What is wrong with this picture? In a country, my beloved country, where American soldiers continue to put their lives on the line while earning less than fifty thousand dollars a year, where police officers and fire fighters stand up on a daily basis to protect us while earning far less than a hundred thousand dollars a year; where agricultural workers who are responsible for providing us with much of our food are lucky if they make anything near thirty thousand dollars a year; where teachers choose to educate our American children for far less than they might earn in other areas of the workplace; in a nation where so many people work so very hard for salaries that never approach forty thousand dollars a year; in this nation of ours, we are now learning that our National Football League reportedly paid it's commissioner, Roger Goodell, 105 million dollars for his past five years of service. What am I missing with this picture?
I hold no envy for people who earn considerable amounts of money and live extremely well. What bothers me, as an American, is seeing the incredible gap between the wealthy and the poor and middle class continuing to widen. What concerns me is seeing the America of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, a period that included an historic war that we, with our allies, were able to win, a time when America upgraded its national infrastructure of roads and bridges and a time when our educational systems throughout the nation grew and improved; what concerns me is that what we were then appears no longer to be the case. Instead of a unified force with a concept for sharing that allowed for many to be wealthy while making room for a solid middle class and giving hope for the poor, we now see our national focus on the individual rather than on the united, on expanding wealth rather than on expanding opportunities for all. I continue to hope for a return to the way America worked to meet our needs during the 40s, 50s, and 60s. I believe that by doing so, we would be so much better off as a nation.
I hold no envy for people who earn considerable amounts of money and live extremely well. What bothers me, as an American, is seeing the incredible gap between the wealthy and the poor and middle class continuing to widen. What concerns me is seeing the America of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, a period that included an historic war that we, with our allies, were able to win, a time when America upgraded its national infrastructure of roads and bridges and a time when our educational systems throughout the nation grew and improved; what concerns me is that what we were then appears no longer to be the case. Instead of a unified force with a concept for sharing that allowed for many to be wealthy while making room for a solid middle class and giving hope for the poor, we now see our national focus on the individual rather than on the united, on expanding wealth rather than on expanding opportunities for all. I continue to hope for a return to the way America worked to meet our needs during the 40s, 50s, and 60s. I believe that by doing so, we would be so much better off as a nation.
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