Would You Want To Be In The Top 1%. . .

...Who wouldn’t? Well, I wouldn’t. So what’s so strange about me?

The gross inequalities in income and wealth in the United States are so much in the limelight that they longer can be dismissed as a cause of only the “left.” How much to tax the ultra-rich remains ultra-controversial, but the gap itself is a fact.

It would be a comfortable life for me on the 1% side of the divides, where the average annual income stands at over $300,000 plus investment income. Still. . .

Once, decades ago, I goofed a great opportunity. I was offered a job with a major media corporation headquartered in New York City, and in my interview I displayed a reluctance about moving there. In the years since then, I often regretted passing up that opportunity.

Think of it! I could have moved up in that empire and become one of its TV stars. Maybe.

More likely, in my desire to succeed in that competitive environment, I would have absorbed its values and suppressed mine. It is a fantasy to think I would have
-- launched my Website, Human Rights for Workers, in 1998, as I did
-- maintained it as a blog starting five years ago,
-- published its best material in a book, Justice at Work,
-- participated in demonstrations against the suppression of worker rights in China, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

In short, I would not have been me.

I would have been someone else. As a One Percenter I would imbibe the social and political standards of that peculiar environment, and so why wish to be or to become one of them? Why?