Middle-Class Welfare
I work at a Trust and by supporting a range of local nonprofits, we are a big part of serving the poor, the disenfranchised, the homeless, the powerless the starving, as well as the environment, local economies and and so on. We facilitate everything that a range of diverse nonprofits serve. Philanthropy has its flaws, but by and large it's good to be a part of all that, to be on the side of good. I read something recently that provided numbers to show how much more effective philanthropic dollars are than tax dollars. This has much do do with the fact that we support strong nonprofits who are generally comprised of small effective groups of people who regularly are those who feel a calling for their work, as if it were a cause, and work longer hours for less pay in arenas they understand intimately. Government dollars and workers are not even in the same stratosphere. We facilitate nonprofits' good work. We are a part of the solution.
So what's the problem? Well, it's the middle-class you see. Big business, the influential, Washington and Bush (the evil mother-f*cking powers-that-be) have contrived to decimate every class that is not their own and currently we're going through a massive economic downturn that will rob the rest of us of much that we have. While welfare and nonprofits aplenty will try to help the poorest of us in these times (with mixed results), who serves the middle class? We're the ones being hit hardest by job losses and we have houses and cars and other things that need middle-class incomes to sustain them. How do you help the middle class? So many have lost jobs and livelihoods. Obama says we're on the agenda, but with Washington seeing is always believing.
So how can we help each other? Truth is mostly we don't even want to. We just put our heads down and hope we don't get hit by the shrapnel. We have that war-zone compassion, where we're really sorry the guy next to us just got hit, but really elated that it was not us. And further, there really is little we can do. We can't support another middle-class lifestyle over and above our own. Even if a bunch of us band together it's nearly impossible to support that friend to the degree they are accustomed to, or even need. And if we tried there would always be those sods who abused the situation. Or maybe that is just an irrational middle-class fear? For anyone abusing the group would lose their entire circle of friends if the abused the system.
So what do we do? Truth is our middle-class lives are too insular, too alone. Each family unit isolates themselves in their own cave. We survive alone and guard our space and privacy. At best there might be support to/from family, but generally we live our lives in cocoons, dreaming of inheritance or lottery wins that can shore up this fragile balance. We should save more, but mostly we don't. And when we do we are robbed, just as most of us have lost money to the recent stock market woes.
But we do care. We have friends and we visit each others caves and we draw each other out into open spaces, or fun places. We make our own families and there is real love, often more than we have for blood family, but we never seem to get to match those bonds of blood that will see a family bail out their struggling cousin, or rescue crazy uncle Charlie from himself... even when you hate uncle Charlie.
Every time I hear about someone in my circle or the next degree or two of separation losing a job I feel a little twist in my heart. And I feel helpless. How will I help my friends, should any of them need it? It all seems impossible. A couple of situations have come up and I've offered emotional support and a couple of times some small financial support. But in some cases it's not nearly enough.
I've been stewing on this for months now, as the first waves of Bush's economic armageddon wash over us, trying to think of ways we can get organized, become more like a real family... but I'm stumped. The status-quo is so deeply entrenched, mostly with good reason; we all have to earn and maintain our own middle class status. When we fall, we fall alone. It's almost the very nature of middle-class, or else we'd all be living in communes or kibbutzes. And maybe there are some ideas for us in approaches like those.
Part of me worries that this is all just a manifestation of personal security concerns. agrathea has a small business that is vulnerable to economic downturns and I'm in all kinds of trouble with the Mississippi house which my ex is completely failing to hold up her end on, forcing me to make most of her payments, something I can't really afford. I'm in no real position to help anyone else really, though we do help Theresa's granny. It leaves me second-guessing my second-rate ponderings.
But it's more than that. I know this. So for now I'll keep stewing on it. We are seemingly in a depression and some feel it already is closer to being comparable to the great depression than we realize. It's scary out there. I wish I knew how much was panic and how much was real and if there really is any effective difference between the two. I'd welcome any thoughts and ideas any of you have. Maybe we can get this conversation started. In the meantime, I love you guys and I hope we all get through these insane times unscathed. Maybe after this we'll all save more...and hopefully not lose it all to fraud and market crashes.
So what's the problem? Well, it's the middle-class you see. Big business, the influential, Washington and Bush (the evil mother-f*cking powers-that-be) have contrived to decimate every class that is not their own and currently we're going through a massive economic downturn that will rob the rest of us of much that we have. While welfare and nonprofits aplenty will try to help the poorest of us in these times (with mixed results), who serves the middle class? We're the ones being hit hardest by job losses and we have houses and cars and other things that need middle-class incomes to sustain them. How do you help the middle class? So many have lost jobs and livelihoods. Obama says we're on the agenda, but with Washington seeing is always believing.
So how can we help each other? Truth is mostly we don't even want to. We just put our heads down and hope we don't get hit by the shrapnel. We have that war-zone compassion, where we're really sorry the guy next to us just got hit, but really elated that it was not us. And further, there really is little we can do. We can't support another middle-class lifestyle over and above our own. Even if a bunch of us band together it's nearly impossible to support that friend to the degree they are accustomed to, or even need. And if we tried there would always be those sods who abused the situation. Or maybe that is just an irrational middle-class fear? For anyone abusing the group would lose their entire circle of friends if the abused the system.
So what do we do? Truth is our middle-class lives are too insular, too alone. Each family unit isolates themselves in their own cave. We survive alone and guard our space and privacy. At best there might be support to/from family, but generally we live our lives in cocoons, dreaming of inheritance or lottery wins that can shore up this fragile balance. We should save more, but mostly we don't. And when we do we are robbed, just as most of us have lost money to the recent stock market woes.
But we do care. We have friends and we visit each others caves and we draw each other out into open spaces, or fun places. We make our own families and there is real love, often more than we have for blood family, but we never seem to get to match those bonds of blood that will see a family bail out their struggling cousin, or rescue crazy uncle Charlie from himself... even when you hate uncle Charlie.
Every time I hear about someone in my circle or the next degree or two of separation losing a job I feel a little twist in my heart. And I feel helpless. How will I help my friends, should any of them need it? It all seems impossible. A couple of situations have come up and I've offered emotional support and a couple of times some small financial support. But in some cases it's not nearly enough.
I've been stewing on this for months now, as the first waves of Bush's economic armageddon wash over us, trying to think of ways we can get organized, become more like a real family... but I'm stumped. The status-quo is so deeply entrenched, mostly with good reason; we all have to earn and maintain our own middle class status. When we fall, we fall alone. It's almost the very nature of middle-class, or else we'd all be living in communes or kibbutzes. And maybe there are some ideas for us in approaches like those.
Part of me worries that this is all just a manifestation of personal security concerns. agrathea has a small business that is vulnerable to economic downturns and I'm in all kinds of trouble with the Mississippi house which my ex is completely failing to hold up her end on, forcing me to make most of her payments, something I can't really afford. I'm in no real position to help anyone else really, though we do help Theresa's granny. It leaves me second-guessing my second-rate ponderings.
But it's more than that. I know this. So for now I'll keep stewing on it. We are seemingly in a depression and some feel it already is closer to being comparable to the great depression than we realize. It's scary out there. I wish I knew how much was panic and how much was real and if there really is any effective difference between the two. I'd welcome any thoughts and ideas any of you have. Maybe we can get this conversation started. In the meantime, I love you guys and I hope we all get through these insane times unscathed. Maybe after this we'll all save more...and hopefully not lose it all to fraud and market crashes.