Chapter 6: Down It Goes

This chapter describes the events of May 2017. The effects of the Economic Freedom Act are becoming apparent, as the horrific crash of the economy that began the previous month only grows in intensity

Down It Goes

Economic Developments in May 2017:

• The official unemployment rate for the month of May 2017 shoots up to 18.8 percent, as the job market sheds another 6,087,000 jobs. Most of these job losses occur in the private sector, as businesses realize that they are having massive operating losses brought on by the lack of demand for their products and services.

• As many of those workers who kept their jobs saw a reduction of their hours at work, the underemployment rate has skyrocketed to an astonishing 44.5 percent.

• Average wages fall further, plunging another 8.5 percent, as businesses cut costs in any way possible, and most workers have had at least some pay reduction sometime in April or May. Furthermore, the swelling ranks of unemployed individuals place more downward pressure on wages, as employers can cut worker’s pay, or simply replace them with somebody who will accept the lower rate.

• Due to the millions of job losses and reductions in both pay and hours, weekly household incomes fall another 14.4 percent.

• As a wave of horrific economic reports come out, stocks tumble even further in the month of May, losing over 40 percent of their remaining value. The largest drop in the stock market ever recorded on Friday, May 19th, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average falls an unthinkable 27 percent. Indexes worldwide get clobbered every time a new economic report is released.

• A continued drop in incomes causes another massive fall in retail sales, which fall another 21 percent. Customers are now buying, on average, about half of what they once were, as all retail categories see big hits.

• The drop in retail spending causes a massive crash in manufacturing, as manufacturing activity craters to the tune of 17.4 percent. Numerous factories are now idle, with many others sharply reducing their activity. Durable goods, which are more expensive purchases such as autos and home appliances, see the biggest hit, as households simply don’t have the money to purchase these big ticket items.

• In a futile effort to bring in customers, businesses continue to drop prices. Prices fall 3.3 percent for the month.

• The amount of business failures shoots up in the month of May. There were business failures in April, but more and more business owners decide to cut their losses, before they lose everything, and close their businesses. This, of course, exacerbates the job market woes.

• The official poverty rate in the month of May is listed at a ghastly 50.2 percent, a figure that is still widely believed to be understated. The amount of extreme poverty rises dramatically, as pockets of the country have begun to resemble that of third-world nations in the last two months.

• The amount of hunger in the United States seems to grow by the day. Also, as many families do not have rent money for May, evictions pile up, and parks, public spaces, vacant lots and even shuttered businesses become home to a sharply rising homeless population. These encampments start being called “Harrisvilles”.

• Like before, this is a global phenomenon. Other wealthy countries see similar results to what is being experienced in the United States. Poorer countries, especially those who have large manufacturing sectors, are especially hard-hit as that sector gets walloped. Economists the world over declare a “massive global crisis”.

As the calendar turned to the month of May, it was now readily apparent to everyone that the changes brought on by the Economic Freedom Act have caused utter chaos, just like many predicted. Even those who were not paying attention before certainly were now. Never before had economic reports been such hot news, but people wanted to know exactly what the hell was going on. For perhaps the first time ever, people were eagerly waiting for the jobs report or the manufacturing activity report, or even the durable goods orders report. Indeed, virtually everybody has either been negatively affected by the EFA, or knows at least one person who has been negatively affected. We saw our pay cut, our hours cut, or our jobs simply vanish. Many of us are either going hungry, or perhaps losing our place to live, or maybe even both. We may have seen a family sleeping in a car, or a park, or a vacant lot. Many families were moving in with other family members, or friends, or sometimes even strangers, doubling or tripling up in overcrowded apartments and houses. Some of us even knew someone who lost all hope, and took their own life, as suicides nationwide more than tripled in the month of April alone.

Yes, as you can tell, the American public had taken on a very downbeat mood. Most people were losing hope, as their economic fortunes deteriorated on what seemed to be a daily basis. Yeah, some held out hope for a better tomorrow even if today sucked, but that hope was growing thinner and thinner, like a rubber band that was bound to snap at some point. I saw it on a daily basis, in the faces of the exasperated store clerks, or the extra irritable drivers on the commute to and from work, or the poor souls who had taken to asking for spare change in front of stores and on street corners, of which there were more than ever. Despite all of our troubles, most people pressed onward, trying to provide the best possible existence for themselves and their families. A sizable number of us were now simply existing, not living. We just wanted to secure shelter and get that next meal. Many tried to at least look like they had an upbeat outlook, even if they were crying on the inside. A poll released in early May showed that a whole eight percent of Americans felt that the country is currently moving in the right direction, the lowest figure ever recorded for that particular survey question. I sure wondered where these eight percent were, because I never saw any of them.

Families all over the nation, and all around the world, coped in different ways financially. Many of us had already cut back on non-necessary items, such as cable TV, eating out, cell phones, entertainment, or leisure activities to make sure they had the necessities, such as food and shelter. This worked for people, as long as they didn’t receive a pay cut, or have any unnecessary expenses. The standard of living was now lower than it was just a couple of months earlier, sure, but these folks weren’t homeless or having to skip too many meals. However, if someone lost their job, or had a further pay cut, or some sort of unexpected event came up, it could spell doom. A bothersome trend among some households to start cutting necessities, such as utilities or paring back their food budgets further. Every utility company across the United States reported a sharp increase in the number of customers cancelling their service. Some of them decided to cut their gas service, others cut their electricity. These people didn’t lose their homes, but were now living in the dark, or going without heat or hot water, just so they didn’t end up homeless. The same companies also reported massive increases in the number of accounts that were past due, as some customers may pay one bill, but not the other, or they may pay neither of them. Customers would call the companies far more frequently, begging for extra time, or a reduction in the amount owed. Other holders of debt, such as credit card companies and banks, reported similar increases in the number of delinquent accounts. Visa, the top credit card company, reported that the percentage of cardholders who were behind on their payments had risen, and that the forecast for delinquent accounts will increase more than tenfold in just the next two months. More and more individuals were running up debt just to pay regular expenses, such as food or clothes or gasoline for their cars. At least these people could use their credit card as a backup plan in case they had a big unexpected expense, such as car repairs or a medical bill, many people didn’t have that luxury.

As for food, soup kitchens and bread lines, staples of the Great Depression, were popping up everywhere, as people would line up, for hours in some cases, for a free meal. These kitchens would often show up in empty lots in commercial buildings, where a failed business once was located. The owner of the building would get some rent money, while hungry individuals and families from the surrounding area would get a bite to eat. I remember the first of these kitchens to pop up near my house. A space where a recently-closed mom-and-pop dollar store once stood on Holt Boulevard and Sultana Avenue, about five blocks from my apartment building, became the go-to spot for some soup, as I saw folks line up around the block. I was thankful that I didn’t need to eat there, at least not yet. I was also happy that people who were struggling to find something to eat were getting that essential food. I told Juan about it right after his hours were cut at the construction site in early May, but I think he was too proud to go there with his family. Many more enterprising households found other ways to feed their families, as those with backyards began using those backyards to plant gardens, growing their own fruits and vegetables to eat. Some of these folks would give the excess to other members of their family, or to neighbors who were struggling to put food on the table. Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding us, it was heart-warming, at least for a moment, to see that there were people willing to help those in need. We were going to need to band together in order to weather the storm.

