As you know I like talking about the middle class and looking at the different structures that either enable that to flourish or not.
It's been an interesting journey. And it's something that I continue to focus a lot on. Just because I feel like I've been on different sides of it.
I think a lot of people are still figuring out where they stand in this whole middle class thing.
But I also know, as I mentioned last week and in other parts of my work, that one of the big things that I think is affecting the middle class is this empathy gap.
It's affecting all of us, but I think in particular, when we look around at different social groups and social networks there are different levels of striving and competitiveness, and empathy.
And I think that in this country where we are sort of told, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you too can achieve the American dream.
The American dream is something I've been writing about since I was at CNN quite some time ago during Trump's first presidential win. And, you know, the concept was already sort of on the rocks then, but I do think it's gotten...more pronounced these days, right?
And so I started thinking, well, what if I just stopped for a moment to critique and started to think about what could be.
I know it doesn't feel very like we're in a moment where we can really, do a lot.
But one thing we can do, I think, is to dream, right?
And let's think about how we can go about closing this empathy gap, right?
Changing it starts both at an individual level right individually we need to learn
Which is where I started thinking about what we have currently in place, right?
What do we have in place in this country that what's the establishing baseline,
that we all sort of bought into in the United States about what we're owed,
Outside of the American dream, like what are the sort of values that we hold close?
The first thing I could think about is the Declaration of Independence, right?
So here we go.
We've all heard this at one time or another, so I'm just going to read it, and then we're going to talk about the word that stands out to me.
You can find this online, my source is archives.gov right now,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
We've all heard that before, right?
The word I'm honing in on today is life, right?
So when you say life, that has to mean a lot of things right we have a right to live in this country so my question is what does that mean in terms of the things that are necessary to
live and to me there's a baseline right necessary to live means I need to eat, I'm a human being so I need to eat I need access to water, I need access to fresh air and a place to live, right?
These are the most basic elements, right?
if we're talking about a threshold, establishing a threshold, these things are humane and accessible,
If the American dream isn't working for all of us, then we need to go back to look at the source document here.
But I think that means that we are entitled to the things that support life.
We are entitled to the things that support humans. And that means food and shelter and water and all these other things.
It doesn't mean that you can't be rich.
It doesn't mean you can't have better food and a bigger house.
Go for it.
But there has to be a floor.
I think empathy means, as a society, being an empathetic society, means that we care about all of the people, It means that we don't just say, okay, we're going to set up this really fucked up game where we're enslaving half of the population, massacring another part of the population, not allowing other folks to get a foothold in society.
Now we're seeing the effects of that. We've got a wealth gap that's yawning.
What we've done is not working.
So if we went back and thought, okay, let's create a floor and the threshold doesn't have to be insolvency.
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