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When I grew up,like many of my generation, I left my parent's house and went out into the world with a few boxes of my personal belongings and nothing else. Everything I had for the next decade I earned myself. When my parents died, I got a small inheritance mostly from insurance policies, which helped to defer medical expenses, debts and funeral expenses for them. Very little was left to go into a savings account.
Whatever my husband and I have today we earned ourselves. There were no trust funds, inheritances, lottery windfalls, clever stock market transactions, or money boons from real estate or other lucky money deals. Our retirement nest egg is quite modest.
Everything that our government does affects us. During the Clinton years we were able to increase our nest egg because of the favorable economic conditions and the fact that we are frugal people and were in relative good health for oldsters. Today our nest egg is worth two-thirds of what it was worth when George W. Bush was sworn in.
Our health problems and expenses are increasing at a time when the White House is trying to dismantle traditional Medicare, which we desperately rely on for my husband’s end state renal disease. Our prescription medicines not only have increased but are in the $100 a month range for some of them at a time when our monthly income keeps going down because of lower interest and dividend rates.
I worry about what other economic bombs are going to be dropped on us with this right wing cabal that has taken over our once free country. When I look at those who are making decisions about what happens to the rest of us, what I see are the sons of privilege, who never had to worry about being out of work, or being able to pay the rent or mortgage. They don’t worry about getting sick or having a sick child or relative and how they are going to pay for the medical expenses. Life was handed to them on a gold platter. They can’t speak for us because they never have had to live from paycheck to paycheck like we have.
Most of us have never collected welfare nor had charity handed to us. Yet many of us who are elderly can’t go back to work at this stage of our lives. It seems that the contributions our work made in the past, that kept the corporations and companies solvent so they could reap their profits, isn’t even worth a thank you. Instead there are the covert meetings where the wealthy plot to raid working class people’s retirement and health care so they can be even wealthier without a thought as to what is going to happen to those people who need these programs the most.
Those people, whether elected officials or journalists who write about these things, do not speak for the majority of us living on a shoestring, and who have to helplessly stand by and watch the feeding frenzy at the people’s treasuries being spent to enrich corporations at our expense. The calloused recall movement in California didn’t even offer an apology to the tax payers for the increased expense of a special election even though the State of California was reaching a critical budget crisis. Even our Democratic Presidential candidates seem to be detached from the majority of the population preferring to hurl insults at each other instead of addressing the things that concern us most.
Will anyone ever stand up for us and address our concerns? Will they please tell us how they are going to change our country into one that governs for all the people, no matter how humble they are, instead of just the elite few at the top? Who has been where we are? Who is out there who can speak for all of us, the American majority?
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