Mine Is This Big

Crawling Back To Where He Came From

Slavery on a Plate

  
                                                       SLAVERY ON A PLATE  


     What if we were conquered and enslaved? What if everything that was once ours was no longer? What if it happened without an invading army, valiant battles, a great struggle that somehow, no matter how heroically we fought, we lost? What if it happened without us even knowing it was happening, without even a chance for a fight? What if we just one day woke up conquered and enslaved?
   Once we made more of more different kinds of things than the rest of the planet. Today we make almost nothing. A few of us gamble with money they print out of thin air. A few of us make apps that deliver a burrito in the middle of the night. A few of us make perpetual war. The rest of us who lose everything when that gambling goes bust, who deliver that burrito in the middle of the night, whose sacrifices for their country in that perpetual war are rewarded with lost limbs and lost minds, the rest of us who face a retirement home in the back seat of our car or a tent under a bridge are told that we are blessed with The Sharing Economy, an economy of masters and slaves that has nothing to do with sharing and is all about subjugation and conquest.
   Uber is bragging about its new $2000.00 a week incentive to recruit drivers and offset its fifty percent defection rate. If a driver works sixty hours a week at two rides an hour, drives seven hundred miles, accepts ninety percent of fare requests, pays Uber a twenty five percent commission and forks over $378 for gas and wear and tear (figured by Uber and omitting car payments, insurance, license, etc.) that works out to (according to Uber’s calculations) $18.70 and hour, or (Uber’s figure) $1122.00. Subtracting the $1.55 Uber booking fee per ride times two per hour brings it down to $936.00 or $15.60 an hour. Then, since you are an independent contractor and Uber doesn’t contribute to your taxes, another 15.3%  is due for social security and medicare and, according to 2015 income tax rates for income between $9,225 and $37,400 filing single, yet another 15% in income tax. That works out to $10.45 an  hour. So if you drive complete strangers anywhere they want to go sixty hours a week for three hundred and sixty five days a year with no health care, no unemployment, no paid holidays or sick days, no retirement, you can net $32,688 and twelve cents a year. As long as your car holds out.
    Not so many years ago there really was a flickering American dream, a democracy that was far from perfect, that had more than its share of inequality and injustice but was working toward a better life for its citizens, mostly middle class who either worked for themselves in small businesses or worked for an employer who paid them well and offered job security, decent benefits and retirement. Its police were members of the community. Its media were the guardian of its freedoms. Its food came from citizen farmers. The homes and businesses of its citizens were financed by community banks. The term Main Street was not a cliché spouted by gas bags. There was a Main Street in town with a book store, a shoe store and a drug store, a ladies clothing store, a men’s clothing store and a toy store, a grocery store, a gas station, a nursery, a doctor, a dentist, a beauty salon and a barber, most owned by independent business people often for generations who were their own boss living in their own home making a decent living raising a family in an interconnected community.
     Now we have Walmart. Now we have meth and heroine addiction in every corner of the country. Now we have corporate schools teaching children what to think, a corporate ‘health care’ industry that sucks the life out of us, corporate banks that bury us in debt, corporate prisons with more people in jail than any other country.  Twenty-two percent of our children live in poverty. Seventy-six percent of us live paycheck to paycheck. Our democracy is no longer. We have a police state that watches every move we make. Now if we work really, really, really hard sixty hours a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year as we sink deeper and deeper into debt to make ends meet, we can make $32,688 and twelve cents - slavery on a plate.
Rick Hill
5/16