I was thinking, this morning, that the hardest concept I’ll ever have to teach my kids is “and where does it end?” For example, you do something greedy, you effect someone’s life negatively, and often they’ll do something equally nasty in return, or perhaps you’ve just taught an onlooker that they can get away with it too…where does it end?
The radio show I was listening to on the way to work was focusing on the housing market, the problems faced by major cities across the country because of the housing market’s fucked-up state, etc. Someone called in, mentioned that in the early ’70s she owned a home in Atlanta as a single mother of five. And each of her children has gone on to own a home in Atlanta as well, but there’s no fucking WAY her grandkids will be able to do so. Not if things don’t change drastically.
And I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know jack about owning real estate, renting to people, upkeep expenses, etc. But I really have to think that all along the path from then till now, lots of greed has been in play, rents being raised more than necessary, prices just getting bloated for no reason, and so on and so on. Where does it end? Well, it ends fucking badly is where it ends.
Another concept that was mentioned today that stuck in my head (and isn’t entirely un-related) is the fact that the disparity between the rich and the poor is getting wider and wider, and as a result the middle class almost doesn’t exist anymore.
When I was a kid, my dad carried a camera everywhere, and he probably took close to a half-million pictures in his life. Shit, probably more. Sounds like hyperbole, but you should see the bags and bags, boxes upon boxes of photos my brother has to sort through at his house, in addition to all the weddings he’d shot in his life. It’s staggering. It’s even more staggering to think of the money that was put into film and processing over the years. Sure, it wasn’t as expensive back then to get film developed, but it wasn’t free. These days, I take pictures with my camera phone and a digital camera, and it probably costs me less than one cent for the bandwidth it takes to email or post photos to the web each month from my computer. And still, I struggle.
I think I need to read some Abbie Hoffman.