Chapter 4: Countdown to ChaosA Chapter by DGordon This chapter describes the first days of the Harris Administration, and the introduction of the Economic Freedom Act, the law that destroys the economy. Countdown to Chaos With the election now over, it was time for President-elect Harris to assemble his team of advisors. Now, seeing who an incoming president picks to advise him can really provide a window for one to see how exactly they will govern once in office. Who Harris picked only confirmed the fears I had about him, as he was pulling many members from various far-right think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute. He was picking men and women who held what could be considered to be fringe beliefs, who were known for making inflammatory comments. For instance, one advisor, a short, stubby, jowl-faced man named Frank Forman, once referred to homosexuals as “subhuman” in a post on Twitter (a popular social media site) that he had quickly deleted, but not before someone screen-captured it and showed the world what exactly what hateful thought came out of Forman’s small mind. Another advisor, a fiery, petite redheaded Texan lady named Carla Lee, actually gave a speech to a small religious college a couple of years earlier stating that the women who were graduating today “were better off finding a husband to submit fully to, and shouldn’t bother with a career. The best choice you ladies can possibly make is to be a wife and mother”. Such a statement came off kind of strange coming from a woman who chose a career, at least to those who actually used logic and reason. These kooky, discredited beliefs were par for the course at the Heritage Foundation, where she worked. After all, one of their head “academics” once wrote a now-infamous book, which made the claim that racial minorities, African-Americans in particular, were destined to be poor because they were “genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than whites”. Yes, these were the people who had the ear of the incoming President, they would be given the opportunity to shape the direction the United States of America would be headed. It was certainly distressing to see people with such horrid beliefs giving the leader of the free world advice on all matters. I mean, David Harris never said anything like what those people said while on the campaign trail, so he came off as not like them. However, if he was hiring them, did he actually share their belief system? Did he just not say it because he knew of the backlash that would ensue? Well anyways, back to the advisors. One pervasive belief that many of them echoed was that America’s social safety net, the programs that kept millions out of poverty, either needed to go, or be pared back significantly. Harris’ Chief of Staff, a tall, dashing fellow in his late 30’s named James Milton (no relation to my boss, that I know of anyways), called the nation’s anti-poverty programs “an affront to individual liberty”, and once referred to those who used them as “leeches”. He said of the safety net: “Those who go to the government for help end up growing complacent, with no desire to help themselves out of their predicament. They grow dependent of the government, and learn to live the high life without working for anything. That, I think, isn’t helping them at all. It’s quite hurtful, to tell you the truth”. These were the minds that were going to be shaping the direction of the United States for at least the next four years. It wasn’t just the advisors, but also who an incoming President picks to be in their cabinet (the heads of the various government departments) that showed the American people how they would govern once they assume power. My fears of what President-elect Harris were further stoked by the people he chose for his cabinet. For example, he picked the CEO of Bank of America, Michael Drew, to head the Treasury Department, despite his poor record. He had a propensity to foreclose on people’s houses during the housing crisis of the Great Recession, even when they were not behind on their payments. He had no problem taking people’s money, then taking their homes anyways. He was also accused of having his employees do other various shady dealings during his time running the bank. However, Drew did give Harris’ presidential campaign $15 million, as well as smaller amounts to Harris’ 2010 Senate campaign. To head the Department of Education, he picked Laura Hall, a woman who had no background in public education whatsoever, but instead headed the Campaign for Parent Choice, a group who advocated for the wider use of charter schools, where the school is run by a private company instead of a school district, and has a goal of turning a profit. She had also made comments in the past about wanting to abolish the Department of Education, a goal which David Harris shared. Likewise, the guy Harris picked to run the Department of Energy had publicly commented that the department they were picked to run should be abolished, and the same also went for Harris’ pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. David Harris’ disdain for our environmental laws was well known, even going back to his Senate days. In a campaign speech, Harris said that “I long for the day that our American industry can compete once again, when we remove the chains of so many of these environmental protections that have been put in place over the last several decades. These laws just increase business costs, and it is time to put them in the past” to roaring applause. I guess his supporters didn’t want breathable air, or drinkable water, or trees, or to keep countless animal species from going extinct. Oh, and it just kept going from there. Congressman Christopher Morris from Alabama, a longtime ally of David Harris who was tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, had long argued against any sort of government health care, which meant no Medicare of Medicaid. Robert Faller, the District Attorney of Knox County, Tennessee, and an early supporter of David Harris when he ran for the U.S. Senate, was Harris’ pick to be Attorney General. However, he had a poor history when it came to civil rights, and once argued for more corporate power when it came to making laws. Civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center vociferously complained about the nomination of Faller, citing his reported ties to white supremacist groups, as well as his past comments about race that, in the eyes of many Americans, showed him to be too biased and racist for to be the Attorney General. Some of these comments include hits such as “I get tired of these blacks who want these special rules and protections! Didn’t we give them enough in the 60’s?”, and “Why don’t we just kick the immigrants out? Especially the ones who aren’t supposed to be here.” The other cabinet nominees just followed similar patterns. Harris’ choice to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, congressman Jim Teller of Wyoming, argued against government housing of any kind. The nominee for Department of Labor, fast food executive Eric Putnam, had a long history of labor law abuses towards his tens of thousands of employees, and once argued that there should be no minimum wage. “The government, especially the federal government, has no right to set a minimum wage. Any wage floor simply hurts those without the skills to make more money. Companies shouldn’t have to pay anyone more than what they are actually worth.” Putnam once argued to Forbes magazine in an interview a few years earlier. George Miller, the nominee to lead the Department of Commerce, shared similar sentiment to Putnam. Ryan Hilton, the former governor of Mississippi who was picked to lead the Department of Transportation, greatly expanded the use of private toll roads in his state, turning over the maintenance of roads from the state government to private firms. Kenneth Ungerman, the governor of Idaho, was chosen to lead the Department of the Interior, which oversaw our national parks and forests. Well, he wasn’t too big of a fan of our national parks and forests, once claiming that “We have no use for all of this land to be owned by the government. Do you know how much economic activity can be generated by drilling for oil and gas, by mining and logging operations, if we opened up those lands for that purpose? We need to sell off these federal lands in order to unlock all that potential.” He stated shortly being nominated. Also, last but not least, Sam Graham, the choice to head the Department of Agriculture, was against giving government subsidies and tax breaks to small farmers. “Let them sink or swim on their own!” He said, conveniently ignoring the huge corporate farms that get the majority of those subsidies, and killed off most of the small, family-owned farms that once dotted the landscape. Through David Harris’ cabinet choices, we saw the true face of what was to come under the new administration, and it wasn’t pretty. Before too long, left-leaning, as well as many mainstream commentators, showed alarm at the fringe members now dominating the incoming administration. Time magazine had a headline on a December issue titled “How Far Right is Too Far Right?”, which showed the face of David Harris on the cover. On left-leaning publications and websites such as the Huffington Post, the Nation and Salon, there were seemingly daily articles predicting impending doom. The Nation put on one issue the headline “The United States: 1776-2017?”