I used to hate opening night of my classes in Organizational Management, when incoming students submitted their first papers, essays on the book, Who Moved My Cheese?*. I found the book childish, well below anything I would consider worthy of a masters level course. Yet, class after class proved the need for it. Sadly,many students entered class a level or two below it.
Every day for the last two decades I have encountered people who are living the elements in the book. Even Paul, a student whose life was good and his life forecast rosy. Paul's circumstances did not immediately model any of the scenarios in the book at first. He had a great job with a long career path before him, one with perks that included education benefits, healthcare, a 401k and a pension. Life was good -- until it wasn’t.
Paul accepted his lay-off in stride. After all, given the company’s plight at the time, the severance package was generous if not extravagant. Unemployment was available if no new job was forthcoming, and he could always enroll in training courses if he chose to. A side benefit of training courses was that they continued his unemployment benefits for a few months. Sadly, he needed all that, and more.
A year later, he found himself living within the books pages, experiencing the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Depression, the fourth stage, intersperses the elements at random. Fear has fast become a friend, visiting unannounced at any moment.
For many, living Paul’s life would be an oasis, a welcome relief. To sleep in one’s own house, in one’s own bed is a vision they have long ago ceded, along with hope. But, for Paul himself, there is the constant, unrelenting and increasingly real fear that soon what little he has left will belong to someone else. It is an unsettling feeling.
In Tennessee, a few million working poor live with similar fears. They’re making the rent while foregoing meals. Medical care is out of reach. Even free clinics carry costs. The diagnosis is free, the meds are not.
Medical care for the working poor is coming soon, they hope, with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Guidelines for the program allow people to pay based on earnings. Resistance to the program is intense among the right wing Republican politicians who are so against it that they willingly forwent billions of free dollars from the federal government rather than accept it. They believe Ayn Rand’s fiction.
This, it seems, is what Tennessee Republicans see as acceptable health care for their lesser constituents. These are not the homeless. They are the working poor. Some work multiple jobs yet still can’t afford insurance. Others have insurance with deductibles so large that it’s like having no insurance at all. Were it not for organizations like Remote Area Medical, thousands of Tennesseans would never receive needed medical, dental, and vision care. Yet Congressman Chuck Fleischmann and his fellow Republicans**, the very men and women who voted time after time to repeal or replace the ACA, enjoy the benefits of first-rate health care -- at government expense.
Looking Ahead
In just under sixty hours the New Year will unfold. Times Square, New York, will fill with over a million revelers. Smaller numbers will raise their glasses in Market Square, Knoxville, and in Chattanooga, Memphis and Nashville. Hope will spring eternal -- for a while.
For 2014, my hope is that we can enliven the fortunes of the state by:
- Acting en masse to raise the minimum wage in large cities and counties, to provide for all Tennesseans and, in the process, put more money into the economy. Remember,
Poor people spend 100% of everything they earn
Working people spend 98%
Rich people spend 30%
- Raising the minimum wage helps families and their children, and improves life outcomes for all by stimulating local business activities.
- Replacing Fleischmann and friends with true public servants
- Creating new companies that employ people who are currently out of work and young college graduates whose majors are least in demand
- Developing small, sustainable communities within the borders of Tennessee's major cities
These ideas are not pie-in-the-sky but they do call for active participation and cooperation by a number of individuals and investors committed to bringing them to fruition. They are ideas that have precedence in any number of areas across the nation where they have taken root. For more on this, and to get involved, e-mail me at jmalgeri@gmail.com.
*Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson, Kenneth Blanchard http://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Amazing/dp/0399144463
** Chuck Fleischmann and the rest of Congress earn $174,000/year for just over 100 days.
*** Ayn Rand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand
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