It's Only a Matter of Time, and We'll All Be Better Off

I am infuriated by all the stores lining Hollywood Blvd where teenagers spend a minute amount of their Daddy's paycheck buying $300 dresses at BCBG in the Hollywood and Highland shopping center. On those same streets, the homeless sleep in ragged blankets, Hollywood stars as their pillows.

These homeless who ask us for change in the subway, whom we pass off as lazy drug addicts. The same homeless whom we look at with disgust, smelling the piss and sweat on their clothes and hair.

On those same streets we eagerly spend $30 on a shirt, that was probably made in India in about 3 minutes, costing the corporation about 14 cents to make.

I am infuriated by my own hypocrisy.

I am the one who spends my meager paycheck on Forever 21 clothes that I will soon dislikes come the next trend in fashion. But the lights, the smell, the softness of the material appeal to my desire to be significant. To be luxurious. I walk past the trumpet playing hobos on Colorado Blvd, avoiding eye-contact.

Can we blame our condition on hard work? Does that mean they are lazy? Can we say that it is easy for a smelly man, with an overgrown beard, and no phone number or address to get a job in this time? But we assume he got their because of his own mistakes.

What if he did get their because of his own mistakes? Do we have no mercy?

But I want my pretty dresses and sweaters, my $5 coffee and cigarettes, more than I want to stop and talk and maybe give him my spare $20.

I am infuriated by the gap between the rich and the poor. The hyper luxury market that is booming, while dollar stores are also booming. That some people are collecting bottles and cans out of trash cans to make five cents off of them, while some are spending $100s every weekend to get wasted and leave the bottles in the streets.

I am infuriated that one person will call the stone floor of an LA metro station his bed, while another person can pick to sleep in one of the six bedrooms in his luxury mansion.

But this is just the way things are, right? The poor will always be among us, so we just can't be bothered with change.  And if we let the rich thrive, then eventually they will decide to hire the guy off the streets, and things will get better. 

It's only a matter of time.