I’m sitting here doing our bills — or, rather, making a vane attempt to pay what’s due.
There is the mortgage, the credit cards, the phone and cable. Our lifestyles is pretty normal — we spend a bit more than we should, but our debt falls well below the average American’s (total credit card debt is about $3,000 or so) and we make a strenuous effort to pay it down quickly. We always pay more than the minimum, and we’re rarely late with a payment — especially since we started taking care of it online.
Our medical expenses, as well, are rather moderate compared with most — some prescriptions and some co-pays, but nothing dramatic.
And yet, this biweekly ritual always depresses me.
Mostly, I worry that something could happen to alter the current balance — one of us getting sick, for instance, or losing a job.
That’s not out of the realm of possibility, of course. Layoffs are a fact of American life — Citigroup recently announced layoffs that will total almost 75,000 jobs when done (20 percent of the work force), the auto companies are in dire straights and the newspaper industry has been hemorrhaging jobs for years. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Unemployment is up — 6.5 percent — and could continue its climb. There are 10 million Americans out of work who are still seeking work, several million more who have given up or are working part-time because they can’t find anything else. And the unemployed are staying unemployed for longer and longer.
So the income side of the ledger always is in doubt, the balance that allows us to live in this ranch house and drive a nice car always teeters on the edge of failure.
And, yes, it’s scary. Anyone who says it isn’t is deluding themselves.
Hank Kalet 
Maybe you / they / I, we all, should seek gooferment employment. It\’s never a \”recession\” for the gooferment. And, it always has \”money\” to spend on \”good works\”. Argh!
Or maybe we should go down the road of a thorough going goofballtarian anarchistic dystopia where you don\’t give a flying fork about the millions unemployed or uninsured. In goofballtarian world you just gingerly step over the bodies until your day of reckoning comes along. Eric Hoffer wrote about the true believer; that would be goofballtarians in spades and then some.
No, we wouldn\’t step over the bodies. Nor patronize the poor, the downtrodden, or all us little people with patronizing pity! The politicians give: \”welfare\” that ensnares people in multigeneration poverty; a \”drug war\” that imprisons millions of the poor slobs who chose to ingest a chemical; an \”education system\”, that they don\’t send their own children to, which ensures that they can\’t read or get a job.Yes, us \”libertarians\” are terrible people. We want everyone to succeed. We want them to KEEP the fruits of their labors. We want them to enjoy the blessings of the same freedoms and liberty we want for ourselves. Please keep your gooferment force to yourself. No thank you. We just want to be free.I\’d assert that you are the \”true believer\”. You believe in the propaganda that the gangs in gooferment are just looking out for us. They don\’t feather their own nests. They don\’t reward their friend. They don\’t punish their enemies. AND, most of all, they don\’t break the laws they enforce on others!