Cursed Tongue: Let Them Eat Twinkies

Posted by CursedTongue on December 22, 2006

According to a disturbing report released by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2% of adults owned more than half of all global assets in 2000. Astonishingly, 50% of the adult population owned only about 1% of wealth. Even more alarming is the lack of digital resources with which to gather and sort current data on wealth distribution. (I fear that the World Institute for Development Economics Research has a warehouse full of shoeless Guatemalan children slaving over census data with slide rules.)

With the holidays barreling down upon us, this “Season of Giving,” is the perfect opportunity to consider the notion of generosity, and what constitutes cheapness. The miserly distribution of global wealth demands discourse on cheapness and its consequences, which are more dire than even the Spears/Federline break-up.

Generosity has always been a hard concept for me. I’m a penny pincher. I don’t like to think of myself as a penny pincher, exactly. Although pennies have been know to shoot out of my wallet from time to time. But I don’t believe cheapness is about thrift. You can save money by buying generic and still be a generous person. In fact, I’d argue that spending cold hard cash on Brazilian waxes, designer shoes with matching handbags and moisturizing anti-wrinkle cream that’s expensive enough to warrant armed escort, is counterproductive to generosity.

Sure, spending money does fuel the economic juices, but I’m sure the proverbial “little guy” working in the expensive moisturizing anti-wrinkle cream factory is making a similar wage to his or her counterpart in the cheap moisturizing anti-wrinkle cream factory. The excess cash goes to costlier ingredients and marketers. Impoverished children are far more deserving of excess cash than marketers.

Cheapness isn’t about socioeconomic standing. Some of the richest people I have known have been the cheapest. Like the landlady who thought it a pity that the cat-scented, matted, 3-year-old carpet in our apartment might be shredded and dumped. Far be it from me to stop her from using shabby, cat-grease-laden floor covering in her own home, but I know she was hoping to reuse it in one of the other hovels she was leasing. (Happily that pile of synthetic fiber made the long journey from the curb to its eternal resting place in a landfill.)

In one of the richest countries in the world, especially among the upper and middle classes, it seems as if generosity should not be a problem. But I’m constantly amazed at the amount of belly-aching I hear about money. People that spend $3,000 on a grill and then cry poor and buy a used car seat for their baby. (A used car seat is only a little safer than Britney Spears’ lap.) The only thing more ridiculous than whining about not being able to afford Christmas presents after buying a $600 purse in which to carry a Chihuahua is the fact that there are malnourished people in the U. S. today.

This is America, and I believe in the American citizen’s inalienable right to complain. If complaining were an Olympic event, the U.S. team would consistently be the favorite to win the gold. Complaints are one of our biggest exports. (Only, we need someone to figure out how we can generate revenue from them.) That being said: complain. But do something to help the poverty situation in America if you can afford to buy a new Dodge Caravan.

What about the billions of starving children in Third World countries? They are under the protective wings of Sally Struthers. If anything happens to her, they can eat the protective wings of Sally Struthers. And we can’t forget the efforts of Angelina Jolie and Madonna. After Madonna saves Malawi single-handedly, I’m sure she’ll move on the next impoverished African nation.

Regardless of Britney Spears’ wild behavior, and her file at the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, I wouldn’t count her out of the “collect them all” foreign adoption trend. Of course, the celebrity meddling in developing nations may eventually be cause for clean-up efforts, but we’ll burn that portable modular bridge when we come to it.

It’s not that I believe Third World countries are any less deserving of aid. But I think that the U. S. should focus on fixing itself, before it tries fixing other countries. Mostly because things have turned out so well in places where we have stepped in with our special brand of help. But also because we can witness the impact of local charity first hand. No one who gives to charities such as Save the Children (where for the price of a latte a day you can sponsor a child) really knows where their money went or if it did anything but boost the ego of the donor.

There is no excuse for children going hungry in America. There is no excuse for uneducated, or undereducated children in America. There is no excuse for children to be homeless in America, one of the richest nations in the world. We should be more ashamed than Michael Richards after dropping the n-bomb.

Fortunate Americans should be rolling up their sleeves, purging their pantries of all non-perishable snack cakes loaded with hydrogenated fats for donation in food drives. We should be giving away gently used items and clothes we can’t wear anymore because we’ve been eating too many fried Snickers and donating money we didn’t spend on a $500 shower curtain to reputable local charities.

But above all we need to improve the digital infrastructure so that shoeless children in developing nations everywhere can be put out of the business of compiling statistics on global wealth. Which, lets face it, is only useful as fodder for pundits and bloggers.

Like 6-year-old canned peas, aged economic data is not fit for human consumption. Even by or for the poor.

- Sarah Letnes

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Tags: christmas, economy, humor

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