Mobility and Choice: Things to be Grateful For

David Cates, the father of a friend of mine, has a book about to be published entitled X Out of Wonderland. A farce, the book follows a character named X as he looks deeper and deeper into the dark side of the Global Free Market.

I mention the book not merely because it is an excellent read or because it does a wonderful job of poking fun at the free market (including the wonderful character, Dr. Fingerdoo, who I interpreted to be a Tom Friedman-ripoff), but because it increasingly seems like farce is simply unnecessary as a way of understanding what is going wrong with global markets.

Poverty is rising and median wages are falling even as our economy (measured by GDP) grows. The average CEO now makes 430 times what the average worker makes. 15 years ago, that ratio was 100-to-1. Gasoline prices are spiking and natural gas prices are expected to increase with a 27 percent rate hike in Montana just approved.

In other words, America's working families are making less and less money while their overhead costs are getting bigger and bigger. In October, they'll be hit again by an increase in minimum payments on their credit card bills.

Meanwhile, the Administration is doing virtually nothing to help deal with the rising costs of health care.

In X Out of Wonderland, Cates portrays a world in which workers are to be grateful for the twin values of "Mobility and Choice" -- a world where we go places we don't want to be so that we can "choose" to take jobs we don't want. The book is hilarious, in the makes-you-want-to-cry sort of way.

So, these days in America we can be grateful, that there are so many jobs to choose from even if we don't want them and that, since they're so awful, we're free to leave them whenever we want.

Mobility and choice. It's something, I guess.

--Matt Singer

COMMENTS: Go to Sirota's Working Assets site to comment on this entry