Have you ever noticed the different language people of different income brackets use when describing economic realities. Watch any investment program and you'll hear about winners and losers, as if this was a game - Talk to any of the families that use our food pantry, and you'll here the language of trying to keep enough food on the table to feed hungry kids, of going to bed hungry, of not being able to afford proper medical care, of slipping through the cracks - one thing is sure, to them this is not a game.
Or perhaps we even disconnect on the meanings of words when we use the same ones. To the investment manager, or the stock-holder, to earn money means to have money in an account somewhere that multiplies. To all the working stiffs, earning means working your tail off, trying to not get sick and miss work and getting a check every two weeks.
And why do we allow the words legal and illegal assuage our concsience of the ethical failure to defend the cause of the fatherless, widow and foreigner? Perhaps it was legal for the Investment banks to bet against us and cause this economic collapse, while making money hand over fist - but it wasn't ethical or right. Perhaps it's illegal for Juan to bring his family here to seek a better future for his children than the life he got facing child prostitution and unprecedented violence by drug cartels - but it is ethical - because you would do it to.
When did we stop caring?