. Some people, such as the authors of these articles and many of the commenters on said articles, actually felt that the end of the United States was nearing its end, that the most powerful nation on Earth was soon to meet a horrible, painful demise. Of the hundreds and articles and news segments pumped out by the various commentators, I quite possibly read and watched all of them. While I knew that things were about to get far worse for the vast majority of our population, I was hesitant to think that our nation was now dying. However, I did know that it was sure to be a bumpy ride ahead. As the calendar flipped to 2017, it was time for the new session of Congress to get to work. After the Republican victories in both houses, Congress did have an even more conservative tilt to it than ever before. On top of David Harris winning the presidential election, the Republican Party added seats in both houses of Congress, going from 247 to 268 seats in the House (out of 435), and from 54 to 58 in the Senate (out of 100). Surely, all that Reed money really made a difference, as many of these new Republican members won their seats on the heels of massive campaign spending, drowning out their Democratic opponents. Also, through a heavy vetting process conducted by the big money donors such as the Reeds and a myriad of Tea Party groups, these Republican freshmen were also ultra-conservative, with views in the vein of David Harris. These newly-minted members of Congress would help Harris pass his agenda once he took office a couple of weeks later. The attack on government spending would now be bigger than ever, and now they finally had the numbers to be successful this time. The far-right had truly taken over, and would now get to rip the New Deal to shreds. There were even more changes to the Republican Party leadership. The Tea Partiers had already forced out previous Speaker of the House John Boehner back in 2015, replacing him with Tea Party firebrand Jason Miller, a representative from Alabama who was elected in the first Tea Party wave election in 2010. Miller, a big, burly former college football player of about forty, cowrote a Tea Party budget in 2011, calling for balancing the budget via massive cuts to social spending. He cowrote it with, you guessed it, then-Senator David Harris. The Republicans in the Senate then completed their takeover of that body in January of 2017. replacing their previous leader, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, with Utah Tea Partier Lee Michaels. Michaels, a tall, mob boss-looking fellow, was a former corporate executive known for stripping multiple companies bare and sending the jobs off to China, walking away with the profits made and moving on to his next victim. He shared Harris’ beliefs about the role of government, so he was perfect for the job. It was settled, the far-right had their dream team in place for the new session, they managed to wrest control away from the Republican establishment, whom they had been infighting with for years. Their takeover of the U.S. government was now complete. All I could say about this was may God have mercy on us all. Indeed, it was safe to say that I, like my fellow progressives, was deeply concerned about what lied ahead. I had fallen into a depression that I could not perk myself up from, and I began to have nightmares, which were always about impending doom. These nightmares involved falling, or having incredible stomach pains from hunger. Many of these nightmares involved family members or close friends dying. Needless to say, there were many sleepless nights during this time period, as I would often be tired at work due to lack of rest. While at home, I would find myself pacing back and forth around my apartment, thinking deeply a lot, and it got to the point where I was often distracted at family gatherings, or out with friends, or at work. I definitely came off as very distant. My mother would seemingly ask me what was wrong daily. I always said the the same thing: “Oh, nothing Mom, I’m ok, just got a lot on my mind”. I always had issues expressing how I really felt at any given moment, I was always shy in that regard. As the months passed, even I was noticing that I had been growing increasingly distant, my coworkers and friends and family expressed their concerns to me. “Will, what the hell is wrong with you?”, my work buddy Reggie asked me out of the blue one day. “Are you still pissed about the election?”. I apologized to Reggie, and told him that I had a lot on my mind. He knew what was up, that I kept obsessing over the whole situation that was unfolding before our very eyes. I couldn’t help it, I struggled to turn my attention to anything else. It was that day that I had gathered my thoughts and formed a coherent response to everybody’s questions. See, I had a lot of time with these thoughts since the election, since it was almost all I thought about, and I found myself interacting with others much less. I was making predictions as to what would happen. I knew that the economy is a vast and intricately connected thing, and that taking out a huge part of it would cause the rest to fall quickly. I hated to even envision this, and the thought of it depressed me deeply, but I came to the conclusion that our economy’s days were numbered, much like the articles from the sites I visited every day were saying, much like Bob Martin said even before the election. If the Harris Administration made the policy prescriptions that I thought they would, it would trigger a massive collapse of the economy, that we just may never recover from. It would take out entire sectors of the economy one by one, and spread all over the world, since other nations were gearing up with similar proposals of their own. My predictions weren’t that deep on details, but I knew that sharp reductions in wages would trigger sharp reductions in retail spending. I knew that for businesses to prosper, consumers needed money to spend on the products and services that businesses sold. Then, the reduced consumer demand would cause manufacturing to fall. Once retail was taken out, there would be less need for manufacturers to make things, hurting them significantly. Job losses would be massive, springing millions into deep poverty, and there would no longer be government help for them, worsening the blow of unemployment. This was to be a vicious cycle, a downward spiral where businesses, who were now losing huge amounts of money, would respond by cutting workers more, and further reducing the pay of those who remained. Many would lose their homes, causing the housing sector to go down before long once evictions and foreclosures start piling up. Then, the grand finale, those housing losses, combined with mass business failures and people burning through what money they had left, would drain the banks dry. Bank failures would start happening, causing a mass ripple effect across the entire economy. This would all be sparked by a mass reduction in government spending, which varied from twenty to twenty-five percent of the nation’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product, a key measure of an economy’s size), as well as stark reforms to our labor laws. There would be no more laws protecting labor unions, which had helped obtain higher wages and better benefits for workers but had decreased in size and power since the 1980’s due to right-wing attacks. There would also no more environmental laws, or workplace safety laws, and of course, no more minimum wage laws. This putrid cocktail of new policy was a stark reversal of decades of progress, and was going to create a massive mess. Before long, I started communicating these terrible predictions to those around me. I did this as a way of venting, but also to warn people as to what was probably coming. I started my quest with people who I felt more comfortable talking with, beginning with my sister Leann. Leann was now nineteen years old, she had graduated high school the same year I finished college, and was now working at a store called Claire’s, which sold jewelry, accessories and other assorted products to young girls, that was located in Montclair Place, the local mall. She was tall, with a medium build. She wore glasses and had ever-changing hair, it would be blue one month, then back to her natural blonde, then it would be green. We still stayed in regular contact once I moved out of my parent’s house, as I would share articles and memes (a form of internet joke) with her. Like I mentioned before, she did share very similar political beliefs as me, I guess I taught her well. One cold, rainy day in early January, right after the swearing in of the new Congress, me and my sisters were hanging out at my apartment. I would like to give my mom a break from them sometimes, and sometimes she would come along as well, but this time she didn’t. While Briana, now thirteen, was watching TV in my bedroom (her usual shows, which consisted of stuff on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel), I started telling Leann exactly what I had been thinking about for the previous several weeks since that fateful November night. I told her what I felt would happen, and when it would happen. She was taken aback by my predictions. “S**t, Bub, is that why you have been acting all weird lately? Do you think that would actually happen?” she replied to me, looking at me like I were some sort of crazy person. “Yeah, I truly feel that we are fucked. I hate feeling this way, and I wish that I didn’t, but I can’t help it. It is a terrible thing to think about, it’s like I’m fighting with myself constantly. I can’t help but think of this kind of stuff all day long. It’s driving me insane”. I responded, with an increasingly distressed tone. Yes, I had quite the potty mouth back in the day. A classic case of sailor mouth. Maybe that’s a reason why my parents wanted me to join the U.S. Navy after finishing high school. I felt, however, that my future lay in some cubicle crunching numbers, and producing reports for some rich person to read. The conversation continued. “Wow, I have read some things on Harris, like that issue of Time that you told me about a few weeks ago. He believes some crazy s**t. Sounds like he does want to do exactly what you say he wants to do. He said stuff like everyone taking care of themselves or whatever, and he said that if someone struggles, it’s probably their own fault, so they can fix it themselves. It’s like he has no grasp on reality. He’s such an a*****e!”