Forty seven million can't afford health insurance.
Tens of millions have maxxed out their credit cards and are finding it hard to even make their minimum monthly payments.
Tens of millions have maxxed out their credit cards and are finding it hard to even make their minimum monthly payments.
Credit-Card Defaults Rise
Wall Street Journal -- August 29, 2007: With more Americans filing for bankruptcy... credit card defaults are on the rise... According to Moody's Invester Services, credit card compaines wrote off 4.58% of payments between January and may 2007, up nearly 30% from the same period in 2006."
Wall Street Journal -- August 29, 2007: With more Americans filing for bankruptcy... credit card defaults are on the rise... According to Moody's Invester Services, credit card compaines wrote off 4.58% of payments between January and may 2007, up nearly 30% from the same period in 2006."
Each day more and more formerly comfortable working families come to realize that their kids, stuck in substandard schools and faced with diminishing career choices, are not likely to get the same fair shot at the American dream they had – if only briefly.
They are also figuring out that the infrastructure in their cities and highways is crumbling and not likely to get fixed any time soon. Why? Because the rich demanded and got tax cuts so enormous that there's no money to spend on America's infrastructure.
They are also just starting to understand that's the real reason our passenger air service has become something akin to flying Greyhound Buses – only worse -- is because America's movers and shakers have shunned commercial air for the comfort of private jets – the aeronautical equivalent of gated communities.
Working stiffs, the ones that abandoned Democrats and have voted Republican ever since Ronald Reagan blew his “Morning in America” bullshit up their asses, are slowly figuring out that they've had – big time.
Finally, whatya think is going to happen when all those hyper-patriotic, hyper-religious, hyper-armed working folk figure out that America's corporate super-rich share none of their values. Not one. They don't even see themselves as Americans any more, but as corporate citizens of the world.
Maintaining America's infrastructure – the very backbone upon which most of the super-rich built their fortunes – is someone else's responsibility. Don't tax the rich to fix all those roads and bridges upon which they continue to ship their goods and commerce. If you do tax them for it, they threaten, they'll relocate their corporate headquarters to some other tax-friendlier country.
It hasn't happened yet -- my dard vision. Maybe it never will happen. Maybe they'll figure out how to keep fooling workers into accepting and expecting less while working harder and harder. After all, "worker productivity" has become the holy grail of success. Companies are no longer judged by good citizenship qualities but by how much product they can squeeze out workers at the lowest cost. Pensions, health insurance, protecting the environment... such factors are no longer considered good corporate policy, but rather drags on productivity. So, they had to go.
I don't know, maybe I worry too much. Maybe I'm just getting old and undergoing the inevitable process that makes old farts b*tch and complain about everything and anything. I admit that I do, from time to time, pine away for the America of my youth. At time between the end of World War II and the pre-Reagan era when a man like my father, who never finished high school because of the depression, was able to start his own business, work hard and attain a solid upper middle class lifestyle. He was not the exception back then, but the rule.
It was time when that carrot at the end of the stick -- the American dream -- was actually attainable by almost anyone willing to work hard. The carrot is still being hung out there, but the stick is now so long fewer and fewer can ever hope to attain the prize. Which is why fewer and fewer even bother trying.
Last month WallMart announced lower earnings expectations going forward. The company's chief financial officer noted the reason being that, “Clearly our customers are running out of money before the end of each month.”
Well, yeah. Duh.
And the US stock market convulses daily now. Some days it struggles off the floor, gives everyone a big thumbs up, only find itself face down on the floor in convulsions the next day. It's all about that blood supply being horded by that 1%.
Meanwhile in Europe savvy traders are betting on trouble.. big trouble.
Mystery trader bets market will crash by a third
16 Aug 2007--An anonymous investor has placed a bet on an index of Europe's top 50 stocks falling by a third by the end of September, as world equity markets plunged for a third day and volatility hit a three-year high. (Full)
16 Aug 2007--An anonymous investor has placed a bet on an index of Europe's top 50 stocks falling by a third by the end of September, as world equity markets plunged for a third day and volatility hit a three-year high. (Full)
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