Not Today

In an excerpt from a chapter titled “Everybody does it” in David Callahan’s book “The Cheating Culture,” several reasons are given for the increase of cheating in today’s society. One of the reasons given is income gaps have increased greatly over the past twenty-five years. The old saying of The Rich Get Richer applies here.

In the article, Callahan states, “the top one percent of households has more wealth than the entire bottom ninety percent combined.” (Callahan 20). This has put a large gap between the upper and middle class, and continues to widen each year. Income, for the middle class, has not kept up with the upper class, or the inflation rate. Many middle class American families struggler, financially, in today’s society.

My mother and father raised a family of four children, on a Meat cutter’s (butcher’s) salary. This was in the nineteen sixties and seventies. Back then, a new three bedroom house cost fifteen thousand dollars, a new car under three thousand, and gas went for twenty-seven cents a gallon. That family was considered middle class, and had a comfortable life. Knowing, what the cost of living is today, and what the average meat cutter’s salary would be, it is easy to see, that my family of the Sixties, would not have a chance today. You would not be able to raise a family on a meat cutters wages, in today’s world, and be considered middle class.
Financial pressures, I believe, have forced many Americans to get an edge financially. In many instances, this edge comes in a less than ethical way.

Notes
Callahan, David. “The Cheating Culture.” NextText. Eds. Anne Kress and Suellyn
Winkle. Boston: Bedford/St. martin’s, 2008. 19-24.