(This is an article about another article. I'll link to the original next.)


http://www.nextavenue.org/going-viral-secret-shame-of-the-middle-class/

Gabler’s article about the financial woes of the middle class has already attracted more than 1,700 comments on the Atlantic site. Some are sympathetic, others think Gabler is a whiner who brought on his own financial problems.

I think you should read his article and draw your own conclusions.

But there’s no denying this: As I’ve written on Next Avenue earlier this year (The New Normal of Financial Vulnerability in America) and in 2015 (The United States of Financial Insecurity), millions of middle-class Americans have serious, sometimes dire, money challenges.

In certain cases, they’re still trying to recover from the Great Recession and the real estate and stock market crashes of 2008-2009. They’re stuck with underwater mortgages, they’ve lost jobs, their incomes have plummeted while their expenses have risen and they’re pummeled by the steep cost of college.

The financial class is rapidly gobbling up what's left of the wealth of the middle class. There's still the social security trust fund. But when that's gone, the party is over.

(Loooong essay, but well worth the read.)



http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/


Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency. I’m one of them.

Since 2013, the Federal Reserve Board has conducted a survey to “monitor the financial and economic status of American consumers.” Most of the data in the latest survey, frankly, are less than earth-shattering: 49 percent of part-time workers would prefer to work more hours at their current wage; 29 percent of Americans expect to earn a higher income in the coming year; 43 percent of homeowners who have owned their home for at least a year believe its value has increased. But the answer to one question was astonishing. The Fed asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The answer: 47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all. Four hundred dollars! Who knew?

Well, I knew. I knew because I am in that 47 percent.

I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. I know what it is like to have liens slapped on me and to have my bank account levied by creditors. I know what it is like to be down to my last $5—literally—while I wait for a paycheck to arrive, and I know what it is like to subsist for days on a diet of eggs. I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell my daughter that I didn’t know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil.

You wouldn’t know any of that to look at me. I like to think I appear reasonably prosperous. Nor would you know it to look at my résumé. I have had a passably good career as a writer—five books, hundreds of articles published, a number of awards and fellowships, and a small (very small) but respectable reputation. You wouldn’t even know it to look at my tax return. I am nowhere near rich, but I have typically made a solid middle- or even, at times, upper-middle-class income, which is about all a writer can expect, even a writer who also teaches and lectures and writes television scripts, as I do. And you certainly wouldn’t know it to talk to me, because the last thing I would ever do—until now—is admit to financial insecurity or, as I think of it, “financial impotence,” because it has many of the characteristics of sexual impotence, not least of which is the desperate need to mask it and pretend everything is going swimmingly. In truth, it may be more embarrassing than sexual impotence. “You are more likely to hear from your buddy that he is on Viagra than that he has credit-card problems,” says Brad Klontz, a financial psychologist who teaches at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and ministers to individuals with financial issues. “Much more likely.” America is a country, as Donald Trump has reminded us, of winners and losers, alphas and weaklings. To struggle financially is a source of shame, a daily humiliation—even a form of social suicide. Silence is the only protection.

This is part of a paragraph from later in the article, but I think it's appropriate for the kind of discussion we used to have here in SMW.