all too realistic

[kindkit]

I have a feeling that watching the DS9 two-parter "Past Tense" in 2010 is a very different experience than watching it in 1994 would have been. The details that probably seemed alarmist and preachy then--official ghettos full of the long-term unemployed and the untreated mentally ill--look eerily like prophecy now. I could picture 2024 being

Comments

[wishfulaces]

Mm. "Past Tense" was the first DS9 episode I properly watched when it aired, and it got me hooked on the show. But it's definitely not a comfortable story to watch.

[julia_here]

*shiver*

When that episode was aired, my husband had been working at a Community College for nine years, and had gotten cost-of-living raises twice; he also had two months unpaid in summer every year. It was the first year both kids were in school all day, so I could get sufficient hours at my academic scut work to make an appreciable increase in our financial situation, but I had no control over how many hours I was assigned, so it was not dependable. So, yeah, altogether it was too close for comfort.

Julia, January of 1995 was notable because I managed, for the first time in a decade, to buy an actual new winter coat (on clearance, 80% off) instead of layering multiple sweaters under one I'd owned for fifteen years.

[kindkit]

altogether it was too close for comfort

I imagine so. (And yuck to underpaying community colleges.) I was in graduate school then, so I was poor but I was also a bit shielded from the market, and it was less scary because I had hopes for a major improvement after a few years.

I remember the early/mid 1990s as fairly optimistic and boom-y, or at least optimistic and boom-y compared to now. But in the U.S., a boom is never a boom for everyone, as the episode itself acknowledges by showing the contrast between the rich dot-com types, ordinary workers like the guards and bureaucrats at the processing center, and the unemployed.

[julia_here]

(Icon is my husband and me, 26 years ago)

I think for a lot of us who graduated from college during the frequent recessions/jobless recoveries of the last forty years, hitting rock bottom broke is always something we can see from where we sit. The chances or necessities of incurring debt have always been more frequent and prolonged than the ability to save, if you were dumped into the work economy at the wrong point, and student loans are, increasing, a millstone that drags you down no matter what your income.

Julia, and just when everything gets caught up a little, well, welcome middle-age and growing health expenses.