It is 5 am CST and I just got home. Around 3 am I decided to drive around and jam because I was insanely bored. I drove thru the town I went to high school in, and it was a major smack in the face. I got a really a good view of what has happened to our country. You may need a little background information. I was in High School in the late 90's and early 00's - how are we saying that? Clinton was really the president of my memorable youth.
When I was in high school the town I was in was a working class town. Really, it was the type of town that I would want to bring my child up in. I'd say the average combined income of the families I knew was about 60k, mine was about 110k. In my town my family was relatively well off, but not wealthy. The city is now pretty much dead. Now all the houses appear to be lower class, and I would imagine their incomes are substantially less. All the mom and pop stuff is shut down in what appear to be abandoned buildings. The only things that are bigger and better are the hospital, banks, and schools. I feel like it is a very representative sample of the country as a whole.
Then there is where I grew up in Chicago. I lived, and my entire family lived in Wicker Park, Chicago. Now the buildings that were like 200-300k dollars are going for 1-1.5 million. That has been built up like crazy and is crazy beautiful where it was kind of sketchy before.
What happened? I remember when I was in high school corporations were doing anything they could to retain employees. They were matching 401(k)s at over 100% and now I don't think they match at all. There is nearly no opportunity anymore. I know people with master's degrees working as bartenders and serving coffee at Starbucks. When I was in school grown ups told us we couldn't handle the real world... Really? I feel like they couldn't handle the real world and that is why the majority of my generation has absolutely no real opportunity. I know it isn't fair to blame older generations, and I really don't. It is something that just happened and was obviously not intentional. I just don't think the country knows exactly how much harder it is for younger people because we are the ones who don't even get to start a real life. We are the first ones to get laid off because of seniority and we can't get the experience and so we aren't the ones who get hired. I mean seriously, the person who is giving you your coffee likely has an education level that is higher than yours. That is fucked up. They are likely 40-60k in debt trying to pay it off and pay their bills based off that minimum wage salary.
We need to get beyond this stupid fucking partisan bullshit and fix our country. We need to get back to where we were in the 90's when people were only partially miserable, but were able to escape it when they went home. Now we can't even do that. Can we agree that we need to quit outsourcing and focus on buiding jobs? Can we analyze what happens to the population when corporations grow, ie bringing in walmart to small towns. Why is all the money going to large cities? Should fixing health care on paper really take 6 months? You could get a group together at any business school in the country and they could have it fixed in a week or two. The shit that is going on is truly ridiculous and while those people are collecting millions of dollars in salary/benefits an entire generation and like 40 percent of the population is suffering, in the true sense of the word. Our country is dying. I don't even think that is a sensational statement anymore.
I don't know what it looked like when Russia collapsed, but I would venture to guess that it looked something like this towards the beginning. We are in real crisis in America. I'm truly offended by anyone saying that the recession is over. That is horseshit. The reality of the situation doesn't work in business cycles. We don't live by the quarter and we don't get bailouts.
This is a very good production that encapsulates my entire generations situation. I hate John Mayer but some of his trio stuff is really really good. He is just a tad older than me, but I mean this is the way pretty much all young people feel. Now that we did the impossible and got a black progressive into office, people are getting more and more turned off. We gave it our all to do our part and what is the result?