. Leann replied as she recalled the aforementioned issue of Time magazine. Then Leann let out a huge sigh, she didn’t want to talk about this anymore, and neither did I. She went back to talking about some band she had recently started to like, and fired up a song by them on her phone. It wasn’t bad actually, something that could put my mind elsewhere, at least for a few minutes. The escape, however brief it was, was really nice. I could talk about music, or movies, or what was happening in the sports world, but I couldn’t take my mind off of my thoughts on the economy for long. I also remember the first day back at work of the new year. I was tending to my stack of reports and unpaid invoices like usual, when I saw a familiar face. It was my pal Reggie. He was African-American, a couple inches taller than me, with a shaved head and a thin, well-kept goatee. We greeted each other with our trademark fist bump, followed by me sitting down at my desk. Our conversation started with talk about the Lakers (our favorite basketball team) game last night. They beat the Clippers in a thriller of a game that went to overtime. They had just started to play well again after a few tough years. After a few minutes dissecting the play of the team’s promising young stars, the conversation turned more serious: “Hey Will, what’s going on? are you feeling okay now?” Reggie sat on my desk, he was clearly still concerned about my well being. “You seem really out of it lately. I’m worried about you man. You are just really off, you’re messing up with some of the payments you make, and you’re making mistakes with your calculations, which you never do. Milton is getting on my a*s about it.” “Yeah, I’m okay. I mean, I can’t lie, I still have the same thoughts I had last time we talked, but I’m not gonna let them distract me from my work anymore. I feel like I’m gonna have a productive year at work, then maybe Mr. Milton will give me a raise”. I replied with a forced chuckle to Reggie, who had a confused look on his face. “Dude, you gotta stop letting that get to you. I know it sucks that Harris won, the dude is a psycho. But it’s gonna be okay. He can’t be as bad as you think, you read too much political s**t! Seriously, it’s warping your mind and messing with every other aspect of your life”. Reggie shot back at me. “I’ve tried convincing myself that, man. I really did. But unfortunately I think it IS gonna be that bad. I have been reading so much about it. I got at least a hundred articles and studies bookmarked on my phone. I think the economy is gonna go down, Reggie. I hate thinking this, but I can’t help it”. Reggie put his hand across his face, seemingly a mixture of being tired and trying to comprehend what I was saying. I spent the next twenty or so minutes telling him what I thought was going to happen, what my predictions were. Reggie’s expressions oscillated between confusion and disbelief with some head nodding mixed in. Trying to gauge his expressions, it seemed like he felt that what I was saying made sense, but didn’t want to believe that things would actually get that bad. Reggie was a very intelligent, thoughtful man, he graduated from UCLA (a prominent university in Los Angeles) with honors. Despite his academic prowess, he also struggled to get a job in the accounting field, and had settled on working at Milton Plastics until he can pass the CPA exam and get something better. Here at Milton Plastics, he had a hand in preparing the financial reports that the company produced, like the income statement and the company’s balance sheet, as well as keeping track of all the transactions in the company journals and ledgers, so he was above me in the Accounting Department hierarchy. Back to our conversation, he seemed to put the pieces together in his head as I was saying them, as he did share fairly similar beliefs as me, and he voted for Morrison as well. Still, he didn’t pay nearly as much attention to politics as I did. I knew I was surely an outlier in that regard, as I was always glued to political news. Once I finished, it was 9 A.M., time for the workday to start. Reggie headed off to his cubicle, which was located some fifteen feet from mine. Before he gave me another fistbump and shuffled through the crowd of coworkers who were milling about the office at the start of the day, he turned back to me one more time. “Man, I hope you’re wrong. Things can’t go down like that. What would my family do if I lost my job? Or if my wife lost her job? We have twins to feed”, Reggie said to me. Reggie’s wife, a sweet, beautiful young woman named Melissa who worked as an elementary school teacher, had just given birth to twins, a boy and a girl, eight months earlier. They were a wonderful family, who liked to invite me over for dinner at their house in Brea every couple of weeks or so. They even referred to me as “Uncle Will” to their twins, which I found to be pretty cool. “You know what man, I hope I’m wrong too. I would love nothing more than to be wrong about all of this”. I responded. Reggie then walked away to start work, and I went back to my report. As much as those I talked to were disturbed at what I had to say, it was therapeutic to speak my mind. Even though most of the people that I knew and interacted with regularly knew what my political leanings were, I didn’t actually express my views all that often. I knew that that particular topic wasn’t one you could discuss with just anyone, so I often kept quiet. Furthermore, I felt they didn’t want to hear it most of the time, so unless I was talking to Leann, I would only mention political stuff when the other person brought it up. This time it was different, I just had to tell people what I thought would happen, even if they might think I was crazy. Then came the inauguration day, the day when David Harris would be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States of America, which came on January 20th, 2017. It was a clear, but cold Friday morning in Washington D.C., as a huge crowd gathered on the National Mall to watch their guy, the native son of Knoxville, Tennessee, take the oath of office, which would be administered by John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The throng of supporters, which was estimated at more than one million individuals, roared in approval as Harris walked down the steps of the West Front of the U.S. Capitol building alongside the outgoing President Obama. Harris then took his position alongside his supportive wife Sarah, and his two young daughters Ann and Michelle. David gave Sarah a quick kiss, and hugged Ann and Michelle, who were fourteen and ten years of age respectively, and spitting images of their father, just with pigtails and freckles. First came the swearing in of Harold Branson, the new Vice President. Tall, portly, bald and bespectacled, Branson was a fellow far-right Senator from Colorado who Harris chose as his running mate. Branson had virtually identical beliefs, and fought for the same causes as Harris, so he was a natural choice to be the vice presidential candidate. Not long after Branson took his oath, Harris came up to stand in place to take his. After being sworn in, he addressed the ecstatic crowd, made up mostly of older white folks waving a mixture of American flags and Gadsden flags, the flag with a snake that said “Don’t Tread on Me” that had become the unofficial flag of Tea Party groups. The group of supporters that attended the inauguration was not unlike what would be seen at his campaign rallies. His winding, nearly 20-minute inaugural address sounded like a campaign speech, touching on the usual themes of liberty and freedom and balancing the budget. Unlike many inaugurations of past presidents, Harris’ inauguration had little ceremony, and he didn’t throw a big party afterwards, like some of his predecessors would do. He was always a deeply private individual, who didn’t care much for the limelight. He would rather have a quiet dinner with his family and a few foreign dignitaries his first night in office. It was a symbol of smaller government, his supporters were saying the next day. After his inauguration, David Harris got right to business. On the following Monday, January 23rd, just three days after taking office. Harris, with his vice president and a couple dozen Republican members of the House and Senate in the background, unveiled his big economic plan in its entirety. His piece de resistance, if you will. It was called the Economic Freedom Act, and was unprecedented in size and scope. In the form of a PowerPoint presentation on the big screen, Harris unveiled it to the nation in a nationally-televised speech, much to either the delight or the horror of everyone, depending on their political leanings. The Economic Freedom Act balanced the budget immediately, and was essentially a complete right-wing economic wishlist. It consisted of the following, among other things:
