This is a complex topic that is deeply personal. But I believe we are humans who are capable of complex thought and we are allowed to talk about the bleak economic picture that so many of us face without having people yell, "WELL TRUMP WOULD BE WORSE." Therefore any more people saying "Trump will be worse!" will have their comments deleted. Thanks.
Decoupling healthcare from employment would (IMO) have so many positive 2nd order effects that most of us wouldn't recognize the country when all was said & done. I'd love to see it in my lifetime, but we're also a country that somehow decided free school lunches were a bad thing, so...
I don’t understand why companies don’t lobby to change this. It seems it would save them so much money not to have to fund insurance directly. And we all know how much corporations love to hoard money.
Because it would give their staff so much leverage if we could quit without worrying about how to fund health needs, is my theory. I think it would change the American workplace so much if we all had access to high quality healthcare regardless of where or if we were working.
The economy is booming…… for millionaires and billionaires price gauging everyone else. Their profits are at record highs. As well as the private equity firms buying up ‘average’ priced housing, renting it out and driving up the cost of housing by loss of supply. Somehow I’m making more money than ever but still living paycheck to paycheck and racking up CC debt to survive. So yeah the economy is ‘booming’, just not for normal folks. It drives me nuts when pundits equate the health of the stock market to the economy as a whole. While they are related, one does not = the other.
I'm currently reading Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond. Your article calls out many of the same concerns. It feels overwhelming to think things will change, though I appreciate that he seems to be working through some ideas that may be effective.
Unlike so many Americans who think the 1950’s or 1980’s were such a good time, my family was always poor. I am a child of welfare and section 8 housing. After my mom’s divorce, she worked herself out of poverty while having 4 kids. We were not like those folks who said “we were poor and didn’t know it - we knew. I was traumatized at 12 when we went to help my aunt who got evicted and the sheriff’s dumped all her belongings on the street. People brazenly walked up and took her belongings while we were trying to pack her up. I knew I would never ever be in that situation again.
I don’t know what the economy is going to look like as my kids (20’s) enter their careers. And while we are not rich by a long shot, I don’t freak out in the grocery store like I did when my kids were young and I was working part time so we could save on childcare.
I wanted to be able to take housing off my kids plate so we brought a bigger house. One that would accommodate my aging in-laws and my kids. I hope my kids take advantage of staying with us until they can afford to buy a home - even a condo. Unfortunately, this whole racket is based on homeownership and defined pensions. We can help my kids with the first but pensions are scarce.
bless you for providing that multi-generational family home! that's wonderful. i'm sure that it must sometimes be difficult but it's also a sign of your generous spirit and family strength. applause!!!
I'll vote for him, but man, I hate having to defend this administration right now. Things do suck. It's awful being in this country right now. I'd love to have something to vote *for*, instead of just voting against Trump.
the only time that i voted 'for' a presidential candidate in my 50 year voting history was for obama. twice. every other time i have been voting 'against' the other candidate. it's a thing.
This is the first time I will be voting 3rd party. I know, I know... but I absolutely cannot stomach either of the options this time, what with the genocide and all. I just can't put my name on it.
It is certainly upsetting to feel that your vote doesn’t count, and that a protest vote would be better. And I understand not wanting to vote on a candidate that doesn’t represent your beliefs. Knowing that, a protest vote this election is a vote for the Republican. This is the truth. Just like when people voted for Nader in 2000 - and Bush squeaked in. It’s what happened, and it’s why we have Alito as on SCOTUS, and why the Iraq war began. If you can live with the consequences of having the Republican back in, then yes, vote for the 3rd party.
I've voted 3rd party before but would any of the current crop of 3rd party candidates be better than Biden or Trump? Chris Christie was on a podcast recently saying that the polling he's seen can't determine who a vote for the No Labels party would help or hurt. For me, since I believe that electing the R's candidate would be the end of democracy, the acceleration of climate collapse and likely be the start of war on a global scale, I can't afford to not vote for the pro-democracy candidate who can actually win. There's no room for error for voting 3rd party this time in my view.
