Brian Risk’s Blog

Last night I was, quite literally, wading in sweage. It’s a special occasion at the Cradle when we break out the hose to clean the bathroom. I saw Superbad yesterday (and the day before — it’s a must-see) and some character in the flick muttered, “fuck my life” when he had to clean an isle spill. Yesterday I worked for nine and a half hours which culminated in spraying caked feces off the floor and probably made lass than $60 dollars. Some people, many people, make that in an hour or two. How necessary is that? It doesn’t take much money for one person to live fairly comfortably. I feel there is something intrinsically wrong with our distribution of wealth, with the pay schedule society has deemed appropriate. There is an interesting measurement of the distribution of wealth in a society called the “Gini index“. It’s a wealth distribution curve and history has shown that when that curve gets too steep, the bonds of society suffer. Check out the map on that Wikipedia page; the USA is getting redder with each measure. I’m not for abolition of social strata, and I do feel that certain jobs should be rewarded more than others, however I believe a retooling is in order.