I was listening to NPR's "Marketplace" yesterday, as I drove to meet my girlfriends for dinner. I didn't hear the entire show, but the topic seemed to be the economic recession and the effects of the economy on those whose wages have been cut.
Now I don't have a problem with anyone doing a news story on today's economy. After all, this is a topic that is on the minds of most people in our nation. Yet I was a bit bemused by the reporter's choice of people to interview.
The first person the reporter interviewed was a corporate CEO who had cut his own salary, as well as his employees' salaries, by 10%. He spoke of having to by a nice used car this year, instead of a new one. He chuckled about how his wife would insist on ordering an appetizer for her dinner instead of an entree whenever their family went out for dinner. He seemed to find all this "belt-tightening" in his home a bit of a lark, and found it cute that his wife was cutting back. I wonder what life is like for his employees. After all, their salaries were cut by the same amount, but I'm guessing they don't have nearly the amount of cushion in their budgets as the CEO.
The second person interviewed was a woman who worked for a major accounting firm in downtown Boston. Her husband worked in the corporate sphere downtown as well. They had never had children and had both recently experienced temporary pay cuts. She spoke of their lifestyle changes such as putting a little less in savings than they usually did, eating at home, making their own yogurt, and attempting to make their own cheese. She seemed beleaguered, and stated she couldn't wait until the end of summer when they would receive their full salaries again. Again, I can't help but wonder about the people who didn't make enough to have a savings in the first place. You know, those who buy generic cheese slices at the grocery store, because they can't even afford the tools and ingredients to make their own cheese? I doubt their pay cuts are only for the summer.
Yet, lest I sound like a whiner myself, I'm actually glad I heard this report. It caused me to look inward at my own sense of entitlement. How many times have I inwardly whined that I can't afford a better wardrobe or a monthly cleaning service? I admit this to my shame. My husband and I make it a point to teach our children how good they have it, and how many people in other parts of the world are truly destitute, without even the most basic necessities on a regular basis. And yet, here I sit, coveting my neighbor's new car.
It's funny, the things to which we believe we're entitled. As if by virtue of being human, we have a right to a certain standard of wealth or health. Are we entitled to anything, really? And what happens when we have competing entitlements? Who wins? I'm thinking of the situation in the news in Scotland, where the Libyan terrorist was released from prison because he has cancer and does not have much time left to live. Scotland claims it is humane to allow a terminally ill man to die at home. The families of those killed on the plane he bombed claim that there is no justice, because their relatives are dead, yet the perpetrator was released to a hero's welcome in his home country. Quite honestly, I can see both points. The merciful part of me can agree that human beings are entitled to die with dignity. However, the part of me that craves justice realizes that his victims were not given that courtesy, and that their families are entitled to retribution.
So who is in the right? I don't know. Life is complicated like that. But I believe that if we could put aside our own sense of entitlement (that whining voice inside us) and step into our adversary's shoes just for a moment, we would find a lot more common ground.
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