Despite all of this, more and more people sunk under the massive weight of the job losses and pay cuts. During the month of May, the number of evictions was rapidly increasing all over the country, as poorer families were unable to pay their rent. I heard on the news that preliminary reports on the matter estimated that the number of eviction proceedings taking place had increased fivefold in just two months. While some landlords were flexible, allowing tenants to pay later and later, reducing rents, or delaying eviction proceedings, many proceeded with the evictions. The court system became overloaded with bankruptcies and evictions, and Sheriff’s offices were spending less time fighting crimes and more time kicking people out of their houses and apartments. From elderly folks who lost their Social Security to families whose breadwinner got a savage pay cut to single mothers who lost their jobs, the evicted were regular people, people who were trampled by the swift merciless economic downturn. One day I was coming home from work in mid-May, and I saw such an instance right before my very eyes. It was about six o’clock, and the weather that Wednesday evening was glorious. As I was getting out of my car and walking to my apartment, I saw it happen. In the apartment complex next door to mine, I heard a commotion, and noticed two San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department vehicles parked out front. Two deputies were escorting out a brunette woman of about thirty, who was screaming and crying while holding her infant daughter. Two other deputies were grabbing important possessions, while leaving others behind in the one-bedroom apartment. The woman was screaming “Please no! You can’t do this to me, my pay got cut! My pay got cut! Am I supposed to get a 30-day notice? I didn’t get one. I should at least get a chance to get my belongings and find somewhere to stay! Please! Don’t do this to me!”, and bawling her eyes out as she watched deputies pull out a bed, a couple of kitchen appliances, a crib, and bags of clothes and toys. I, along with some of my neighbors and some of the woman’s soon-to-be former neighbors, watched this all unfold. I saw it all happen, with my mouth agape with horror and tears rolling down my cheek, but surely not as many as were flowing down the cheeks of the young woman who may have nowhere to go. Unfortunately, I don’t know what happened to her and her adorable little daughter, who couldn’t have been more than a year old. Also unfortunately, I heard from my neighbor Frank that they same deputies came back the next day while I was at work and did the same thing to another tenant who couldn’t pay their rent. Three tenants in all from that complex were kicked out just for the month of May. I guess their landlord was just that big of an a*****e. I would later read that many landlords were bypassing the eviction laws in order to get their tenants out quicker, so they can try to rent out the units. Though this was very illegal, the courts were swamped, and those affected didn’t have the means to get a lawyer and fight the landlords.

Thankfully, my landlord Sanjay was rather forgiving, allowing two of my neighbors pay a week or two late. He saw the hell everyone was going through, that they needed help financially. He himself was suffering as a small business owner. He owned a Subway restaurant franchise in Ontario, as well as two 7-Eleven convenience store franchises , one in Ontario and one in Montclair, and he knew that business was down big time at both places. The Subway had lost almost half of its business in April alone, and it killed Sanjay to cut the pay of his employees. He had cut the pay of his employees at all three places in April, but not by as much as other franchise owners of those two companies. “My cousin also owns a few Subways, and he was really happy when the minimum wage went away. He never felt that the workers were worth what he had to pay. He was too eager to slash wages, as were a lot of the other franchise owners I talk to, from multiple companies. I can’t see how they can think that way, their employees are human beings, trying to make a decent livelihood. They have families, I have met the families of those who work for me. They make me money, so I should reward them fairly.” Sanjay always did tell me that he paid better than almost every other franchise owner for those companies. However, the loss of revenues was really taking its toll, and he had to cut further. Because of that, Sanjay knew our pain, and he tried to work with us as much as he could. I wondered, however, how long that arrangement would last. I was fortunately able to make my rent on time, but I worried about June. I was meticulously budgeting every last expense in order to make up for the reduction in income.

As the evictions began to pile up, the homeless population of the United States began to soar. Now there were homeless encampments in cities before the Great Collapse started, but many, many more popped up starting in April. Organizations such as the National Alliance to End Homelessness rushed in to provide whatever help they could, but it was mostly of no use, as homeless shelters were overrun by newly homeless people already. Before April, the estimate of the number of homeless on any given night in the U.S. was around 600,000 or so. In April, that number mushroomed to over two million, and in May it exploded to over six million, according to multiple estimates. Millions more lost their houses but were able to find cheaper housing as rents fell somewhat, or move in with relatives or friends. Others, six million in fact, were not so lucky. I saw them everywhere, in the parks near my house and near my work, on bus benches, in front of businesses asking for change and holding signs saying “Just Evicted” or “I Just Want Something to Eat” or “Will Work For Food” or something else along those lines. I even saw one from a guy in front of the 7-Eleven that said “GOD HELP US ALL”.

In cities all over the United States, new homeless encampments were showing up, as most parks or empty parking lots filled up with newly homeless people, throwing up ramshackle buildings made out of sheet metal or plywood or even cardboard. The inhabitants carved out small “lots” for themselves or their families, and some even somehow rounded up an old port-o-potty or two for the “residents” to use. During the Great Depression, homeless encampments were known as “Hoovervilles”, named after Herbert Hoover, the U.S. president who resided over that massive downturn in the economy. So naturally, these new encampments that have been necessitated by this downturn came to be known as “Harrisvilles”. It seemed that almost every city had a Harrisville by the end of May, which was quickly filling up with men, women and children, folks that this new economy left behind completely.

Not that people needed further proof that our society was hurtling towards complete ruin, but the month of May brought in a big batch of statistics to show everyone, once and for all, just how disastrous the Economic Freedom Act really was. People, even people who previously didn’t give a damn about business reports, pored over the news stories looking at just how bad things really are. Surely enough, every time a new batch of numbers was released, whether it was the unemployment rate, or the retail sales figures, or the manufacturing figures, or even something more obscure like the number of new building permits, the markets responded accordingly. The response in the stock markets was not kind at all, as more mass stock selloffs happened whenever some new appalling economic report came out. The numbers that were coming out were far, far worse than anything that anyone had forecast. The economy was falling much faster, and much harder, than any of even the most dire of predictions had said it would. Even I, who had predicted this months earlier, was shocked at the reports coming out. The selloff would be followed by a slight recovery for a day or two, only to slide down rapidly again whenever another piece of bad news came out, like another report, or a report of a company raining pink slips again, or some plant closures.

