Phil Gramm and his buddies are doing just fine, aren't they?
If gas got to $10/gal, Phil and the GOP elite would still be doing just fine. After all, they've spent the last 40 years raping and pillaging the Constitution and this nation, contorting laws for their own purposes and lying with every breath they can muster.
What they don't seem to get is when people like me, and the others like me, who shopped at the grocery and paid their bills regularly, are having trouble that means the economy is in serious trouble, no matter what's on paper. After all, without us spending what we do, what's to keep our consumerist economy afloat.
We need am angel network. Or something. Maybe a rich person could adopt me?
I'm on my last legs, financially. I'm trying to make sure my car doesn't quit, and it's trying to do it as we speak. Because, mostly likely, I'm one rung below you on the economic ladder and I have a kid, things are at the breaking point.
I'm not self-employed so work hours are fixed, and there is no bus line from my trailer park into the city. There is a busy major highway, though. I've thought about biking, after all it's only 10 miles each way, but what to do about the 10 year old? I'm sure she could bike it, but the safety of it keeps me up nights. (The summer camp program is actually ~4mi from our home.
No summer camp program for her, if I can't get there. No job if I can't demonstrate reliable transportation and child care, and guess what? I'm not sure I can anymore.
A year ago I had $3000 in immediate savings, was diverting $100/mo into the account. I also have a retirement account that I auto-deduct into too. $2000+ in car repair and miscellaneous unplanned expenses (like illness - I have coverage like you, but they increased premium/co-pay and decreased benefits so it's basically catastrophic ONLY anymore - and I work for a city govt!), and guess what? I've got zilch in savings now.
The $100 a mo? That is now absorbed into gas, groceries and utilities. In short, it no longer exists. And guess what? City's in shortfall now, so no raises. No bonuses. No overtime.
Without transportation, I can't even get - drum roll, pls, a second job.
But hey, don't take this as whining, Phil Gramm. If worse comes to worse, I'll have to cash out retirement savings and take a blistering tax hit. Or, I could quit my job due to transportation issues and become one of the hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed. Y'know those folks? The ones it was decided NOT to extend benefits for?
Like my mom, who lost her job due to cut backs a couple of months ago. She's 60, Phil. Six-oh. She should not be trying to find a job, she should be trying to retire. Now, she's not sure she'll ever be able to stop working, and she's gone home to Jersey to live with her 86 year old mother, who's on Social Security and my grandfather's postal pension.
From my point of view, Phil, things are pretty fucking bleak. I'm on my second day of ~5 hrs sleep, and I have a knot in my shoulder and the beginnings of an ulcer.
I'm 36, Phil. Thirty-fucking-six. And I'm terrified we won't make it.
Not just me. Not just my daughter, but the whole fucking lot of us working class folks. I will enter mid life as broke as I was in college, and it's not because I have a drug habit, or a criminal record. I have consistently held a job my whole life.
If you and John McCain can't understand where I'm coming from, it's not really a surprise, Phil. That's why I am voting for Barack Obama in November.