If America Is Richer, Why Are Its Families So Much Less Secure?

[OneBlueSky]

http://www.latimes.com/business/specials/la-newdeal-cover.special

Los Angeles Times reporter Peter G. Gosselin has spent the last year examining an American paradox: Why so many families report being financially less secure even as the nation has grown more prosperous. The answer lies in a quarter-century-long shift of economic risks from the broad shoulders of business and government to the backs of working families. Safety nets that once protected Americans from economic turbulence — safeguards like unemployment compensation and employer loyalty — have eroded or vanished. Familes are more vulnerable to sudden shifts in the economy than any time since the Great Depression. The result is a daunting "New Deal" for many working Americans — one that compels them to cope, largely on their own, with financial forces far beyond their control.

PART 1: If America Is Richer, Why Are Its Families So Much Less Secure?

PART 2: The Poor Have More Things Today -- Including Wild Income Swings

PART 3: How Just a Handful of Setbacks Sent the Ryans Tumbling Out of Prosperity

- much more . . .

http://www.latimes.com/business/specials/la-newdeal-cover.special

[sasquatch]

1. They want it to go back to the old days of the Robber Barons

Where there wasn't a middle class and corruption was overtly rampent.

[applegrove]

2. I think I will become a guilder? No I will make ball-dresses. Perhaps

a gardener... yes - I'll be a private gardener.

[MichiganVote]

3. Anybody that can define America or Americans today is a genius

[jody]

5. Dupe due to martini. n/t

[jody]

4. Analogy "Head in oven, feet in refrigerator, on average comfortable" n/t

[mermaid]

7. Best Fucking Analogy I Have Run Across - Mind If I Use It?? n/t

[mermaid]

6. I Read All Three Parts

and found myself relating, entirely.

If we really ARE so much richer, and better off than our parents were...WHY could my dad, with no college education, raise a family of four on one income, and provide us with a decent house? And I, at age 34, cannot manage to provide for only myself and my dog....in an apartment?

I am having to move back in with my mother, in Pennsylvania. I'd planned on moving back with her, anyway, when she retired, because I didn't want her to be alone (she's been a widow for six years now, and there is no other family left in Pennsylvania) but that was to be seven years from now.

It woulda made all the difference to my pride if I could have held out that seven years, and managed to make it on my own, but I find I no longer can. Ten months of virtual unemployment, and being denied unemployment insurance...have all but devastated me and left mw with absolutely nothing but the meager possessions I have managed to accumulate in the ten years I have been on my own...and what few I left my parents house with ten years ago.

My renters insurance lists my entire worldly goods (a complete loss) at $13,400. If you add a bit for my car, you could say I have a net worth of about $15,000. That's it. That's what fifteen years in the Corporate America rat race has earned me. $15,000 in net worth, a loss of all self-respect and confidence...I have been sucked dry, and left behind, like the no longer needed husk of a dead insect.

My bank account is near zero, and I have nothing left to lose, anymore. Everything I hoped for, everything I dreamed for...everything I tried to achieve, is laid waste. My dreams are ashes.

The final, and most agonising blow of all of this is that I cannot even pay for the moving truck which will move my fifteen-year-old home entertainment center, and the rest of my worldly belongings (none of which is less than five years old) back to Pennsylvania. My mom is paying for that. And the gas and hotels on the way. It's just absolutely gut-wrenchingly DISGUSTING that this is happening to me.

The only consolation I have is that I know that I'm far from alone...may other, who, like me, are in the bottom quintile of earnings in this country...are facing similar circumstances.

This country sucks.

FUCK YOU, GEORGE W BUSH - FUCK YOU REPUBLICANS...YOU CAUSED THIS!!!

[scarletlib]

9. You situation parallels so many others.

My dad was a working class guy in the south. He supported a family of four children, his wife and mother-in-law on his salary. I wouldn't say we had all the luxuries in the world but we never went without. We had a family car, a television, a stereo. And I guess just about whatever gadgets were available in the 50's and 60's.

My husband has a masters degree and I have a bachelors. We had 2 kids and I have had to work since the beginning of our marriage in the 70's. It has taken the 2 of us just to maintain the standard of living my dad gave to 7 people.

Now, I watch our 2 grown children try to make ends meet. It isn't any easier for them and probably is going to get harder.

We took a major wrong turn in this country in the late 60's and early 70's. War and military spending. Corporate irresponsibility. Capitalism let loose to ravage the nation.

on edit: I just want to add that the absolute best years of our life econmically were in the 2nd term of Cinton's presidency.

[bread_and_roses]

8. Capitalism is not in the "business" of providing for families

We are seeing the natural outcomes of "free-market" philosophy espoused by the Right and largely unchallenged by the Democrats.

[scarletlib]

10. Capitalism that is unchecked and unregulated

takes on the characteristics of a rabid animal. That is what I call what is happening today. Rabid Capitalism.