I am apparently part of a club I didn't wish to join according to a new report on CNN this morning:

"It only takes $34,000 a year, after taxes, to be among the richest 1% in the world. That's for each person living under the same roof, including children.
"The true global middle class, falls far short of owning a home, having a car in a driveway, saving for retirement and sending their kids to college. In fact, people at the world's true middle -- as defined by median income -- live on just $1,225 a year.
"In the grand scheme of things, even the poorest 5% of Americans are better off financially than two thirds of the entire world."

O.K. I knew that.  I've travelled around the world to places that are not resorts.  I've seen and to a limited degree experienced what it means to live without material choices.  The way I live is unreal.  And I am probably much less generous (and, ooo, do not point fingers on this one, I think) than what I would tell you if asked.  I say it often.  It is simply a matter of luck, of being born where and when I was.  It could more than easily be otherwise.  I write about it often, too--organic foods, champagnes and nice wines and expensive whiskeys, aged cheeses and the foods of fat pashas, cameras and a studio and a new iMac and iPad and Kindle, and even this year a newer car, too.  I do not forget any of this a single day of my life.

To say I'm grateful might be going too far.  Hell, to say I'm happy would be worse.  To say I'm a pig could be appropriate.

And I know people who have much, much more and feel they deserve more, too.  They do not want to pay taxes.  They want to defund public education.  They want a bigger gap between themselves and others.  I tell them they are pigs as much as possible.

So what I want to ask each of you American readers to do today is this: give away your shit.  All of the tvs and electronics, your nice cars and expensive wines.  I want you to begin sharing your income with others around the world generously.  In no time, things will change.  You'll see.  Do it.

Wait a minute.  I just read this in the New York Times:

"Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights.
"But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe.
"One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees.
"A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.
"Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts." 

I'm going to have to think about this a bit.  Europeans and Canadians are going to need to be included in this somehow.