VACATION, Southern Utah – Our vacation this year took us through parts of Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. Coming from a liberal college town, we noticed a stark contrast in political lawn signs. And in mask wearing. One rural Utah convenience store displayed a sign on their door “Masks are NOT required.”

I was reminded of what a friend said prior to leaving. He had recently camped in southern Oregon and alluded to the differing politics and mask protocol. With a raised eyebrow and sigh of fatigue he said, “But they sure were friendly.”

One thing seems clear, we are all fatigued. We are fatigued by politics and competing beliefs. And then we are fatigued by this pandemic.

Undeterred, we added masks to our camping gear and kept them at the ready and we set off.

As my new wife and I have different musical tastes, I surprised her by bringing one of my few country CDs for road trip music: a greatest hits of female country singers. Thanks to this, I now have Loretta Lynn’s Coal Miner’s Daughter stuck on replay in my head.

On repeated listen it strikes me how this song, now 50 years old, unwittingly articulates so much of our current political divide. A proactive ode against judgement of those in poverty, Lynn speaks of being proud of her origins, of making due with what you have, finding strength in family, and lauding hard work.

I don’t know anyone who has a problem with these ethics.

But what we have in American now is the same dilemma we’ve had for some time; divergent beliefs regarding work, merit, reward, and the role of the government.

Many steadfastly believe that nothing should hinder each individual’s path to prosperity. Whether it’s operating a business or working for one, we should have the agency to choose for ourselves and that is freedom.

Others argue that agency and freedom are tied to opportunity and fair play, and without either the individual is open to exploitation. When many are in need or few have true choice, they may not have the leverage to advocate for better wages or a safe work environment.

With this backdrop, when I listened to Coal Miner’s Daughter recently, I heard lines much differently. I heard “worked all night in the Van Lear coal mines” and “all day long in the field a hoin’ corn” and I wonder, is that the work ethic that made America great, working two jobs to barely get by?

We celebrate the prosperity that we can create for ourselves in American. Yet Lynn’s famous song, perhaps unintended, points out the fallacy of our bootstrap ideology in one simple line; that her father “raised eight kids on a miner’s pay.”

There has been a long unquestioned and ingrained acceptance that “a miner’s pay,” for a hard and dangerous job, is something the working class must stoically endure. And, I think, a misunderstanding when that acceptance has been challenged.

As one who challenges that acceptance, and has engaged in heated arguments over pay, inequality and the role of government, I’ve observed that some take the challenge as personal, or a criticism of hard work. Others argue that capitalism has already identified the correct wage and any suggestion otherwise will bankrupt our businesses.

This last, especially, is false. When we ask that rank and file worker’s standard of living come before excessive CEO compensation and stock buybacks, we are not undermining hard work, but we are asking for capitalism to be accountable. Who is benefiting from America’s labor? It is not the worker, or even the middle class, as wages and savings have been stagnate for all but the top 10% over the last two decades.

A trickier nut to crack, though, is when the challenge is taken personally. Or worse, the mere mention of worker or labor brings an association with communism. Free market libertarianism has leveraged that fear and redirected it to focus on freeing up business and the purported evils of redistribution.

They ask why a fast food worker needs $15 dollars and hour, but never seem to question why a CEO needs to be properly incentivized to earn millions. These are contortions we’ve been conditioned to accept, and the end results are harmful to our overall prosperity and the health of our communities.

For capitalism to survive, we need all members of our society to fully participate in the marketplace. Rather than eking out a living through subsistence as Lynn’s song suggest, we need everyone to have more money to spend.

To rebuild the middle and working class and to end poverty we cannot rely on re-distribution through welfare. No, we must redefine the terms. What we need is correct distribution in the first place! It starts with better pay for those at the bottom, not at the top.

André Alyeska lives and writes from Corvallis, Oregon. He strives to change the tenor of discussion in order to create a broad middle ground. Follow him on Twitter @Andre_Alyeska.

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