nothing is more important than our children.

You know the old adage about asking ten economists the same question and getting ten different answers, right? Well go ahead and ask those same ten economists whether our children will be as well off as we are. Oddly enough, every last one of them will say “no”. That’s what really bugs me. That’s wrong.

I don’t know about you, but I actually don’t mind busting my butt and working hard. Really. But “For what?” is the question. So my kids can work even harder, and have less? My time is stretched too thin as it is. I rarely get to see my wife because when I’m not working, she is. I have no retirement. I can hardly afford health-care, barely make the mortgage payments, and don’t even want to think about college tuition.

I want a better life for my kids, my family’s kids, and my friends’ kids. Yes better, not worse. I’m not doing this for you. I’m not doing this because I’m altruistic, no. I’m doing this for myself, my family, and my friends. The good news, though, is that what’s good for my kids is good for yours, and vice-versa. We’re all middle or working class. Helping your kids helps mine.

Now read carefully, and I’ll do some simple math for you. The bottom 50% (of people in the USA) have less than 1% of the wealth. What does that mean? It means that our piece of the pie is really, really, really small. Just 1/50th of 1%. Imagine a nice big cherry pie, with exactly 100 cherries in it. Now imagine 50 people sharing one cherry. Go ahead and try to cut a cherry into 50 little pieces if you like. That itty bitty little speck of red, that’s yours. Fully half of us are scraping by paycheck to paycheck, no paid time off, no health care, no benefits, low pay, multiple jobs, and generally not enjoying life. But wait! The converse (opposite) is also true. The top 1% have over 50% of the wealth. Yeah. See that one guy over there? The one laughing at us? He’s got half the pie. 50 cherries all to himself. Wow. That’s a lot of pie for one guy.

What does this mean? It means you can double your paycheck, have your health care, have your paid time off, have your benfits, and even a retirement account. All we’ve done is expand our piece of the pie to 2%. Oh heck. Go ahead. Give yourself another raise. Make it another double... 4% of the pie for the bottom 50%. That’s still not very fair. But you know, that’s enough that I could be happy. That’s all I would need. That’s all my kids, or my family’s kids, or my friends’ kids would need. I could live with that.

I want my piece of the pie. I’ve earned it. And I want to make sure my kids get some too. I want to make sure that all our kids get some. Corporate America should be brought into line with the rest of the civilized world. Decent wages, benefits, pensions, health care. Everyone else has them. We do not.

Do you know the story about cooking a frog? Toss a frog into a pot of hot water, and he’ll jump right out. But toss him in a pot of cold water, turn up the heat, and he’ll happily swim around until he’s cooked. This is what is happening to America, exactly. They’re turning up the heat, making us work harder, longer, for less, and less. Cut this. Cut that. Cut the other. A little at a time. Our wages have been being cut for years. And our health care. And our pensions. And our vacations. Our working hours are getting longer. And they’re even beginning to watch us at home now too.

It’s not just your imagination... it’s gone. The American dream to happily raise a family, teaching, watching our children grow and prosper... How can we do that with fewer jobs, smaller paychecks, no health care, no retirement, higher taxes, senseless wars, and terrorists all eating away at our sanity? It’s already forecast that our children, for the first time ever in all of our history, will be worse off than we are. They will work much harder and have much less. That’s unacceptable. I want the American dream back, for me, and my kids, and everyone else’s kids too.

Our kids: I am not raising mine to be slave labor.