by Shirley Scurlock

Created on: May 02, 2009

It's hard for those who have always done well to understand the hardships caused by this economy. How could it possibly touch them? How could it touch any part of those who work in government? It would be a great learning experience if they would lay aside their riches long enough to understand the population they govern! Every politician preparing to run for office should be expected to live for six month on the income of those who are subject to his or her decisions. Before they can cut the incomes of those in the most need, or raise taxes, they should have some working knowledge of what that means. They should have to go to work when they have to choose between lunch and gas to get there. Every one of them would be expected to spend mock time in a hospital and get the bill on the same day your welfare or public assistance check is cut in half! They should go to the grocery store in dirty clothes with food stamps and have to walk by the detergent knowing they can't buy it. They should go through what a single mom does as she tries to raise a child on a check that is one tenth of the cost of living for her a month.

There are no candidates running now or in the distant past who have ever had to make the truly hard choices. Congressmen and Senators come to a new year of work with a pay raise on the budget. At the same time they look deep to see which benefit they can cut from the aged and poor. They are privileged with the best insurance while many of the poor are sick and can't meet the most basic human needs. While the cost of living rises consistently the benefits of the poor are cut consistently. Politicians have no understanding of what it means to be impoverished, so the current downturn means little to them. The rich are only concerned with the amount of taxes they have to pay.

They should be required to live this way long enough for them to have a real understanding of the effect their decisions have on the people they govern. They should be handed the keys to a local single wide trailer and an old clunker gas hog and assigned a minimum wage job. This assignment should include mock sicknesses and mock children with diseases they can't treat. Then when they have completed the assignment and allowed to run for office maybe they could have some conception of the pain normal people have to suffer when they sign their name to cuts. Maybe they will think twice before they take a raise after they understand the cost. Do you think these people will have a different point of view when they get home to their mansions around the world? Will they feel guilty riding in those limousines, dining in the finest restaurants?
I'm not enthusiastic about the chances of this happening anytime soon. As our new leaders, perhaps they could lead the way and donate a third of their pay to the homeless. We will see if this was all talk or not.

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