The biggest fall of all happened on Friday, May 12th. Investors were already nervous that the jobs and unemployment reports were delayed a week, and many observers wondered out loud that perhaps the government was withholding the reports in order to hide the extent of the carnage their policies had brought about. Once the Harris Administration killed off the Bureau of Labor Statistics (who kept track of all this economic data for decades), there were fewer workers to prepare the reports, which were now being done by the now much-smaller Department of Commerce. The lack of workers delayed various reports, such as the jobs data. The jobs report, as well as the figures for national retail sales, were both released the same morning. Both reports came in much worse than anyone could have conjured up in their nightmares. The jobs report for April showed a loss in excess of six and a half million, by far the worst jobs report in our nation’s history. More than 4 percent of those who were employed at the end of March were not employed at the end of April. The biggest job losses were in government jobs and retail, but every sector of the economy saw huge losses compared to March. The unemployment rate, which is computed separately but is always released along with the jobs report, painted a similarly grim picture, as the job losses, coupled with the fact that millions of seniors and disabled individuals were flooding the job market after they lost their income, caused a massive spike in the unemployment rate. The unemployment figure, which had hovered around the five percent mark for the previous couple of years, shot up to a ghastly 16 percent, the biggest single-month jump in the nation’s history by far, and the highest figure seen since the Great Depression. The combination of a sharp decrease in jobs, and a sharp increase of those looking for work, created a perfect storm that caused the unprecedented jump in the unemployment rate.

The stock markets opened not long after the release of the jobs report, and the markets absolutely cratered, the Dow Jones falling over 1,000 points in a matter of minutes, and continuing to sink lower as the day went on. About half an hour after the opening bell, the second boom was lowered, the retail sales report. This report too was far worse than predicted, as the massive drop in incomes caused retail sales to fall by a whopping 36.5 percent. The fact that fewer people were working, and those who were were largely making much less than before, created another perfect storm that took down the retail sector, and threatened the rest of the sectors as well. This report caused more panic selling, as every index was clobbered. By the end of the day, the wreckage became clearer: The Dow Jones had fallen 3,116 points, a drop of a little over 27 percent. The other indexes fell by similar amounts, as every sector of stocks was hammered. It was the biggest percentage drop in history, as well as the biggest point drop. The next day’s edition of the New York Times summed it up best, as the headline took up the whole top half of the page, blaring “DOWN IT GOES”. Other indexes worldwide saw similar results, as investors got crushed and frantically tried to unload shares everytime a new, worse economic report was released. This was made worse by the fact that every nation released reports that showed similar, or even worse figures than the U.S. reports. Mass daily stock selloffs happened all around the world seemingly every single day.

Despite everything crashing around him, President Harris did still have some support. Though he didn’t make many public appearances, and didn’t seem to care in the least what he had unleashed, David Harris had some powerful folks in his corner. The right-wing media apparatus was still working full-time, trying to pump up support for the policies. Far-right commentators such as Annie Coulson and the talking heads of Fox News still insisted, day after day, that the Economic Freedom Act was the right course of action. Their arguments were that the EFA was, in fact, necessary, as too many “freeloaders” were “taking advantage of the old system”. Another argument was that folks were now able to forge their own destinies, free from the “shackles of the government” that “held people down”. Then, of course, came the most-parroted talking point, that “hey, we’re paying less taxes now”. Analysis did show that to be untrue, however. Even though the official rates were lower, and there were no more payroll taxes, the credits and deductions that reduced tax liability before were now gone. Overall, the amount of taxes paid by most was about the same now, and in many cases, the percentage of income going to taxes actually rose somewhat. So yeah, there goes that argument. There was a bit of criticism in far-right circles about the EFA, but it had nothing to do with the policy itself. The criticism revolved around the speed at which the policy was implemented. Some economists, including a well-known right-wing economist named Hal Willis, said that the EFA should have been implemented in stages, bit by bit, and that doing it all at once created too big of a shock for the system to withstand. For instance, Willis said that Social Security should have been phased out over a period of several years, and that the other government safety net programs should have been gradually reduced, and perhaps turned completely over to the states, where they could manage them alone and tailor them to their own needs. Despite the initial shock of the implementation of the EFA, Willis said that there would be a swift recovery “within six months to a year”, and that the economy would come roaring back “stronger than ever”.

The loudest of those voices in favor of the Economic Freedom Act came from the usual suspects, the verbal bombthrowers of the right-wing echo chamber. Annie Coulson, never one to hold back the invective, came under fire for comments on the Fox News show of Seth Hannigan one day in early May. Her comments attacked the very people who had been most harmed by the new law, expounding that “anyone who has been hurt by the changes is solely responsible for their problems. They are just gonna have to suck it up and take responsibility for their own lives. No more wah wah wah, I need help. Help yourself!”, to which Hannigan nodded his head in agreement, and added his two cents, saying “I agree, no more victimization! Everyone pays their own way, and if they can’t, tough! That’s the way it has worked throughout most of history, and it worked. People simply lifted themselves up. I think that pretty soon, people will start to do that again, as long as they are willing to. I truly think that, in the long run, poverty will actually be reduced by the Economic Freedom Act. We will not see generations of people enslaved by the government, on the government teat, so to speak.” Even though they were just parroting much of what other personalities were saying for the past several months, that particular segment drew the ire of the public, as it came off as incredibly tone-deaf to the plight of millions of Americans, as well as the fact that it ignored the history books, which showed that a large percentage of working people endured grinding poverty before the safety net came along. It was rebroadcast on other station’s newscasts for days afterwards, where their own personalities offered their takes. Hannigan came under fire once again a week later, on May 12th, the day of the big crash in the stock markets, asserting that the drop in the market was “a liberal conspiracy to make President Harris look bad”. Yeah, other talking heads had a field day with that one as well, as Hannigan implied that Wall Street intentionally lost trillions of dollars in order to make some sort of political statement. Renee Meadows of MSNBC, on top of continuing her gut-wrenching stories of those who have been economically displaced, started chronicling the horrid statements her right-wing counterparts were making on a daily basis, and airing them after her daily tearjerker. Meadows would devote the last five to ten minutes of each show to point out the horrible, horrible things her conservative counterparts were saying, but still devoting the rest of the show to economic horror stories.

The granddaddy of all of these anti-poor outbursts came out of the mouth of the man who was most well-known for his outbursts, Lance Rushman. During his broadcast one Wednesday afternoon, Rushman responded to the new economic reports, as well as Renee Meadows’ daily stories, by ripping into the poor here in the United States. The worst portion of the diatribe went:

“I frankly don’t care what is happening to these poor people. They made their bed, now they have to sleep in it. You hear that? It’s your fault! Don’t come crying to me or to the government that you are unemployed or hungry or homeless, take care of yourself! I take care of myself, the people I know take care of themselves, everyone else can do it too! I’m just tired of people going boo-hoo, boo-hoo, I’m hungry, or my kids don’t have anything to eat. It’s your responsibility to feed your kids, not mine. And to those who got their pay cut, claiming that they don’t make enough to pay rent and buy food, oh well! You should have gotten a better job! I have a tip for those people, and that is...WORK HARDER!”

The response to this outburst was swift and fierce, as most of the sponsors of Rushman’s show (those who didn’t jump ship over the last few years, whenever he said something especially controversial) abandoned the show en masse, and Rushman’s employer responded the next morning by suspending Rushman indefinitely, a move that angered his fans, but was applauded by the more rational segments of society.

