Herman Cain, out of touch with the people or just reality in general?

"Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself! It is not a person's fault because they succeeded, it is a person's fault if they failed. And so this is why I don't understand these demonstrations and what is it that they're looking for."

These words came from Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain, a man who is gaining in the polls and who has also recently said that no one in the United States is held back by racism. So, according to Mr. Cain if you are unemployed, if you are a single parent struggling to raise a family because your ex just disappeared on you one day, if you were born with a disability, none of this matters. Your financial difficulties all come from your personal laziness and lack of ambition.

To me this is insanity, but to Mr. Cain it makes perfect sense. You see the current system has worked for Mr. Cain and he believes that everyone has had the exact same opportunities as he has, has the exact same skill set that he has, and therefore they could have had the exact same level of success that he has if they had only worked hard. Aren't you all ashamed of yourselves now?

A few years back I worked for a gentleman in a small company that he owned. I was the very first person he hired for this company and it was undoubtedly very successful. He had also worked very hard to make his company successful, I do not deny this. You should also know that he came from a very wealthy family, was surrounded by business people growing up who offered encouragement and support. When his parents passed away they left him a considerable sum of money along with some real estate. Lets just say that his experiences growing up were remarkably different than mine.

I grew up in a blue collar, middle class family. My father worked in a factory and my mother was a waitress for most of her life. I was surrounded by people who worked exceptionally hard, some worked several jobs, and many who still had a hard time making ends meet. I can't relate to my former employer's childhood any better than he can relate to my childhood, but at the same time I don't think the opportunities made him less of a person than me.

One night I was at a restaurant enjoying a meal with my husband, my boss, and his husband as well. Yes we did have a few things in common. My boss had a few drinks and as the night progressed he wound up insulting me, my husband, my mother, my brother, and a few of my friends. He was angry and screaming these insults, our crime in his mind? Not being wealthy like him. You see my family's struggles with medical bills, in his mind, came from us being to lazy to work hard enough so that we earned enough money that medical bills wouldn't be a problem. By the way, my brother was blind from birth and had had two kidney transplants and a liver/kidney transplant. My brother had graduated from college and wanted nothing more than to get a job, but having a job would have made him lose his health insurance coverage which was provided by our father's employer. Of course to my former boss my brother just hadn't worked hard enough and should have been willing to risk going a few years without health insurance so he could get a job and contribute to society. Everyone else was insulted for the same general reasons, we were all lazy and had no reason to complain because we were simply living the life we had chosen for ourselves. He also claimed that all homeless people choose to be homeless so they can live of of the hard work of others.

To my boss, and I am guessing to Herman Cain, everyone's value as a person is directly related to the value of their bank accounts. They seem to think that it is the natural state of things for everyone to be millionaires like they are. Does Herman Cain not realize that if it wasn't for the low wage workers at the pizza chain he used to be CEO of he wouldn't be as wealthy as he is today? If he paid all of the cooks and counter help a real living wage the price of the pizza would have been so expensive that no one would have bought it. Does he not realize that it was the money of the middle class customers of his pizza chain that made him wealthy? I have no doubt that Herman Cain worked very hard as CEO of this company, but his work would have been for nothing if it wasn't for the poor and middle class who bought the company's products and staffed the company's locations. If we were all millionaires our economy would crumble and cease to function, we can not all be rich, plain and simple.

Of course the wealthy, every single last one of them, owe their wealth to the labor and spending of the poor and middle class. Our work and our money is more important to their wealth than their own hard work and good luck. We can't all be rich but the wealthy owe us for their wealth and they should be paying their fair share in our society. If they don't they may find themselves learning what it is like to live our lives. You see we can't all be rich, that is simply not possible, but we can all be poor. The way things are going that seems to be the most likely outcome as the wealthy destroy our economy with their self aggrandizing ideas about being self made and their apparent belief that they have the right to be wealthy.

Sometimes an individual can fail and it not be their own fault, but if our country fails it will be the fault of those who think they have succeeded.