Slow Impoverishment in Middle Class American Life

As a retired person, I was already impoverished. Now I'm well on my way to destitute. I planned carefully for a much different life than I have now, but real life interfered and directions got changed.

I've never been much for communes, but I'm getting to the point that I want to contact everyone I know and talk them into joining me in some kind of communal living where maybe by pooling resources we can live half-way decently without ending up under the gov't's financial thumb and keep our independence.

Posted by Sara (Pal2Pal) at May 17, 2011 8:11 PM

Living it, watching it, tired of trying to explain it to my kids. "Even the North Pole is struggling." Damn Obama's hope and change and screw his blessings.

Posted by RedCarolina at May 17, 2011 8:52 PM

I take exception to one of the main points of your essay.

There is nothing slow about it. The last 20 years may have been slow, but the last two have been happening at almost breakneck speed. It is only the incredibly wealth of the USA that has kept things afloat this long.

but not for much longer.

Other than that minor quibble, spot on.

Posted by pdwalker at May 17, 2011 9:56 PM

One of my favorite things to is to go on long aimless drives. Lately, I haven't done it because of the fuel cost.

I look at my bank statements and I think "What the hell did I buy for 64 bucks on Saturday?" And then I realize, it was just for the gas.

Oh, well...who needs personal freedom anyway? I can just take the bus and then the long walk home from the bus stop will do me good, especially on those cold, rainy days.

Posted by Mumblix Grumph at May 18, 2011 12:21 AM

There won't be a second term. So don't worry. Poverty for American Taxpayers won't happen.

Oh he may win the election in 2012 but that's not the same as having a country over which one claims to hold office.

Posted by Peccable at May 18, 2011 5:44 AM

It's not just gasoline; electricity costs are likely headed up as well. The "progressives" seem determined to prohibit or at least delay all practical forms of electricity generation...even solar projects, when it is discovered that they need actual *transmission lines* to connect them to users, are stopped by environmentalists and NIMBYs.

And expensive electricity is not just a direct cost impact to consumers; it also makes American manufacturing less competitive.

A broad, affluent middle class was largely the result of broadly-distributed and reasonably-priced energy, especially in the form of electricity.

Posted by david foster at May 18, 2011 8:18 AM

Geez, Gerard,

Please don't try to cheer us up any more. I just lost my job, and am feeling low enough as it is!

Posted by leelu at May 18, 2011 9:45 AM

Equality of outcomes is what he wants. Unfortunately, Obama seems not to have noticed what happens when those policies were followed elsewhere. The USSR before the breakup, North Korea, Red China before the liberalization, Cuba, Chile under Allende, etc.

It is the so called Green movement that has been
guiding us down this path for thirty years now. Obama has just speeded things up. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) must be revised or repealed because it is the basis for the Greens to use the courts to stop or delay indefinitely the increased production of our own resources.

Getting rid of Obama will be a first step, but much, much more anti-Green activity will be required to turn things around. They are not environmentalists per se, they are utopians using the ESA to force the citizenry to conform to their vision of a pristine world that has never existed and never will.

Posted by Jimmy J. at May 18, 2011 11:32 AM

One thing I find so very darkly amusing in all this is how the feminists seem to be cheering Obama and his minions on in their apparent drive to make America poorer. I don't think that they realize (being too intent on their fellow-travelership) that female emancipation depends on physical strength being irrelevant to making a living. Make energy too expensive, and muscle-power starts becoming important again. He who brings home the bacon calls the shots, and pretty soon women are chattel again.

Obvious, no? But does that occur to our exalted leaders and their harpy fellow-travelers? Of course not-- they're far too well educated to ever follow a simple line of reasoning.

November 2012 can't come fast enough, Gerard.

Posted by Hale Adams at May 18, 2011 7:05 PM