Author: Gary Beck Source: https://www.polseguera.com/writers/writing-732_double-envelopment.html Double Envelopment Gary Beck/Double Envelopment   Unfair A child asked me: "Why do some people have so much and some so little?" I searched for words of comfort, but found none. I considered explanations, greed, capitalism, inherited wealth, but they wouldn't mean anything to a child. The best I could manage, "It's always been that way," brought a cry of despair: "It's not fair!" In an anguished voice at the shock of inequality, in a woeful lament that redress of grievances would not be answered.     Urban Sight The creaky, old homeless woman, ravaged by unmet demands pulls her cart of broken dreams as she trudges unkind streets that do not welcome outcasts, concrete without compassion for relics of once normal lives.     Immigrant I carry the delivery bag and no one looks at me. They ignore the delivery boy and I can't tell them I'm a man, not a boy. I hate my boss who talks down to me, because I'm an immigrant. I hate the people who tip me as much as those who don't. They are all the same, despising me. I try not to think of the old days when I walked with Shining Path, carried an AK-47... No one laughed at me then. Now I am a delivery boy and must eat my pride.     The Way In the ongoing war between capital and labor that surely started in the caves if not sooner, labor almost always lost, except for a brief time in 1940s America, when unions exerted temporary strength that compelled concurrence from begrudging bosses.   Then capital developed international mobility and no longer needed American workers who gave their best on the assembly lines, but cost too much and made too many demands to be treated with care.   So the lords of profit closed their factories, abandoned the workers who made them rich and built in third world countries where labor was cheap and not empowered.   The decline of the blue collar class eroded the foundation of the nation built on sweat and muscle, now replaced by hi-tech service jobs for the underclass, unadaptable to the Information Age.   So the Land of Promise, the hope of the mass of humanity, now resembles other lands where the rich rule, their servants prosper while the rest of us struggle to survive.     Lost When a man lives on the street he is a true citizen of the disadvantaged world. Nairobi, Calcutta, New York… Did I say New York? How can the richest city ignore the abandoned begging on street corners, cardboard signs held low the flags of disenfranchisement. As the limousines drive by the occupants do not notice outcasts of despair.   Double Envelopment is an unpublished poetry collection in response to harsh conditions affecting many of our people, who only want a better future for their children.