So there you have it, the Economic Freedom Act. The EFA was developed by the economic team of the Harris Administration, most of the Republican members of Congress, and many of the wealthy financial backers of the Harris campaign, who felt they would have much to gain from the lower taxes they would be paying. The EFA, which would take effect on April 1st, 2017, reduced government spending to the tune of two and a half trillion dollars per year, far beyond anything that anybody except the far-right extremists could even fathom. It also completely upended the entire tax code. For businesses, it was a mixed bag, they got their tax rate reduced, didn’t have to pay payroll taxes anymore, and now were able to treat their workers as terribly as third-world workers were treated, but they lost a lot of their generous subsidies and tax credits, something many in the business community felt was a fair tradeoff. For regular people, it was terrible all around, except for perhaps the richest of the rich, but I predicted that the effects of the EFA would take them down too. If there was nobody left to buy the products and services that businesses were producing, how would the rich continue making any money? The response to the unveiling of the Economic Freedom Act was swift and completely predictable. Conservative commentators were absolutely ecstatic, the nation was now being run exactly the way most of them wanted it run. Well-known commentator Annie Coulson, a tall, rail-thin blonde who was well known for incendiary statements against racial and religious minorities, titled her nationally-syndicated column the day after the EFA was announced “No more living off the government, now get a job, losers!”. In her venom-filled diatribe, she expounded the virtues of the new policy, clearly pleased that she “wasn’t paying for lazy inner-city moochers anymore”, ignoring the fact that benefits were used close to equally in urban and rural areas (in fact, it was Republican-dominated states that got the most money from the federal government, relative to what they put in). She also said that the soon to be defunct anti-poverty programs “enslaved millions of people, and were inherently evil”. Lance Rushman, on his radio program, said that the poor can get ahead on their own, only if they “just worked harder and tried to better themselves”. He dusted off the old trusty right-wing talking points, trying to assure his army of listeners that regular people weren’t completely screwed. Fox News ran wall-to-wall coverage, where their myriad of talking heads pretty much said the exact things that Coulson and Rushman were saying on their platforms. Many of their commentators droned on about how the EFA would “jump start” the slumping economy, and be a boost to business. Observers noticed that every Fox News host used the term “jump start” when describing it. Almost as if they got together and decided that they were going to all parrot the same points over and over again. The Fox News coverage continued for weeks following the EFA’s unveiling, as they brought in many of the officials of the Harris Administration to give their comments and their justifications for the EFA. Few would question if this was the right course of action, as if taking food out of the mouths of children and swiping the retirement funds away from people who paid into the system their whole lives was completely okay with them. Wait, what am I talking about? Of course they were okay with it, many of them were advocating these exact policies for years on the propaganda network they called a “Fair and Balanced” news station. Like immediately killing the jobs of over around three million people, and likely killing millions more jobs over the next few months and years was just swell. It got to the point where they were just repeating the same tired lines over and over again, like a broken record. However, one talking head, a higher-up from the Heritage Foundation named Rick Hallman who had assisted the Harris Administration in crafting the EFA, made a big claim. According to him, the economy would indeed shed millions of jobs, and there would, in fact, be an immense amount of pain inflicted by the EFA. “We will probably have a downturn sharper than even the Great Depression, which will be eventually followed by a great economic boom once the proper economic order has been restored”, Hallman said during the interview. He finished off his segment that late January evening by saying that this was “necessary for our great nation to survive” and that the United States would get better once again once it “got the toxins of big government, of liberal government, out of its system”. These segments, as always, provided a window into the warped, selfish mindset of the far-right. It encapsulated one big problem I always had with the conservative mentality. To many conservatives, human beings were expendable commodities, meant to be used and thrown away once their outlived their usefulness. That was the mentality behind corporations fighting labor laws, or moving jobs overseas. They couldn’t treat their American workers poorly, so they moved operations to where they could ruthlessly exploit the workforce. Now, because of the EFA, they can treat American workers poorly once again. Conversely, many other commentators, mainly on the left, but also including many mainstream commentators, were appalled by the EFA. CNN ran wall-to-wall coverage, where their on-air personalities picked apart the various parts of the policy and offered their opinions. Most of those opinions were negative, even from their more conservative commentators, who felt that, even though they agreed somewhat with the EFA, that it was way too much, way too soon. Essentially, everyone who wasn’t on the far right of the political spectrum thought that this was a terrible idea. Most of CNN’s talking heads, who were generally middle of the road politically but mixed in people from both the left and right, expressed worry that the changes brought on by Harris’ grand policy would upend the fabric of society, and that it was horrific and cruel. MSNBC, which once tried to bill itself as a liberal alternative to Fox, covered the story much the same way. The few liberal commentators left on MSNBC were in agreement, that this would erupt in chaos. One such commentator, an older, grey-haired and very talkative man named Matthew Christenson, predicted a possible change in society. He felt that the United States will start drifting towards a new caste system reminiscent of the Middle Ages, where a few noble landowners had complete dominance over the rest of the population, which barely scraped by to survive, living a meager, harsh existence with no hope of advancing in life. Christenson believed that the new economic policy would shift the wealth to the wealthy even faster than had happened the previous forty years or so, allowing the elites to accumulate unfathomable amounts of wealth, and run roughshod over everyone else. “We’re moving back to the days of lords and serfs! Life is about to get terrible for most Americans.” He told a guest during one show. However, he did not predict complete collapse. The economic forecasts, at least the ones that weren’t from right-wing think tanks, weren’t pleasant. One such report that came out in February, and was aired on the evening news on the major networks and all the cable networks except for Fox News, was from Macroeconomic Advisers, a nonpartisan group that had previously advised major corporations as well as presidents of both parties. Macroeconomic Advisers was not kind at all towards the EFA, predicting “catastrophic consequences” while predicting an extremely sharp downturn “of a veracity that never been seen before”. Spending cuts of that size would shrink the economy by a whole twenty-five percent in 2017 alone (the previous worst year on record was a drop of twelve percent, in 1932). There would also be a loss of jobs in excess of twenty-five million, and combined with the number of seniors reentering the workforce due to the loss of Social Security benefits, would cause the unemployment rate to rise above thirty percent, which would rank as the highest in American history. Worst of all, the group explained that “there is no way we can foretell exactly the ensuing chaos that this EFA would unleash” and also that “the situation would get worse for an unknown period of time, and reach depths that we can’t possibly determine at this point”. Macroeconomic Advisors were not the only economic experts who sounded the alarm bells. In early March, a letter signed by