Thursday, August 11, 2011

Mark Reardon Says Pointing Out Inequalities Is "Class Envy" and "Jealousy"

The Post-Dispatch included an excellent editorial today pointing out the fact that sales of luxury items, such as $2,500 boots and $1,500 face cream, have been increasing even while 17% of Americans are living in poverty during a brutal economic period. The whole editorial is excellent, so I hope your read it, but here's a small sampling:
So for the sake of the economy and, especially, for the men and women working the selling floors of luxury retailers and the showrooms and service departments of expensive automobile brands, we all should hope that the latest spasms of the stock market don't scare upscale Americans into tucking away their Amex black cards.

At the same time, we can't help noticing how far removed a Mercedes S-class sedan is — for gas savings, consider the S400 Hybrid, starting at $91,000 — from Americans who don't know if they'll have a job next week.

We think about families who have no option but to keep squeezing miles out of aging cars that are just a paycheck away from being unfixable — AAA (the auto association) reported this week that a quarter of all Americans couldn't afford a $2,000 car repair bill if they were faced with it.

We imagine couples now living on one income instead of two, worried about meeting the payments of adjustable-rate mortgages. We know middle-aged, middle-class parents who've lived modestly and saved responsibly and wonder from semester to semester if there will still be federal Pell grants and subsidized loans to allow their kids to stay in college.
But of course pointing out the fact that there are economic inequalities rankled KMOX's Mark Reardon, who claimed that it was nothing but "class envy:"


Great to know that such caring and thoughtful people are given their own radio shows. I'm sure it's because Mark Reardon is just so much more intelligent and works so much harder than all of the people who live in poverty, right?

1 comment:

  1. Good Lord. Spoken by a man who I'm sure has no worries about HIS paycheck, his kids' college, or their healthcare. Not to mention his probably newer vehicle. It is not class envy to want to survive until tomorrow. It is not class envy to expect that this country be ,ore equitable. I grew up in a large family with no car. At no point did I even want what my friends had. I wasn't even aware we were poor until I was in high school. I wanted to go to college because I was bright, got good grades, and my teachers said I'd succeed. I did, and married an engineer, and we live very comfortably. Never did we want the $300,000 home or two brand new cars. We paid off our mortgages early, have no debt, and our kids went through colleges on academic scholarships (including one law school grad) and have no college debt. Hard work they understand. Leaving poor people behind; they don't. Calling a desire for a decent standard of living 'class envy' is juvenile and stupid, not to mention no where near Christian.

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