If this isn’t a recession, what the heck is it?

The belt is going to have to come in a few more notches

As this past week has shown, things don’t really seem to be getting better in this country. I’m still hoping for change, but angry that the regressives in this country seem to be having their way. The rich get rich and the poor get poorer and in the meantime it’s sometimes hard to see the fun.

When the bubble burst, stock market crashed, and the Great Recession started in ’08 I figured that we’d hunker down, tighten our belts and wait it out. In the meantime my husband’s job was eliminated. True, he had retirement from 25 plus years with the FAA, but that is a half salary and there are not a lot of jobs for aging airtraffic controllers in the private sector. True, he could have continued working for the company that took over his sector of the FAA, but it would have meant relocating to undesirable parts of the country (Sorry, Texas, Arizona, and Virginia) leaving behind aging parents. His unemployment is due to run out in October and my live-in son and I will be receiving a 2% pay cuts this year.

I have a friend who insists that circumstances are a matter of visualization and attitude. It is hard to be optimistic right now. My daughter-in-law has taken to not watching the news and reminding me that we have each other and our heath. Blessings indeed, but that hardly makes the mortgage payment on a house worth less than it was three years ago. I probably should stop listening to the news, too, but I'm too much of a junkie to do that. The belt is going to have to come in a few more notches and yet economists can’t seem to agree. Is the recession over? Are we going into a double-dip recession? If this isn’t a recession, what the heck is it?

Buddy Can You Spare a Dime?

Since the beginnings of civilization society has had those individuals who for one reason or another find it necessary to ask—beg—for help from those more capable of making their way in life. They have always been with us. During hard economic times even more so. They make us uncomfortable and we’d rather they be invisible so we don’t have to think about them. We pass laws against panhandling as though we can outlaw homelessness and poverty. Tacoma has tried it with the result that the beggars came to Gig Harbor. Gig Harbor prefers to keep those things invisible or on the other side of the Narrows Bridge.

Up until recently there have been three or four individuals (never more than two at one time) standing at the intersection of Pt. Fosdick and Olympic Drives holding signs asking for help. Since the appearance of an article on the phenomenon in the Peninsula Gateway, Gig Harbor’s weekly newspaper, they have disappeared. Did they all get jobs? Were they all run out of town on a rail? Are they in the bushes behind Safeway where homeless people, some of them Tacoma ex-gang members, have lived for several years?

I don’t have a problem with panhandlers or beggars. It reminds me that we are not doing enough to care for each other. If I’m not the one driving and we are stopped at the intersection I will give them a $5 bill. No one need feel obliged to give money to these people, but our family firmly believes that there are people for whom it is just impossible to hold a job. Most of us would not even want to attempt to employ them. Does this mean that they just deserve to starve or die from the elements? I don’t think so. The fact that people are in a position where begging has become their only option speaks to our failure as a society to care for our own. The way we outlaw poverty is to provide support for these people not pass laws that attempt to make them invisible.