several hundred prominent economists, ranging from liberals to moderates and even a few conservatives, warned of the negative effects that the EFA would cause. The letter spoke of “dire consequences” to workers and to the natural environment. According to the letter, the economists wrote: “Large-scale wage cuts are likely, the lowest-paying lines of work may see pay levels drop to as low as four dollars per hour, or perhaps even less in some cases. The wholesale ending of anti-poverty programs, coupled with wage cuts, will lead to mass economic dislocation, affecting tens of millions of workers. This will then spread to higher-paying jobs as demand all across all economic sectors will fall sharply over time. The lack of demand for goods and services will, before long, lead to large numbers of job losses, perhaps the worst job losses ever seen in the United States. If significant portions of the Economic Freedom Act aren’t overturned, and in fact, are allowed to take effect, it will unleash an economic depression, perhaps dwarfing the Great Depression in size and scope. Therefore, we recommend that the Harris Administration and Congress reconsider its stance, and amend or repeal the Economic Freedom Act, before it takes effect. If it is implemented, even for a short time, it will cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy.” Within hours of the release of the letter, it was blasted by many conservative media outlets, as right-wing talk radio hosts all over the country deemed it to be “liberal propaganda”. The most well-known response came from Beck Glennon, a nationally-syndicated radio host and former Fox News host. Glennon, known for being rather emotional on the air, was downright yelling into the microphone that day. “This is pure rubbish, meant to get the American people back on the government teat! They don’t want us to be free!” exclaimed Glennon. He wasn’t done, calling the conservative economists who signed on the letter “a bunch of turncoats, who betrayed the conservative movement”. His rant was pretty similar to most other right-wing commentators on talk radio and Fox News that day, but Glennon’s take on it was certainly more fiery and emotional. Glennon was near tears by the end of his rant, as he was known for crying while on the air. Among all of the countless takes on the topic, the best response to the EFA came from MSNBC’s best-known liberal personality, a whip-smart, bespectacled woman named Renee Meadows. Meadows had occupied the main prime-time slot (prime-time was what the evening hours were called in the TV industry, it was the time of day when TV viewership was the highest) on MSNBC for the previous ten years, giving her left-leaning takes on the day’s hottest stories. This was by far her biggest story yet, and she did not disappoint her faithful viewers. She aired scathing stories every evening, of the government employee who was losing her job, or of the millions of children from low-income families who would no longer get free or reduced price lunch at school, the seniors that were to be deprived of their hard-earned Social Security and Medicare benefits, or even of the McDonald’s employee who was about to get his pay cut by half because the minimum wage was getting eliminated. Each new airing of her show brought several new stories of upcoming misery, much more powerful than any magazine or newspaper article can possibly convey. The stories showed the viewer the pain that would hit all across America come April 1st. Meadows’ ratings shot up, at least among the people who didn’t cancel their cable subscriptions in anticipation of a job loss or pay cut. Meadows had another ingenious idea for her show, a countdown clock that showed the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds until midnight on April 1st, a clock that she called the Countdown to Chaos. This countdown also was put up on the website for Meadows’ program. On top of her daily stories of impending personal anguish and despair, she also made claims, much like that Fox talking head, that there would be tens of millions of jobs lost. However, unlike her conservative counterpart, she said that there may be no “getting better” from this. This was likely to be the granddaddy of all economic downturns, she said. The Great Depression would be “a walk in the park compared to this”, she said. To her and her viewers, the writing was on the wall, the U.S. economy was facing utter ruin. As for the public, well, they weren’t happy at all. In the days and weeks following the announcement of the Economic Freedom Act, protests began to break out all over the country. The protests, which were mostly sponsored by the labor unions that would be gutted by the EFA, attracted a diverse group of individuals, from working-class folks, to college students, to seniors, from every social class, every age group, every race, every religion. Indeed, the more people learned about the specifics of the EFA, the angrier they were. I even attended a couple of these protests, at least the ones that were held on weekends, so I didn’t have to miss work. My boss was already upset at me that I was even attending the event (he was a hard-core conservative, a proud Harris voter), so if I missed a day at work, I would probably lose my job at the worst possible time to lose my job. I even dragged Leann along with me to one protest, where we marched and held signs and hollered slogans such as “No pay cuts for workers” and “Give us back our Social Security”. These protests erupted in hundreds of cities and towns, big and small, in every region of the country. While the gatherings were peaceful for the most part, some did unfortunately end in violence. Guess which protests the media covered the most? The violent ones of course. Media outlets, especially Fox News, took some time away from their coverage of the EFA to cover protests that turned violent in cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore and Seattle, showing scenes of disgruntled young people throwing rocks at police or tipping cars over, or even setting fire to cars. Anything to turn the people against a good, mostly peaceful movement. Regarding the protesters, the always bloviating Lance Rushman remarked the day after the Seattle protest, “these protesters, these thugs, need to put down the rock and get a job”, of course ignoring the fact that many of the protesters were in fact employed. After the negative attention the protests got, and a campaign by some large employers such as McDonald’s and Walmart (among others), in which they threatened to fire any of their employees who participated in the anti-EFA protests, the protests began to die down. Even though the protest movement faded away somewhat, the approval ratings for David Harris took a tumble, as most saw the EFA as an affront to this country, and what made it great. Harris’ approval rating tanked, falling down to around twenty percent by mid-February. He had not even been in office a month yet, and many people were calling for his removal from office, as his approval ratings were far lower than any of his predecessors at the same point of their presidencies. Surely many of those people who had voted for him the previous November were now dealing with buyer’s remorse, and hoped for him to get kicked out of the White House as well. Within days of the announcement, it was time for the debate on the Economic Freedom Act to begin in Congress. As expected, the debate for and against it was very intense, with fiery arguments made on both sides. Conservatives felt that the EFA was exactly what the nation needs, while liberals and moderates decried the bill, claiming it to be the possible end of our economy. House Democratic Leader (and former Speaker of the House) Nancy Pelosi of California said that if the EFA passed and was signed into law, that “America was signing its own economic death warrant”. Despite the objections of Democrats, the EFA passed the deeply conservative House of Representatives easily, by a margin of 234-197, with thirty of the few moderate Republicans remaining crossing over to vote against it, and four others abstaining. I shuddered after watching the news story on the vote, hearing the House Republicans erupt in cheers upon hearing the measure passed. After this vote, it was on to the Senate, where it would be more difficult to pass. Under normal circumstances, it would take a whole 60 percent to get a bill to pass the Senate, and there were only fifty-eight Republicans, not all of which were supportive of the bill. However, since the EFA involved the budgeting process, a process called reconciliation could be used so only a majority vote would be needed. This process was used by both parties to achieve their ends over the previous few decades, and this time, Republicans were going to ram a deeply unpopular bill through the Senate with it. Despite boisterous objections from Democrats, and the fact that several moderate Republicans crossed party lines to oppose it, the bill narrowly passed the Senate 52-48, again to the cheers from the most conservative members of the chamber. Within hours of the Senate vote, the bill reached President Harris’ desk, where Harris signed it happily, with his family, several of his aides, dozens of Republican members of Congress,and oddly, the Reed brothers in the background. All of them had these creepy smiles on their