Is a decent standard of living a given? Certainly not for those not willing and able to work for it. The untold millions, however, who undergird the perceptive glamor of living and working in the United States by toiling as garbage collectors, landscapers for home associations and municipal locales, hospital maintenance, school and office custodians, window washers, pet groomers, housekeepers, nannies, and thousands of other toils to keep the nation’s productivity viable, most assuredly earn the right to a decent living.

Just what is a decent living? If workers perform with integrity, however menially, a forty hour week, they should not be burdened with the worry of health bills from catastrophic illness in the family. Nor should they be expected to live in dumps that should have been torn down years ago. They should earn the right to paid vacations so that they and their kids, too, can enjoy a change of pace. Neither is it too much to expect that these workers have the means to a reliable car to get to work and to cruise with the family. It would be nice too to have a little spare cash for special occasions to take their spouse, and the kids to a modest restaurant once in a while in lieu of McDonald’s.

This is not to say that those lower on the ladder do not have their own faults. Too many — and no different from some of the middle class — overspend and max out their credit cards making it more difficult to make ends meet, let alone get ahead. Single groups especially engage in too much frivolity, such as drugs and alcohol, spending enormously on entertainment like concerts and gadgets, and fancy cars they can’t afford. Much of this syndrome stems from inadequate education and devastating commercialism and gauche icons from Trump to Madonna.

Alas, disrespect for the grubby workers of the nation is here to stay, since it is probable the conservatives are here to stay and have no plans for a brighter future. Their primary concern is to preserve the investment dollar for the upper class. Often they denigrate this nation's savings by contrasting it with that of others and blame consumption, but what conservatives really mean is that the tax dollars consumed by the government in order to engender spinoffs to improve the lifestyle of everybody robs the better-off to consume and invest at will. The majority party — as Bush has proved — was not satiated by the grand theft of the Reagan era; it still wanted more of the tax dollar in order to relegate the federal government to the level of lame duck.

Surplus capital makes savers and investors. Millions of average people in this nation do not save because they do not have surplus capital; municipalities and insurance companies see to it that they don't. The average youth spends in auto insurance and car loans a third of his earnings. Health insurance is on a runaway train. In all intents and purposes the earnings are invested by insurance companies and investment bankers in solid, some dubious, enterprises controlled by the very same upper class. Still, their huge investment is in reality a surtax on youth and older alike as equally as social security. In addition, the average young couple is tied up by either rent or mortgage. Real estate tax, too, is their burden, whether they own a home or not. Though far from an ideal scenario, the reality is that supply and demand endure whereas oppressive regimes have no real economy, no consumption to speak of, consequently a magnet for cheap labor, which only increases the contempt we have for unskilled labor here.

This is the lagniappe the vast majority of workers can expect in a conservative matrix that induces consumption on borrowed money by the low and middle class for the benefit of the well-to-do investment dollar. Even the average small investor is being taken for a roller-coaster ride. In lieu of the pride in investing in the growth of America, he is befuddled by the crooked insiders and the unscrupulous takeovers that choke the innate spirit of inventiveness in business and governance.

Hopefully polls throughout congressional districts are not set in concrete; there is still hope that a majority of voters will clear their heads of all the lobbying propaganda against meaningful reform and muster courage so the country can renew the agenda of fairness to all.