I am so taken by the here and now. It's the sumo in front of me, two toddlers in its arms, my purse on its shoulder, my massive every day routine in its big, flabby belly. My here and now is my constant whine, my ready excuse, my trees for the forest.
I often wonder if any individual's ability to deal with their reality and see beyond marks them for success or failure in this country. Success as we used to define it.
This could be the mantra of the current American middle class. Caught up in the here and now. Unable to plan the future. And while our leaders dawdle, while we wrestle with our present, the future slips away: thoughts of college, buying a home, having health insurance or a pension fade or at least go gray.
More below the fold...
Earlier this week, Sen. John Edwards and Elizabeth Edwards dropped by Daily Kos to listen and respond to the community. The participation was amazing; the thread became weighty. I believe they truly wanted to know which issues mattered to us. My comment came in at the bottom, I doubt they’ll ever read it. But my favorite issue wasn’t really any different from many, many other posters in the thread.
Mine is the issue of the middle class and, by association, the heft and weight of our country’s future. It’s about my family, about most of us.
I am old enough to remember when a union member could afford to send their kids to college in a one-income family. I remember that that same family could buy a house. I remember when health insurance for the entire family was at least partially paid by the employer and the cost to the individual was nominal. I remember when California public schools were the best in the country. I remember when the amount of social security benefits made a big difference in a grandparent’s life. I remember when people earned and received pensions. I remember when a utility bill for an entire house was less than $50. I remember when $50 was a lot of money.
Today, in the American city, in the suburbs, home owners have met the problem of no raise in real wages, of layoffs and outsourcing, of inflation, of maintaining their lifestyles by turning to their piggy banks, the places formerly known as their homes. We are in debt up to our eyeballs and the very thing that was our protection against old age is an albatross around our necks. A dead and stinky bird which, though the Fed can’t smell it, rots and devalues with every passing day.
It’s not your home, it’s your bank; it’s not your home, it’s a threat; it’s not your home, it’s your burden.
In some American cities, the housing crash is immobilizing families. Where it hasn’t hit, home ownership is out of reach of nearly all middle income buyers. I saw neosleaze’s diary yesterday about the reality of inflation and, though I didn’t really understand all that he wrote in his semi-poetic style, the graphs spoke volumes. The message is clear: compared to the 1960s, we have no middle class. Two incomes today don’t buy half of what one income bought then. Debt is up 70% from 1967; incomes show only a .5% growth; cumulative inflation is off the charts.
Drought: $550K buys this two
bedroom in San Francisco. Nine
homes at this price or less in SF. | Glut: Each green balloon represents a
single two bedroom home for sale in
Boston for $550,000 or under. |
We have a leveraged class. A leveraged class subject to the after effects of fed money manipulation. If you owned a home, you watched the equity grow. If you got no or little increase in your wages or a spouse lost a job or if other family costs bore down on you, you re-financed. You are in debt and working only to pay it down. You can’t sell your house and buy
anything else; you can’t
refinance again. And
if the housing crash hasn’t hit your town, if housing costs are still sky high, you can’t afford to buy at all. If you can buy, it takes two incomes to pay the mortgage. College without student loans is impossible. Childcare takes up a huge chunk of cash. Health insurance isn’t paid for by employers who have either outsourced your job or taken you back as an independent contractor. Public schools across this nation are caught up in an arbitrary and unfunded test taking system. Monthly social security benefits cover groceries if you have a pension; catfood if you don’t. If you didn’t buy a home five years ago, the old adage of rent equaling one-third your pay is out the window. Pensions are no longer a part of employee benefits or, if they are, have been thrown back to the government with a lower monthly payout. Utility bills have skyrocketed and add anywhere from $100 to $300 to your monthly costs. My rent and utilities for the home I am about to lose are far more than I can afford.
Living room of the cheapest
home for sale in San Fran-
cisco. Bayview. $454,900. |
The home I am about to lose is a cavernous old flat in a two unit, San Francisco building. My neighbors are being evicted too. We’ve committed a major sin in San Francisco: we can’t afford to buy a home. Our rents are moderate, we’ve fought for heat in the winter and safe wiring and plumbing all year round from three different speculator landlords and now face eviction from our new owner, a "feminist filmmaker" who paid nearly one-and-a-half million for our building and can’t wait to upscale it for luxury buyers. We won’t be those buyers. We are two school teachers and one tenant activist with four little children all told and we can’t afford to buy our homes.
We are the alleged middle class; we are disappearing.
When we grew up, our parents could pay for our college, we had free health insurance, our families owned two cars, our mothers didn’t work; our utilities rates were low, our families owned our homes. Our children will rely on scholarship, worry about mom and dad being evicted, about having money to care for us when our pensions lose their purchasing power and social security doesn’t cover the shortfall. And they, too, will be that so-called “middle class,” that slot of income earners that made up the boring belt of our economy, relegated to wrestling the sumo in front of them, to holding down the fort at the expense of the future. Distracted by debt and expense, perhaps another senseless war fought by those on the fringes, the latest missing white girl, reality TV, celebrity divorce, illegal immigrant boogeymen.
They won’t see the forest for the trees, they’ll deal only with the here and now.