Yes American life is more expensive. For those that care to do the research we have data on inflation by sectors and very specific categories. The point is which Presidential candidate will do better for Americans. Period. All the “Biden could do more” is undisciplined handwringing. He doesn’t control the House and has a 50-50 Senate given the two Dino’s which is a filibuster mess. We must work in the realm of possible. A protest “vibe-vote” for ANYONE other than Biden will hasten your personal economic misery AND cost you all your remaining female reproductive healthcare rights including, likely, birth control (Trump’s own recent declaration.).
I think the current economic setup is untenable for about 80% of us, and no candidate is capable of the transformative change required. Biden wants to cap childcare at $10 a day but it’s hard to imagine that not becoming a sacrifice the same way free pre-k was.
Well for starters we could move minimum wage back to where it was in 1980 indexed for inflation which I think is about $22/hr. A living minimum wage. All else follows. Care providers can eat and pay bills, service industry workers don’t need two or three jobs and on and on. Don’t cry about wage-flation. That’s billionaire-pay. See how fast that has gone up.
I have been thinking a lot about this lately too and have sadly concluded that if Coca-Cola, Frito Lay, Smithfield and Purdue cut prices it would be the biggest influence on the election (other than ending the genocide in Gaza.) That's why I am glad that this Administration has been active in anti-trust enforcement including Google (active) and Live Nation/Ticketmaster (coming) that they somehow fail to talk up.
I'm sure other readers already knew, and I recently learned, that in the early 1970s our Congress voted for a system of nationwide childcare that could be affordable and available for everyone--and then Nixon vetoed it, because "having the state take care of children is Communisn." I'm glad my kids are past day care age, but daycare is somehow both incredibly expensive and also doesn't pay its workers enough.
The cost of all the essentials (a non-exhaustive list that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation) has increased so much in a short period of time that it puts us all in a precarious position. The vibe I'm getting is that multiple bubbles will eventually burst at or around the same time. Or maybe it will be dominoes falling? Whatever it is, it's bad.
Having to do a little breathing. This post reflects why my tummy hurts all the time. For me it's the student debt/PhD trap, and now I'm an adjunct. I'm one of the best damn adjuncts you'll find, but I am growing more and more anxious and resentful at the incredibly low wage. I bought a generic damn pre-made pie crust because the brand name one was $8. That is double what it was a year ago. If my wages can stay the same, why not rent and food?
We are living the dream of an individualist society...in which individuals flourish & if the rest of us don't, it's probably our fault, in some fashion or another. Maybe more than anything else, it's the precarity of it all: that so many of us are living in a house of cards. I think I read somewhere, some pundit or twitter wit: why do we need billiionaires? Like what foul distortion of the US fever-dream about individualism makes it reasonable that anyone should have a fortune that size? Even when someone like Melinda Gates says she's going to give billions away towards programs aimed at gender equity (YAY her!) ... she's the exception (well, she and Mackenzie Scott. Do we make anything of the fact that they're women? I mean sure, there's Betsy DeVos, aka Cruella DeVil, but...) those exceptions are drops in proverbial buckets. Waaaay too many are living in houses built of cards. Maxed-out credit cards, mostly.
The persistent myth of the lone cowboy as the ideal American doesn't square with the fact that 333,000,000 of us sharing this country can't all be greed-driven individuals. Only the 1% can even afford to ride off into the sunset.
exactly! and of course the "lone cowboy" has been a myth since the get-go (since the giddyup?) ... cowboys worked in groups, often there were queer romances that developed, etc etc etc. It's a pervasive (masculinist) myth that's choking us as a country. <gets off soapbox, sorry>
Yes!!!!!!!!! The greed and individualism baked into American capitalism has always been present but went extreme under Reagan and hasn't slowed a bit. I'm supporting both my children in their 20s with housing because there is zero affordable housing where we live. I'm lucky that as a teacher I have a pension, but that only means that I'll need just a part time job when I retire rather than another full time job AND should any of us suffer the medical issues we've gone through so far once I don't have my employer insurance we're all up a creek. Trump will make it worse, but the status quo isn't good.
I live in one of the most expensive areas of the US (northeast - outside Boston). One of my neighbors recently sold their home for almost a million dollars. They have been unable to purchase a new home because there's next to zero inventory available, what inventory is available is so wildly overpriced, AND there's bidding wars where houses are going for $100K OVER asking price.
