While it’s not an official holiday, coming as it
does after Thanksgiving Thursday, many workers (except those working in retail
stores) get it off. While Black Friday might be a happy day for owners of stores
that finally start to show a profit, it has to be Bleak Friday for many of
their employees who often give up Thanksgiving with their families for the
sales that sometimes start on Thursday. Retail giants like Walmart and J.C.
Penny, for example, begin their Black Friday sales the afternoon or evening
before, meaning that their workers have to give up a significant portion of
their holiday. While I’m sure they get holiday pay (at least, I would hope they
do), it hardly seems to compensate for the missed time with family.
Now, I have to begin by confessing that I have never
done a Black Friday sale. When I do Christmas shopping, it’s either done in
September and October, or the week before Christmas. I don’t really celebrate,
but I do buy gifts for my children (when they were small) and now for my
grandchildren.
Being aware of how Black Friday impacts many retail
workers, I’m glad I’ve never been tempted. Added to this, there’s the fact that
we have this period celebrating conspicuous consumption at a time when nearly 7
million households in the U.S. don’t have enough food to eat, and nearly 4
million are unable to provide sufficient, nutritious food for their children.
We have more than 40 million people living in poverty, and some 20 million live
in extreme poverty (making less than $10,000 per year for a family of four).
While many politicians seem to delight in blaming
the poor themselves for their poverty, the U.S. political and economic systems
are primarily to blame. In our free enterprise economy, companies are not
creating enough jobs for everyone, and the top echelons of business tend to
allocate the lion’s share of profit to themselves. Our political system, which
one would think would focus on the needs of the people, tends to have other
concerns. Military and security expenditures, for instance, make up half of
U.S. federal discretionary expenditures; corporations and the rich have greater
lobbying power, and as a consequence tax breaks and subsidies tend to benefit
them more; and, the Democratic Party; once the party of the working man,
focuses on the middle class, often to the detriment of the poor.
As a consequence of this, we have a culture of
inequality, with people segregated by income and sometimes race or ethnicity.
With jobs scarce and wages low, the lack of income leads many low income people
to dysfunctional behavior, creating a vicious cycle – in other words, poverty
often leads to more poverty.
With all this on my mind, I can hardly see Black
Friday as a time to celebrate. If you want me to notice the day, maybe it
should be changed to Bleak Friday – a much more appropriate appellation.
No comments:
Post a Comment