Layoffs are up again, orders for big ticket items down and new home sales at their slowest pace in years.
We recently heard that the economy is “gaining momentum,” with a big jump in the so-called Gross Domestic Product, which, by the way comes out again with revisions tomorrow. I abhor giving the right-wing nuts a bit of attention here, but they’re correct: Unemployment, real unemployment is above 17 percent; we hear from the government that it’s closer to ten, but statistics are complex: people fall off the rolls, there are “marginally attached” workers and there are “discouraged” workers.
My own view, though it’s more visceral than anything else, is that the number of jobless is even higher, but that’s not what’s important in this writing.
I’m wondering about that which we call “lifestyle,” and how it’s changing for many of us, perhaps most of us. How it’s affecting our families and friends. Are married couples, work-a-day married couple engaging in more arguments over money?
It’s tough to know if one reads the blogs. There are so many young couples writing regularly that their lives are just “peachy keen.” Children with smiling faces and families getting together for events: Everything seems just fine, eh?
Tilting a bit toward hyperbole, as I often do, I think of that almost caricatured interview with the neighbor of a mass murderer who says, “Well, he certainly seemed normal to me; we talked everyday about our gardens.”
Are they all living on psychotropics or is there a level of anxiety we need to push down just to get through the day?
I make a pretty good living, though my income’s down a bit from a year ago and I’m concerned. I’m a left wing liberal Democrat from New York who voted for this administration, and I feel it’s letting me down. I worry and I’m not prone to apprehension.
More than two decades I spent in Washington, DC as a reporter and from virtually everything I read, from legitimate sources anyway, there seems to be no change, just the “gridlock,” now the current word in fashion for the pundits (thankfully, “kerfuffle” seems to have faded away).
Have you ever wondered: What is my Senator or Congressman doing to put a buck in my pocket? To make me feel better? To assuage this almost overwhelming concern of “what bad news will the mail bring tomorrow?”
While we have brave men fighting abroad, we also have brave citizens fighting here just to get through the day and I give them credit for making from one hour to the next.
Many of my friends in the news business wonder whether their publication will be the next to fold and most aren’t my age. What will I do next, they muse. The fallback for reporters was always the PR business and that’s taking a huge hit these days.
Others in the sales business of one sort or another are seeing their commissions decline and closing cycles extend. A few have picked up jobs at fast food restaurants to make ends meet; a couple of the lucky ones a Starbucks where they have health insurance.
And that’s another issue: We were once a nation that extend a had to our fellow citizens in trouble. Not the raucous right wingers have convinced so many that should we have the “public option,” or “Government Run Healthcare,” we’ll be just a step away from becoming a Marxist nation. Jeez, I’m happy with Medicare and the government runs that.
I’m becoming convinced that pundits, especially those on television, whether on the right or left, should be forced to take a test and get licensed, or at least have an IQ of above 100. We listen far to much to these folks. And, yes, I do as well and frequently want to throw a brick through my television. Actually, that’s fast becoming almost cost effective with the price of flat screens almost at the bubkas level.
There seems so little heart left in our nation.