Another neighbor has their home on the market for almost $900K. It needs two new bathrooms (think salmon pink bathrooms from the 70s), a new kitchen (80s cabinets and flooring), and at least some work done in the finished basement and to the floors. It will go close to that price. In the meantime, we can't find my mother-in-law a new place to downsize because everything is so expensive she'll be paying more for a smaller house than the 5 bedroom she's in! It's insane!
I have two kids - one of whom is a teenage boy - and my grocery bills are almost $300/week. A WEEK. That's shopping with coupons and at three different grocery stores. They both need new clothes, new shoes constantly because they're growing all the time.
I am beyond grateful to have a job and that my husband has a job and that our jobs are relatively well paying. But in reality, we live paycheck to paycheck. It's bonkers.
Also thank you for tackling this subject. So many social media “discussions” devolve into people trying to score points off each other, there’s little room for thought. This is one of the few online places I feel to be healthy and respectful.
The only reason I was able to leave my abusive marriage and not have it completely ruin me financially, is because both of my parents died suddenly and closely to each other, and I received an inheritance. The only reason we are able to stay afloat now is because we sold my parents house and I got my share of the deal. I work for a non-profit, and we couldn't afford merit raises this year, so we only got a 3% cost of living raise. That is $64.83 per paycheck, before taxes. My costs of living have definitely increased at least triple that, and that is me incredibly low-balling that figure. When this money runs out, I simply have no idea what I'm going to do.
Jess, that is heartbreaking to hear. Congratulations on making it this far, although it crushes me that your survival was dependent on the unexpected deaths of your parents. Sending you hugs if you want 'em. Hang in there.
This is a complex topic that is deeply personal. But I believe we are humans who are capable of complex thought and we are allowed to talk about the bleak economic picture that so many of us face without having people yell, "WELL TRUMP WOULD BE WORSE." Therefore any more people saying "Trump will be worse!" will have their comments deleted. Thanks.
Decoupling healthcare from employment would (IMO) have so many positive 2nd order effects that most of us wouldn't recognize the country when all was said & done. I'd love to see it in my lifetime, but we're also a country that somehow decided free school lunches were a bad thing, so...
I don’t understand why companies don’t lobby to change this. It seems it would save them so much money not to have to fund insurance directly. And we all know how much corporations love to hoard money.
Because it would give their staff so much leverage if we could quit without worrying about how to fund health needs, is my theory. I think it would change the American workplace so much if we all had access to high quality healthcare regardless of where or if we were working.
Probably because paying for healthcare is a tax deduction or something
Right?!
The economy is booming…… for millionaires and billionaires price gauging everyone else. Their profits are at record highs. As well as the private equity firms buying up ‘average’ priced housing, renting it out and driving up the cost of housing by loss of supply. Somehow I’m making more money than ever but still living paycheck to paycheck and racking up CC debt to survive. So yeah the economy is ‘booming’, just not for normal folks. It drives me nuts when pundits equate the health of the stock market to the economy as a whole. While they are related, one does not = the other.
I'm currently reading Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond. Your article calls out many of the same concerns. It feels overwhelming to think things will change, though I appreciate that he seems to be working through some ideas that may be effective.
That’s a really good book. Depressing, but very informative.
Unlike so many Americans who think the 1950’s or 1980’s were such a good time, my family was always poor. I am a child of welfare and section 8 housing. After my mom’s divorce, she worked herself out of poverty while having 4 kids. We were not like those folks who said “we were poor and didn’t know it - we knew. I was traumatized at 12 when we went to help my aunt who got evicted and the sheriff’s dumped all her belongings on the street. People brazenly walked up and took her belongings while we were trying to pack her up. I knew I would never ever be in that situation again.
I don’t know what the economy is going to look like as my kids (20’s) enter their careers. And while we are not rich by a long shot, I don’t freak out in the grocery store like I did when my kids were young and I was working part time so we could save on childcare.
