It's a mystery the shit hasn't yet hit the fan. The most recent
unemployment figures paint a ghastly picture. While 9.8% is the
nation's official unemployment number, scratching the surface just a
wee bit and adding the underemployed and those who've now given up on
finding full time work raises the number to 17%. It means nearly 1 in
5 Americans are no doubt wondering how the hell they're supposed to
manage in this new economy.
Adding insult to injury, it must have
seemed like an especially cruel joke for those 17% who watched the
media celebration as Fed Chair Ben Bernanke announced the recession was over and the Dow Jones passed 10,000. In the same week, reports that hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the economy's tumble may never return while TARP awarded banks were providing
record bonuses to their employees. Elizabeth Warren, chair of the
Congressional Oversight Panel, said she was "speechless" over
record-high banking bonuses.
"I
do not understand how it is that financial institutions could think
that they could take taxpayer money and then turn around and act like
it's business as usual. I don't understand how they can't see that the
world has changed in a fundamental way, that it is not business as
usual when you take taxpayer dollars."
The
result of all the news is an undeniable, maddening sense the country is
split into those with power and influence and everyone else. The
notion of "two Americas" isn't new, by any means, but perhaps never
before so blatantly obvious. The health care reform debate, full of
professorial discussions about whether health care is a right or a
privilege and if providing health care to all the country's citizens
was tantamount to socialism must seem a bit like Nero's fiddling to the
millions that are without health care and the millions more that
anticipate losing theirs when they're inevitably laid off from their
jobs.
The obvious effects are a fucked up social psyche, full of
rage, resentment and frustration with the powerful elite and the shame
and desperation that comes with being unable to provide for your loved
ones. It's a recipe for the whole American experiment to rot from the
inside out.
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