As I said before, the fact that the economy was crumbling was readily apparent to the vast majority of the population. People from all walks of life were feeling the pinch of shrinking incomes and disappearing jobs. The working class was seeing their jobs disappearing left and right, and business owners were seeing their companies hemorrhaging red ink, which in turn caused them to reduce pay and slash jobs further in a vicious cycle that was threatening to engulf the whole economy. In the month of May, the mass job losses showed no signs of slowing down, as a soul-crushing 6,087,000 jobs were lost, second worst monthly total in U.S. history, only the previous month was worse. To put this in perspective, nearly as jobs were lost during just the last two months as were lost during the whole Great Depression, a fact not lost on economic experts, such as those at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning economic group who published a report in late May stating that the downturn would continue to get worse, and the jobs situation was “a contagion that threatened to annihilate the economy, sector by sector”.

Indeed, the job losses piled up in every sector of the U.S. economy. The retail sector fell another 21 percent in the month of May, meaning that retail sales in May were about half what they were in March. With fewer and fewer customers walking through the doors of their stores, retailers continued their relentless slashing of pay, hours and jobs. Seemingly every day, another chain announced a round of layoffs. Walmart announced a round of layoffs for over 150,000 employees, as well as the closure of some of their thousands of stores in the U.S. and abroad, the day after they announced a sales drop of 38.4 percent in April. Their retail competitors didn’t fare much better. Target had a drop of 35.6 percent, and other retailers such as Kohl’s, and clothing retailers such as the Gap, among others, posted drops of around 50 percent.

Of course, before long, this trend in retail would spread to manufacturing, as manufacturing companies suddenly had far fewer orders to fill. Manufacturing crashed hard in the month of May, falling a whopping 17.4 percent, the worst monthly figure for that category ever reported. As far fewer goods were being bought, the number of orders that were coming in to manufacturing plants plunged. Factories all over the nation fell idle, and the cities and towns that housed these factories, big and small alike, felt the pain of the local factory, often the main source of jobs in the neighborhood, closing its doors. The factories that remained open did so with leaner operations, using fewer workers and running fewer shifts. The workers that remained were expected to do extra work for less money than before, as wage cuts spread throughout the sector. Manufacturers held off or completely cancelled plans to purchase new equipment, and they also virtually stopped research and development, meaning they won’t be working on new products anytime soon. All of these cuts in expenditures created a ripple effect, hurting those businesses that provide the materials and products used by manufacturers. Production of big-ticket items, such as automobiles and home appliances saw even bigger declines than production for other items. The number of new auto registrations fell by just over half between March and May, leading to articles and news segments portending the doom of the big auto manufacturers, who were the largest manufacturers left in the U.S. Surely enough, all of the major automakers announced mass layoffs, as the number of cars coming off of assembly lines plunged. The loss of just one of those companies would also spell doom for the myriad of companies that produce the parts that go into the cars, as well as the dealerships that sell the cars, and the firms that produce the machinery that is used to make the goods.

The trend of mass factory closures happened worldwide, especially in the third-world nations that had seen economic growth in recent decades due to the growth of manufacturing. Nations that lean heavily on manufacturing, such as China, Japan, Germany, and much of the developing world, saw their manufacturing number fall harder than places like the U.S., where the manufacturing sector makes up a smaller portion of the economy. Furthermore, places more dependent on industry saw their economies hurt far more by the mass downturn in manufacturing. Orders for all products, from cars in America and Japan, to industrial equipment in Germany, to electronics in Taiwan, Japan and Korea, to textiles in India, Bangladesh, and other developing places all over the world, to toys and other consumer goods in China, crashed when compared to just a few months earlier, falling by 20, 30, 40, even 50 percent or more. The global destruction of the manufacturing sector led to the destruction of the livelihoods of untold millions of people all over the world, people whose jobs were the difference between maintaining their households and starvation.

A big international news story during this time, which made the newscasts of all the networks over a period of several weeks, centered around the emptying of countless factories in nations such as China or India or Bangladesh or Vietnam or Guatemala or Mexico or Brazil, among dozens of others. China alone saw thousands of factory closures, as large industrial cities started to empty out. The displaced workers, whose factory jobs were often the only source of income for themselves and their families, vacated the cities by the millions, to make the trek back to the countryside, to their family villages. We heard heartwrenching stories of people who died of starvation, disease, or suicide. In places such as China, those who were laid off from their jobs and headed home to their villages were sometimes shunned, cast off as failures by their families. The suicide rate skyrocketed among these individuals, as government officials started to comb the waterways of the country looking for bodies of those who took their lives. Indeed, suicide rates shot up all over the world. We didn’t see anything to the extent of what was going on in China here in the U.S., but there was plenty of devastation to go around. Towns which had lost their factories, especially in more rural areas, were crushed, as unemployment in these areas shot up to 50 percent or higher in some places. Many of these places were already hit hard by the deindustrialization that had taken place in the U.S. over the previous forty or so years, and now they were walloped by another round of factory closures, this one much bigger than before. Many displaced industrial workers saw no choice than to try their hand at another job field, a dicey proposition, as every other career field was also contracting, or to leave their homes and try to find work elsewhere.

While the losses in retail and manufacturing made the biggest headlines, and were the subject of the most stories in the news media, other sectors were hard-hit as well. For the second straight month, every sector of the U.S. economy lost at least 100,000 jobs. Construction was pretty hard hit, as the construction of new buildings ground down almost to a halt in much of the country. The number of new homes being constructed fell by more than half between March and May. On top of that, the amounts being spent on renovation of homes plunged as well. We also saw commercial construction fall off a cliff too, as far fewer buildings for stores, as well as factories and other commercial structures were being built, and many projects that had been started were left half-completed for the time being. The drop in private construction, compounded with the near-total halt in government-funded construction (of public buildings like schools), contributed to a massive loss in construction jobs. We saw a large number of construction firms simply close, as in many cases, there was just no demand for them to build anything. The closures meant that all those construction workers were out of work, further adding to the ranks of the unemployed, more and more folks competing for fewer and fewer jobs.

The transportation sector also was dramatically reduced, as further declines in the volume of goods transported by truck, rail or ship caused these companies to make further cuts to jobs and pay. Of course, the transportation sector is very much tied to the broader economy, especially consumer spending. The steep drop in retail and manufacturing devastated the trucking, rail and shipping industries. There simply weren’t as many goods to transport. The roads of America had far fewer trucks on them, as trucking companies laid off hundreds of thousands of truck drivers, a move they said was temporary. My dad told me that he personally knew several guys who were getting let go by Covenant Transport. One guy named Bob, who liked to compete with my dad and his codriver for loads of goods to haul, got laid off in May, along with his codriver, as well as nearly a quarter of the drivers who operated out of that terminal in Pomona. “I feel bad that those drivers were laid off, but I thank God that I wasn’t one of them.” My father told me one hot afternoon as I visited my family at the mobile home park, partly to see them, and partly for the air conditioning. “I thought I would get more loads after Bob and them got let go, since there is less competition, but I’m actually getting a bit less. I getting one less trip every two weeks or so. I hope that doesn’t continue, and I really hope it doesn’t get worse.” He said to me and my mom in a worried voice as we sat in the living room, me and my dad both drinking a beer while he was flipping channels, trying to find something decent on. “F*****g regular channels! I hate not having cable anymore!” He angrily told my mom, lamenting that they cut their cable TV  week earlier.

