The Economic Problem

Nothing in this post will be backed up with hard statistics, so take everything here with that caveat in mind. I really think there’s something to all the media hyping of a recession that goes beyond the fact that a Republican has been in office.

First off, anecdotal evidence exhibit A. I’m middle-aged, married, a couple years into a mortgage, one small child, another on the way. In my family and in our circle of friends are six other couples, all around the same general age and family size and economic bracket. Between us all there’s thirteen-and-one-half kids (the half is our mini-baby, not quite fully cooked yet). All but one couple are having difficulties making ends meet. Living paycheck to paycheck, running up credit cards, borrowing money from relatives, always on the make for a higher-paying job. The one couple that seems to be doing fine may be doing so because both sets of grandparents are retired and can watch their children and allow both husband and wife to work. Daycare for any of us in this group runs anywhere from $15,000 annually on up.

Anecdotal evidence exhibit B. In 1972 my parents bought their first house, in the same county where I now live, for $36,000. My father was a schoolteacher, my mother didn’t work. Money was tight, but it was affordable. When we got to school, my mother started working. We only had one car until that second salary came in.

Thirty-some years later I buy my first house, comparable in size if not a little smaller, for ten times that amount! And though I make more than your average middle-school math teacher, I ain’t making anywhere near ten times that figure. Plus, my wife works – and with her yearly bonus she makes more than I do! Still, money is so tight that, according to Quicken, we should be in the red every month. Somehow, we’re not, but I lack the energy or enthusiasm to research why. I’m just thankful, I suppose.

Exhibit C of anecdotal evidence. Jobs. Companies. Is it just me and my immediate circle of family and friends, or are companies responding as desperately as if Son of the Great Depression was looming just over the horizon? Cost-cutting, yeah, I’m fine with that, but when it comes to employee salaries and positions being coldly regarded as such costs to be cut – something bad’s going on. All this business-school talk of being “forward-thinking” and “employees are our greatest asset” is chucked out the window and replaced by “produce or perish!”

Gas prices are killing us; despite cutting back on trips and traveling more strategically, we’re still gonna spend almost $1,000 more this year than last on fuel. Yes, I know this affects everyone across the board, but it seems to hit us struggling, growing families (should having two children be prohibitively economically expensive?) a little harder than single twenty-somethings and retiring boomers.

So, I’m thinking to myself, what went wrong here? What’s happened to the American dream? Surely that didn’t include maxed-out credit cards and sleepless nights over paying the mortgage. What happened? When did it happen? Why did it happen?

What are the fixes? I know I should focus on the most direct fixes, the things I can do to plug the leaks in the floundering U. S. S. Recovering Hopper, but I’m by nature a dreamer, so I’m curious about the system as a whole. And that led me to wonder, is there a better way?

I think there is. More tomorrow.