Ok, so people are supposed to save for their retirement AND for their children's college fund????

[JDPriestly]

52. Add to that our disastrous trade policies that pit American middle

class workers against foreign workers who can live on less than we do in their less sophisticated, less packaged, less sanitary societies and who are paid very little even compared to their cost of living.

I used to be the service rep at a telephone company. That was many years ago. Now, when you call your phone company because you have a problem, you will speak to a representative in the Philippines or maybe in India, only occasionally in the US.

Those service rep jobs did not pay all that badly. You could live a lower middle class life on the income back when I had the job. Probably how well you could live depended on where you lived.

But today, those jobs are gone. A lot of secretarial jobs have been eliminated thanks to technology.

And we haven't found a way to make up for the losses of those jobs.

How long will this economy work for ordinary Americans?

Even the very, very bright, well educated people in our society worry about getting a job, about keeping a job, about providing for their children, maybe trying to buy a house.

Things are much tougher than the media acknowledges. I don't know what is going to happen.

It's partly for these reasons that I am backing Bernie. He seems to be the only candidate close enough to the middle class to understand just how difficult the job market, the competition for a decent income and the cost of living are making life for so many good, hard-working Americans.