Bust a Cap

I am scared of capitalism. I read an article and then I watched Capitalism: A Love Story and now I am freaked out, gentle reader. Well, I've always been freaked out but I didn't really know the name for what I was afraid of. Capitalism.

I know that a lot of people have a problem with Michael Moore's dubious sources so I watched with a prudent eye but the bare bones are still there, aren't they? I don't want to believe that Citigroup sent a memo to its wealthiest clients explaining to (and congratulating) them on America now being a "plutonomy" (an economic culture in which the wealthiest have control).

In the memo, however, there is one concern for the fat cats to consider. While they are part of the 1% of American people who control the wealth, there is that 99% of the population that still gets one vote per person. So! If you've ever lived paycheck to paycheck, if you didn't get a brand new luxury car for your 16th birthday, if you don't live in a house paid for with cash, if you work for a company not owned by your father or his father's father, FUCKING VOTE. We can't let our great country crumble around us while the wealthy elite (think Paris Hilton, Charlie Sheen, Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey) eat their pie in the sky. Vote.

When I was in my junior year of high school, working two jobs (supervisor at a burger joint and teaching piano lessons to kids), while the rest of my classmates went to their guidance counselors to discuss college application, a terrible and brutal anger grew inside me. There was no college fund for me. There was no promise of a bright future. There was no choice. There was only the cold, hard knowledge that I would be working for the rest of my life, no exceptions. Working for pennies if I wasn't willing to pay some bank tens (or hundreds, depending) of thousands of dollars in interest on a school loan repayment. Interest! A college loan quickly becomes twice what you originally owed when you add on the interest. If you're lucky.

I looked at this situation and the dream I've always had, since I was a little girl, to raise a family, and knew there was an imbalance somewhere and I probably wouldn't be able to reach it. I didn't want to be rich or famous. I didn't want a fancy car or a big house on a hillside somewhere. I wanted to have children. That's all.

This realization came 13 years ago and here I am, still skating the poverty line, while my eggs creep closer and closer to being unusable. Fucking hell, you guys. Fucking hell. I'm not any closer to a stable financial life than I was when I was 16. Even more unstable, probably, with my very own sizable share of America's personal consumer debt. You can take the kid out of the trailer park but you can never take the trailer park out of the kid.

I did go to college, by the way, I listened to the people who told me not to worry about the debt. I didn't end up earning my bachelor of fine arts (at $23k a year, the complete $90k of college loans was probably best to avoid in the end, anyway). I owe $17k now. I pay it off $100 a month.

Three-quarters of that monthly payment, each month, goes to interest only. I'll be paying the bank probably $35k before it's all said and done. $100 a month for the rest of my life. If I ever get laid off or otherwise lose my income, that $35k goes up and up and up with late fees, and various other dings. Does it seem to you too that there is an effort and desire taking place here for me to never pay back this loan? As long as I am in repayment, I am providing a monthly income to a huge bank who is also receiving this monthly income from thousands of others. I am a small but necessary cog in their money machine. God bless us, everyone.

In Michael Moore's documentary, he featured a couple of businesses that are run completely democratically. This doesn't mean each employee gets a share of the stocks or any ghosty funny-business like that, it means each person within those companies (owners included) receives exactly the same percentage of the entire profit. A bread-making company called Alvarado Street Bakery (in Petaluma, a small California town that I lived in for a short while, incidentally) pays its line workers and its CEO $60k a year, respectively. Everyone votes on any changes the company will make, and everyone has the same feeling of worth within the company.

Yesterday I got my 401k statement in the mail. It showed zero contributions year-to-date. Even though I check every pay-stub when I receive it, I checked again. Yup. $25 of my money comes out of every single paycheck for this 401k fund. Zero contributions year-to-date. Zero contributions year-to-date! Zero contributions year-to-date?! My employer is keeping all those deductions?! No interest is accruing because the money is simply not there?! Bad timing for a small business to screw over this particular employee. This is not the last you'll hear of this, my dear readers, I'm aiming to raise a fucking ruckus.

Or move to Japan.