For me, this journey of understanding about how frayed our society was becoming came of age when I glanced through a Wall Street Journal in probably 2004. A brief article outlined how the top 1% of all Americans had accounted for about 7% of all gross reported income in 1970. By 2000, that number had almost tripled to 20%. My jaw dropped. I simply couldn't believe it.
To me, this had to be the seminal financial event of my lifetime. Much bigger in fact, than any recession that we have experienced in my slightly more than half a century on this earth.
I can still remember when not every Mom worked. That was when there was a middle class. Heck, right down the street from where I grew up is a great example. There was a real factory - a huge one in fact. making real things. Had done for probably a 100 years or so. It was called the Hamilton Watch Company. They were going gangbusters during the Vietnam War apparently making triggers for bombs, or at least that's what I remember. A whole host of folks worked there.
Now? The darned large factory is a condo project. Long since in fact. All those middle class jobs? They went the way of all things.
So Mind over Phatter was simply my way of beginning to think about and understand where we are as a country. A small sliver of the nation has gone Phat to the max. Homes in the Hamptons, weekends in Paris, and $1200 bottles of champagne over Sunday brunch in New York. To those folks that is the new "normal." To the rest of us, it's home foreclosures, increasingly older cars, and crushing credit card debt.
When did all this happen, and why?
I'm hoping this line of thinking will attract others who have stories to tell about their towns, their jobs, and their loved ones.
