1978, all things considered, is better than where we are now. I remember seeing these big guys with sunglasses in the periphery of the men's department of Bloomingdales in White Flint. Turns out I was standing about 2 feet away from Rosalyn waiting for the cashier. I smiled pleasantly at her as she finished her transaction which was a package of underwear. No biggie. She smiled back. That was it. I guess Jimmy was getting some tightie whities under the Xmas tree.
Minimum wage was $2.90/hr. There were solar panels on the WH. There was a huge rally on the Mall for SunDay which promoted solar energy. We had trash cans everywhere that said: "Don't be a litterbug". Gas was cheap and cars got rather good gas mileage. Mine got 55mpg. If you had a television you could pick it up, move it, plug it in and watch it. If you had cable, MTV was 24/7 solid music videos and no commercials.
Most everybody I knew was thrifty. We recycled. We scavenged, we reused. We helped each other with work and projects. We had jobs, but most of us didn't have health insurance. We did things ourselves.
Flash forward 33 years later and everything costs something. In order to watch television you need to have more than the television, you need to have a "content provider". You have to have a phone, at least a cell phone which necessitates another "provider". In order to have internet you have yet another "provider". All these provisions have taxes piled on them. We're almost to 1978 home prices with 2010 property taxes. I've never had health insurance. I've never had a job that offered it. Luckily I'm a sturdy unit and have gotten by with fee for services for infrequent acute issues. I said NEVER. Most of the people I know are in the same boat, or they have insurance, but the coverage is such it doesn't mitigate what they will have to pay by that much, even though they pay out the nose for it. Everybody I know would buy into a public option. But we didn't even get that. What we got was a mandate to buy into private, for profit insurance. Thanks a whole freaking lot. By the time the ACA might have some force, it could be sundered by your weak policy making. Don't expect me to run out and get me some. I won't. And you won't be able to fine me for it because I'm not making enough to pay any taxes because I don't have a job. I've been over here eating grass, because my peas ran out a long time ago.
I find your condescension inexcusable. I can certainly understand what the debt limit is, even though you didn't deign to speak on it further because I might not get it. I get it. You don't get it. The income disparity in this country is shameful. Do you think people don't know? They know. There is no more sharing or compromising from the vast bottom, we're tapped out. You can sit there in castle keep and look out over the muddy squalor and expect more? What more? Over 20% of people have no health insurance. About the same amount have no jobs. The cohort that is not getting Medicare now will be more sickly and more expensive when they get there, IF they get there. Or is that the goal? Is there a class war for attrition? Are you hoping they die off before the gov't has to pay off? And before you get an attitude that I'm being hyperbolic, it's already going on with Veterans.
If you want to be taken seriously as anything other than an enabler for the pecuniary class, you need to stop telling us to "eat your peas" and tell the upper 2% to start giving back the cornucopia they stole. You need to end the wars, prop up Medicare, SS and the flaccid DOJ. Enforce the damn laws. Didn't you take an oath or something? Last I looked, fostering fraud wasn't something one could campaign on. Your base is eroding. Independents are not really independent, they just wait until the last minute and act with less information and less background. They're not paying attention to your "deftness" with the process. They don't care about the process. They don't care if you're NICE. Get over it and eat your own damn peas.