a modern, modest proposal

Do you ever feel oppressed by the injustice of having to drudge off to degrading “jobs” while other people (like celebrities and billionheiresses) get to spend their time gallivanting from party to resort to party? You should, because there is a reason for this grave imbalance of wealth: while your country is rich, it is NOT RICH ENOUGH! This can and must change.

For years you have grown in wealth along with your nation, reveling in the glorious panoply of cheap consumer goods swirling before your credit-card-laden hands. While most of the world has toiled away in the third world’s so-called “sweatshops” and rice patties, you’ve enjoyed convenience, corpulence and the comfort of completely losing track of the difference between “I need” and “I want”.

Through the marvels of modern technology and globalized economic powermongering, you have managed to remain in that elite majority that can buy anything it desires without having to worry about trivialities like the social, ecological, and spiritual costs of modern economic practice. The best part is that you do all of this without lifting a finger! Your implicit approval has allowed corporations acting in your name to rape most of the world’s population of their very lives, forcing them to eke out a living on a pittance – but so what? You deserve it. I mean, LOOK AT YOU.

Besides, the main reason fifty million children die every year of malnutrition-related illnesses is that their parents are just too freaking lazy to provide for their kids. You work at YOUR job and YOUR kids will never starve, so it stands to reason that if they worked harder, THEIR kids wouldn’t starve either. Should you be forced to pay the economic consequences of the actions of a bunch of insolvent inebriates? I say not. I say you deserve what you’ve got, that you earned it by being born here. And do you know what else? You deserve even more. Why should you have to continue to go to boring, blue and white-collar jobs when others get to have their party-clothes collars starched and pressed for them by scores of servants? They are no better than you – so what is keeping you back?

I’ll tell you what – laziness. Those same lazy, dissolute parents who are causing the deaths of all those children are becoming more and more lazy at their sewing machines, their fruit picking, and their rice planting. They are starting to believe that they have a right to be disillusioned with what is obviously their God-ordained lot in life. Reports are coming in from shops the world over that the majority of the workers are beginning to slack off even more than usual. Riots are expected.

The future of your way of life hangs in the balance. Now is the time to rise up – NOW – before these ingrates crap all over the path you were born to follow. Who knows what could happen if you don’t act now? Your living expenses could skyrocket as corporations become forced to factor things like human dignity into the prices of consumer goods. You could become (gasp!) more like them.

In these dark times, however, there is some hope. Act now, with me, and together we can crush this rising menace that threatens our very way of life. No longer can we stand idly by, letting others do our dirty work as we live in the apathetic acquiescence that has for so long greased the wheels of economic exploitation. Join me in signing the following e-petition and in sending it on to your friends and acquaintances.

When enough signatures have been gathered, send it back to me and I will forward it on to the people who pull the important strings and who can use our open support to make a difference. Politicians, heads of corporations and leaders of state will no longer be shackled by the need to maintain a façade of respectability. Unfettered by antiquated notions of moral restraint, they can operate with greater efficiency in their efforts to force those whose work makes our lives possible to bend further under the load they were born to bear. Together we will stand against the tide of ungracious sluggardy swelling in the ranks of the lower classes. Rise up! Rise up!

PETITION ON BEHALF OF THE UNDERSIGNED:

We the haves, the drinkers of Starbucks and purchasers of everything from American Eagle to Gucci. We the corpulent wearers of Nike and the owners of doodads and trinkets far exceeding our basic needs. We the few, the twenty percent of the world living on eighty percent of its resources, stand together in defiance of any slumping trends in our consumer economy. We, who have risen to the call of a barrage of advertising slogans and newsreel propagandas and have purchased our way into hedonistic history, are standing together to say that we have bartered our souls and the rewards have not been enough! We want more!

So we call on you, the leaders of the “free” world, to give your corporate middle finger to everyone else. We have voted you into power with our wallets – now earn that voter confidence and send a clear, unmitigated message to the world’s poor: We are done with your laziness! We are done with your sloth! We stand against you this coming January first, two thousand and seven, which we hereby declare to be known hereafter as “International Caning Day”.

On January first of this and all subsequent years all people, regardless of race, creed or caste, who make less than what we, in our nation of privilege, consider to be the “poverty line”, will be beaten, harshly and without recourse, as a reminder that laziness will no longer be tolerated! Together we will stand today in the hope of a better tomorrow. God bless the first world!

Sincerely,

JLB - Langley, Canada