“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.” — Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
In the wealthiest nation ever to exist, in the year 2025—when nearly all human knowledge sits at our fingertips—it is nothing short of obscene that we not only tolerate the myth of scarcity and the cruelty of austerity, but have now faced the longest government shutdown in our history, a manufactured crisis forcing hungry children to compete with the medically frail for basic compassion and moral outrage. We once dreamed of sending men to the moon and creating zero carbon emissions by 2030. We once imagined a “chicken in every pot” and an end to communicable diseases and world hunger. Somehow, now we are left with bird flu and a dystopian future with AI, while Great Gatsby-themed parties inoculate the elites of DC from pain and suffering. “Let them eat cake” could be heard loudly in the halls of power. What happened?
In John Steinbeck’s famous The Grapes of Wrath, I believe he sums up our profit-driven world succinctly:
”There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
A crime that goes beyond denunciation…a sorrow that weeping cannot symbolize. I believe within each of us is a yearning for opportunity and a yearning for self-determination that longs for community rather than rugged individualism. This communal sufficiency is found in neighborhoods where tools are borrowed, meals are shared, and children are mutually cared for even when they aren’t our own. This is a version of America that many rural and small-town folks recall from a bygone era, or perhaps nostalgia has merged fact with fiction from a childhood television series. It is more dangled like a carrot before too many people these days. An idea that says scapegoating another group will secure this yearned-for world. However, the same people dangling the carrot and deporting our neighbors are also the same people profiting from the destruction of resources and exploitation of our labor. Calling their extraction economy “austerity measures”, they would rather see food rot than risk a loss of profit or lose political power.
When Charles Dickens penned the words, “This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want.”, he was speaking to a world too comfortable in their wealth and too reluctant in their charity. He was speaking to a world in the throes of the Industrial Revolution. And much like our own time and our own emergence into an AI era, our industry titans have secured for themselves the wealth of nations while, for efficiency’s sake, they force cuts to so much of our social safety net programs that our “net” can no longer hold anything…or anyone.
I was living in Los Angeles when the dot-com bubble burst in 2002, only to be shortly followed by the housing crash of 2008. Wall Street speculators trading on hopes and dreams made sure to take their share while many lost their one and only financial asset. Time and again, we see the same cycle: corporate interests are protected with abundant tax loopholes and favorable business environments, while regulatory oversight is given a blind eye, and people are squeezed out of opportunities to thrive. For some, settling for scraps is so normalized that it has become a badge of honor. We seem to now have a race to austerity. Recipes for 3 ingredient-casseroles and spam entrees are hitting the airwaves. You know it’s getting bad when Hamburger Helper sales spike and the box now advertises, “Great with Hotdogs!” It is one thing to remember one's ancestors’ stories of surviving the Great Depression. It is quite another to brag about surviving one now. It means we have learned nothing. Ignorance and Want.
Folks, something is profoundly wrong with our society when Google and Amazon, some of the wealthiest corporations in the history of the world, are demanding multi-billion-dollar tax abatements over 35-50 years in our state while our local governments are scrambling to stay solvent amid rising costs and severely cut budgets. Taxpayers are burdened to carry the load, with our most vulnerable populations placed further at risk because they are largely on fixed incomes. Thousands were denied SNAP benefits at the beginning of the month and thousands more will be dropped from health insurance coverage in January. That our government shut down for over 40 days in a battle between food and healthcare is a moral indictment.
The cost of scarcity is high. Those experiencing poverty spend a greater percentage of their income just trying to survive. Food costs, housing and utilities, childcare, healthcare - these costs have increased exponentially. Yet, continually from the Indiana Statehouse, we are told there is not enough money available to provide childcare vouchers, SNAP benefits, Medicaid, or housing vouchers. Perhaps if the goal were to provide childcare or food or safe housing or healthcare, we would see a greater imagination towards abundance and less a willful ignorance to the suffering and want caused by these not insignificant budget cuts and lavish corporate handouts. Abundance for them…austerity for us. That’s not fair.
This quote from Charles Eisenstein gets right to the point about scarcity:
“From our immersion in scarcity arise the habits of scarcity. From the scarcity of time arises the habit of hurrying. From the scarcity of money comes the habit of greed. From the scarcity of attention comes the habit of showing off. From the scarcity of meaningful labor comes the habit of laziness. From the scarcity of unconditional acceptance comes the habit of manipulation.”― Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
We must do better at resisting a scarcity mentality. Let’s imagine differently, together!
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