Mark Winston Griffith
Surviving the Lived Economy
May 20, 2008 - Crown Heights, Brooklyn, USA
The dangers of the American economy are getting pretty close to home. Literally.
Last night and this morning hundreds of people gathered at the church down the street from my home, at the corner of Dean Street and Nostrand Avenue, to mourn the passing of Audrey Smith Campbell. According to 1199, the healthcare workers union she belonged to, Ms. Campbell died as a result of the fact that the nursing home that employed her improperly terminated her health benefits, thus making it impossible for her to buy medicine for the asthma that eventually killed her.
Meanwhile a USA Today story reported yesterday that the number of people on food stamps is growing, with working families and professional people joining the ranks in huge numbers.
Economists are trying to decide if the U.S. is facing a recession. Despite what they ultimately conclude, people are experiencing the pain of today's "lived economy", a term introduced to me by a colleague from the Australian think tank, the Centre for Policy Development. I interpret "lived economy" as the actual, day-to-day struggles that working class people are enduring, an experience that has yet to be adequately addressed in deed by Washington politicians.
Take the foreclosure crisis which has been in full swing for more than a year now. This is one of those surreal, Hoover-esqe moments in our national history where the government is blithely unconscious to the economic pain that people around them are feeling. As the New York Times put it yesterday, "In responding to the subprime mortgage crisis, most Congressional Republicans and many Bush administration officials apparently believe they have time on their side. They are wrong." The fact that the crisis was in no small part enabled by failed government oversight and regulation of the lending industry makes the political lethargy in the face of record setting foreclosures even more disgraceful.
People abandoned by a broken health care system; professionals with graduate degrees filling soup kitchens; homeowners owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. This is life - and death - on my block and on countless streets across the country. Once again, it's the economy, stupid.
Mark Winston Griffith: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 8:00 AM, May 21, 2008 in Economic Opportunity
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Comments
some people would have to be hit in the head with a baseball to understand anything. We are already in a resesion, if you don't believe that then go out and try to get a job.also try to make you pay check go asfar as it once did,then youwill know where we stand.FLAT BROKE:
Posted by: howard read | May 23, 2008 04:34 PM
It makes me angry when I hear people place blame those who are most affected by our dismal economy. It's their own fault, right?They should have prepared better and saved more, right? Record high food, fuel,energy, housing and college costs have nothing to do with it, right? Republicans who say "it is their own fault for irresponsible spending and getting into debt" are like the pot calling the kettle black. It was this administration who took a thriving economy and drove up our national debt and deficit to surreal levels.THEY are the ones who should have foreseen these economic woes and taken measures to prevent it,or at least lessen the impact on everyday people. It is the low and middle class who are impacted most.5 years ago, my salary seemed luxurious.Now we scrape every dime to live. Don't tell me I don't work hard enough or that I spend too much. Neither is true. The truth is that it is tough to find a job, hard to make ends meet and impossible to manage the ever broadening gap between salary and necessities.
Posted by: Keri Lock | May 23, 2008 04:56 PM
The sensation-oriented media have no interest in providing insight into the feelings of desperation in the "middle class" (ignoring completely the impoverished and economically disenfranchised, as they always have) so that it can become an acknowledged COMMON reality. Fool us with entertainment and sensationalism, keep us opiated with the trivial and irrelevant so we can be ignored and manipulated by commercialism and our so-called representative form of government. We are dumbed-down by our fill-in-the-bubble rather than thought-analysis oriented education system, and we are now being stressed-down by an economic system that manipulates information to make us helpless and stupid. Hooray for American Democracy.
Posted by: Michele Meyer | May 24, 2008 12:40 PM
It is for sure that the prediction of the Federal Reserve about the United State's economy is not that good. The Federal Reserve has predicted that unemployment is going to keep rising, as much as up to 10%. They also predict the economy won't re-stabilize until next year at the earliest, even with stimulus packages making payday loans to the nation. The range of predictions is going all over the map, from full-on Depression to an early end by 3rd quarter of 2009. One thing is for sure – we all might need some payday loans before this thing is through.
Posted by: Koby C | February 24, 2009 05:41 AM