faces, as they were just too happy about this. The fundamental transformation of the United States economy was now fully set in motion, for better or worse. “This is a great new day for this great nation.” Harris stated seconds after signing the Economic Freedom Act into law. I remember watching the signing on the evening news broadcast, a cold chill swept over my body as I saw Harris sign the bill. The implications of the conservative takeover of the United States, and in other wealthy nations, reached far and wide. Soon after David Harris introduced the Economic Freedom Act, several other nations, which included Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and some others, announced plans to implement similar changes to their economic systems. These nations, which had all elected right-wing or right-leaning leaders in the last several years, were mainly inspired by the EFA, but also the general economic malaise of Europe, which never fully recovered from the Great Recession and, in fact, fallen into another continent-wide recession. This economic stagnation caused right-wing powers to be able to take power in different countries. Newly empowered by the far-right turn that the U.S. took, they felt it was time to do exactly the same. Led by a man named David Cameron, the British Prime Minister (their head of government) who had been making cuts to the British government for years now, these leaders gathered together in early February to announce that they too were going to implement their own versions of the EFA. It was speculated that these leaders were getting their cues from the Harris Administration, as Cameron and the other leaders met with President Harris the day before they announced their plans. All of the international versions of the law, just like the U.S. version, would take effect on April 1st, 2017, and implement nearly identical things. Yes, the world was going to follow the United States right off the damn cliff. Furthermore, since those countries were putting in place far-right doctrine, the pressure was on the wealthy nations that were holding out, intent on preserving their social welfare systems and labor laws. Seeing that their fellow leaders were committing economic suicide, some nations, including Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Spain, Greece and others, boldly stated that they would keep their social contracts in place. These nations had mostly resisted the turn to the right, especially Greece, which had fallen on especially hard times in the several years preceding 2017. Why were they so hard-hit, do you ask? Well, Greece was greatly affected by the Great Recession, causing their national debt to go out of control. Conservatives the world over pointed the finger at excessive spending on the part of the Greek government as the reason that Greece struggled so badly. Nations such as Germany would go on to help Greece out with bailout money, but only on the condition that Greece enact draconian spending cuts, fairly similar to the level that the EFA was about to enact. As a result of the cuts, as well as tax hikes, Greece’s economy crashed, and it crashed hard. The economy fell into a full-on depression with around thirty percent of the population out of work, and incomes in a tailspin. Any attempts to get out from under the boot of the austerity forced upon them were met with a swift, brutal reprisal from the powers that be. The European leaders, especially Francois Hollande, the left-wing President of France, used what happened to Greece as a cautionary tale of what would happen if their nations enacted the reforms that their right-wing counterparts were pursuing. Despite the bold stand, multinational corporations, like sharks smelling blood in the water, put immense pressure on the holdout nations, to make them put in place their own Economic Freedom Acts. These multinationals saw their opportunity to wipe out the labor laws that they had fiercely opposed for decades. Throughout February, and into March, the massive multinational companies, from energy companies to retail stores to automakers and everyone in between, threatened all the holdout nations. They would move millions of jobs out of those countries, and give the jobs to nations that have embraced so-called “economic freedom”, where they can pay the workers far less, pay less taxes and abuse their workers and the environment all they want. Furthermore, those nations who had embraced the mass austerity had threatened to cut off trade with the nations that held out, a move reminiscent of what European leaders had threatened to do to Greece. The nations that refused to play by the new rules would see a horrendous drop in their exports, a move that was sure to annihilate their economies. Before long, these threats, which included public announcements, commercials and mass layoff notices to workers, started to wear on the holdout leaders. The holdout nations had to sell out their people. It was either ruin their own economy, or have some giant soulless corporations do it for them. Despite leading the charge, France buckled first, as they passed their form of the EFA on March 2nd. The French Parliament wanted to preserve some of their safety net, including their much-loved universal healthcare system, considered among the world’s best, but when the layoff notices and ads started again, the left-leaning members of Parliament caved. President Hollande resigned in a tear-filled press conference, and a subsequent election led to a new right-leaning government taking power, as voters were angry at the “coward” Hollande. Next was Spain (another country that was crushed by austerity cuts earlier in the decade), whose government gave in on March 7th. By March 24th, the remaining holdouts had given up. The multinationals even went after developing nations, the nations who produced much of the world’s goods and raw materials. Even paltry minimum wage levels were frowned upon. Nope, the minimum wage must completely go, or their jobs go. These poor and middle-income nations also had to adopt the policies that big business wanted, so as to maintain their tenuous positions in the world economy. The corporate world showed no mercy, and they had the money and resources to bend any nation to their will. Many nations kept a few parts of the safety net they had before, and some others moved programs to lower levels of government, but nobody had anything near what they had before. It was a full-on coup by the corporate world, and they won, much to the chagrin of working-class and poor people all over the world. Greed won the day. This was a stunning development that I even didn’t fully predict. I felt that conservatives and corporations might try to get the EFA exported worldwide, but I didn’t think they would be this successful. “Oh my God, everyone is doing it. This is the worst law ever made, and every country in the world decided to go along with it! Everybody is simply marching off the f*****g cliff. Well, it’s probably game over for everyone” I protested to Leann one day over the phone. She had called me when she heard the news, and wanted my take on it, like she often did nowadays. She had even taken to telling her best friends my predictions, in hopes of informing as many people as possible. She was also poring over political news just like I was, if not as obsessively. The response to the new economic order of the world, people protested furiously. Protests far surpassing anything seen in the U.S. popped up in cities all over the world, from Europe to Latin America to Asia to Australia. London, Paris, Rome and Berlin all saw groups numbering in the millions protesting. College students losing their free or lower-priced tuition. Senior citizens seeing their public pensions, which they worked for their whole lives, go up in smoke. Sick people losing their access to medicine. Mothers losing the maternity leave they used in order to be with their newborn children. The protesters that filled parks and public squares came from all walks of life, but they all had something in common, they were all going to get royally screwed by these changes. Many protesters burned effigies of the leaders of whatever nation they were in, as well as of David Harris, the man who set this chaos in motion. Unlike in the U.S., the demonstrations overseas continued for months. By the beginning of March, people in the United States were beginning to realize the mistake they had made the previous fall. Over two million employees of the federal government, those who worked in the dozens of federal departments that were being shuttered, received their layoff notices. Friday, March 31st would be their final day on the job. Many state employees, most of whom worked in social services departments, but others were scattered in other departments that were losing funding, were also losing their jobs, since the services they helped provide would no longer exist. Even more wrenching than that was the notices that tens of millions of senior citizens were receiving with their Social Security checks for the month of March. The notice stated that the benefits they received, the benefits they had paid into their whole working lives, were now being ended. Senior citizen advocacy groups such as AARP cried foul at the treatment that older Americans were being subjected to, and tried to make a compromise with the Harris