Seaports were also far emptier, as the ships bringing in imported consumer goods were fewer and farther in between, leading to large job losses in port cities on both coasts. There were stories of half-empty container ships coming into seaports worldwide. Despite a sharp drop in fuel prices, trucking companies still couldn’t turn any profits. Speaking of fuel prices, gas prices in the month of May tumbled a whole forty-four cents a gallon nationally, on top of a seventeen-cent drop in April. This provided a small silver lining to the millions of families that suffered a loss of income. Getting to and from work became cheaper for folks such as myself, as many of us travel long distances to get to our jobs, so that provided a bit of help. Even though the drop in gas prices helped people’s wallets, it wrecked the oil and gas sectors of the economy, as the energy-producing parts of the country suffered mass job losses. Energy production across the country plummeted, as it was not profitable to extract oil or gas or coal from the earth, leading to mass layoffs.

The mass losses in the financial sector, amounting well into the trillions, caused banks and other financial firms to lay off workers by the thousands, as well as largely freeze new lending. Bank lending, which helped individuals make purchases such as cars and houses, and which helped businesses, especially smaller businesses, fund their operations, had dried up nearly completely. The credit crunch was hard on businesses, who lost a major form of financing to go along with steep drops in revenues. The loss of credit perhaps caused as many business failures during this time as the loss of customers, as companies now struggled to pay the bills, and to pay their workers. The rapid increase of personal and business loans going into delinquency and default caused lenders to tighten up their lending even more. Lenders were trying to decrease the amount of money going out their doors as much as possible, since far less money was coming in.

During May, economists, such as those at the Economic Policy Institute, began to sound the alarm that the reduction of incomes, as well as job losses, may have some negative effects in the banking system. A report released by the Economic Policy Institute in the last week of May claimed that, if the loss of jobs continues across all income levels, at the levels of the months of April and May, there may be a risk of “endemic failure in the financial system”. See, if households continued to see further declines of income, they will continue to accrue debt at an unsustainable rate. This, coupled with the draining of money from bank accounts and the growing possibility of a wave of losses from home foreclosures, may overwhelm the whole financial system. This just confirmed the suspicions that I had had for months, as the drop in the financial sector would be the biggest hit to the economy of all. The breakdown of the banks would be the final step in the full-on collapse of the economy that I had been envisioning.

The world of sports and entertainment continued its steep decline in the month of May. In the movies, May is the month that the summer movie season, full of special effects-laden blockbusters, typically started. 2017 would prove to be a major exception. Articles in movie industry-centered publications such as Variety blared headlines such as “Is Hollywood Doomed?” As the big studios moved their big releases out of such a toxic environment. The first instance of studios moving their titles back came for the first title of the summer movie season, a comic book-themed film named Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, from Marvel Studios, the top studio for superhero fare, which was perhaps the most popular genre for movies in the years leading up to the Collapse. The movie was set to release on Friday, May 5th, but Marvel Studios decided mere days before the release to push the movie back to the year 2018, when the economy would hopefully be better. Not long after, Disney (which also owned Marvel Studios) decided to push back the release of their other big-ticket item for May, the fifth installment of the popular Pirates of the Caribbean series, delaying the film indefinitely. These twin moves spooked the film industry, as studios from Universal to Columbia Pictures to Fox Studios all pulling their highly-anticipated summer films from the release schedule, as well as halt production on their current projects. The result was a mass loss of jobs in the film industry, a domino effect that also swallowed up movie theaters, which began closing in droves. Several hundred theaters, from multiple companies, ranging from small theaters to huge corporate chains, shuttered their doors.

Being inquisitive once again, I decided to check out how the downturn of the economy was affecting the experience of going out to the movies. I liked hearing about what was going on, since the economy was the just about only thing I thought about nowadays. One warm Tuesday after work, I made the trek over to the Edwards theater in the northwestern part of Ontario, on Mountain Avenue and Sixth Street. I used to like going to this theater from time to time to catch a movie with my family, or to take out a date, whenever I could actually get a date. I arrived around 6:30 in the evening, only to see empty lines. I took a look at the marquee, which was not lit at all, presumably to save money. Looking at the lightless board, I saw that some of the theater’s fourteen screens were not even being used, and the ones that were being used were playing movies that were a few months old. Only two of the eleven movies that were playing were released in April or May, and both of those were low-budget films, one a comedy and one a horror film. I saw the effect of the studios withholding their big titles, so as to not incur massive losses in the downturn. I asked the ticket booth employee, a sweet, portly, dimpled Hispanic girl of about twenty whose nametag said Sarah, what the deal was with the movies playing. “Yeah, the studios didn’t give us the big stuff that was supposed to come out, they didn’t want to lose money since people can’t afford tickets. So they are leaving in movies that have been out a while, like Beauty and the Beast, so they can make back some of the money that they lost. I swear, every day is slower than the last. Even during weekends, when this place is super-packed, we don’t get that many people. The manager let go most of the concession stand people, and all but three of the ticket booth workers. My best friend Veronica got let go last week, and she can’t find a new job. I’m afraid I will be next. I think that, because I have been here longer than everyone else but the manager, I might be safe for now. But still, I worry. Earlier this afternoon, I didn’t get a customer for a whole hour, that is the first time I ever saw that. Even during the fall and winter, when not that many big movies come out, has it ever been anything even close to this slow.” Sarah told me as I nodded and mixed in some simple responses like “oh wow” and “damn”. At that point, her manager, a tall, skinny white guy named Derek came up and started chastising Sarah right in front of me. “What did I say about chatting with customers, Sarah? You can find another task if customers aren’t coming in!” Derek said to Sarah, before turning to me. “Sir, are you going to buy a ticket or not? If not, you have to leave the premises, or I will call the police. Stop taking up my employees time!” He hollered at me while Sarah frowned in the background.

I turned around and headed out before Derek made a bigger scene. “Have a good night, Sarah.” I uttered to Sarah before leaving to check out the rest of the neighborhood. Seeing what had been a bustling area had me just as depressed as seeing what had become of the movie theater. The Thai restaurant in the same center as the movie theater had closed down, a big sign saying “Out of Business” on the window (I was starting to think that the places that made the out of business signs might have the been only growing industry anymore). After walking by the closed restaurant and the Coldstone Creamery ice cream shop that was devoid of customers, I drove across the street to see how those businesses were faring. It was much the same, as I was sure it was all over the country. The cupcake shop located there, which I was told had lovely cupcakes, had a going out of business sign, as the the juice shop. And then, I saw the saddest thing I would see that day, which was really saying something. I saw Casa Jimenez, my family’s favorite Mexican restaurant, closed down. The lights were off, and there was nobody inside. I used to love eating there with the whole family, as they had an All You Can Eat menu with dozens of delectable choices (I was partial to the enchiladas and the chicken chimichangas). Now, it was gone, and I actually cried as I stared inside the empty husk. I also looked across the way to Wingnuts, a restaurant with a bar and a bunch of TVs where I would go watch football with my old pal Andrew before he went into the Army. There were a few cars in the parking lot in front of Wingnuts, but they also looked like they had fallen on hard times. I wondered if they too would go under, which made me weep some more. After seeing that, I drove home, dejected after what I had seen, as well as worried about whether I got poor Sarah fired from the movie theater.