I wanted to be able to take housing off my kids plate so we brought a bigger house. One that would accommodate my aging in-laws and my kids. I hope my kids take advantage of staying with us until they can afford to buy a home - even a condo. Unfortunately, this whole racket is based on homeownership and defined pensions. We can help my kids with the first but pensions are scarce.
bless you for providing that multi-generational family home! that's wonderful. i'm sure that it must sometimes be difficult but it's also a sign of your generous spirit and family strength. applause!!!
I'm so sorry for what you went through. I can relate, as my sister also experienced an eviction where everything was dumped on the street.
This world is a really shitty place sometimes. I wish humans would be nicer to each other.
Good job, pulling yourself through all those trials!!
Fellow welfare baby here. I feel you so much!
The American Dream needs to move off of “make enough money to isolate myself and my loved ones from the problems”
We should be so lucky!
I'll vote for him, but man, I hate having to defend this administration right now. Things do suck. It's awful being in this country right now. I'd love to have something to vote *for*, instead of just voting against Trump.
the only time that i voted 'for' a presidential candidate in my 50 year voting history was for obama. twice. every other time i have been voting 'against' the other candidate. it's a thing.
This is the first time I will be voting 3rd party. I know, I know... but I absolutely cannot stomach either of the options this time, what with the genocide and all. I just can't put my name on it.
It is certainly upsetting to feel that your vote doesn’t count, and that a protest vote would be better. And I understand not wanting to vote on a candidate that doesn’t represent your beliefs. Knowing that, a protest vote this election is a vote for the Republican. This is the truth. Just like when people voted for Nader in 2000 - and Bush squeaked in. It’s what happened, and it’s why we have Alito as on SCOTUS, and why the Iraq war began. If you can live with the consequences of having the Republican back in, then yes, vote for the 3rd party.
Yeah, and how fucked up is it that these are the choices?
I've voted 3rd party before but would any of the current crop of 3rd party candidates be better than Biden or Trump? Chris Christie was on a podcast recently saying that the polling he's seen can't determine who a vote for the No Labels party would help or hurt. For me, since I believe that electing the R's candidate would be the end of democracy, the acceleration of climate collapse and likely be the start of war on a global scale, I can't afford to not vote for the pro-democracy candidate who can actually win. There's no room for error for voting 3rd party this time in my view.
Yes American life is more expensive. For those that care to do the research we have data on inflation by sectors and very specific categories. The point is which Presidential candidate will do better for Americans. Period. All the “Biden could do more” is undisciplined handwringing. He doesn’t control the House and has a 50-50 Senate given the two Dino’s which is a filibuster mess. We must work in the realm of possible. A protest “vibe-vote” for ANYONE other than Biden will hasten your personal economic misery AND cost you all your remaining female reproductive healthcare rights including, likely, birth control (Trump’s own recent declaration.).
I think the current economic setup is untenable for about 80% of us, and no candidate is capable of the transformative change required. Biden wants to cap childcare at $10 a day but it’s hard to imagine that not becoming a sacrifice the same way free pre-k was.
Well for starters we could move minimum wage back to where it was in 1980 indexed for inflation which I think is about $22/hr. A living minimum wage. All else follows. Care providers can eat and pay bills, service industry workers don’t need two or three jobs and on and on. Don’t cry about wage-flation. That’s billionaire-pay. See how fast that has gone up.
Sadly $22 an hour is not livable in my city.
would you even have the votes! That’s the question.
I have been thinking a lot about this lately too and have sadly concluded that if Coca-Cola, Frito Lay, Smithfield and Purdue cut prices it would be the biggest influence on the election (other than ending the genocide in Gaza.) That's why I am glad that this Administration has been active in anti-trust enforcement including Google (active) and Live Nation/Ticketmaster (coming) that they somehow fail to talk up.
I'm sure other readers already knew, and I recently learned, that in the early 1970s our Congress voted for a system of nationwide childcare that could be affordable and available for everyone--and then Nixon vetoed it, because "having the state take care of children is Communisn." I'm glad my kids are past day care age, but daycare is somehow both incredibly expensive and also doesn't pay its workers enough.
The cost of all the essentials (a non-exhaustive list that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation) has increased so much in a short period of time that it puts us all in a precarious position. The vibe I'm getting is that multiple bubbles will eventually burst at or around the same time. Or maybe it will be dominoes falling? Whatever it is, it's bad.
