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Edited on Sun Aug-12-07 05:56 PM by Mythsaje
How's your savings? How much of your income is currently going to pay insurance on your health, your car, your house, and everything else that matters to you? How much of it is going to pay your utilities, to feed your family, and provide them with the clothing and day-to-day supplies that most families need? How much is going out in home maintenance, car maintenance, and general equipment maintenance? What do you spend in medical and prescription co-pays? Car payments? Credit card bills?
How much do you have left over for savings?
The corporatocracy is tearing bloody chunks out of all of us every day. The middle class has it no better, in many ways, than the working poor. The distinctions are growing less obvious every day. The "ownership" society that the neocons allegedly want to build comes with its own costs. The requirements necessary to maintain ownership of ANYTHING can be daunting.
I was just watching a commercial advertising flood insurance, saying that "homeowners insurance" doesn't cover floods. And why not? Simply because it's more lucrative for them to sell it separately. And for those who can't afford, or don't see the need for, a separate policy for floods, can lose everything because the insurance companies are playing it this way.
Our healthcare system is fractured beyond repair and nearly everyone knows it. The only people who won't admit it are so invested in the way things are that they're most definitely part of the problem.
We work longer hours, put in overtime, sacrifice time with our families and time for ourselves, to learn, or simply to relax. We work on our yards, maintain our houses, and try to put aside time for ourselves. All too often we fail.
Nearly all of us totter on the brink between solvency and incredible debt. We have all of the above and, additionally, some of us have other responsibilies, such as child support. While I certainly agree with paying child support, it is still another burden many men face on top of all the rest.
The very rich can be ordered to pay as much as 30,000 a month for child support. A person on the bottom rung is lucky if he can afford to pay 300 a month. And he often has to fight to survive on what he has left.
Prices for everything are shooting upward, while wages mostly remain stagnant. The tax code adds another layer on top of this--you're being taxed as if you were making twice to three times the money you are.
The government's stated official "poverty level" is ludicrously low. We know how much it takes to sustain a decent standard of living for a family of two or more.
Corporate America is like a pack of predators, or scavengers, picking off more and more of our flesh with the turn of every season. And we are left without any real way to fight back. The vast majority of our elected officials work for, or are at least indebted to, those that prey on us. The insurance companies insure us to death, the credit card companies engage in blatant usury, and the banks return only a fraction to us of the money they make with OUR money in the balance.
Our employees, our representatives, vote themselves pay raises, do next to nothing to protect us from these predators, and stand by as we're torn to bloody bits by their slavering jaws.
And we let them all get away with it.
Yeah, it's a war all right. A class war. And they're winning.
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