greed = poverty

My friend Sharon sent an email to me and David about Blog Action Day 08. It's a way of uniting bloggers around the world to share their thoughts on a single subject. Today's topic is one that's been near and dear to my heart this summer - poverty.
I've been lucky. I've been continuously employed since the age of 16; some jobs were great, some jobs were awful, but I always managed to make a stab at paying my bills and keeping myself fed and sheltered.
That part of my life changed in May.
I was employed as a graphic designer for a large department store chain. We'll call it Spacy's - not because I feel any sympathy for the corporation, but frankly, they've got more money and better lawyers than I have.
I had been there for several years. Sales weren't great, but nobody else's sales were either. Then 9-11 happened. Consumers started feeling guilty about buying a cute little pair of boots when the terrorists were waiting just around the corner to pounce on them, take away all of their reality shows and tell them they couldn't go to church. Sales plummeted. People started going around the office with worried expressions on their faces. A great deal of the discussion concerned making "plan". In the retail world, "plan" means that sales should be at least equal (and ideally more) on a certain day than they were on the same day the previous year. It didn't mean that nobody was buying anything. It just meant that the powers that be wanted to make, say, 2 billion in sales and we only made 1 billion.
That's right, folks. 1 billion.
I think the thing that bothered them the most was that the loss of that other 1 billion meant that some of the CEO's might have to accept smaller bonuses.
The economy was bad and getting worse. We went to war. The economy got even worse than before. Consumer confidence was shot. In an effort to blame it all on somebody, they fired the company president. It was hard to feel bad for him - he still continued to receive his salary, got a huge bonus and was told he'd better just sit on his ass until his contract ran out.
We were a dead fish in the water just waiting to be snapped up by Spacy's.
Things went from bad to worse. Shoplifting was at an all-time high and I was still churning out ads trying to convince people with less and less money to buy things that they didn't need and probably couldn't afford.
Then Spacy's lowered the boom. In an effort to cut costs, they closed the Midwest office and sent all of our work to another regional office in Atlanta.
And, just like that, I was out of a job.
Going on the dole and searching for a new job was a real eye-opener.
Let me say this - I am not a snob. I'm lucky. I just have to take care of me and I have some severance pay. I know there are a lot of different kinds of people in this world working at a lot of different kinds of jobs - some for more money than others. But the unemployment office was filled with people hoping to find a job that just pays a living wage - something that will keep a roof over their heads and their children fed. A job with benefits, like health insurance that works and is affordable. There are more minimum wage jobs out there than you can shake a stick at.
But here's the truth:
PEOPLE CAN'T SUPPORT THEMSELVES WITH MINIMUM WAGE JOBS.
And it all comes back to corporate greed.
You see, I think that's how most companies make enough money to keep themselves afloat and still pay their CEO's those huge salaries and bonuses. Not by offering a valuable and reasonably-priced service or product to the buying public, but by paying employees as little as they possibly can, offering them health insurance plans with a $5,000 deductible, or by creating 2 part-time positions with no benefits instead of 1 full-time position with benefits.
I know I sound bitter. Seriously, I want things to be better not just for me, but for everyone.
We'll just have to see what happens after November 4th.