The music industry suffered a similar fate, as artists, even the most popular acts in their genres, struggled to sell tickets. Performers were forced to cancel their tours, or cancel many of the tour dates, as not enough tickets were selling. Like the movie studios, the music promoters also pushed back tours, sometimes indefinitely. This hurt not only the performers, but also workers at the venues where the shows were to take place. The people who sold and took the tickets, who worked the concession and merchandise stands, and cleaned the venues after the show, would all lose their jobs, which were perhaps the sole source of income keeping them afloat. I heard plenty about this from Leann, who had grown accustomed to attending concerts put on by her favorite bands. She had previously attended at least one or two shows a month, seeing artists from a variety of genres, but she, like many others, simply could not afford to attend shows anymore. This just added to her already worsening depression, as those concerts were her big thing. “Since my pay at Claire’s went down, I don’t have the money to go to shows anymore. Mom wants me to help out more with groceries, so with the food and getting to and from school, that takes up almost all my checks now. I read about some shows that I want to go to, but I don’t have the money. This f*****g sucks!” Leann told me over the phone, before letting off her trademark scream, not so much a loud scream, but a low sound meant to blow off some steam. Many others probably shared her sentiment.

In sports, it quickly became apparent that the previous operating model wouldn’t work for them, either. In recent decades, athletes, much like movie stars and musicians, were commanding massive salaries, sometimes reaching into the tens of millions of dollars. The top players in the sports world commanded annual salaries upwards of thirty million dollars per year, in an era where regular people’s salaries remained stagnant, or dropped. However, with attendance figures plummeting in all sports, and the television partners demanding new, much smaller rights deals so they didn’t go bankrupt, something had to give. In mid-May, it was reported that each of the thirty Major League Baseball teams were set to lose tens of millions of dollars for 2017, as attendance had fallen by nearly 60 percent from 2016, and seemed to keep dropping by the week. The owners responded by going to the player’s unions, who already lost some of their protections, such as minimum player salaries, to the Economic Freedom Act, and asking for salary reductions, at least until things got better. It was seen by observers as a desperate move by the billionaire owners, but many of the league’s teams were facing insolvency by year’s end. The union agreed to a twenty percent across-the-board reduction in pay, on the condition that the amounts being given up be paid to the players when economic conditions improved. If they improved, that is. On top of that, some individual players, from benchwarmers, to some of the game’s biggest stars, agreed to pay reductions to reduce their team’s salary obligations. It was done in an effort to keep the games going, but small-market teams such as the Tampa Bay Rays, who perennially struggled to draw fans despite having generally good teams, were claiming that unless more was done, they wouldn’t last the season. The Rays managed to get their entire roster to agree to a 30 percent pay cut, and the Oakland Athletics, another team who didn’t bring in fans, got a 25 percent pay cut out of their players. The month of May also featured the playoffs for the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, where tense, dramatic postseason games were being played to less than sold-out crowds, which was jarring in itself.

More jarring than that, of course, was what I was seeing everyone around me go through. It was traumatic and depressing to see family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers struggle so mightily. Every day that passed involved me seeing someone losing a job, having to go without seeing a doctor, or perhaps skipping a meal, or multiple meals. It killed me to see people so depressed, so defeated. I felt myself sinking into a deep depression, a depression so bad that I struggled to get out of bed most mornings, because I knew that I was going to see and hear terrible things, that I was going to see something bad happen to someone I cared about. At night, I would lay in bed, thinking of what was going on around me, haunted by any sad sight I had seen that day.

I saw the pain and anguish on my neighbor Phil Warren’s face one Saturday morning that he discovered that his young son Daniel, just twenty years old, had committed suicide. The previous night, completely unbeknownst to Phil, Daniel took dozens of prescription pills and went to sleep, never to wake up. Phil walked in the next morning to his unresponsive son, a empty bottle of pills on the ground right next to the bed. Not only did poor Phil Warren get his pay cut at his job and was facing eviction, he now faced the reality of burying his child, something that no parent ever wants. I couldn’t help but feel the overwhelming sadness Phil felt as the coroner was removing his son’s body, his face ghostlike, one could see right through him. Phil Warren was no longer alive, just existing, a shell of his former self. Myself and the other neighbors helped Phil the best we could, because that’s what we felt neighbor were for. We all felt that he would lend a helping hand if something that devastating had happened to us, even though we didn’t really know him that well.

Me and Juan both brought Phil food that we had made for dinner some nights, and kept him company to help him through this obviously tough time, even when he didn’t much like having anyone over. Franklin also assisted with groceries. This was all to help him make the rent after his pay cut at the Olive Garden, an Italian restaurant where he worked as a manager. Nonetheless, at the end of the month, before the eviction process was to start, Phil decided to pack his things, selling whatever he could at the local pawn shop (which was already bursting at the seams with goods that people pawned to bring in some cash), and moving in with his sister and brother-in-law in the suburbs of San Antonio, Texas. Before he left, Phil thanked everyone who lent a helping hand during his darkest times, before hopping into his beat-down Honda Accord and driving off, never to be seen again. I couldn’t imagine losing a child, especially to suicide. Unfortunately, more and more people had to deal with losing loved ones in such a terrible manner. A report released in May showed that the number of suicides in the United States more than tripled in the month of April alone, and was set to be even higher in May, as a result of the steep downturn in the economy. I guess I could see that being the case, many people lost their jobs, or their homes, and just lost hope, or their sense of self-worth. It still doesn’t make it any less saddening.

As for the rest of my neighbors, the struggles just continued to get worse. Like I said before, Juan worked in the construction industry. By May, construction had dramatically slowed down in the United States, and this area was no exception. I had noticed that the building of the large housing developments and the business buildings that were popping up out of nowhere in places like Chino and Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana had pretty much completely stopped. In the last few years, a lot of new housing units had popped up on previously undeveloped land, a bunch of condos that were meant to attract middle and upper-middle class people to live in the area, since working class folks generally couldn’t afford to rent or buy them. Within weeks of the Economic Freedom Act taking effect, construction virtually halted, as I would drive by half-finished developments driving down Central Avenue in Chino when heading to my parents’ house. Sometimes, the houses themselves would be unfinished, almost as if the developer or construction firm ran out of money before the home can be finished.

