Re: Sounds like fun (long) - Posted by Sailor
Posted by Sailor on October 19, 2008 at 17:24:43:
Rich, you said “The middle and lower classes work at jobs.”
That includes moi (even though I supposedly retired long ago), so I’d like to point out that we are a much more diverse group. Although my teaching & research career was as a government employee, even as a small business owner I have contributed a great deal of $$$ to the economy as both an employer & as a contractor of services. (First thing tomorrow, I’ll be calling my HVAC guy, begging him to come to work right away on one of my homes. Ka-ching, there goes another goodly sum into the local economy.) No matter if I had never worked for anything but the hourly minimum wage, my pay would have gone back into the economy as I paid my landlord, doctor, grocer, & car dealer. In fact, under those circumstances I would have also lined the pockets of more than one finance company. Instead of being able to Save a portion of my salary, under those circumstances, I’d have contributed 100% of my earnings to our economy.
Those are the circumstances of most of my tenants. The rest of them are on disability–no, not because they ever wanted to live that way, but because they lacked accessible health care that could have prevented or corrected their problems. They live in a society that has yet to recognize that basic universal health care is cheaper than a lifetime of gov’t checks.
There is nothing morally wrong with these tenants; in fact, I’d love to have all my units filled w/folks like them. They pay me $$$ like clockwork, have low expectations of me as a landlord, & never leave. Not only do they pay me thou$ands of dollars every year, but they are grateful for the box of chocolates I bring them at Christmas (unfortunately, the box only holds 14 oz. instead of a full lb. these days).
Those tenants who can still work, don’t make more than $11.50 an hour, which isn’t enough to put food on the table & $3-4 gas in the tank. It’s a payday to payday existence. The only way in my area for working folks to get more money is to become an entrepreneur. If they can scrape together enough to buy some equipment & do lawn care or some other service business that mostly pays in ca$h, they can eventually do well. Let me point out this only applies to males here. It takes more money here for a woman, as opening a beauty salon is almost the only option for women. There is a booming drug trade, though. That is our fastest growing industry; not only does the product provide temporary respite from daily life, not only necessitating the expansion of the Sheriff’s Dept., but the building of a large new jail. Oh, yes, & the drug-related (the accused’s alibi is his crack dealer) double ax-murders have sold newspapers & kept prosecutors & defense attorneys at full employment as we have just opened the 3rd trial. Thrift shops are doing a whale of a business as no one can afford Wal-Mart anymore. Yes, & the Women’s Shelter is at full capacity because more men are responding to their circumstances by beating up members of their own families.
Prospects have always been bleak for most folks here, & the record-busting energy prices have broken up some families as some fathers have gone elsewhere looking for jobs & mom + kids have moved in w/relatives where they all hunker down together.
Again I’m showing my age, but I recall times when families could own their own home & buy a brand new car every few years with only one working parent. If fathers worked some overtime & mothers stretched the grocery budget, they could even send kids to college. What’s the difference? J-O-B-S allowed families to stay together, & even if they didn’t exactly prosper, they could still dream the children would succeed where they couldn’t. My first 2 years of college were tuition-free, & the last 2 years I paid $90 a semester. (I didn’t request a diploma because it cost $5) Grad school was $180 per quarter. There was no such thing as a Pell grant, but then we didn’t incur 100k in student loans, either.
So if jobs propelled the economy then, why not now? Oops, did we forget to keep open our factories? No, it isn’t really that simple. However, if we can temporarily brush aside the cobwebs of foreign financing of our national debt, hedge funds, trade deficits & other complex factors, it comes down to the fact that we don’t have make things to sell. It’s actually pretty simple–if you want sell @ a flea (or any other) market, you have to bring products.
In my opinion, tax credits (though I love 'em), tax increases, tax decreases, vague campaign promises–they are all band-aids. We can busy ourselves putting various fingers in the dike, but I do not see hope until we recognize & address the fact that unless we manufacture goods, all we have to sell is ourselves & the futures of our children.
The Chinese have learned that people like & need “stuff.” When did we forget that if you take raw materials & add value by making them into products people want, you can exchange those products with others so that all sides prosper?
This isn’t political, as I haven’t heard either side offer possible solutions, or even display any common sense. This isn’t the 1st negative campaign (anyone remember 1964 or even 2000?), but I’m becoming a little testy about the failure to propose what amounts to mega-baksheesh to special interest groups. Pay-offs don’t really trickle down all that much & aren’t going to rescue a very sick economy. Heck, we couldn’t even pep it up by fighting 2 wars @ the same time.
What I want to hear politically is that we value our diversities, but that because of them, just like a gene pool, we are stronger for them. I want to hear that our country is great & good, & that our common goals bring us together. I want to hear recognition that, yeah, things are bad, but that we’re going to join together succeed & be even greater. I want to hear that we are going to not only show the rest of the world how decency is done, but share w/it a map of the road to financial & political freedom. I want us to learn from our mistakes, & I want Common Sense 101 to be a required subject. I don’t want change as a political slogan from either side; in fact, I want solidarity & the sense of greatness & patriotic pride I felt as a child when I looked at our flag & recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Yes, right now I’m feeling pretty greedy–
Tye