The Difference between the Haves and the Have Mores

by Chris McGinty of AccordingToWhim.com

Life is not fair, no matter how fair we try to make it. Life does have a strong and believable illusion of being fair though, and this is where we fail as humans to understand what we’re truly up against. Particularly in the United States, we have this sense of fairness that states that everyone should have the opportunity to do well, and by the way, everyone who doesn’t do well with that opportunity should also do well. And while we’re on the subject, there are those who believe that if some people do more well than others then those people should be penalized for the sake of those who did less well. Grammar correct hates that last sentence.

Modern comforts are insane, and they’ve been insane even as long as I’ve been alive. I’m not even talking about the internet, or smart phones. I’m talking about clean water and the ability to travel almost anywhere on Earth in less than 24 hours. If you go back even 100 years in our history, travel wasn’t all that easy, and clean water was not as clean or available. When you start getting into the ability to talk to people in video chat long distance, and to binge watch almost any TV show whenever you want you should realize that life is pretty fucking easy now.

This is why I’m a little confused by the way that we argue about societal rights on the internet. We have freedom of speech and a platform for everyone to possibly read what we have to say, and we use it to talk about how oppressed we are. I mean it. If you are on the internet for any amount of time you start to realize that everybody believes they’re oppressed.

The poor are oppressed because they have to buy the $200 iPhone rather than the $700 iPhone, which they don’t really have to because there are $30 a month payment programs since the companies don’t so much make the money on the hardware as the service agreements.

The rich are oppressed because they pay more taxes than the poor do, even though I would rather pay 50% of $100,000 than 15% of $24,000 any day, because I understand basic math and fixed expenses.

White people are oppressed because everyone believes that they have some undefined privilege, and non-whites are oppressed because… white people.

Men are oppressed because everyone believes that they have some undefined privilege, and women are oppressed because… vaginas. And if you’re not one of those two genders then you’re oppressed because science only recognizes two genders.

We hear about the “haves and the have nots” often from the news media, but what they really should be saying is the “haves and the have mores,” because that’s more accurate. I believe that here in the US, we’re one of the least oppressed cultures in the world. We have so much going for us. You can work a 40 hour a week minimum wage job and have the basic needs (food, shelter, clothing) covered.

Somehow that doesn’t feel very oppressed, but the media and the politicians don’t want us to think that way. The best way to keep a people oppressed is to tell them how oppressed they are. The best way to keep someone oppressed is to tell them

that they need someone else to come to their rescue, because this person or group of people over here has it out for them. No one will ever love you as much as I do.

This is what the media and the politicians do. Hey poor, 1% of the population controls 90% of the wealth and they aren’t giving it up. You need me to force them to give you more. Hey rich, the poor hate you even though you create jobs and give millions to charity every year. You need me to protect you from those with a selfish spirit.

Have you ever wondered why it is that non-Hispanic white people make up more than 60% of the population of the United States, enough to win any given election, but the politicians don’t focus their messages on white people? Seems counterproductive. It’s because most white people fit into the category of poor, as we have defined it. You’re not part of the 1%, you’re being screwed over.

We have so much going for us. We have great lives. Even without health insurance you can walk into an emergency room and be cared for. We’re not denied education, which is why the media and the politicians divide us on the subject of “higher” education. Think about that for a moment.

We’re being divided as a culture over the idea that somebody out there gets to take more vacations than we do. We’re being divided as a culture over the idea that someone gets to drive a nicer looking car than we do. We’re being divided as a culture over the idea that no matter what the politicians do, there will always be shit jobs that have to be worked. Even if everyone had a four-year college degree, we would still need people to ask if you’d like a new mocha latte yogurt mega shake with your order.

Life is not fair. It’s not fair to the starving child born in the rural parts of Africa when there are people who were lucky enough to be born to a poor family in the USA where malaria isn’t a common threat. That’s the saddest part to me about the nonsense that we argue about on social media. We were lucky enough to be born into a society, or to end up in a society, where social media access is probably more common than owning a car. Yet we argue and fight over whether or not it’s fair that some people have to drive a car that doesn’t have an extended warranty.

