Cookies

A lot has been written and said in the last year or so about the economic state of this country. Too often, these explanations are so complicated that our eyes glaze over by the third or fourth paragraph. We KNOW things are bad, but we have trouble explaining it those who only get their information from sources like Rush Limbaugh or Faux News.

Yesterday, on Eat the State! (a publication produced here in Washington), Lansing Scott provided one of the better explanations I've read in a while. He utilized an illustration based on something most of us can readily identify with: cookies.

There’s a joke I’ve seen going around among friends on Facebook that goes like this: “A unionized public employee, a teabagger, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the teabagger and says, ‘Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.’”

This is such a clear illustration of what’s going on in our country right now, I hope the joke goes viral. I’ve seen it start a few good conversations, the kind of conversations we need more of right now.

This joke prompted me to do some cookie math of my own, based on my own inquiries into wealth distribution in America (seen here), as well as some excellent infographics just published by Mother Jones (seen here).

Let’s say you have 100 people lined up for 100 cookies. The very first guy (definitely a guy) takes 35 of the cookies for himself. By the time the first 10 people have passed by the cookie plate, 73 of the cookies are gone, leaving 27 cookies to divide among the remaining 90 people. By the time the next 10 people pass the cookie plate, there are only 15 cookies to divide among the remaining 80 people. And so on, until you have about 50 people forced to divide up the very last cookie.

That’s right: Half of all the people compete for just one out of 100 cookies, while just one guy makes off with over a third of all the cookies himself. Now you might ask: Who can even eat 35 cookies? Is that healthy? The answer is no. It’s sick. But that’s our country right now.

Of course it works out very nicely for those first few cookie hoarders if the majority of people focus their attention on fighting over remaining cookies rather than asking why so few cookies are left. And now those cookie hoarders are shamelessly demanding more cookies for themselves, and are using their cookie wealth to focus attention on the possibility that someone somewhere near the end of the line might get a crumb more than deserved, and other crumb-chasers should worry about that.

If we don’t pay close attention, the cookie monsters could succeed. They could get even more cookies for themselves and leave even fewer crumbs for the rest of us to fight over. But if we do pay close attention, and act accordingly, their shameless schemes could backfire. We could see a full-scale cookie rebellion.

Pass the chocolate chips, please.