Cost of living

The joke has several slight variations in different tellings, but the essence is the same. I'll tell it this way - I'm hoping to have my money and my life run out at the same time. If I can just die before lunchtime on Thursday, I'll be set.

There was a letter to the editor in today's Wilmington (Del.) News Journal from a newly-divorced, 60-something (I'm assuming - she mentions 40 years of marriage), disabled woman who had been a stay-at-home mom, who now finds herself unable to get health care. I posted a comment on the website, replying to the majority of posters who are opposed to a dime of their money helping anyone else get health care (or anything else, for that matter). It got me to thinking, really about the whole of our economy. Forty years ago, she was able to make that choice.

Right around that same time, my mother more or less made the same choice. She worked part time, 4 days a week and only a few hours a day, till her youngest child (your humble correspondent) graduated high school, because she wanted to be home when we came home from school. My dad never made a lot of money. He was, and is, a blue-collar worker. Literally - his work shirts are, in fact, dark blue. They raised 4 kids who didn't have to come home to an empty house on working-man's wages. You used to be able to do that.

Can you imagine that happening today? My wife and I have 2 salaries, no kids, and most months it seems like we're barely above water. From what I can see of the people around me, our situation seems much more to be the standard than the exception. Most of the people around me seem to be just barely keeping ahead.

When, why, did life get to be so unaffordable? Why are so many of us teetering on the edge of a precipice, needing only one serious, unexpected expenditure to push us over the brink? Home foreclosures are skyrocketing, millions have no health coverage, people are working more and more hours, and real wages (compared with cost of living) have gone down over the past few decades. What the hell is going on here?

I'd like to think that the choices we make on Election Day this November could help to turn things around, but the cynic in me says that the real power is far removed from Washington and St. Paul.