The Prince and The Pauper

While I have always believed and bought into the notion that “money doesn’t buy happiness,” the texts in this unit seemed to be saying otherwise… and I get it.  When I initially looked at the chart “Money & Happiness”, I was surprised because, like I said, I had never bought into that correlation.  However, after examining the rest of the readings, I can see why the chart may hold more truth than I first believed.  “Guest: Show respect for fast-food workers with sufficient pay” really plays to the idea of this correlation.  Fernando Cruz seems to be a good, honest man who does not have a whole lot of options when it comes to his job.  I am sure that he would rather work somewhere else where he has a higher salary, doesn’t have to work 10-12 hour days, and gets respect from others.  So, maybe he would be happier if he had more money because he would be less worried about supporting his family.  However, he may not have the means to get a better job due to lack of education and experience.  Additionally, as we discussed in previous units, race carries more weight in the real world than we would like to believe, and Fernando Cruz appears to be either Latino or Hispanic.  I thought the critic in “Pay fast-food workers with sufficient wages” was much too harsh.  To me, it seemed that this article was saying that somebody must be financially stable to deserve a family and a decent job.  However, what this person was not taking into account was the cultural capital and other factors that influence a person’s economic mobility and success in achieving one’s goals.  As I said before, some people may be working in fast food because it is their only option.  Just as “Why U.S. Taxpayers Pay $7 Billion a Year” article points out, 52% of fast food workers are signed up for some sort of public assistance program.  Additionally, the majority of the workers are adults who are the primary breadwinners in their household.  At the very least, these employees deserve respect for doing the jobs that most people consider to be low-class.  I do not believe that society should condemn or look down upon those people merely because they have fewer opportunities than, say, somebody who was born into a wealthy family and never had to work very hard to get or keep an education or well-paying job. 

            “Million-Pound Bank Note” by Mark Twain and Trading Places trailer play on the idea that the life of the poor is a game for the rich.  These two texts also have very similar plots.  In both, two wealthy men make bets about how a poor man will bode when given the opportunity to live large.  Though I have never seen Trading Places, it seems that Eddie Murphy’s character was simply picked off of the street to fill the place of Dan Aykroyd’s wealthy character.  The two men who picked up Murphy appeared to do so only because he was poor (and maybe black?).  Similarly, in Twain’s play, Gordon and Abel select Henry for their bet only because he is poor and honest-looking.  Henry and Murphy’s character are mere puppets in a high-stakes bet by wealthy men who hold all of the power and control.  I do not know what happens at the end of Trading Places, but in “Million-Pound Bank Note” Henry finds out that he was basically used, but he does not seem to care at all—not what I was expecting.  This short story also seems to be a commentary on the idea that wealth alone makes you well respected, but that having wealth also makes you exempt from spending your money as well.  Even today, it seems that our rich and famous (celebrities) are the ones that get so much for free, or they get paid for merely bringing attention to businesses, places, etc.  I think that Inequality For All does a good job of tying everything together by emphasizing that in the United States, there is the greatest income inequality.  Just as the other texts reveal, the divide between poor and rich is vast.  Robert Reich stresses that as a nation, we have to protect American workers because they are the foundation of this country.  So, after reading these texts, I again wonder, does money buy happiness? Does it buy respect? Power?