This Unaffordable Life

The United States is rapidly becoming a nation that is shedding its middle class and making life in general unaffordable for the average person. We have bountiful resources, copious amounts of food, some of the best medical professionals in the world and the ability to house everybody. Yet all our resources are being siphoned off through deliberate policy decisions to a smaller and smaller group all the time. We are the frogs in the pot, and the pot is starting to boil.

Consider this: In the 70s, the median house was easily bought with a 15-year mortgage on a manageable percentage of the median salary. These days, a 30-year mortgage won't bring most dwellings inside a city within the reach of a family even if there are to-wage earners, without such a high percentage of salary being devoted to the enterprise that foreclosure is constantly looming. This doesn't even take into account the unconscionability of the mortgage companies getting so much more in interest over a 30-year period than they would have over 15 years.

Food is more expensive as well. The minimum wage, or, indeed, the median wage, has hardly increased in purchasing power in many years. But food is becoming a larger part of people's budgets. Many of us would not give a second thought to eating well, and having good, nutritious food twenty years ago. But some of us are making even more money and have to ration our food budgets much more.

And medical care is getting outrageous. Somebody is just pocketing a huge amount of money. And that "somebody" is mostly the insurance industry; a frivolous middleman that gets hungrier all the time.

Things are really getting out of kilter.