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From the Editor's Desk
The reviewer, Andrew O'Hehir wrote the following for Salon.com. "Benn argues that for-profit healthcare and the other instruments of the corporate state, like student loans and bottomless credit-card debt, perform a crucial function for that state. They undermine democracy by creating a docile and hardworking population that is addicted to constant debt and an essentially unsustainable lifestyle, that literally cannot afford to quit jobs or take time off, that is more interested in maintaining high incomes than in social or political change." Lets get past the healthcare thing for a moment. I wish I had access to the real quote, but O'Hehir's paraphrasing may be more to the point. This resonated because I'd also recently read that Americans aren't taking their vacations. According to some surveys most Americans only take about half the vacation time available to them. And the amount of vacation time the average American workers get is half again as much as what most European workers get (they get four to six weeks!). So why would we not take vacation - paid vacation? Afraid of losing our jobs to someone younger and more ambitious? Were we the ones who were younger and more ambitious that took jobs from others? I don't know, but I think Tony Benn understands part of what's happening in our country better than we do. Some smart people are taking advantage of our Protestant work ethic and our desires to have the best of everything. So, we're working ourselves into the ground for things that we're buying on credit. And the stress is killing us. I bet we could radically change our healthcare system if we just stopped to smell the roses a little more often. But we can't. Everything's at the top of the priority list. The big house with a twostory entry in the new "safe" subdivision? Check. Keeping Billy and Suzy in T-ball, top honors classes, college bound, in the latest fashions in constant glowing write-ups in the town newspaper and shiny new cars? Check. Flat-screen plasma TVs, iPods, home redecoration, dining out every night, and the list goes on. We all want to live like the Rockefellers even when some of us are the Clampets before the oil.
Hey, I'm just as guilty as anyone on some of this, but if you have any vacation time you're not going to use this year, please donate it to me. Or hit yourself in the head with something that will hurt - maybe it will knock a little sense into you.
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