Tough Times

Times are tough. Com­pared to mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, times aren’t that bad for my fam­ily; but in some ways we’re poster chil­dren for the social, infra­struc­tural and eco­nomic chal­lenges that the coun­try cur­rently faces. For instance:

• My home has decreased at least 15% in value since I pur­chased it due to the fore­clo­sure crisis.
• Refi­nanc­ing my mort­gage to take advan­tage of the lower-interest rates is not cost-effective, as I would have to pay the dif­fer­ence in appraised value and pay for mort­gage insur­ance, even though I’m in no dan­ger of default­ing on my loan.
• We had to spend a hefty chunk of sav­ings (around $3,000) on a new fur­nace this winter.
• Debbie’s char­ter school shut down last year because they didn’t pay their rent, and none of the for­mer employ­ees were eli­gi­ble to receive unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits because the school admin­is­tra­tion told the unem­ploy­ment folks that the entire staff quit.
• As soon as Abra­ham left Debbie’s body, he was no longer cov­ered by her insur­ance. Since it took a few days to get him on my insur­ance, his doc­tor visit in the hos­pi­tal wasn’t cov­ered and we had to pay it out of pocket. $200.
• My old insur­ance, Kaiser Per­ma­nente, refused cov­er­age for Abraham’s first two vis­its to the pedi­a­tri­cian. $1300.
• Debbie’s cur­rent job as a part-time art teacher is at a parochial school that pays its teach­ers $75 a day. We spend more send­ing Abra­ham to day­care than Deb­bie makes at work. Her school may close after next year because the Dio­cese of Cleve­land can’t afford to keep so many schools open.
• There is lit­tle hope that Deb­bie can find a full-time posi­tion as an art teacher. Even though Buhrer Ele­men­tary was just rebuilt a block north of where we live, her con­stant search­ing is dis­heart­en­ing sim­ply because there is noth­ing to find.
• Due to a pre-existing con­di­tion, Deb­bie was unable to get ade­quate med­ical insur­ance after los­ing her job. The six-month pol­icy she pur­chased has refused to cover all of the care she received dur­ing the time of the pol­icy. From what I’ve read lately, these poli­cies are a joke, and the com­pa­nies that sell them are rack­e­teers. She’s out another $700.
• I lost my shirt with my pen­sion plan and my deferred com­pen­sa­tion plan.

To sum up, banks don’t want to loan, employ­ers screw their employ­ees, the school sys­tem is in an abysmal state, and health insur­ance is a giant malig­nant leech. This is why we voted for Obama. After the matroshka Gauss­ian Copula-derived, over-leveraged, shell-game orgy that Wall Street engaged in after being dereg­u­lated and handed a few buck­ets of lit­tle blue pills by the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, well it was time for some change we could believe in.

But you know what, things could be much worse. We’re lucky in the fol­low­ing ways:

• I own a solidly con­structed home, built in 1900, that has an upper apart­ment that we rent for some sup­ple­men­tal cash.
• I have a great job that I love, and good job security.
• I have much bet­ter health insur­ance, and live just blocks from Metro Hos­pi­tal, which has given me noth­ing but excel­lent care from cour­te­ous staff since I’ve lived in Cleveland.
• We have plenty to eat, and are warm at night.
• We have fam­ily and friends that look out for us.
• We live on a street of good peo­ple, who are friendly and keep an eye on each other’s prop­er­ties. There are no blighted homes.
• The non-bank-bailout stim­u­lus pack­age might actu­ally mean that Deb­bie can get a job as a teacher. She’s got a Master’s Degree in Art Edu­ca­tion after all.
• The cost of liv­ing in Cleve­land is great. The art and music scenes are vibrant, all you have to do is look around your neigh­bor­hood. I’ve been all over Cleve­land and I’ve yet to be in a neigh­bor­hood that didn’t have reg­u­lar folks doing extra­or­di­nar­ily enter­tain­ing stuff.
• We are all healthy.
• Abra­ham is awesome.