From the MRW Water Cooler

In reading some of your writings I wondered if you feel blue-collar workers are better, work harder or are happier than white-collar workers? Is wishing for a better life for our children limited to one or the other “collars” or is it just the universal hope for “the good life” for our families? — M

The reason I think blue and white are so tough to balance, has to do with he fact that we tend to see them as opposites, like weights on different ends of a seesaw. A healthy society knows that each end needs the other. At the moment, things here are out of balance. There’s too much on the white-collar end. Sixty years ago, there was maybe too much on the other side. Either way, it’s not the right metaphor. Blue and white collar should be viewed as two sides of the same coin. Like clean and dirty. Without one, the other has no meaning.

The desire to want a better life for our kids is not limited to the blue collar set. It’s a natural desire shared by just about every parent I’ve ever known. Unfortunately, it’s not realistic, because our definition of “the good life” is ever changing. Every year, our expectation is primed to anticipate an increase in the overall standard of living. That standard moves with alarming speed. In 1970, a clothes dryer was considered a “luxury.” Today, thousands of families with washers and dryers and color TV’s and cell phones and late model cars are counted as “impoverished.” What we call poverty in this country looks like poverty nowhere else.

Mike