What is with this country?

“Young man, you need to work hard in school, graduate from a good college, work hard and you’ll succeed in life!” That’s what my guidance counselor used to tell me. Poor old thing probably never worked a day in the corporate world… and I’m still not sure why she should be allowed to give advice to teens.

Let’s see, I graduated in the top third of my class with a strong B grade point average. Got into THE state school with a nationally ranked business school and graduated a few years later. I got a job at a large corporation with several thousand employees. I work hard every day and continue to do so. I started as a senior bookkeeper and now, after 5 years of being a dependable hardworking employee I am… a senior bookkeeper.

Most of my friends went to college too, they either work here doing the same things or in jobs quite similar. I don’t have one friend who’s “made it.” I do know, thru acquaintances two people who are doing quite well for themselves, one lucked into a position because his father works at the company he now works for. The other took over his parents business.

I have friends who have started companies, worked 18+ hours a day neglecting their wives and children, yet they have only suffered for their education and hard work. Businesses lost, bankruptcy considered. And no, the guidance counselor didn’t offer to help to explain to their kids why Santa didn’t bring them much last year.

Now let’s look at business success another way.

What if I were to tell you there was a guy, or a group of people who were all paid very well and given lavish expense accounts. This group made risky bets, poor decisions is a more accurate term, they obviously didn’t work at researching the bets, and those bets didn’t hit. It’s perfect right? Exactly how the system is supposed to work. If you don’t work hard you’re not going to make it. So how are these guys doing now?

They’re being fired. YES! The system works! … What’s that? They’re also being given $20 million golden parachutes. Wait, they’re getting paid more than I’ll make in my lifetime for leaving?!?!?!?

This is what happens when our government, I feel that I need to say that again, OUR GOVERNMENT, comes to their aid, bails them out, doesn’t cap executive pay, and continues to reward the rich for their greedy and reckless behavior.

It’s not how hard you work that makes you succeed in capitalism, it’s how greedy you are and how ruthless you can be in going about satiating that greed.

That’s my fundamental problem. I’m not ruthless, unless you really, really piss me off of course. But most of the time I’m a laid back kind of guy. I’m not overly greedy, and my personal wealth and belongings can certainly back up that position. There is one clause concerning my greed. When it comes to sports I want my teams to dominate. Eighty to nothing at the half is just not enough. Don’t even get me started on video games. I will be throwing a controller if I can’t drop 50 on my computer driven college football foe. Or at least I would be throwing a controller if I could afford any of the new game systems.

This brings forth the base flaw of our society. We teach our kids to be good people, to share, to live and let live, to treat others as you’d want them to treat you. We have fairy tales and religions (but I repeat myself) that mirror these qualities of virtue. Yet in the real world the people that live their lives with virtue are often the workhorses that the greedy, reckless, bad people make fortunes off of.

I am punished because I’m not mean enough, because I don’t sit and strategize as to how to take others money away from them so that I might have it. Good people are punished every day simply because they’re good. Oh sure, people say nice things about them when they die in their 60’s due to high stress, bad diet, and lack of appropriate healthcare. But they die nonetheless, and more than likely they spent their last days on earth working too much and worrying about money, about retirement, about what they’d like to leave behind for their children.

This is a system in which evil is rewarded in its abuses of the good. The bailout is a perfect example, they’re not buying up mortgages that are in default, you know the thing that might actually help to shore up the real economic worries. They’re buying up derivatives which aren’t even real, it’s just a bet that Wall Street plays endlessly, nothing more. And the executives who lived high on the hog while this was all bringing money in will be pushed out the window to watch their golden parachutes billow open and land softly in some other place of wealth and extravagance while we still toil away at dead end jobs only to have our pensions and SS benefits be gone by the time we need them.

Why can’t we have a turn? Why can’t the $700 billion be given to the people? Why can’t they pay off mortgages and buy new homes for us? Would that not help the economy by relieving the true backbone of this society of their debt laden lives? Debts many people took on at the urge of the President no less.

When do those of us who live within our means but can’t get ahead because of this awful economic system get bailed out? Did we not bet and drink enough? Do I need to go throw kittens at passing cars? Would that be reckless enough?

I’m not asking for a handout, I’m asking for fairness. The wealth disparity in this country is atrocious and only getting worse. But, in the end I just want to know when our government is actually going to be for the people, by the people, and of the people. I guess it’ll be as soon as we take the responsibility of being the people instead of the apathetic, undereducated couch potatoes that we’ve become.