Last night I had a very bad dream in which my October Social Security Retirement Check did not come. The rent was due, the cupboards nearly empty, and prescriptions needed filling at full price, because of the donut hole. My phone calls went in useless circles, and the penalties for late rent payment began to pile up.
Then, still caught in this nightmare of a dream, came a letter in the mail that informed me that due to the need to help the market stay afloat, there would be no further SS checks for an undermined length of time. The second letter I opened was from HUD, notifying that all Project based Section 8 housing funds were also needed for the bailout and would end effective immediately.
I need that housing subsidy in order to afford a place to live.
I need that SS check to survive: it is my only income.
It is my only income, because I had to use all my savings long ago while waiting for Social Security Disability to be approved, and then to pay for medical expenses while waiting out the two year period before Medicare would kick in. Disability caused by a back injury that could only get worse as I aged, and did, until I could no longer work at all anymore by age 55, after 40 years in the work force. I didn’t have a lot of savings anyway, because as a single mother widowed at age 29 and raising two kids alone, you just can’t save up a whole lot of money.
It was a tremendous challenge, learning how survive and enjoy life on such a small income in these times. If forced me to reevaluate everything I thought I knew about what is truly the important in life. And I managed it. I managed to create a brand new, extremely fulfilling life.
The dream wouldn’t stop. In it, I sat frozen in disbelief, facing the end of the road. After all those years of working so damned hard, raising my kids on my own, paying taxes and being a productive citizen, this is how it will end?
Oh I know my kids wouldn’t allow me to end up on the streets. Somehow, one of them would carve out some small space for me in their very small houses, if it came to that. They wouldn’t let me starve. But oh my gawd: they don’t want me to live with them one bit more than I want to live with either of them! No matter how much we love each other, it would be certain disaster. And who knows how long either of THEM will have jobs houses TO share, as much debt as they are both carrying and with their own savings now at such risk, also.
Am I really still in America?
Is this really happening?
Please let me wake up.
Please let this all be a very bad dream.
I woke up. Yes, thankfully, it was a bad dream.
But after spending an hour on the internet reading about the bailout and the sick, terminally corrupted political system in charge of things, there is no way NOT to know it is very possible that my very bad dream could well be a premonition of what could yet come.
I’ve faced potential homelessness before, but I was still young, fit, and able to protect myself. Now I am old and disabled. Still, I could probably last on the streets for while, because I know where the homeless vets hang out, and I’d go to them with full confidence that they would help protect me as best they could.
If I am destined to be left to die on the streets by this wonderful country of mine, this land of the free and home of the brave, who better to die along side, than these old forgotten soldiers who gave their lives for this country, but just haven’t died yet.
May the force be with us all.
UPDATE
I had a very interesting conversation today with a small group of my neighbors here in this 100 unit building for seniors. About half had involved and well off family members they knew would take care of them, so they weren’t too worried. The rest of us live only on SS income. What impressed me the most was that that no once seemed surprised by anything happening: we all have watched it coming, so we got right down to brainstorming what we could do..”If”. It’s grist for another diary to come: for now, it’s enough to say it is NOT wise to underestimate the power of age, experience and proven survival skills when combined with one hell of a sense of humor!
The things in your dream WILL happen. They cannot be avoided. It will arrive in some 6 months to two years.
Plan for it now.
Most people are not paying attention, and don’t want to know. A few think the system will be fixed–a theoretical possibility–but ignore the plain facts showing it won’t be.
The behavior of the Democratic Congress since 2006 should alone be sufficient evidence, even if you weren’t looking at oil production and economic indicators.
Obama, despite several virtues, will not be much help.
Find friends who are paying attention, and are interested in surviving, and get together and try to think up some plans.
Most people will walk blindly to their deaths. They will refuse to pay attention until they are broke and starving, and it will then be too late. No energy should be wasted on them at all.
You think I am a pessimist? Not so! I am acting under the happy assumption that it is not ALREADY too late!
My partner (also on SS only) and I already share good sized two bedroom unit in a well managed senior building in a nice neighborhood. If necessary, we would rearrange the space to accommodate a third room mate. People (and not just elders!) are going to have to relearn how to share space and pool resources, big time. This will be MUCH easier for low income and poor people to do, because we’ve been doing it to some degree, for a long time anyway. In that respect, the poor are better prepared for what’s ahead than those who have never been tested in this manner.
