How can 99 be less than 1?

Last time I checked, 99 > 1.

I was born in 1983 when the economy was bad but not terrible.  As I grew up, even in bad economic times I learned that hard work and being a good person would be rewarded with decent pay and easy goings as long as I could keep it up.  There were no "but only if you're" barriers taught with this.  When I became politically aware in the mid-1990's, it seemed apart from a small group of ultra-rich who were being greedy, most people understood that a more even distribution of wealth benefited all income classes.  Hard work and good living were still all you needed to succeed but a college degree didn't hurt.  When it came time for me to head to college, I had been lucky enough to receive a 4-year tuition scholarship but I still needed grants and loans which were available to me.  I ended up moving into the dorms 4 days after the 9/11 attacks so the world started to fall apart as I tried to pull my life into focus.  The college I went to, like most Western state colleges, was very politically active (some would say to a radical extent at times), so even before the economic meltdown I was aware of just how much the wealthy were getting away with (i.e. Enron).  By 2006, I had graduated only to go back to try another degree because of how little work existed in either my chosen field or my established work career.  I ended up dropping out due to being so depressed over, amongst other things, the futility of it all.  Between then and the meltdown of 2008, I took what work I could find that would hire me.  I was working for a office store when I voted, caucused, and phonebanked for Obama.  I voted for him because I thought the kind of movement that eventually elected him could lead to a return the progress I'd grown up with in the 90's if not proceed beyond that.  Less than two months after he was sworn in, I moved back to Portland after bottoming out in Olympia.  4 months later, my marriage evaporated after sustained damage and prolonged problems between us.  Within another half year, I lost my job with the office place after transferring the job down to Portland about a year prior.  When I lost my job, it came after a period of gender exploration.  With that job gone, I could live the life I thought was right for me and began the slow transition progress I'm still working on.  Living in Portland, I did not think being transfemme would be as big of a barrier to employment as it would be other places.  I still don't, despite having had multiple interviews in the 18 months I've been unemployed and not one of them leading to a job yet.

There are simply too many people fighting for the same job for every job.  The only jobs available require such a specialized degree that, unless you had already studied and earned it, would require years more of school and tens of thousands more in loans and it still wouldn't guarantee you the job.  And it's not that we're lazy or dim or we have anything truly against us compared to other applicants.  Somewhere along the way the jobs focus was shoved into the self-perpetuating clusterfuck of the financial world.  No longer were hard work, good living, and the ability to earn a degree enough; now you had to play the game they wanted you to play and invest on top of everything else.  Meanwhile, everyone outside finance and not buddy-buddy with them gets squeezed for every ounce of effort, given barely enough to survive, and told to be thankful they still have work.  So the squeezed yearn and hope for a break and elect those they think will help.  It is infuriating to me when I see such squeezed people get bamboozled by politicians who say they'll do what is asked of them only to do nothing of the sort once elected.  Lately, it has been the Republican party who has bamboozled more power away from the squeezed.  This does not absolve the Democrats from responsibility; their failure to at least stop any further squeezing (let alone easing what exists) is a form of bamboozlement as well.

So people take to the streets, figuring they have that right left at least, right?  With the Tea Party, you'd figure that public demonstration against government was OK, right?  The Tea Party had armed members and not once did the police pepper spray them.  Yet you have unarmed people of all backgrounds, ages, classes, educational backgrounds, careers, religions, orientations, and genders protesting how they feel bamboozled and swindled, they get sprayed like they were a car body getting a paint job.  Tell me how this is OK and I'll back down, but I doubt anyone can justify the pepper spraying of an elderly woman at Occupy Seattle.

I'm not asking for a hand out, just a hand hold so I don't fall off the cliff I've been shoved to.  I don't know who said "A rising tide lifts all boats", but I don't think it was a bank.  I leave you now with a column written by a fictional writer in a graphic novel that, with very little adaptation, doesn't sound all that made up:

“There's a jungle rhythm beating out below me; the sound of truncheons hammering on riot shield, police tradition when the streets get nasty. I'm in Angels 8, above what will doubtless be called the Transient Riot. History's written by the winners, after all, and if the cops want it called the Transient Riot, then that's how it'll be. Because there's going to be Transient blood all over this place. And you know something? It's not their fault. The Transients couldn't have managed this on their own. They're just big kids who thought it'd be fun to live inside an alien body. A sane society would've tagged them for the waterheads they are and bought them a big playground. But no one even checked to see if their silly claim for secession was feasible. Civic Center just decided to stamp on them instead.....They paid a few Transients off to start some trouble, deliberately marring a non-violent demonstration. Spontaneous violence, the only excuse Civic Center would have to send in the riot cops. These people are bleeding down there for a scam. It's a show of power. How dare anybody ignore the authority of Civic Center? How dare a bunch of freaks try and think for themselves? So let's go out and stomp on children, lunatics and incompetents, because by damn it makes our balls feel big. I can see a blatantly unarmed Transient man with half his face hanging off, and three cops working him over anyway. One of them is groping his own erection. I'm sorry. Is that too harsh an observation for you? Does that sound too much like the Truth? Fuck you. If anyone in this shithole city gave two tugs of a dead dog's cock about Truth, this wouldn't be happening. I wouldn't be seeing a Transient woman with blood on her face huddled in a porn store doorway clutching her belly. I wouldn't be looking down at a dead boy, thirteen if he's a day, draped over the hood of a police wagon. No one's eyes would be bleeding from incapacity sprays or the nerve bomblets the cops are launching down Cranberry. I wouldn't be surround up here by the people who have to live and work here, weeping openly. Enjoying this? You like the way I describe disgusting shit happening to people you probably walked past in the street last week? Good. You earned it with your silence. You see, here's how it works; Civic Center and the cops do what the fuck they like, and you sit still. Your boss does what he likes. The asshole at the tollbooth, the bouncer at your local bar, the security guy who frisks you at the clinic, the papers and feedsites that lie to you for the hell of it. They do what they like. And what do you do? You pay them. This “riot” here, this terrible shit-rain visited upon a bunch of naive and uppity fetishists; you paid for it. Lap it up. You must like it when people in authority they never earned lie to you.”

-Spider Jerusalem (Warren Ellis), Transmetropolian #3: Up on the Roof [1997]