Who can ruin your day?

The middle class is dead. It's gone. A tiny fraction of them made it into the upper the class. The rest are poor, whether or not they know it. As for the poor -they've dropped right off the map.

The old game is dead. Your bosses just hope you don't know it yet. As long as people keep striving for that American dream, they can keep skimming the cream off the top.

The game is rigged. If the top 1% find themselves impacted by a new law, they call up their pet politicians and get the rules changed. They don't even have to change the law. Changing the way it's enforced is good enough. Haven't we heard of those “too big to go to jail?” The government can't prosecute the big boys as it “would negatively affect the economy.”

The little guy? No such luck. Anyone who works for anyone else knows they can lose their job at any time. Everyone from the big boss miles a thousand miles away to their immediate supervisor can impact a worker's life. They don't even have to fire you. Work condition changes can quickly turn a good job into a living hell. Your good company can be bought out by a bad company and your life goes down the tubes in a hurry.

Do you think owning your own business insulates you from all that? Nope. A different bunch of bozos can ruin your day. Government regulations can turn a small business from a profitable venture to a money loser. Even simple things like road construction can cause a small business to fail. If your customers have to travel miles of bad road and dodge construction equipment, they might not be your customers much longer.

The whole nation, thanks to Obama care, now knows what's it's like to have your life impacted by the government. Work hard. Try to save a few bucks. Get it all wiped out with insurance costs -or medical expenses. Either way it's bad.

What's a poor peon to do?

The first thing is to realize the game has changes, won't change back, and has to be dealt with. One way is to look at around and see how many people can impact your life and ruin your day. Cut down on your vulnerabilities. It might be by eliminating debt, downsizing before you have to, cutting losses and moving on. Maybe it's by having 5 small income streams rather than one “regular” job.

Mostly though, look at those who can casually screw you. This past year my pension income was quietly cut back by a $1,000. I didn't even get a letter. My check didn't show up on and I had to contact the pension system to find out what happened. Now $1,000 won't make or break me, but I felt it. Eventually I'm going to have to better isolate myself from those arbitrary decisions. I suspect that one day the checks will just stop entirely. Plan B is in the works. There will be a few less bad boys who can ruin my day.

-Sixbears

The end of surety

Through much of history people knew what to expect from life. Most were born into their condition, and stayed there. Peasants knew what was expected of them and knew what life was all about. It might have sucked, but it didn't have a lot of surprises. There may have been better conditions for the upper classes, but they too had a limited set of options.

There are times when I wonder if the American Dream wasn't much better. Work hard, obey the law, be patriotic, vote, and life would get better. Maybe that even used to work for a lot of people. That's fine, but maybe the whole life path known as the American Dream was just another box. There was more opportunity, but there were some serious expectations that could only be ignored at great personal risk.

Never question if you even wanted what was promised: more money, bigger house, nicer car and maybe even a trophy wife. Never question who benefited from a large mass of worker bees sticking to the rules. How many of that tiny fraction at the top who actually run things, played by those rules? Few to none is my guess. That was for the people who didn't know how things really worked.

We are coming to a time when the old models of living are breaking down. The whole work hard and get rewarded model is falling apart, but so are other models. The middle class might be changing, but so's life for the poor and well off minion class too. The poor are finding their tenuous grip on life is starting to slip. The things that held it together are no longer working, be it welfare, low income housing, fuel assistance, health care, unemployment insurance, food stamps, or whatever. The well off are catching on that the super rich are playing a different game and they'll never be allowed to even know the rules. A million doesn't buy what it once did either.

It's going to be rough, but it's also going to be immensely interesting. The old rules are breaking down. Chaos plagues all systems. Entropy, entropy all winds down. Except it doesn't. Nothing stimulates evolution like stressing a system. The critters on the margins of things, insignificant in the old order, find their oddities are perfect for the new conditions.

I just hope it's not ideal for cockroaches, either insectoid or human.

Odds are it won't. Humans have a long history of actually being pretty decent at times. If we are clever, we'll have a new paradigm where we compete for status by seeing who can be the most enlightened. Boy that sounds like a set up for a joke. (none are as humble as I) But still, if there are systems that appeal to our baser natures like greed, there are also systems that reward generosity. We saw were greed got us. Let's try something else.

When nothing is sure or certain anymore, it's a time of turmoil, but also opportunity. If the old stuff doesn't work like it used to, throw it out and try something new. It might fail, but the old ways are failing too. In fact, the old ways are failing for sure.


-Sixbears

What the hippies could get away with that we can't

During the 60s, I was too young to participate but old enough to observe. I really came of age in the 70s. By the time I got out of high school in '76, the whole hippy thing had run its course. Many of the experiments of that time had run out of steam. The Vietnam War was over so there was no longer a major movement to unite young people.

A tiny fraction of the hippies continued to live their values. A handful of communes survived. Many people held on to some of the values but pretty much integrated the rest of society.

Most got haircuts, ditched the tie dyed clothes, finished their degrees and got real jobs.

There were real jobs to be had and money to be made. Much of the hippie movement happened on college campuses. That means those young people came from a background financially well enough off to afford college. The lower working class, by and large, didn't protest the war. They got their draft notice and went and fought it. Still, even for most of them, there were jobs waiting for them when the got home. Maybe in a factory, but they could earn a living and a piece of the American Dream.

For a while it was fashionable to drop out. When that went out of fashion, most dropped back in.

Today, the fear is that dropping out is a one way trip. Once off the corporate treadmill, it's hard to jump back on. Human resources departments don't want to hear that you took a year off to read philosophy. There are plenty of other people they could hire instead. Dropping out is long long drop these days.

Unlike the 60s, students are indentured to massive student loans. Those payments have to be made. Voluntary simplicity is for rich folks who went college without loans. How weird is that?

People don't drop out of their comfortable middle class lives; they are pushed out. Jobs are lost, houses foreclosed on, and the dream is over. It's a tough landing. Too many of friends are on the raggedy edge, looking at that hard landing. I've been told that they don't know how to live like I do. That's too bad, as their landing will be a lot harder than it could be. They keep hoping for a last minute improvement that shows no signs of appearing. Job searches have stretched into years.

It's one thing to drop out when you are 21, healthy, and live in a prosperous time. It's another thing to be pushed out when you are 40, with bad knees, a wife, kids, a mortgage and two car payments. You don't crash at a friend's pad and beg mom and dad for some bread.

Those pushed out of the middle class would benefit from having a landing zone picked out. Maybe an old RV they can park on some cheap land. Perhaps n old sailboat they can live on. Maybe something as simple as selling or abandoning the house and cramming the family into an upstairs apartment above their shop. Sure beats living in your car. Heck, maybe that car is one of the things you should have ditched years ago.

The thing is, many of us will end up living like hippies, but without the cool music and too much gray in our beards. Mom and dad won't be sending us any checks as they are barely getting by themselves. There will still be people with the appearance of living the dream, but they'll be running faster and faster just to stay in place. There will also be a lot fewer of them. For the rest, it's an exercise in getting by with less. Wake up from the dream and deal with the reality.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could at least get some decent music, peace, love and understanding out of the whole experience?

-Sixbears