Throughout my life there has been one value that has influenced me so much to the point where I say that they are the most important in life. Economic security is a very important thing. People take it for granted but we all need it within our lives. People will argue you that it will lead to greed, its wealth that leads to greed not being secure. Without economic security we can’t be happy.
When it comes to economic security I can speak from my own life. When I was a child my mother had just left my dad and had no job and no place to go. We lived in my grandmother’s house for a short period of time. She then was able to go on welfare, and get some money, to get an apartment on her own and a steady job. Even though things were better we still didn’t have much. It was bad enough where all we could pretty much afford to eat was tuna casserole. As I got older life got better and my mom and I were doing fine with money and had a great life. We had moved in with my step dad and things were great. I was in a good school with good friends and I no longer had to wear hand-me-downs or eat casseroles. I was really happy for a good period of time in my life because of that.
My life started to make a steady decline and eventually a major plummet in my life. My father had lost his job and today is still unemployed. My mother and quit her job to work in a new store but the store is failing and she isn’t making much money. My clothes and food is still the same but my happiness has been affected severely. With out working my dads income has gone down and he has become unhappy. This event then brings the hammer down on my life and it takes its toll constantly. Things have gotten so bad to the point where my mother and father don’t speak to each other and I am left to be the messenger boy between the two of them.
In society today the suicide rate has increased. It has risen because the unemployment rate has gone up. We can prove this fact by looking back into history. During the Great Depression the same happened. These people are sad with their lives and feel like they are worthless because they can’t hold onto a job or support their own family. Even then the people of the 1930 have felt like they couldn’t do anything. I know this fact to be true in my life today. My cousin Mike had been unemployed for awhile. And even though we loved him and would do anything for him he felt alone. The police found his body lying in bed the day after Christmas of this year.
Not having enough money also takes its toll on the children of the family. They constantly have this pressure on them. They want to do better than their family could ever do, be better than they can ever be. Then, this weight of the pressure finally breaks through and completely demolishes the child. I can relate to this. My parents never went to college so it’s a big deal that I go. With everything I got to do with school and the baggage that comes with everyday life I tend to crumble under the pressure. I can feel everything building up on me. It makes me wonder sometimes. I sit and I think to myself if the Greek titan Atlas ever felt like I do? I only have the weight of school and my life; he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders.
This all goes to prove that when we had money we were a happy family. Now some may say that you can be happy without money. “That through the ashes a phoenix is born”. But, when you really look at the chances of that happening, you realize that people born in stay in dirt. Sure, some of them do make lives for themselves and live on to be happy. The probability of that happening is slim and when it does it really only makes a good story for a magazine. If everyone had economic security then the crime rate of America would be cut down to such a large amount that the number would be staggering.
Now I’m not fighting for greed. That is the farthest thing from my mind. I’m not even defending wealth. In society today wealth eventually leads to greed. We can look at corrupt politicians for that. We all saw our Illinois governor go down in this huge scandal trying to sell the senate seat. We can all safely assume that he did this for his own wealth