Summertime and the livin' is easy (for the rich)

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/29/summertime-livin-is-easy-for-rich

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I resent rich people in general, but I hate them especially during the summer.

During this past wretched and seemingly never-ending winter, we Americans were all miserable together. The poor were punished more than the rich – they always are – but the rich couldn’t escape the collective misery of the cold, no matter how much wealth they were hoarding. Boston Brahmins couldn’t escape the more than 100 inches of snow Beantown was under as they trudged to work, while Wall Street bros still had to turn into ballerinas to cross slush puddles. In the suburbs, the rich still had to dig out their cars and navigate ice tunnels to get to work.

But like flesh being exposed to the seasonal sun, income inequality reveals itself in increasingly obvious ways during the summer. That’s when the rich get to enjoy what summer has to offer in ways the rest of us don’t.

Come summer, the rich get to go on vacation, a luxury only available to select salaried people. Vacation isn’t usually an option for Americans who are “independent contractors,” underemployed part-timers or flat out poor. For the 8.5m currently unemployed workers in the US, there will be no vacation from their misery and anxiety about when they’ll find work again.

But, our Facebook feeds will be filled with wealthier friends going on vacation to exotic places, and news broadcasts will be filled with the president’s vacation and Congress attempting to go into recess as quickly as it can to flee the summer misery of Washington DC.

Those vacations will rely upon the exploitation of cheaply paid workers. Those minimum wage workers at Disneyland, and those dismally paid cruise ship employees at sea, will likely not get to vacation themselves. And, while the economic benefit to any place which relies upon rich tourists is nebulous, “all-inclusive” vacations mitigate those benefits almost entirely

In summer, the rich get to escape the most violent time of the year in American cities, when young men are outside and the police are twitchy. That’s when poor people – who can’t afford to leave the city or even to run their AC and stay inside – are most likely to hang out in the streets to beat the heat, becoming inadvertent targets of crossfire or police harassment. And even when they’re both outside, the rich still have it better: a black New Yorker drinking beer outside their house is likely to be cited for public drinking if seen by a cop. A rich person consuming wine who is “both white and watching the Philharmonic” in Central Park is probably not.

When rich people aren’t fleeing town, they get to enjoy the best their cities have to offer – unlike the rest of us. When they do go outside, they can walk around in expensive organic fabrics rather than the kind of sweltering polyester which can drive someone as crazy as Divine in the heat. And those free outdoor movies or plays some cities offer? The rich enjoy those, too: movie lawns are filled with assholes who can afford to spend hours waiting around for the free movie, and theater lines are packed with scalpers who sell “free” tickets to the rich. And here in New York, while the rich can cool off in private pools or far away beaches, the poor have to cool off in public pools which close before most working people can get to them or go to public beaches which lack even toilet paper in their restrooms.

The delusional ways rich people ignore the plight of the poor is more obvious in the summer. On a warm Saturday night in Oakland last weekend, the night after mayor Libby Schaaf ordered a ban on nighttime protests, I watched a calm black man being arrested by cops in riot gear. He seemed to be a part of a group of demonstrators who were being arrested after peacefully, but strongly, asserting their fourth amendment right to assemble even after dark . The rich people dining al fresco on the same street pretended like nothing was happening; the dog walker had more interest in his dog taking a crap than the man being arrested ten feet away.

This is what the summer brings us: a clear view of who has a right to leisure and relaxation, and who does not.

Much of this exists in cold weather months, of course, but it’s more obvious in the heat. When I examine my rage at those for whom summertime living is easy, a lot of it is based on jealousy. But if it weren’t for such extreme income inequality, my summertime rage wouldn’t be necessary. If not for income inequality, the extreme policing that is a part of everyday American life and which goes on steroids when public life for the poor moves outdoors could be rendered null and void. If it weren’t for income inequality, many more American workers, like many of their European counterparts, could afford to go on vacation. And if the people working to make others’ vacations were paid a fair wage, they, too could afford to go on vacation. And then, my anger about the summer wouldn’t be as hot as the August asphalt of a New York City street.