Administration that would allow those already over the age of sixty-five to keep getting their benefits, at least temporarily. Unfortunately, the pleas fell on deaf ears. The elimination of Social Security and Medicare would proceed as planned, a Harris Administration official said at a press conference in mid-March. Many millions of seniors counted on those benefits to remain independent in their retirement years, and for many, Social Security was their only source of income. Social Security had been in existence for over eighty years, and had lowered the rate of poverty among seniors from fifty percent to less than ten percent. However, it didn’t survive the ax of the Harris Administration. As for America’s seniors, many had to make do with less income, burn through their retirement savings (if they had any), or reenter the job market, flooding the already tough job market with millions of new job seekers. Those who now didn’t have enough income to make ends meet, even with a job, had to move in with relatives, such as their adult children. I saw the manifestation of this in my own apartment complex. The Jackson family, a kind, fun-loving bunch who lived in the apartment directly below me and rolled out the welcome wagon for me when I moved into my apartment the year before, had to take in Mr. Jackson’s elderly mother starting in April, since she now had no income to afford her rent at the senior apartment complex located on the other end of the city. Lisa Jackson, a sweet, hunchbacked lady in her mid-70’s was going to share a bedroom in their two-bedroom apartment with the Jackson’s son Dwayne and daughter Nicole, who were fifteen and ten, respectively. Their already crowded bedroom would become even more crowded. Lisa’s son Franklin, a giant but kind-hearted African-American man who worked as a manager of one of the nearby Stater Bros. supermarkets, was very worried that his mother can no longer afford her medications, which were far too expensive for her to afford now that Medicare would be gone. I noticed him crying his eyes out below me one cold March night, I approached him to talk to him. “Hey Frank, what’s wrong?” I asked as I made my way down the stairs, not knowing why he was so upset. “It’s my mom, man. She won’t have her meds anymore. I don’t know how long she is gonna live once she loses her insurance”, he said, in between his sniffles. “How much does the medication cost?” I asked. “Maybe she can get some other insurance, that you can pay for. You have that savings, right?” I was trying to reassure him, even I knew damn well the what the answer was. “Her meds without health insurance cost like $500 a month! And she can’t get other insurance. She is too old and has preexisting conditions, so any insurance plan is gonna be way too much”. Frank had already lost his father to a heart attack six years ago, he didn’t want to bury his mother now, too. “How are the kids taking having to share a room with their grandma?” I asked Franklin, who was starting to wipe the tears from his cheeks. It was hard seeing anyone like this, especially a good friend like Frank. “They’re both little angels, Will. They said they will do anything to help their grandmother. Nicky even said my mom can have her bed and she would sleep on the floor. I told her that wouldn’t be necessary, that we were going to put my mom’s bed in the room too. It’s gonna be really crowded, but my family will manage. We always do.” Frank told me with a slight grin. Other than tonight, Frank was always an optimist, so it was really alarming to see him break down the way he did. I know there was going to be a lot of adjusting made. The Jacksons weren’t the only family that I knew that was going to take in an elderly family member. At least three workers in my office that I know of were doing something similar. Dave Carlton and Rick Anderson, the top employees in my department, were both taking in parents. Rick was taking both of his parents. His father, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War of the 1960’s, was apparently really depressed that he would have to depend on his son to take care of him in his golden years, according to the parts of Rick’s conversation with Dave that I overheard at lunchtime. I didn’t go and ask him more about it because I was listening to my friend Reggie telling me how he was taking in his wife’s father, who of course was losing his Social Security, and would be unable to reenter the workforce due to a broken hip he suffered two years earlier. Reggie was glad to help his father-in-law Phil, even though Phil didn’t seem to care for him at all. Reggie was, however, unsure how he was gonna support another person in their household. He was becoming worried how he would take care of the people already in his house, as he saw everything around him unfold. I’m pretty sure my dire predictions didn’t help, either. “Will, I don’t know how I am gonna do this. Though Melissa’s Pops has some savings to help out, I don’t know how I’m gonna feed another person, since my pay is going down.” Reggie told me with a resigned tone in his voice. He would now be sharing a small two-bedroom, one-bathroom house with his wife, their twins and Phil. Things were getting more squeezed. “So your pay is getting cut too?” I asked. “Yup, from eighteen an hour to twelve-fifty. This s**t sucks, I work hard at this job, and Mr. Milton treats me this way? It’s depressing.” Reggie said, with a hint of despair and anger in his voice. “So, did Milton cut your pay too?” He asked, looking over his shoulder to see if Mr. Milton was around. He, like most other employers, didn’t like when their employees discuss their pay with each other, especially in a time like this. Can’t have the workers knowing how much they are getting screwed over, I guess. “Yeah, I’m going from thirteen-fifty to ten an hour. I think everyone in the office got their pay dropped some.” I said, sounding exasperated. “Damn, no wonder everyone has been grouchy at the office lately, Hannah went off on me yesterday, she must have got a big pay cut!” “I don’t know, Reggie, she is always mean. But I will say, she has been meaner than usual. In the last week or two, morale all over the company has gone to s**t. It must be the pay cuts. I wanted to tell Hannah she was partly at fault for all this, since she voted for Harris and all, but she already looked like she might throw her stapler at me.” I replied, before sinking my teeth back into my ham and cheese sandwich I made for lunch. I was already trying to pare back my expenses, knowing that I would have less income soon. I had already had my cable shut off, and decided to eat out less, so more stuff like ham and cheese sandwiches and leftovers from the previous evening’s dinner. It turns out that the almost everyone at the office, from Accounting to Human Resources to Product Design to Marketing, got a pay reduction of some sort. Only a couple of the most senior employees were spared from a pay cut, at least for now. Oh yeah, the pay cuts. Despite claims from conservative analysts from the Heritage Foundation and the Heartland Institute that wages for people who were already working wouldn’t go down after the minimum wage was eliminated, tens of millions of American workers learned in the weeks following the passage of the Economic Freedom Act that their pay was indeed going down. Pay went down in every sector in the economy right away, as companies felt they can cut their costs, and therefore, undercut their competition’s prices and gain valuable market share. Once word got out that big corporations, starting with Walmart, McDonald’s and many others were going to cut their worker’s wages in order to reduce their prices somewhat, their competition felt compelled to follow suit. In some cases, workers saw their wages drop sharply, over fifty percent. Perhaps half the workforce, maybe a bit more than that, were getting rather large pay cuts starting April 1st. The most aggressive wage cuts happened in the sectors that already the lowest paying, such as restaurants, retail sales, and various forms of manual labor. Even higher-paying jobs saw declines, but not as sharp, at least not right away. In my case, my pay fell from thirteen and a half dollars per hour to just ten, which worked out to nearly three-hundred dollars less per paycheck. I would be making two whole dollars less than I was making when I started at Milton Plastics nearly a year earlier, and on top of that, I was losing the health insurance the company provided for me as well. Many companies gave their workers written notices, stating their new pay rate, to be effective on April 1st. I saw at least a few of my Facebook friends posting their notices, something that became a phenomenon on various social media sites in March. My friend Jimmy’s cousin Eduardo actually got fired for putting his on there, since his manager at the Best Buy electronics store where he worked was on his friends list. Many companies didn’t give written notices. Some just told the employees in person, like at my job, Mr. Milton called us to his office, one by one, and informed us. At least he did that for us, as some employers didn’t even tell their workers at all. Some employees didn’t find out the changes to their pay until March 31st. That sudden news must have hit many of these individuals like a ton of bricks. In an attempt to put a positive spin on all