two cheers For Yuppies - Part Two

   Two Cheers For Yuppies part Two


    I'll call this man James. I met him over 40 years ago.
    James was a yuppie though that word hadn't been invented in 1973. He was studying to be an economist. "He's so clever. He knows so much," said the woman who was living with him.
    She later became a famous media star. Frankly I preferred her to her boyfriend. And she was clever too. Yet James was bright.
    Yet he was a horrible man who had complete contempt for most people. "Look at this bunch," he once said about a group of people at a party we were at. "Wow, they're really dumb." James is one of the reasons I don't want to praise yuppies too much.
      Then there was another yuppie I knew whom I'll call Frank. He wasn't a nice person either. He studied hard to be a natural resources economist. He knew everything about the price of coal, iron nickel, copper and many other minerals. Yet Frank had no time for the people who worked in the mines.
    He launched a personal crusade to cut the costs of the company he worked for. "Yes, we're laying off people," he proudly boasted in the 1980's. "our job is to keep profits up, which means keeping wages down. That's what business is all about."
     He also made it a badge of honour to pay as little income tax as he could.
     Another man I'll call Leon came to Vancouver's downtown eastside to meet a woman. Leon sat in this very poor area of the city in a run down cafe sipping a coffee some time in the 1980's. "You work here, do you?" this tall blonde 40 something said to an anti-poverty activist who sat at the same table as Leon. Leon shook his fine-featured face with contempt at the whole scene.
    Leon was a lawyer who was an arch-snob.
    So was a woman I''ll call Andrea. She met a man at a party in the 1980's. Years before this both of them had worked in a government office. Back then, this man didn't have his own desk, though Andrea did.
   Andrea made a point of reminding the man how she'd always had her own desk. To her, this showed that she was a far better person than this other office worker. "You finally got your own desk, did you?" she asked. "I never thought you'd get one." Andrea was an accountant who clearly liked herself, but not too many other people.
     The list of yuppies I've known could stretch around a half a dozen city blocks. Some of them were nice people. Many of them ended up in the co-op I live in. Yet other yuppies I've known were just horrible people. They worshipped the status quo and adored wealth and power.
    Now we need yuppies. So much ot the technological innovation comes from the hard work of yuppies. They definitely know how to run the society and increase wealth in the post -industrial world we live in. Yet some of the yuppies I've known truly turned me off.
   So two cheers for yuppies but certainly not three.