Professionals Are Working People, Too!

To My Dear Professional & Managerial Friends:

I love you, I really do.

I just need to remind you that efforts on behalf of professionals and business people to separate themselves from working people (and the middle class to separate themselves from the "working" class) are just insufferable.

Hope I didn't hurt your feelings.

Now, it is more important than ever to remind doctors, lawyers, professors, business managers, and all people who wear suits that they are just working people.

If you earn a living, you are a working person.

If you are on the board of directors of General Electric, go hunting with Dick Cheney, socialize with Saudi princes, and get your allowance from a trust fund, you are NOT a working person.

Thinking of the cost of health care might help you decide how to categorize yourself:

When I first started working on a trauma unit at UW-Hospitals in 1979, I calculated that the most it could cost to pay for health care in a worst case scenario was $I MILLION/YEAR. Then, I raced out and bought more of every form of insurance available--back when it was still available to me. At that time, there were medicines that cost $1,000/pop.

The amount of money one would have to have invested to earn $1 MILLION/YEAR in 1979 was about $10 million. So, that is what I defined as independently wealthy--way back then.

Now, I define as "rich" someone who can buy entrance into Harvard or an elite university for h/er child. If you cannot do that, you are not truly rich or powerful. You are a working person.

If you cannot pay for your own health care no matter what eventuality--the worst case scenario of cancer treatment or a high level spinal cord injury with weeks of trauma care and years of 24 hour/day ventilator care--then you are not wealthy. You are a working person.

In my entire life, I have only known one family that will never have to work and whose descendants will never have to work.

For working people to snipe about GM employees (as they have done for decades) and to now snipe about the vast wealth of...school teachers(!?!) as they are now doing is bizarre to me.

The Republican Party does not represent the best interests of the business community. They represent the best interests of Gigantic Corporations Who Have More Money and Power Than God.

The Democratic Party represents the best interests of the business community and working people including small business owners, doctors, lawyers, and People Who Cannot Buy Their Children Entry into Harvard or Other Elite Schools.

Hope this doesn't cause any identity crisis.

Your friend,

Vivian