The Pool Of Quiet Discontent

Whether you realize it or not there is a large portion of people in this country who are entering “The Pool of Quiet Discontent”. As I heard so eloquently said on the morning radio program I listen to “keep your head down, don’t make eye contact, go about your business, go home, close your door and enjoy the comfort of your home”. There are probably many of you reading this that are shaking your head and saying “I don’t do that. I interact, I talk to people.” Maybe you do on certain days. I do too, but most of the time all of us just go about our business oblivious to what is going on around us.

Truthfully, most of us could care less about what anyone else thinks, does, or what is going on in other’s lives or even worse, what is happening to our society. I do and so do many others, but for the majority of people today, they don’t care at all. I get irate at what I see pass as “news” today. Years ago it would have been considered a “fluff piece” or filler at the end of the news cast or it was on an entertainment news show, not part of our nightly news.

And believe me, for anyone over the age of 40 the changes have been absolutely unbelievable in regards to the social hierarchy of our society. For those of us growing up in the 50s, we had the very well off (we still have them today), the upper middle class, the middle class (where most of us fell), the lower middle class and then the lower class.

Today we still have the well off, the very well off, and the ridiculously well off and then there is the rest of us. The rest of us are made up of those who used to be middle class, lower middle class and lower class, we are now all lumped into the same category. Some of our elderly are barely getting by and they aren’t the only ones. Take a look at the starting salaries in many of the unskilled jobs today, the jobs most are forced to take, since we don’t have the manufacturing jobs here any longer, nor the factory jobs any longer, so those who were in those jobs are now forced to take unskilled jobs that they are paid a mere pittance for. For those of us old enough (and we fall into that category), starting salaries back in the 50s are still the same today for many of the same jobs. What you say shaking your head. Yup, clerical workers, for example back in the 1960s, got paid $5-6 per hour and today if you look in the papers in many areas of the country these same salaries are being paid. Now you tell me how they are supposed to pay for housing, gas (Hah, at $4 a gallon) food, insurance, and the multitude of other expenses. Those expenses sure haven’t stayed the same as so many of the salaries have.

It is any wonder most of us just want to get in and out of the stores today and as my radio personality said “keep your head down and don’t make eye contact”. We are all starting to wade in The Pool of Quiet Discontent.

DeFiore Enterprises, 2007

By: Chuck and Sue

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