In January, President Obama warned that we were facing “a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime” and that recession “could linger for years and the unemployment rate reach double digits” if nothing is done. He predicted trillion-plus budget deficits “for years to come.”
We were all scared. We panicked and battened down the hatches to weather the upcoming storm of financial doom. We retreated to our “economic storm shelters” and contemplated a more Spartan existence devoid of the excesses we had become accustomed to. We clipped coupons, we rode our bikes instead of driving, we planned meat-free meals, we curtailed entertainment and dining out. We were frightened children, waiting in the dark for the bogeyman to jump out from under the bed and eat us alive.
The government appropriated hundreds of billions of dollars for bailouts, supposedly to stimulate the economy. The President promised economic relief for the vast majority of Americans. I saw the banks and the auto industry get billions, even while they came begging for money in their private jets. I saw several large entities get double-helpings of bailout money. People who received sub-prime mortgages are now getting a break and may be able to renegotiate their mortgages downward because their house is now worth less than they paid, so they can perhaps avoid foreclosure.
I didn’t buy a house that costs more than 31% of my gross income. I didn’t get an adjustable-rate mortgage that is now eating me alive. I’m not defaulting on payments to my creditors. I’ve virtually eliminated most of the “special” things that make life more fun – like travel, dining at nice restaurants, getting my nails done or enjoying a facial. Yet I still struggle every payday to make my check last until the next one, and hope to God I don’t lose my job because I can’t seem to put anything away in savings because the bills take my entire check. Don’t I get any benefit at all from this huge amount of money the government is handing out?
Oh, yes – I forgot. Remember the $13 a week figure that was often repeated as the benefit the average working person would see in their paychecks each week, due to lowered federal withholding taxes? I did see some benefit from that action – I now have a whopping $8.71 per week more to spend. I didn’t even get the full $13 – do I actually make that much less than the “average worker”? I didn’t think so, but it looks like that’s the case. Well, at least now I can buy that venti latté from Starbucks that I’ve been dreaming about!
So big corporations get huge money, and people who acted irresponsibly get a pass – but a responsible working person gets crumbs? It hardly seems fair.
But wait – there’s hope! Just this past week, the President gave himself the new title of “confidence builder in chief” and said that the economic crisis is “not as bad as we think.” What??? I thought it was worse than anything we have seen in our lifetime, and could last for years! Now, a short two months later, it’s not as bad as we think? And just who was it that told us it was so awful in the first place? That’s right – it was the President.
Why the sudden turnaround in his attitude, I wonder? Is it because people were TOO scared, and their fear shut down the economy so much that it came to a virtual standstill? Did the government’s dire warnings go too far, and now they want to soften their stance so we’ll peek out of our hidey-holes and have more confidence that the future won’t be quite so bleak, after all? I don’t know about anyone else, but that flip-flop in the President’s statements makes me trust the government even less than I did before. It also makes me feel like “we the people” have been manipulated like marionettes on a string. I’m getting whiplash from the back-and-forth governmental proclamations!
As for my financial situation – fortunately, I was already so broke that I didn’t have a dime in the stock market, so I wasn’t hurt at all by the plummeting Dow Jones average. My mortgage is at a fixed rate. I have a relatively new car in good working order. I still have a job. My health is fairly stable. So it looks to me that, since so many people were terribly devastated by the recent economic downturn, I have so far been virtually unscathed “so long as nothing bends nor breaks” (as my mother used to say) – with the result that, in relative terms, my economic status has actually improved somewhat because other people are now more on my level after their losses.
So maybe I’ve benefited from the economic crisis, after all – and my $8.71 per week extra can buy me a piece of coffee cake to go with that latté.
I’ve been saying the same thing about feeling manipulated ever since they started telling us we were having a recession. What chaps MY ass is that economic stimulus check they sent out last year? Because we DO have a decent income, we had to pay that BACK when we filed our taxes this year. There is no justice in our system AT ALL.
Thanks for your comment — it’s good to know I’m not alone in my feelings of manipulation. However, I don’t think the stimulus check from last year is taxable (see this article, item 1). At least that’s something, huh? I do feel like the government is pulling the old bait-and-switch routine on us with this new so-called “stimulus package,” which just looks like an excuse to grow the government bigger than ever and take more control of the country than they have to date. I think we’ve definitely turned a corner in this country, and perhaps that turn is into a dark alley. I fear for our future way of life in this country.