Due to the slowdown, many of Juan’s coworkers, most of which were his friends, had been laid off, which his boss Scott said was to be temporary, until work picked back up again. Many days, Juan, who kept his job since he was the most experienced one there, was the only one on the construction site, or perhaps was one of just a few people. The money just wasn’t flowing into the project. Most big business projects, such as construction of buildings, are financed by loans, and credit had largely dried up by this point because banks were losing money due to existing loans going bad. On top of the layoffs of his coworkers, Juan had to take another pay cut, and on some days he was told by Scott not to come in, as there would be nothing for him to do that day. Juan had become stressed because his forty to fifty hour work weeks were becoming twenty to twenty-five hour work weeks. Thank goodness Juan had his savings, but even that wouldn’t last if he no longer had steady employment. Juan and his family adjusted by cutting back on the food budget even further. It would be nothing by rice, beans, tortillas, and whatever vegetables were on sale for them, and Lucia gave up her phone, which saved money but made her hard to reach if Juan wasn’t home. Juan wanted to get rid of his cell phone as well, but he needed it for work. His boss required him to have a cell phone so he could be reached by the boss at all times. There were also no more guests for dinner, but I still spent time with them. We still had our game nights, which substituted for eating out, soccer games and trips to the movies, which most families had to cut out. We even started inviting Franklin and his family over for our gatherings. For some reason, Juan and Frank didn’t really know each other. They didn’t dislike each other, they just didn’t speak much. I saw these gatherings as a way for us to grow closer together, to form a stronger bond in the face of this enormous adversity. Of course, the Jackson family had its troubles too. Franklin was having troubles at his job, where he got another pay cut, and for a time, he worried about losing his job, as the higher ups at Stater Bros. were consolidating manager positions, going from several managers per location to just one who oversaw all the aspects of running the store. Fortunately, he didn’t lose his job, but Chris, the manager Sandra and I would be on the lookout for during our talks (we have had more discussions during this time, her son Aiden has been sick, and she can’t afford the doctor, and her dad got a paycut in May) did lose his job. Franklin was now taking on more responsibility at work, but for less money. I remember him telling me:

“Hey Will. I got good news and bad news.” Franklin told me as he walked towards his house one Thursday evening as I sat outside on the stairs.

“Okay, what is it Frank?” I questioned him, cautiously optimistic about the good news, but really worried about the bad news.

“Well, I am getting more hours at work, I’m actually gonna work seven days a week now!” He replied.

“Okay, what’s the bad news then? That sounds pretty good to me” I stated, somewhat puzzled as to what exactly was going on.

“Well, the bad news is….my pay is going down again. I’m gonna have like sixty or seventy hour work weeks. I’m gonna have my responsibilities, as well as the responsibilities of Chris and Tim, the managers they let go. Corporate is putting the entire store in my hands. I will be running the whole show, but for less money. I suppose it’s better than getting let go.”

“Well damn, I don’t know if that’s good or bad Frank. I think I’ve seen Chris around the store before. Was he middle-aged, kinda pudgy, going bald?” I asked, wondering if the Chris he mentioned was the same guy I have seen there. “He used to get upset when cashiers were talking to customers for more than a few seconds.”

“Yeah, I feel bad for the guy. He looked so distraught when he lost his job. Like the color disappeared from his face and he started shaking. I wonder what he is gonna do now. Hopefully he can get another position with the company, but I don’t know if corporate will even accommodate that. They are cutting back everywhere they can. Letting more employees go, carrying less products, not restocking as quickly. Shutting down departments. The store in Montclair is actually doing away with their deli department. At least they’re staying open for now, I hear they’re going to close dozens of locations in the next two months. I can’t help but feel for those who got let go. I can’t help but think about how they will cope.” Franklin told me. It turns out, a week or so after losing his job, Chris took his life. He used his last paycheck on a handgun, and once he cleared the background check, shot himself in his bedroom, his wife and two teenaged daughters in the next room. Frank learned from Chris’ wife, who blamed Frank for some reason. Apparently she stormed into the store and screamed at him, telling him that he must have sabotaged Chris in order to keep his own job, and peppering him with various racial slurs. Franklin didn’t take Chris’ job, but he certainly bore the brunt of Chris’ wife’s rage.

Knowing that things were going south in a hurry, I made it a point to check in on my family more often. On top of text-messaging with my mother of my sister Leann most days, I started coming over to their house every weekend, usually on Saturdays after my trip to the store, just to see how they were holding up. I would usually be greeted by my mom, who always had a big grin upon seeing me at the door, opening the door wide and giving a big hug and a kiss on the forehead. I would sit down as my mom grabbed me a plate of whatever it was they would have for lunch that day. I was worried about her, however, as she seemed to moving around slower than usual, she seemed more fatigued than normal, and her cough was getting deeper and louder. One of my visits, after hearing the cough several times, I decided to ask her what the deal was with that, was she going to get any medical attention for it?

“Mom, have you gone to the doctor about that cough yet?” I questioned her, worried that she wouldn’t get the attention she needed.

“I told you, I can’t. Your dad can’t afford the company insurance anymore, he got another two cent a mile pay cut.” She responded. I knew about the pay cut, she told me about it last week, but I knew nothing about the loss of insurance. She always had a way of withholding pieces of information like that.

“I hope it isn’t emphysema or cancer. What would the family do without you? Will you and dad at least get to keep taking your meds that you already take?” I asked, knowing that both of my parents take pills for high blood pressure.

“Yeah, those aren’t too much, and the drug company did lower the prices for those a bit, thank God.” She told me. “However, the blood thinner for your dad is pretty pricey, like three hundred bucks per month. We are trying to scrape up the money for that, but it might be either the rent or the meds. That’s a choice that nobody should have to make. A lot of our neighbors are elderly, and when they lost their Medicare, they now have to choose between eating or the medicines to keep themselves alive. It’s really sad.” She said before letting off a thunderous cough.

“Oh goodness, that’s awful Mom. Too bad you guys don’t have insurance anymore.” I told her with a worried tone in my voice. I knew that millions were facing health problems with no insurance and no way to possibly pay for treatment.

My times there typically consisted of eating lunch with them, usually whatever they cooked, but once I grabbed some cheap dollar menu stuff from the McDonald’s, for old time’s sake (The employees there aren’t doing too well. They too got another pay cut. Some were making just three dollars an hour. Three of the employees were on the verge of homelessness, while another was sleeping in a van in the parking lot, a growing phenomenon throughout the country). My family members seemed to want to keep the mood light, trying to remain cheerful despite everything. For the most part, we avoided talking about our situations, or about the economy in general, lest we spend my whole visit depressed. Though on one visit in late May, on a Wednesday this time, it came up again. It was the last day of school for Briana, who was finishing up the eighth grade. She had completed middle school, and I came over to celebrate her achievement after work. My mom had dipped into their savings to buy Briana a cheap cake and some ice cream from the nearby Walmart. I grabbed some balloons and a congratulatory card from the Stater Bros. on the way to their house. I showed up for our little celebration, but for some reason, Briana was in no mood to celebrate. Despite finishing up middle school, she was still feeling rather glum. A couple of minutes after arriving, I asked her why.

“Hey kiddo, what the heck is wrong? This is a happy day!” I hugged her, trying to cheer her up.

“I don’t feel like celebrating. Today was actually really bad Bub.” She told me, with a huge frown on her face, holding her head down as she talked.

“Why is that? I remember the last day of the school year being awesome. We would hardly do anything, just talk and goof off during our classes.” I told her, recalling my days as a student.

“I found out that a couple of teachers, including my favorite teacher, Ms. Mendez, are getting let go by the school! They won’t be back next year. It’s so unfair!” She replied to me, really upset that her beloved math teacher was getting laid off due to the mass budget cuts that the district, like countless other districts, had to make in the wake of mass budget shortfalls.

