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Wake up folks!
We are in for a long haul, and it is going to get worse before it gets better. ‘Normal’ ain’t coming back for a loooong time. I don’t have to read all the reports and projections. Neither do you. Just ask your friends!
How many of you have stories to relate about your friends or acquaintances having difficulty? Either they are out of a job, having trouble getting a modification for their mortgage (Hey, why do they need one in the first place?), having to get part time work tutoring, or at the diner, or doing childcare. How many of your kids can’t afford nannies or baby sitters and leave the kids off with you for the day while they go to work or look for work?
If you have a small business, are your credit cards maxed out? What if you needed $10,000 for an emergency to buy inventory or make payroll? How many times could you meet that need compared to a year ago? Thank God gasoline has been steady—what would happen to your budget if it went back up to $4/gallon? Can you afford to make that health insurance payment since it doubled when you turned 61? How many of your friends have increasing medical bills and needs and no insurance at all?
How many of you have lost 50%+ in your retirement accounts? And the stock market is back to 10,000+! (Has your retirement account recovered?) How many of you have basically tapped out your home equity lines? How many of you are burdened by credit card debt where the banks are charging you anywhere from 15-30% interest, and you can’t reduce the balance enough to make the payments less every month? How many of you are worried where the money is going to come from for all four years of your kid’s college education?
How about real estate? Anyone freaked out about mortgage payments you are making on real estate investments that have declined in value by almost 50%? No one is buying anything except the lowest bracket buyers, and they are buying foreclosures, short sales and auction properties. How many homes in your neighborhoods are up for sale or foreclosed already?
My point is that the signs are all around us. When you look at them one at a time it is daunting but psychologically manageable. But when you collectively take stock of the state of the nation and its people, it is very discouraging. You hear the employment projections every night on the news—after a while your mind is desensitized to it.
The biggest segment of the population right now is the Baby Boomer generation—people born in the late 40’s and early 50’s. 76 Million babies were born in this post WWII generation. They are all reaching retirement age now. How many of them can afford to retire? What happens when Social Security craters? In a society where information industries have eclipsed service industries, how many of these people are equipped to be out searching for jobs in the new information environment? By the way, who is going to hire a 60 year old?
I am a Boomer. I can’t think of one friend I have in my demographic that has told me what a grand time this is to be living in, and how they are so glad they provided adequately for these years. The stories I hear are about the fact that they are running out of money, or they are broke already. Business has dried up. Those that are entrepreneurs are struggling, with declining revenues for their businesses. Their credit lines have disappeared. One friend whose husband is a lawyer said that they don’t know how long they can continue to live on their savings before exhausting it. What will they do then?
How does a 60 year old person who has been successful all their lives and has had a career, and who expected to be able to ‘take their foot off the accelerator’ at this point in their lives, compete with people hungry for jobs who are twenty and thirty years younger? They don’t.
Of the 76 million Boomers born, only a small percentage of those are entrepreneurs. The vast majority are wage earners with limited or fixed incomes. When those people lose their jobs or their savings, what will they do? Who will take care of them as their medical needs become greater and all their savings run out?
These are penetrating questions with no answers. But it is clear to me that as we pass into 2010, the condition of all working class and middle income people is going to get worse. The dollar is going to continue to lose value and there will be much more unemployment, human suffering, hunger and possibly civil unrest. One thing we can count on is little or no help from our lawmakers. They are all living in a bubble in Washington.
What can we do? We can be kinder to each other. We are going to have to find new ways of living in our communities that are more about sharing and not so much about consuming. Pull your families and friends closer to you. There is strength and comfort in compassion and empathy. We are all truly in this together and I hope we ultimately see the rise of new kinds of leaders to usher us in to a new kind of era.
I don't want to be completely negative here, but I can't help remembering the words of the old Dylan song:
“Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows *)
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'..”
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