Do you think you should be paid a higher wage for the work you do? Do you think the schools your children attend should be better? Do you think that there should not be such a wide difference in income and wealth between the rich and poor in this country with CEO’s receiving salaries of millions of dollars? How do you feel about people outside our state pouring huge amounts of money into advertisements to influence our Maine elections? How affordable is your healthcare? These are just five of the issues, which affect our lives a great deal, that were vastly different when I was growing up in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. Even well into the ’70s we had a strong middle class in America, wages were good, jobs with good healthcare were plentiful, and public schools were excellent in most places. Growing up in Detroit I had free violin lessons from third grade and still enjoy playing. Today, even with college degrees from good schools, my children have a much harder time earning a living than my husband and I did. They have a hard time finding good public schools for their kids. In one case they need fund-raisers to provide some of the needs of their children’s school. What happened?

Beginning in the 1980s the strength of unions which negotiated for fair wages began to weaken. This was in large part because of the people we put in office. Ronald Reagan did not like unions and did much to dismantle them. The power of Unions has been decreasing ever since. School taxes, which are funded by local property taxes, were set at fixed rates in many areas so they that they could not be raised appropriately as property values increased. California’s Proposition 13 is the best example of this. In 1978 voters in California voted to limit property taxes to the 1976 level with a 1 percent increase in taxes as property values increased. Californians lost billions over the years in taxes and went from having some of the best schools in the country to some of the worst. This year, 2018, they again have a measure on the ballot trying to counteract Proposition 13. All because of an unwise, self-serving vote 40 years before. It does matter what you vote for and if you vote.

In our governor’s race in Maine this year funding for schools appears to be a large issue with one candidate saying our schools are over-funded and another saying she wants to support our schools even more. Where do you stand? Is it important to you? If it is, you should find out what each candidate thinks about this and decide which one you agree with. And then vote.

These changes in income and support for a strong middle class in our country did not just happen by accident or because of “normal economic cycles,” as some would like you to believe. They happened because of the laws our legislators passed. Deregulation by congress of banking safeguards put in place after the Great Depression of the 1930’s caused the Great Recession in 2008. These deregulations allowed some people to make a lot of money, but in a dangerous way that eventually led to millions of people losing jobs and homes. It didn’t just happen. There is movement in congress again now to relax these safe-guards which are not as strong as the originals. Do we want another recession? We need to study these issues and vote.

I know it is hard to wrap your mind around some of these complicated matters. It is for me too. For a democracy to function, however, we need to be able to do this. If we don’t, those with the power will run away with the money, the taxes they should pay for schools that would give teachers a living wage. This has already happened to a large extent. The teachers I know in Maine do not make a living wage. My first career in the 1950’s was as an English teacher and I made a very good income, enough to help my parents, victims of the Great Depression, buy the only house they ever owned. What would make a bright young person today go into teaching as a career when they know they will not make a living wage in this profession, and it is a profession.

In the past year I was a little shocked to meet two Mainers on different occasions who did not know whether Obama was a Democrat or a Republican. They were smart, lovely people, but completely unaware of what was going on in the governing of their country. I was telling this to another Mainer I know, an intelligent woman, high school graduate, thinking she would be horrified at this revelation, and, lo and behold, she too did not know whether Obama was a Democrat or a Republican. None of the three had ever voted. These were just chance discoveries. I was not taking a survey. In the case of the last woman I spoke to, even though she’s a high school graduate she works very hard to make ends meet. I can understand that when she gets home from work, she wants to put her feet up and has l little energy to read a newspaper. She doesn’t even subscribe to one. But how are we going to gain back the much more stable society we once had if we do not have knowledgeable, engaged voters? How can we maintain a democracy except in name only?

According to the poles, Brett Kavanaugh was the least popular nominee ever considered for the Supreme Court. He was be sworn into office for life, regardless of our wishes, by the conservatives we put in office either by voting or not voting. He was be voted into office because he will vote with the conservatives on the court. “Conservative” usually means the well-to-do, the corporations, the powerful. It was the conservative judges on the Supreme Court who passed Citizens United, a ruling that individuals and corporations can give as much money as they wish in elections. They said that money is speech, so because we believe in free speech, they should be able to give as much money as they like. I do not believe money is speech. If you have more money than I do, you have more free speech than I do. I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t think corporations are persons either, but they ruled that they are, and so corporations can give unlimited money for elections also. But these conservative judges are in the majority now and with Justice Kavanaugh they will be in the majority for a long time.

It once was the case that to graduate from high school, you had to take a course in civics, so you would understand how our government functions, at least that was the case in Michigan where I grew up It’s my understanding that this requirement has gone by the boards. Why would that be? Could it be that some of the powerful people do not want an educated electorate? They don’t even want you to vote. They could not pass laws that benefit themselves, as they often do, if more people understood what was happening. While we are not paying attention, a lot is done under the radar we might not agree with if we were paying attention, and it affects us big time!

I agree with Obama: Indifference is the greatest danger to our democracy. We need to value our right to vote as the privilege it is—look how hard women early in the last century fought, were jailed, even beaten, in their effort to claim that right—or we could lose the oldest democracy on the planet. Other countries have lost theirs. Voting is a privilege, but it is also a duty. Study the issues. Discuss them with other people. Please. And vote.

Sarah Arnold is a psychologist in Topsham.

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