Not all in the same boat--and our boats are sinking

Excerpted from excellent piece here (read the whole thing--first few sections focus on individual stories)

A recent article by Evan MacDonald in the June 2011 issue of Consumer Report states that:

"In 23 of the past 24 months, lower income Americans have lost more jobs than they've gained. Meanwhile, more affluent Americans seem to be gaining more jobs than they're losing."

To hear millionaire Congressmen and TV pundits, poverty only exists in Third World countries while America is rapidly becoming one itself. In the US, poor people are euphemistically referred to as "the struggling middle class" while Third World poverty that is now enveloping Detroit and Camden threatens to consume Erie, Pennsylvania.

It is one thing to be poor, but quite another to have the deck stacked further against you by the compounding ills of poverty through legal and social structures that are, simply put, unfair.

"Equal Justice Under the Law" is inscribed above the doorway to the US Supreme Court. But when the laws are unjust, when moneyed interests shape jurisprudence and public policies and the poor are excluded and forced to bear the all the costs of a "free market"; the hope implied by that inscription rings hollow for many.

When money equals speech, and speech equals influence, and influence drives law and public policy, there is no "equal justice under the law" and there is no fairness in such an unethical system. But there is little talk of fairnness in our society today.

We hear about how government anti-poverty initiatives are "socialism", that they were a "failure" and that giving money to the poor won't really help those who are trapped in poverty; that the power and majesty of the "free market" under limited government is the only answer.

But the "free market" is not really free. The economic law of supply and demand does not operate in a vacuum when this "free market" is cornered and manipulated and controlled by the rich, and stacked with rules that perpetually favor those with wealth, power, and influence at the expense of those who have not.

We believe that justice is fundamental to a healthy society, but very few social predators from the hallowed halls of Wall Street went to prison as a result of the recent economic crisis caused by their economic crimes and the flamboyant escapades of corporate America's fig-newton follies. "Personal responsibility" seems to only apply to the have-nots.

"The poor you will always have with you" — but lack of fairness and lack of social and economic justice is a choice.