March 12, 2002
President Bush has called upon Americans to donate two years of their lives to volunteer work.
While there are certainly plenty of important jobs that need to be done, expecting people to work for nothing is impractical, and implies that anyone who takes home a paycheck is a greedy, money-grubbing social parasite with no concern for the less fortunate.
Sure, if I had a trust fund mailing me checks with five figures after the dollar sign and before the decimal point every two weeks or was the favorite nephew of a wealthy uncle, I might be inclined to work somewhere for nothing.
However, the economic reality is that working Americans need the pay they get from the jobs they do to keep their financial heads above water.
This is an abstract concept to some, especially those in the rarified atmosphere of American business where some executives earn or collect as an end-of-year or retention bonus more than most of us will take home in a lifetime in a single month.
Indeed, it's odd that if a worker is making $6 an hour and wants to make $8, that's called greed, but if an executive is making $6 million a year and wants to make $12 million, that's the American way.
Lacking a trust fund or Roman numerals after my last name, I've had to pursue jobs for my adult life and make changes when that every-other-week paycheck was in doubt.
At my last newspaper job, the company was in such dire straits it missed payroll twice, leading several employees to hasten their job searches and me to accept a position at the Press Journal.
I'd be willing to work for nothing if I could persuade my landlord to let me live rent-free for two years and GMAC to forgive my car loan.
Of course, my landlord has bills of his own to pay and GMAC needs those payments to keep the executives and workers in clover, so while volunteering and working for free may be wonderful for society, it will hurt others who depend on my checks, and hurt my credit rating, not to mention leave me and my cat living on the streets.
This is pretty abstract for the wealthy set, for whom volunteer work is a job that pays only six figures and involves mainly calling up friends and twisting their arms for cash for a disease or social crisis of the week.
Maybe we should all volunteer a day out of our week to show the president some of the harsh realities of American life experienced by those who don't own baseball teams or oil companies, and don't have friends (read: someone who gave him lots of cash) named Kenny Boy.
The "society-improvement" squads are always carrying on about educating the humble and ignorant masses.
But maybe they're the ones who need a little education.
Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com.
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