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The Chinese have an expression, “May you live in interesting times.” The expression is actually wishing you ill because interesting times are bad times. We are currently in “interesting times.” The news reports this morning are telling us that the federal government is warning the capitals of all the states to be alert for the action of “armed people” between now and the inauguration of President Biden next week. How did we arrive at these “interesting times?”

The causes run deep. Yesterday I listened to an interesting discussion with Michael Sandel about his new book titled The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? Mr. Sandel is a political philosopher. The job of any philosopher is to think deeply about some topic. It is an important job because none of us has the time or possible energy to do the type of thinking philosophers do. The United States used to be the leader in children doing better than their parents because we believed in the upward mobility of people. We are not any longer a leader in this area. Mr. Sandel pointed out the leading country for upward mobility is Denmark.

What does this fact mean? For the last 40 years, the United States has retreated from the goal of upward mobility. We have been told the only means towards upward mobility is a college education. That’s not true. Even worse many of us were taught to look down on those that did not have a college education. With the virus running rampant in the country today, we can see that people we didn’t notice before such as grocery clerks, garbage collectors, repairmen of all types, and so on are now considered essential workers. Think about it. Without these essential workers, our society would cease to function. Before you think I am against college, I have a Master’s degree.

Even today only about one-third of our population according to Mr. Sandel is college-educated. Think about that and the events of last week. Two-thirds of our population is being told without a college education you can’t succeed. It implies and sometimes it’s basically true that one-third of the population looks down on the other two-thirds. The ranks of the rioters last week were taken from that two-thirds of the population. They don’t think the country cares about them anymore. They think the only way to address the country’s problems is through change. The elite has too long looked down upon them and devalued their work. Garbagemen, yuck! Being a store clerk is only for those who didn’t go to college! Even in healthcare – the lowly CNA because they couldn’t get another job! Yet easily, these jobs are not only essential but vital. Without those people, our society would cease to function.

I wondered why Mr. Sandel had chosen the last 40 years as a decline in upward mobility. I think a significant reason was the decline of the labor unions. There is no question that they had become arrogant and no longer believed in the common good. It was only good for union members. 40 years ago, President Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers after they went on strike. It started the downward spiral of labor unions. A large company CEO’s wage today is 300 or 500 times the average salary of a worker in that company. This emphasizes to the worker they are not worth much. One thing unions did was keep the spread of income between the CEOs and workers much smaller.

How do we recover? We have defined merit too narrowly. Every job contributes to the common good. Seeing the only way to rise in our society is a college education is just plain crazy. CEOs can’t just think of employees as sources of income and nothing more. People who believe that you only rise in society by going to college are the source of the merit’s tyranny. There is no denying they worked hard and went into debt, but how is that helping the common good? We have to stop thinking exclusively about ourselves. We have to think about the term essential workers. Without them, our society could not exist. Think the common good!