of this, large corporations started airing ads on TV and radio trumpeting their “new low prices”. Walmart started with the ads in late February, followed by Target, their main retail competition. Other companies, mainly retailers and fast food giants, followed suit. The price decreases were rather modest, and often didn’t even apply to all items, but they sure pushed the items they did make cheaper, in an attempt to drum up business. Price decreases were maybe five to ten percent on average, as far as I can tell, when those same companies cut their worker’s pay perhaps thirty, forty, or even fifty percent or more. Despite the sunny ads, people from all walks of life weren’t excited for the price drops, because they would now struggle to afford even the marked-down items. Furthermore, most people knew exactly why these companies can lower their prices, they knew that it came at the expense of the employees, people who would now have a hard time getting enough to eat, or keep a roof over their heads, if they weren’t having a hard time already. It was happening, my worst fears that I had been worrying about over the previous few years were actually happening. The predictions that I had made over the last few months were coming true so far, much to my horror. All this did was make me think about it more, as I couldn’t get it out of my mind. My horrific nightmares grew more frequent as April 1st approached. I found myself growing increasingly depressed, a quality I saw in many others I encountered during this time. I grew ever more inquisitive as to how the situation was affecting those around me. I asked my coworkers, my friends, my neighbors, even random people I saw while going about my day. My coworkers were deeply bothered by the pay cuts they got. My coworker Richard Martin, a quiet, reserved, pudgy white man in his mid-20’s who worked in Human Resources and also started last year, felt it necessary to give Mr. Milton a piece of his mind in his office one fine Friday, the day the pay cuts were announced. “I can’t afford my rent making only nine dollars an hour, sir! I don’t know how you expect people to live on these new wages, what about the employees with families?” I can hear him yelling, he wasn’t so quiet and reserved that day. The next I saw of him was ten minutes later, when he was cleaning his desk. He had been fired by cruel old Mr. Milton. The rest of us were so quiet as he was gathering his things, you could hear a pin drop. I looked over in Reggie’s direction, he had a grimace and was shaking his head. Hannah, the conservative girl who sat in front of me, had her head buried in her hands, sobbing. I think she was rethinking her political philosophy now, as she muttered “This is bullshit, what’s going on?” while at her cubicle. I just sat there, stone-faced. As much as I wanted to tear into Milton too, I needed to have a job, no matter how crummy the pay and how few benefits it had. I went home after that awful day at work. I knocked on the door of Juan’s house next door to me. There was no smell of enchiladas, which had been customary in the Morales home on Friday evenings. Mrs. Morales made the best chicken enchiladas, but that night was different. Juan told me his pay had been cut too, so they would have to cut on the food expenses. Since Juan saw his pay go down a whole six dollars an hour, from eighteen to twelve. So much for loyalty to a guy who worked his a*s off and had been there for fourteen years (he started at the company when he was seventeen). His younger coworkers saw huge cuts in their wages too, as some were going to make as little as five or six dollars an hour now. Juan had a look of despair in his eyes. “It will be tough, but I can manage this, I can’t show weakness to my wife and my boys”, he told me by the stairwell of the apartment complex. The Morales family was cutting back on their food budget, they were going to take shorter showers and keep lights off unless they were needed. They were cutting out new clothing purchases, and there would be far fewer family trips to places like the beach and the aquarium, and they did away with the cable TV, much to the chagrin of the kids, who loved their Disney Channel and Nickelodeon cartoons. One more thing, which hurt Juan the most, he had to pull the boys out of soccer. Apparently at least five of the boys on little Juan’s team had to quit due to their parent’s hardships. I went downstairs to ask Franklin Jackson how he was coping. Frank, who had just finished his dinner, came out to chat with me. His family was responding to the new hardship by cutting down on the meals at restaurants, as they previously eaten out about twice a week. Paying for his mother’s medicine really ate into his budget, and he would now hold off on buying the new car he had been wanting. His car, a 2001 Honda Civic, had been acting up on him. He had problems with his power steering that were making it difficult to make turns. Not only couldn’t he buy a new car like he had been wanting for months, but now he would have trouble affording repair work on the car. Frank was also upset that he couldn’t get the new refrigerator or vacuum cleaner that his wife had wanted. He wanted to buy the fridge a few months ago, but when he found out his pay at the Stater Bros. was being cut slightly, and that his mom was going to have to move in with the family, he realized that he couldn’t make those purchases for now. The Morales’ and Jacksons were the only neighbors I talked to on a regular basis, so I’m not sure how the rest of the tenants were doing, but I did notice that the family on the other end of the complex from me didn’t have their usual party with friends and family they would have on Friday nights. It was weird not hearing the loud Spanish music playing until midnight, though I will admit that I didn’t mind the silence at all. I also noticed that a couple of the families had to take in family members as well, one of the families took in five extra people. I didn’t speak to them due to a language barrier, but I saw them loading a bunch of boxes into the apartment. Eleven people would be cramming themselves into a fairly small two-bedroom apartment, that had to be tough, I’m sure. I also heard through the grapevine that the son of Phil Warren, the gruff, middle-aged security guard who lived two doors down but I didn’t speak to much, had lost his job at the warehouse for FedEx, a huge package delivery company, and now Phil was considering moving into cheaper housing or doubling up with his sister and her family, like many were now doing. The residents of the apartment complex, which was in a not-so-nice neighborhood to begin with, were sure to be hit hard by the impending downturn. I also knew that my family was going to have its struggles. Though I didn’t live at home anymore, I still talked to my mom and Leann on a regular basis. My dad even gave me a call a couple times a week, to ask how I was doing and to see how our favorite sports teams were doing. My mom told me that my dad was not only getting a pay cut that amounted to over one hundred dollars a week, but he was going to have to pay more of the family’s insurance costs too. They were cutting their cable TV, which was hard on my mom, as well as their Internet access, which was especially hard for my sisters, who practically lived on the Internet. They were also cutting their eating out. No more fast food places, just cooking at home, and even that food will now be of lower quality than before. Furthermore, my mom couldn’t replace her cell phone, which had given out at the worst possible time. Leann also saw a pay cut at her job at Claire’s. She got her pay cut by close to half, from ten to six dollars per hour. Leann was also upset by the fact that she was, like millions of college students, going to lose her financial aid to go to Chaffey College, the community college she was attending. “With mine and Daddy’s pay getting cut, and losing my aid, how in the hell am I supposed to go to school so I can get a better job?” she said to me, exasperated. “How is anybody gonna build a better life for themselves?”. She had a good point. My predictions were coming true, alright. There was going to be massive economic dislocation and hardship everywhere. In the words of commentator Bob Martin, the Harris Administration, and the whole world was “committing economic suicide”. The changes hadn’t even gone into effect yet, and millions of Americans, from all walks of life, were about to see their lives get much, much harder. Those who had some sort of comfort were now going to slip into an existence where they had to scrape by just to survive. They can cut a few things out of their household budgets, but can still manage, at least for now. For those who were already just scraping by to survive, who had nothing else to cut, who knows what would happen to them? How many of them would go hungry, end up homeless, or worse? Unfortunately, we were now about to find out, as the Countdown to Chaos ticked down to zero.© 2017 DGordonAuthor's Note
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DGordonMontclair, CAAboutI'm an aspiring author, like everyone else on here. I have been working on a novel on and off for the last year and a half. It is my first try at fiction. It isn't done yet, and I'm not sure how long.. more..Writing
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