Having to do a little breathing. This post reflects why my tummy hurts all the time. For me it's the student debt/PhD trap, and now I'm an adjunct. I'm one of the best damn adjuncts you'll find, but I am growing more and more anxious and resentful at the incredibly low wage. I bought a generic damn pre-made pie crust because the brand name one was $8. That is double what it was a year ago. If my wages can stay the same, why not rent and food?
And as soon as you do get a raise, the landlord takes it all. You can never win.
#facts
We are living the dream of an individualist society...in which individuals flourish & if the rest of us don't, it's probably our fault, in some fashion or another. Maybe more than anything else, it's the precarity of it all: that so many of us are living in a house of cards. I think I read somewhere, some pundit or twitter wit: why do we need billiionaires? Like what foul distortion of the US fever-dream about individualism makes it reasonable that anyone should have a fortune that size? Even when someone like Melinda Gates says she's going to give billions away towards programs aimed at gender equity (YAY her!) ... she's the exception (well, she and Mackenzie Scott. Do we make anything of the fact that they're women? I mean sure, there's Betsy DeVos, aka Cruella DeVil, but...) those exceptions are drops in proverbial buckets. Waaaay too many are living in houses built of cards. Maxed-out credit cards, mostly.
The persistent myth of the lone cowboy as the ideal American doesn't square with the fact that 333,000,000 of us sharing this country can't all be greed-driven individuals. Only the 1% can even afford to ride off into the sunset.
exactly! and of course the "lone cowboy" has been a myth since the get-go (since the giddyup?) ... cowboys worked in groups, often there were queer romances that developed, etc etc etc. It's a pervasive (masculinist) myth that's choking us as a country. <gets off soapbox, sorry>
You go! No need to apologize.
Yes!!!!!!!!! The greed and individualism baked into American capitalism has always been present but went extreme under Reagan and hasn't slowed a bit. I'm supporting both my children in their 20s with housing because there is zero affordable housing where we live. I'm lucky that as a teacher I have a pension, but that only means that I'll need just a part time job when I retire rather than another full time job AND should any of us suffer the medical issues we've gone through so far once I don't have my employer insurance we're all up a creek. Trump will make it worse, but the status quo isn't good.
One hundred percent to the last sentence. Trump was the personification of 80s excess to boot
I live in one of the most expensive areas of the US (northeast - outside Boston). One of my neighbors recently sold their home for almost a million dollars. They have been unable to purchase a new home because there's next to zero inventory available, what inventory is available is so wildly overpriced, AND there's bidding wars where houses are going for $100K OVER asking price.
Another neighbor has their home on the market for almost $900K. It needs two new bathrooms (think salmon pink bathrooms from the 70s), a new kitchen (80s cabinets and flooring), and at least some work done in the finished basement and to the floors. It will go close to that price. In the meantime, we can't find my mother-in-law a new place to downsize because everything is so expensive she'll be paying more for a smaller house than the 5 bedroom she's in! It's insane!
I have two kids - one of whom is a teenage boy - and my grocery bills are almost $300/week. A WEEK. That's shopping with coupons and at three different grocery stores. They both need new clothes, new shoes constantly because they're growing all the time.
I am beyond grateful to have a job and that my husband has a job and that our jobs are relatively well paying. But in reality, we live paycheck to paycheck. It's bonkers.
Also thank you for tackling this subject. So many social media “discussions” devolve into people trying to score points off each other, there’s little room for thought. This is one of the few online places I feel to be healthy and respectful.
The only reason I was able to leave my abusive marriage and not have it completely ruin me financially, is because both of my parents died suddenly and closely to each other, and I received an inheritance. The only reason we are able to stay afloat now is because we sold my parents house and I got my share of the deal. I work for a non-profit, and we couldn't afford merit raises this year, so we only got a 3% cost of living raise. That is $64.83 per paycheck, before taxes. My costs of living have definitely increased at least triple that, and that is me incredibly low-balling that figure. When this money runs out, I simply have no idea what I'm going to do.
Jess, that is heartbreaking to hear. Congratulations on making it this far, although it crushes me that your survival was dependent on the unexpected deaths of your parents. Sending you hugs if you want 'em. Hang in there.