A friend of mine came to this country from China back in the eighties. China had little opportunity for people like him he tells me, especially after Chairman Mao had destroyed the country. To get anywhere you had to know people and pay them off. Everything, he adds, was corrupt and there was no freedom. America looked better and so he emigrated, married and raised a family here. Today he works for a city agency as an air conditioning technician making a good salary with an excellent benefits package (including a health insurance plan and a government pension). And he gets lots of opportunity for overtime which supplements his already substantial regular income and contributes to the baseline against which his pension will eventually be calculated. He's also active in the stock market and is a fairly successful investor.
Still he's soured on this country of late. Americans live beyond their means he complains. They spend more than they can afford and finance the difference by borrowing from countries like his former homeland. But why should China keep lending to us, he asks. The Chinese have to be crazy to do it because we'll never be able to pay them back. Americans are living off the largess of the rest of the world and someday we'll have to pay the piper, he points out.
In fact, he's so frustrated over the recent turn of events that he has found himself wondering of late whether he made the right decision in coming here. When he did, America looked like the future to him but now it seems China's where the economic growth is. America is too full of financial inequities, too, he argues. A confirmed Democrat, he despised George Bush and the last Republican administration. Bush, he insists, spent too much. That's why we're in the hole we're in!
And Barack Obama? In fact he's a fan of the current president, especially his health care initiative. We need national health care, my friend tells me. When I protest that most people in the country are already covered, one way or the other, he responds by pointing out that there are still some who aren't. When I remind him of the good coverage he has for himself and his family under the current system, he reminds me of those who don't. You forget, he insists, how expensive it is for some people, how much more they have to struggle than you to make ends meet. I agree that it isn't uniformly easy.
What's wrong with America, my friend goes on, is the big gap between the wealthiest and those who have less. On a personal level, he objects to the fact that, while he is as competent as, or more competent than, the electricians and stationary engineers in his department, they get paid much more than he does while not having to work as hard. That's a discrepancy that really galls him.
It's due, of course, to the clout of the unions that represent these workers and the contracts they've extracted from the city. Although my friend is a one-of-a-kind tradesman in his agency, the sole staffer on board equipped to maintain and repair sophisticated refrigeration equipment in-house, an essential to that organization because of its heavy reliance on lab equipment, computers and major air conditioning systems, he has no powerful union to represent him as these other workers do and so watches with envy as people he believes less qualified than he, work fewer hours while out-earning him.
Weren't there inequities in China, I ask? Isn't that why you came here, to find new opportunities? Sure, he says, but in China such gaps are not so obvious. In this country, he says, you have all these Wall Street bankers and insurance industry executives making way more than the rest of us. That, he points out, simply isn't fair. Are they really worth hundreds of millions of dollars while he is barely worth $80,000 a year before overtime and all the extra work his job requires of him? And this is to say nothing of those electricians and stationary engineers, the latter of whom basically sit and monitor electronic signals on various pieces of equipment all day while he is running from site to site, getting his hands dirty. Why should others make more than he does if he's just as smart, just as qualified? Is the head of Wellpoint Insurance worth the kind of salary he gets considering how hard my friend must work for his more humble income?
Americans need to level the playing field, he says, and they need national health care like they have in other countries, including China, so everyone can have equal access to the same level of medical services. It's all part of his current critique of his adopted nation.
But how can we afford to nationalize the health industry, I ask him, never mind the question of better or worse care that may result. If it's America's debtload that really has him worried, how can we do what the Obama administration wants without putting ourselves further into hock to China? Wasn't that his original complaint against Bush and the Republicans, even though the Democrats have already blown the budget sky high, since taking over the levers of power in Washington, and adding universal health coverage, with mandates for participation, can only add still more to the ever expanding deficit?
I should have stayed in China, he answers despondently, that's where the growth is now, that's where the future is.
But don't they have rich people there, too, I ask him. Isn't China now basically a capitalist country? Isn't it "glorious to get rich" as Chairman T'eng Hsiao P'eng once told his people -- after Mao was gone?
There aren't so many rich people there, he says, not yet.
You mean we have more here? He nods in agreement. Then aren't you really complaining that there are too many well-off people here, that they're too visible while in China there aren't enough to notice yet? Isn't the real problem troubling you that America's been too successful? You see the well-off all around, wherever you look. But in China, because the country isn't yet where America is, you wouldn't feel deprived because there are so many others with more than you have! But doesn't that also mean your opportunities here are really greater because wealth is so much more widely spread, so much more available?
Consider this, I urge him. Sure you're a salaried worker but look at what you're making. Look at your investment portfolio. Maybe you're not in the hundred million a year category and maybe you'll never be but does that really matter? You're not starving or in want. And it's all because of what you've been able to do for yourself since coming here. If you take money away from the giant earners do you become like them or do you just hope to make them more like you?
Why shouldn't they be more like me, he asks.
Because, when you left China, I remind him, wasn't it because you wanted to be more like them?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stuart W, Mirsky is a Queens-based writer and former government official. He's the author of two books: The King of Vinland's Saga, an historical novel about Vikings and Indians in eleventh century North America, and A Raft on the River, the true story of a fifteen year old girl's survival in Eastern Poland in the shadow of the Holocaust.
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
written by The Isle Magee , February 13, 2010
You can take the immigrant out of communism, but it seems you can't take the communism out of the immigrant.
written by swmirsky , February 15, 2010
I suppose it's a cultural thing, too. Ancient Chinese culture is just more communitarian than individualistic as we are used to and communism probably brought that aspect of the traditional culture to the fore. Then, you get a person raised in that kind of milieu and what does he see? He compares himself to others and thinks why should they have what I don't? But it's not alien to human nature to think like this, either. Just consider how many there are in this country who have the view that the government should prevent others from getting too much, or at least too much more than I have! That's what the whole Democratic philosophy seems to be built on, i.e., the government intervening to equalize everyone.
Of course that is a fantasy. We cannot be equalized in the end because we're different, both in terms of natural talents, luck and the personal attitudes we develop. Our system aims to equalize opportunity not outcomes but I'm afraid my friend only pays lip service to that (he's an avid investor in the markets which means he likes to put his money down and take a chance that he'll do better than the next guy) while, at the same time, he is hyper-sensitive when others do better than he does.
The key, in our society (our system), when that happens is to try harder. Improve our education, look for a better job, take more risk, work even harder. But too many in this country have come to the conclusion that the key is in government, to elect leaders who will take what others have won (either from their own hard work, good luck or skill) and spread it around to others.
While I think that in today's world we do want a society that protects those most at risk from disaster or poverty, we don't want one that aims to keep everyone roughly equal by redistributing others' assets, income, etc. That saps incentive, undermines individual responsibility and, finally, amounts to government sanctioned theft. So it's a fine line that needs to be walked, one that doesn't push us back to a dog-eat-dog world without, at the same time, turning us into perpetually dependent puppies.
SWM
written by Jay Golub , February 15, 2010
Stu, great writing. not much to add...
written by swmirsky , February 25, 2010
My friend referenced in the above article just read the piece and informs me that he makes more than the $80,000 base pay I credited him with. It's $92,250 base he says. This, of course, only makes my point more strongly -- and yet he is still down on America and says he regrets coming to this country, believing, he tells me, that the homeland he left is where the future is. -- SWM
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
