It’s very simple. Some people's identities are based on an ill perceived belief that they are better than others who don't have the same basics that they have, and this helps them cope with the human condition. If you give people who would normally go without the same things they have, you are stripping them of their identity that is based on being above those "others".
Obviously what they don’t realise, or choose to ignore, is that they’re being screwed over by the level of society above them, and they instead go around believing themselves to be a part of it or aspiring to break into it. Also failing to ever acknowledge the role luck and chance have played in them not finding themselves stuck on the ground floor. It was all hard work, they did it themselves, and anyone can do it.
I can just imagine society as a huge 100 floor skyscraper.
In the basement level there you’ve got all the people were happy to leave behind- The great unwashed, you know. Supposedly hopeless and inherently inferior.
Ground floor is perhaps the working poor. Good people getting by but a burst pipe or a new clutch away from struggling to pay the mortgage.
Level 1 and 2 are the varying degrees of the supposed middle class. Level 1 is touching on the higher rate of tax. Things are pretty comfortable, so long as the interest rate remains low.
Level 2 is dominated by those whose income goes up and up but they never seem to work less, only more. There’s no end in sight. The bills expand but standard of living doesn’t really increase. But they’re on the treadmill and can’t get off. Private school for three children doesn’t come cheap, you know.
Then we have 90 some floors of nothing, an empty void. But catch the private elevator to the top and you will find the most marvellous penthouse. It’s really something, you should see it. You can actually, on tv every night. Up here the people with the real money, the generational wealth, are engaged in one century-long coke fuelled orgy. These people don’t have jobs. Theres no hourly pay. Constructs like Law don’t apply. Hey, they own all of the assets. The only way is up. What’s more they deploy their media conglomerates to convince the rabble that if they just work hard enough they too can join the party, fill their days snorting lines off the butt Cheeks of Victoria secrets models, and only stop F***ing to occasionally shower themselves in the blood of the innocent. Or sacrifice a peasant to The Sun God.
I’ve lost my train of thought here as my micro dose turns into possibly just a dose.
But the point is this: society will continue along this path so long as floors one and two can look down and see people below- you know the penthouse is really only the next level up.
There will be no real change until we all find ourselves on the ground floor, or acknowledge that we already are.