We’ve had it so good for so long that I think we’ve forgotten how to be grateful for our basic needs being met. Let me tell you a story. I’m very opposed to giving money to beggars. In spite of this, I have sometimes. I’ll get into a weird, weak moment and actually help someone a little. It’s not that I’m selfish. It’s that if I gave money to people every time that I saw a beggar or someone on the side of the road with a sign, I would not be able to pay my bills. They are everywhere; especially, in some of my older delivery positions where I was delivering on bad sides of town. One example of this is that a long time ago, I was approached by a woman at a stoplight while I was delivering. I generally would have just ignored her, but for some odd reason I wasn’t feeling very cynical that day. I handed her $5. I probably had to borrow that $5 from my dad later, but I gave her $5. On my way back from the delivery, I saw her walking out of a convenience store lighting a cigarette. This is why I’m way less likely to give beggars money these days. I would later have to wash dishes for a half an hour in order to get that $5 back, and she wasted it on cigarettes.

This is what I mean by the haves and the have mores. She clearly wasn’t starving. She clearly hadn’t even gone without cigarettes long enough to lose the nicotine addiction. That $5 may have been better spent helping to vaccinate an African child against malaria, but I unwittingly bought someone cigarettes.

We’re like the bratty child who ruins their own birthday party because they didn’t get the exact video game they wanted; and more important, we’re the grasshopper who gets mad at the ant for not sharing the food. Except that in this particular fable, the grasshopper has plenty of food, Netflix, enough money to buy weed every weekend, and a phone for keeping up on Facebook. The grasshopper is just mad at the ant because the ant can hire a private chef, but the grasshopper doesn’t have enough money to order Uber Eats every night, so he sometimes has to eat mac’n’cheese.

Right now, in the US, we have a comparatively low tax rate, and there are no laws that prohibit us from accumulating wealth. We have two choices how to proceed.

The first is to gradually raise taxes until we’re at 70% and let the government run everything. The problem with this is that we’re already against the idea of 1% of the population controlling 90% of the wealth. Why would we want to give away even more of what we make? The government is in charge of a lot of the wealth right now. They want to be in charge of more. They tell you that they wish to create programs to make life fair to everyone, but in all seriousness, how can they? There are two ways that things can be made “equal.” One is to give more to everyone. The other is to take more from everyone. If we start giving 70% of our income to the government, which option do you honestly think they’ll implement?

The second way to proceed is to use our incomes wisely, live a lifestyle that is consistent with our earnings, and start most months in a better financial position than we were the previous month. This way gives us more in the long run. Our purchases mean more, because we do fewer impulse buys. As we accumulate an emergency fund, life’s little setbacks aren’t as devastating. As we accumulate wealth, we’re more empowered as consumers and decision makers.

If 100 million US workers saved $10 next month that they would not have normally saved, there would be a wealth shift of $1 billion. It would be a very small shift in the grand scheme, but it sure does seem like a lot. If 100 million US workers that currently do not have any savings were to keep a simple emergency fund of $1,000, it would be a shift of $100 billion in wealth. And I know this from personal experience, an emergency fund of $1,000 isn’t really all that great of an emergency fund. It’s just better than most US workers actually have. It’s sad that if you could get $1,000 saved, you would be doing better than so many people.

Take back your own power. Stop living in a place of envy and start living with a perspective of self-improvement. In the United States, it is very, very unlikely that you will ever be a “have not.” You can either sit around lamenting that you’re only a “have,” or you can work a little harder, save a little more, and become a “have a little more” continuously throughout your life.

Note: I wrote a follow up, somewhat counterpoint, to my own post to give my other point of view.

Chris McGinty is a blogger who delivers pizza for a living. In addition to paying income tax, he pays somewhere around 40 to 50% of his income in child support, depending on how much overtime he gets, but he still manages to go to concerts and experience other small luxuries sometimes. He’s had to live with roommates for the last decade and a half, but somehow he actually feels gratitude for having lived a reasonably good life.