This may be the one good thing, altho a chaotic and painful adjustment, that might be good news, overall. It will force people back into living “in community” with each other, as neighbors, rather than each maintaining as fancy a castle and moat as they can!
..social security disappears completely and we have no money at all TO pool together! In that event, I find a nice big refrigerator box, fix it up with the plastic and duct tape I bought a long time ago, get a bunch of other to do the same, and park the whole works in the front yard of the governors mansion. 🙂
You’re exactly right, I’m afraid.
Naomi Klein was on Bill Maher last weekend and she made a similar point. The conservatives want this crisis. They are holding a gun to our heads and demanding that we transfer our treasury over to the banks and Wall Street Financiers now. The transfer will be made. Then when we realize the debt we have taken on and that it will be almost impossible to service this debt, the Wall Street fat cats will once again discover the virtues of free market capitalism and demand that we all tighten our run away spending, i.e. social security and medicaid, etc.
It’s here. It’s happening. And the Democrats are doing it. Too big to fail they say.
Well, we will never know. The wealth will be transferred to the bankers. And when we lose our social security just remember that the Dems had to do it: the people that owned stock in Goldman Sachs and Bank of America would have lost all the value in those stocks. Can’t have that.
I am praying it holds off a little longer so I have enough time to earn the money needed to construct a shelter. I actually have contacted friends with survival and medical skills and we are currently putting together a plan to survive the Collapse.
Can we do it? I don’t know. But it will go hard with those enablers in the state we build.
Very very hard.
Note to FBI who are monitoring this: We won’t be building any state at all until the US collapses.
Ya know, any second you could be hit by the hypothetical bus. Don’t spoil your day with fearfulness. It’s not good for you.
What you have imagined could never come true in the way you describe. You would have plenty of warning if a dictator or China took over and broke open the SS lock box. You’d be alerted by the screams of millions of Boomers who haven’t retired yet. heh.
I don’t (when I’m awake!) feel much fearfullness. Thats one of the benefits of aging: you look back and can’t help but see what you’ve already survived, which proves you’ve got enough of what it takes to get by..:)
On the other hand, I’ve seen so much crap happen in this country I never dreamed would ever be allowed to happen, but did anyway, that it seems a good idea to be prepared for anything. 🙂
fear is a fact of life, and if you ignore it you die.
The high and difficult art is to use your fear, rather than letting it use you. This means living your life fully, without cringing, while letting your fear guide you around dangers.
Social Security? I expect it to last longer than our pensions and private retirement accounts. But it too will go. There are many ways, I think the most likely is hyperinflation. You will still be getting $500 a month, but a single loaf of bread will cost $500,000 and that, as they say, will be that. Baby boomers will scream, but to no avail: Once the dollar has lost its value, there will be no way to bring it back. There will be nothing that can be done.
If you have been following geology or biology–the facts of oil depletion and climate change–you know that the system–based as it is on endless, infinite growth–has to end, and will. So it is time to give up our faith in it, and in our own minds be really ready to let it go. It is time to begin the work that giving up faith in the system implies.
It is time to take our own lives into our own hands, and accept the results.
“The high and difficult art is to use your fear, rather than letting it use you.”
Right ON!
That nightmare could come true. It has happened before in other countries under the stress of financial disaster, and the passing of dictatorial powers over expenditures to the executive. It happened in France and Belgium in the early 1930s. The current bail-out proposal essentially makes the Secretary of the Treasury the economic dictator of the United States. The pressure to circumvent Congress to ‘save the dollar’ will become overwhelming and irresistible. The proposed solution will be to temporarily vest all spending authority (i.e. authorizations) in the executive. At this point, they will cut the Entitlements. This is what happened in Europe in the Great Depression, and will happen here, too, if the trillion-dollar bail-out is not accompanied by a surtax on high incomes that is earmarked to servicing the bail-out debt. Anything less will only delay, but not stem, the run on the dollar and dollar-denominated financial assets.
Have a good day.
But aren’t we supposed to ignore such concerns and keep content by sitting on the couch and watching 247 different cable channels while stuffing our faces with doritos?
no no no…we’re supposed to GO SHOPPING,remember?