We need to work to make sure those that serve us have the basics --at a minimum
Last edited Sat Nov 24, 2012, 05:32 PM - Edit history (2)
This should be our ethic and we should be working together to spread it and have it put into action.
The people that serve you in small and large ways need to have enough to make a living:
Those that clean your offices must not make so little that they can't see a doctor or lack shelter
Those that teach your children (and our society's children) should have what they need to make a living.
Those that serve you your coffee at Starbucks, you should advocate that they have health care and a decent hourly wage.
Those that serve us in our military (or their families) should not face homelessness while serving or as a result of serving.
The food server that brings your food, delivers your pizza, hands you your fast food through a drive-through window, all these people should at minimum have shelter, food, health care and a decent wage to keep them out of poverty.
The above describes working people and today in our society, too often the people that provide things to you and me, are compensated or treated so poorly in service to us and each other, that they lack health care, lack living wages, lack shelter, lack proper nutrition.
This is our moral imperative: We need to fix that.
And the thing is, most of us don't have the income to solve it individually, and if we can't we need to do what we can to change this cruel aspect of our society. We need to do what's within our ability to make those who provide service to us, whole. Whether it's by voting, by paying taxes, by advocating for better wages, better benefits, a stronger safety net, boycotting, supporting worker-friendly businesses, supporting unions and union actions, supporting our fellow workers in our own workplaces --we must do what we can.
If you didn't cause poverty, should you feel guilt over its existence?
Well, if you are served by people who live in poverty, and we all are, though we often do not directly cause their poverty --we benefit from it and because we benefit from their service, if we don't work to change their circumstances for the better, we then become responsible for them.
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