, I know whatever they can make, even with tips, does not always cover the cost of living in West LA.  They probably don't pay income tax because they don't have much of it.  So, now, you tell me.  Is there any reason why they'd have cause to feel like victims?  This incident is only an egregious example of how the people with expensive cars treat these laborers.  Now, let's go wide angle here and increase the size of the category.  Let's make the income ceiling $100k.  This is pretty arbitrary because it's not a whole lot really.  Scary, no?  However, starting at $100k, life is defined by the ability to choose.  You really get to decide where you live.  Because someone is offering you that much for your skills and/or contacts, you can market yourself to the highest bidder and choose where you work and under what circumstances.  You can also begin to save at a rate that means you might not have to work for much longer at all.  All us below that are stuck to varying degrees.  The car washer guys are really stuck.  Also, all of us below $100k rely to one degree or other on public institutions.  Some rely on them for money in the form of Social Security checks, veterans pensions and so on.  Some get medical care due to being old enough to be in the right generation.  Some get medical care because they are very poor. Most of us went to public schools, some of us graduated from public colleges.  And, no one can afford gas these days.  This means we're riding mass transit more and more.  Plus, people in LA are doing it more and more just because traffic is nutbar.  The 1% also relies on public institutions in form of roads.  Yes, they drive their new Mercedes on roads paid for by tax dollars.  The horror.  Now, why might we feel victimized?  In my lifetime, I have never had a meaningful raise by staying in a job despite glowing performance reviews.  I have had to move horizontally to get pay increases.  Many in my generation and most of the fortunate in the younger ones have had similar experiences.  Corporate or public, there's always some reason why raises and promotions are not being given out in any particular year.  I've also had to continually increase my skills and education throughout my career just to keep what I have.  Between the competition the under 50 crowd in the 99% face and the fact that the cost of Things That Matter has risen dramatically faster than the official rate of inflation, we feel under pressure.  Look at the pre-bust house prices to see what I mean.  Look at post-bust rents to back it up.  Take a gander at the tuition trends at colleges and universities.  Healthcare?  Yeah, if you got insurance, think about how much it costs you every year.  That color TV may be cheap, but does that really matter?  Why do we run up credit card debt?  It's not to purchase those  cheap TVs.  Rather, we run up debt because health insurers find every excuse not pay what they're committed to pay and they paid congress to make it impossible to sue.  This has happened to me twice now and I'm not alone.  I'm carrying a lot of credit card debt right now because of the most recent episode.  They pulled this one after we paid for a nice vacation too.  We made the mistake of naively believing that after six months all the medical bills had been paid.  My life is not untypical.  Those of us under $100k do not have a lot of reserve.  We certainly do not have the money to make the bets that took the economy down when they went sour.  I have a healthy retirement balance at the moment.  Before those bets went bad, I had a spectacular retirement savings.  Between the way that risk has been shifted from the the societal group to the unprepared individual over the past generation, you bet at least 47% of us feel like victims.  Another episode in my life drives home the fact that at 47% of us feel preyed upon by the monied elite.  Some years ago, when I completed my master's degree, I was due for a promotion and substantial raise.  It was pretty much mandatory at my workplace, a major private university.  The completion of advanced degrees generally resulted in an automatic promotion, one which my boss was actually enthusiastic about.  However, the university's endowment took a hit during the crash.  So, rather than rattle their donor's cages, they froze pay for all staff and most faculty.  Except for business school faculty.  The business school graduates created the crisis and did so by following what they learned in the b-school curriculum.  The rest of us had to pay for their mistakes.  That, my friends and colleagues, is why the 47% will never vote for Mitt Romney.