The squeezing of the middle class. [View all]
I know there have been many posts about this issue but after having breakfast with a few friends between the ages of 50 and 65 this morning I wanted to see what the DU community thinks.
All of these friends are female, one is a nurse, one a retired school teacher, two of them work as staff at the university here in town, and two are retired staff from a hospital, one on disability and then me a 60 year old who took early retirement due to illness.
Every single one, even the ones who are married, are barely making it financially and feel what one of them described as "the squeeze". We all agreed that our government doesn't care about the working people in this country any longer. We are disposable, especially after we reach "an age", get busy and die already one of my friends said this morning.
Most of us took a beating with the financial meltdown prior to President Obama. My retirement portfolio did not have time to recover by the time I was forced into retirement by a bad back. My portfolio lost almost 40 percent during that time, one of my friends took an even worse beating because her husband had been taking chances to increase their retirement.
What is normally a fun Tuesday morning breakfast turned into a pity party that made me depressed. All of us are educated, all of us have worked since our teens and for that we still have mortgages, old cars and a Wednesday breakfast is considered the highlight of our month.
One thing I noticed is how angry everyone has become over all of this. They brought up something I think is important, is there any candidate that has declared who truly cares about us? What would we have to do to take back our country? All of us vote, we all work for our party to try and change what is happening but nothing happens except the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
It is really apparent here in Oklahoma, go to the upscale mall in OKC and you see the oil money live and in color. People dripping in money, high school kids driving luxury cars parking next to a school teacher driving a 14 year old car.
I truly believe we are going to see some kind of uprising in this country if this doesn't stop. I may not live to see it, I need to die quickly to satisfy the 1 percenters , but I do believe the masses are getting very angry.
Am I alone in this thinking?