But I'm a little tired of hearing about it. I realize there are people losing their homes in foreclosure. I realize there are people whose retirement accounts are now undervalued. I realize that millions are out of a job right now.
I ALSO know that in America, when you're unemployed - the government gives you a hand. I think that rocks. I'm willing and proud to help pay for unemployment. We live in a country where - when the markets tank and people are losing money and businesses are hurting - the government tries to find a trillion dollars to fix the leak. Everywhere I go I hear about the economy. I even hear about about the economy from people who don't have a savings account, much less a retirement account or a mortgage.
There are a couple million people living in poverty in this country who probably don't feel the pinch at all. They were already pinched.
My husband and I are well off. Extremely well off, actually. Insanely, insanely well off. We've got multiple computers in the house (well, duplex), two cars, multiple televisions (we need to dump one, incidentally), annual passes to Disneyland, cell phones, an iPod each, and secondary educations - albeit incomplete ones.
We eat dinner every single night, we have lunch every day, and breakfast when we wake up on time. Our cat eats twice a day. We have running water, electricity, gas, and high speed internet. (No cable TV though, that's why we have the high speed internet - oh the sacrifices we've made.)
I have 30+ pairs of shoes, and that's after selling off nearly all of my designer shoes a couple years back, so I could pay rent. See, I thought I was making a huge sacrifice, selling my way, way overpriced shoes to make rent.
My overpriced shoes could have fed a family for a year in Sierra Leone. I don't have numbers on that, but I'm not a bloody statistician. Google it, I'm sure you'll find that half a pair of my designer shoes could have fed somebody, somewhere.
Back when I had cable, sometimes I watched 'My Super Sweet 16.' For those of you who don't know - ugh. Just click the link. It's a train wreck. These girls scream about not getting a $500,000 car. I couldn't look away. I got the hugest kick out of swigging by beer, confident, nay smug, in my superiority to a bratty little child whining about her multi million dollar birthday party.
Here's the thing about that; I'm not much better than those petulant brats when you put it in a global perspective. I don't need to quote statistics. Almost anyone who's lived in the world for four or more years knows darn well that that are people in this world who live for a month on what we spend on a latte and a bagel in the morning. My household pulls in more than 50K a year before taxes and by God, we are filthy rich. Not only are we filthy rich compared to most of the world, we're filthy rich compared to millions here in the U.S.
I'm not saying that those of us who are lucky to live in the ultimate First World nation should scrap our big screens or our cars our even our luxury goods.
I'm just saying we should quit whining.
1 comment:
I totally agree with you. We are very lucky to be living in such a great country.
I'm sick and tired about hearing about the economy too.
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