The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I just read that 60% of wage earners in the Land of Opportunity are living paycheck to paycheck. Which means they don’t make enough to save anything for, oh, that next ER visit or the unexpected auto repair or the jump in their house or apartment rental. Sure, some folks just spend everything they make anyway, wouldn’t matter if they got a 50% raise in their hourly wage, they’d run out and buy more, probably put it on their credit card, pay the monthly minimum, ignore the huge interest accumulation and just sink deeper in debt. But … I suspect most of these 60%ers are struggling to feed their families, pay the mortgage or the rent, cough up the car payments and buy clothes for their kids. Their incomes are probably down in the minimum wage bottom area.

Nice to know, though, that the Fed keeps jacking the interest rates to try to keep inflation at bay. Or put another way, the Fed wants to see unemployment rates rise. And the last thing they want is for hourly wages to start rising too, just another form of inflation. The lower the unemployment numbers, the more employers will have to pay to entice workers to hire on to flip burgers, repair tires, serve café patrons, scan groceries or make beds at the motels. Yeah, it’s a vicious cycle, a downward spiral, at least for the poor.

Housing prices are going through the roof. Gas is high. Try to find an affordable used car or get in line to buy a new Honda. Supply chain issues, price gouging, too few rental apartments, remote working, you name it. Opioid addictions, homelessness, civil unrest, what’s not to like if you’re the Fed? Crank up those unemployment numbers, keep the wages low, spare the rich. This time around we have the debt ceiling crisis looming, a game of chicken where the right wingers in the GOP put a gun to everyone’s head and dare them to refuse more tax cuts for the wealthy and less benefits for the poor. You might think the richest country in the world might worry less about its billionaires and more for those 60% hanging by a thread. But you’d be wrong…. The rich, in case you hadn’t heard, just keep getting richer.

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