Jackie Allison wrote this humorous piece, Working Class Majority, for the online magazine Funny Times in 2015. It is still relevant today and is reprinted with permission.
I suggest a new government party, the Working Class Majority. Note that it would be called a majority, not a party. The working class isn’t a hedonistic picnic. By saying the name Working Class Majority, our candidates would remember who they worked for and what they were supposed to do.
The Working Class Majority would employ a candidate. If a candidate didn’t do their job, they’d be fired just as it is in the real world.
To be an eligible candidate for the Working Class Majority, one must have worked a job where sitting on a board is eating lunch at the company picnic table. Owning stock means raising non-hormone-injected cows. Hammering out details involves swinging a chunk of metal attached to a wooden handle. The terms hedge and trust mean shrubs for privacy and quality found in friendship. Hedge and trust followed by fund means nothing to the working class.
Job Description
- Full-Time- Senator or Representative isn’t an honorary title but an everyday adventure that pays only on the days you show up.
- Salary- Try living on a salary equal to the minimum wage earning American, $15,080, or an average income of $63,795. ($30.67 per hour? Wishful thinking for most of us.) Welcome to the working class majority (formerly the middle class). To be fair to the people you serve, the spouse must hold a minimum wage job. It builds morals and strengthens character when one scrapes change together at the end of the month to buy milk. We’d boast a House and Congress with character, not a House and Congress full of Larry, Moe, Curly, and Shemps.
- Health Care- You better hope your spouse has a good plan available. Result: Cooperation on a damn good national healthcare plan.
- Car- Buy your own on your average middle-American salary, and like the constituents you serve, gas and insurance also come from your pocket. Result: Government money would build bridges and educate our children instead of bailing out corporations whose top, well-paid executives offer crappy products on recall.
- Raise- Hell no, the former middle class hasn’t had a raise that has kept up with inflation in years. Result: The creation of living wage jobs. A person could actually hold a job that pays as much as selling meth. Bonus: Neighborhoods that aren’t ‘hoods’.
- Meal Expense Account- A candidate must access the same food source as the people they serve, antibiotic-injected beef, genetically modified vegetables with residual pesticides, and cake made with trans fats, hydrogenated oils, and high fructose corn syrup. Result: Affordable healthy food that won’t strain the new healthcare system.
The Working Class Majority’s requirements to live in the real world would bring new meaning to old problems.
- Indulgence means buying name-brand Oreo cookies instead of Better Valu chocolate sandwich cookies.
- Wasteful Spending means you and your constituents must squeeze money from already tight household budgets to pay for new sewer lines because the government spent its money paying for infrastructures they blew up overseas. People forced to pay for shit, literally, would quit wasting money blowing up things.
- Career Politician- A person who does their job because they remember a Working Class Majority candidate can be fired if they aren’t productive.
- Taxes- When a candidate of the Working Class Majority compared their net income to their gross income, gross would mean disgusting. A fairer tax structure would be established. Another result would be the end of companies buying politicians who pass tax laws that favored the wealthy. The Working Class Majority would invoke the Bullshit Law, hunt the deadbeats down, and make them pay their fair share.
- Lobbyist would mean a person who haunts the lobby at job fairs so one can find a second job to make ends meet.
Only through true representation will we experience positive change, a more equitable society, living wage jobs, healthier food, and an end to war. Sign-up sheets will be located in the lobby at the job fair. Bring a resume and cojones. It takes a set to work and live in real life. And hurry before we must change our name to the Populace In Serious Shit and Extremely Disillusioned Majority.