Editor's Voice

By Miguel Vieira

Food and Gas Prices Crisis level the playing field of social classes

The up until recently unthinkable, but now very real, five dollars for a gallon of gas, and astronomically high prices for essential staple foods, are not only a problem in Chicago or the U.S. in general. Working and middle classes in Europe, Asia and certainly Africa and Latin America are feeling the pinch in their pocketbooks as a result of the crisis. No longer is the constant embarrassing inability to purchase enough food for one's self or family or not being able to put fuel in one's vehicle, the province of the poor.  Whether from Chicago, Dublin Ireland, or Singapore, a fast rising reality is changing the context of social classes as we know it. Middle, and in some cases, upper-middle income people, now have to significantly reduce their conspicuous consumerist habits to cope with the global high fuel and food prices. The reduction of ultra consumerist habits, by the aforementioned groups, compels them, if only a little, to empathize with the plight of the world's poor and working poor who have had to endure the current crisis their whole lives. This is, therefore, an ironic leveling of the playing field, if only temporary, of the world's social classes.