Saturday, March 6, 2010

Our system is going bankrupt.  Is there anyone who really thinks, deep down in his unconscious processes where most of the real work of thinking takes place, that we can go on living this way for a long time?  Really?  You really believe that we can support this level of expense and debt indefinitely?  We are a debtor nation.  We are a consumer nation.  We borrow and buy.  That is our function in the world economy.  We depend on the rest of the world for everything. 

When I think about the number of people on public assistance -- and I don't mean the stereotypical worthless shits lying around making babies and collecting a welfare check -- the demographics, the job prospects out there, the amount of unpaid child support and student loans, the amount of debt in general, health care costs, and the potential solutions that are within the realm of possibility as serious alternatives in this political system, I do not see how the American people can keep this economy afloat for long.  Wages are so low and obligations so high that I see many people who work 40 hour weeks and cannot afford to live.  When you can't get a decent room for one person for less than $500 a month, and a typical full-time retail worker makes $7.50 an hour, you've got people trying to pay rent and live on take-home of around $1000 per month.  Put a child support order for $245 per month for two children, and an order for $160 for another child by another mother, and you now have another person in a completely dependent position.  If he's really stupid in his late teens and early twenties, he'll have a couple more kids with about $350 more in court-ordered support.  He also has arrearages in all of his cases, is ordered to pay another $150 toward his arrearages, and every two or three months he is back in court with another court-appointed lawyer trying to stay out of jail for non-payment of support.  He will file a motion to reduce or two, and usually get denied.  Eventually, he will be sent to jail.  He will lose his job.  Now he will be on the looking-for-work/going-to-jail treadmill, and a system that has no mercy for losers like him will just send him to jail over and over again, expecting him each time to get out and within a week get work that allows him to pay that $900 per month in child support.  These expectations are completely without basis in reality.

And into all this the new President offers --

"And did they get you to trade . . . cold comfort for change?"

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