“Oh my goodness, that sucks Briana! I wonder how many teachers are getting laid off” I asked her, worried about how many teachers were losing their jobs. I did hear about a week earlier that California was going to lose between a quarter and a third of its teachers. Also, in some places, schools would be shortening their school years, or closing altogether. Once the new school year started in a few months, many schoolchildren would have to travel much further, to a school that was now more overcrowded than before. This process was being repeated all over the country.

“A lot of the kids are upset about it, especially Ms. Mendez’s students. She’s a great teacher, and I learned so much from her this year. My friend Stephanie was crying a lot over it. Almost all of us in the classroom were crying over it. She really cares about her students.” Briana was clearly shaken up about everything.

“Oh no, sounds like Ms. Mendez really made an impact on you guys.” I replied back. Then Briana continued.

“Yeah, Stephanie went up to her a during class crying, and asked her ‘Did all of this stuff that happened lately, with the students going hungry, and their parents losing their jobs, and the teachers getting laid off, did this all really have to happen?’ to which Ms. Mendez told her ‘No, it really didn’t. Unfortunately, the people in charge, like our president, thought it was a good idea to make changes. He feels that some people deserve to suffer, and that it’s their fault if they suffer.’ Then Stephanie said ‘Making kids go hungry and parents and teachers lose jobs was the dumbest idea ever, those people have a hard time living now. David Harris is an idiot!’ and the class cheered when she said that David Harris is an idiot, because he is an idiot. A huge idiot!”

“Yeah, David Harris is an idiot, he ruined everything!” I replied, chuckling at the thought of what her friend Stephanie said. Well there you have it, a thirteen year-old had more common sense than the President of the United States. What a truly sorry state of affairs we were in.

At work, it was more of the same I was seeing at home or in the news. In line with other companies, Milton Plastics saw its sales plunge in the wake of the Economic Freedom Act. Our sales fell over 40 percent in the month of April alone. In early May, it was announced that most of the company’s marketing department was getting let go. Only Joseph Erickson, a tall, fiftyish gentleman who had been with the company for twenty-three years was to remain with the department, the only person to keep their job in a department of eight. I also heard that our factory in China was cutting back its production dramatically, until sales picked up again (a big if). Thankfully, we didn’t get our pay further cut during the month of May, but we expected that to come sooner or later. My fellow accounting department employees were continuing to struggle, of course. I think Hannah, the girl in front of me in the office who was the accounts receivable clerk, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day that month. Nothing wrong with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I ate them some days too, but it had to get tiring after a while. Tom Wilson, the coworker I had befriended the previous month, ended up moving cross-country with his family, leaving before they could get evicted, but not before thanking each and every one of us who helped him during this dark time for his family. My buddy Reggie Wallace was starting to talk about downgrading their housing situation. He and his wife had been saving up to buy a house sometime within the next year, but his pay cut not only put that on hold indefinitely, but now they were talking about moving into something cheaper (which would almost certainly mean they would live further from Reggie’s job, as Orange County rents were pretty expensive). His family was keeping their heads above water for the time being, just making the typical household budget cuts, buying cheaper food, cancelling their cable and internet, getting rid of all but one cell phone, Reggie’s phone, which they were all to share now. Reggie also had to hold off on buying the new car that he wanted. He was eyeing a nice new Kia, but had to keep his 2001 Toyota Corolla, a slightly newer version of my car, for the time being. This move would come back to bite him later.

On one Sunday night in mid-May, Reggie gave me a call while I watching the news, eating the Top Ramen I had made for dinner that night, with the bad news. His Corolla had broken down. He was going to have to call off of work the next day, as that was the only car he had access to use, and he had no other way to get to work. I suggested that he could take the bus, but I remembered that no buses ran within a mile of the building where we worked, since the Orange County Transit Authority, like many other transportation companies, was cutting back on routes and hours due to less government funding. I came up with another idea, one that would keep him from missing work, and the income that came with it: Why don’t I take him to work every day? I can pick him up from his house in the morning, and drop him off after work. “Are you sure you can do that? I live kinda out of the way.” He asked me. I told him that he didn’t live that far out of the way, since he lived on the other end of Brea, about three miles away from the office. I would have to go a bit out of my way to do this, but it would only add perhaps ten minutes to my trip to and from work, not that much if it means helping out a good friend. On top of that, Reggie would give me some gas money for my trouble, twenty dollars a week, roughly what he would spend if he had his car working. I didn’t need that much money for gas from him, but he insisted, so I took it, as I wasn’t about to reject money in my pocket. This move helped both of us, Reggie had a way to get to and from work until he could scrounge up the money for the costly car repairs (the mechanic gave him an estimate of about a thousand dollars, far too much to pay without eating into the family savings), and I got some money to help myself to get around.

As for my more longtime friends, I suppose it was time to catch up with them, as we had begun to go our separate ways in recent years, after graduating high school. Andrew Martinez had a spell of unemployment after finishing high school, finally landing a couple of jobs where he stayed for a bit, such as at the Edwards movie theater in Ontario, the same one that I had gone to and spoke to Sarah (I do wonder how she was doing, and whether she was still working there), and later at King Taco, the highly popular taco place a few blocks from where we grew up. However, he had bigger plans in mind, as he decided, at the age of twenty, to pursue his dream and enter the United States Army. He had wanted to join right out of high school, but his entrance test scores were not good enough for acceptance. He was undeterred, and he kept working out to keep in shape and, with my help, studied to improve his test scores. He retook the exam, and passed in August 2016. He quickly enlisted in the Army, shipping out to boot camp in October 2016. After passing boot camp with flying colors, he was stationed at a base in Texas. We would call or text message each other from time to time, asking each other how life was going, or talking about our main shared interest, sports. We hadn’t talked much in recent months, but I called him one night in May, just to see how things were with him. He was holding up reasonably well, the pay cut he received as a direct result of the Economic Freedom Act was hurting him, but he was managing. He was a deeply religious young man, who always felt that God would make sure things were alright. Andrew also told me that the other soldiers were struggling mightily, as many had to get funds from shady payday lending places (who provided short-term funding at exorbitant interest rates) to feed their families, while others were going without food. He told me that in many communities with military bases, private organizations conducted food drives in order to make sure that members of the military didn’t go hungry. What a sad state of affairs that we had to go to such lengths to make sure our men and women in uniform were able to eat, but we could thank President Harris for that. So much for the Republican rhetoric about “supporting our troops”, which clearly rang hollow with this administration. Despite all the struggles of himself and his fellow soldiers, Andrew just kept his head down and made the most of every day in the Army.

As for Jimmy Sanchez, he had been doing pretty well for himself. He had gotten a job not long after high school, working for an auto parts supplier, a job that his then-girlfriend Nicole’s dad got him. He worked hard, working his way up the company, and becoming a manager at the local branch within three years. He ended up marrying Nicole, a kind, passionate, giving woman who we grew up with in the old neighborhood in Ontario, in 2013, and not long after they welcomed their first child, an adorable baby girl named Alexis. They welcomed their second daughter, Anabelle, the next year. Not long after Anabelle’s birth, Jimmy got a great opportunity at his job, but one that would cause him to have to move out of state. The higher-ups at his company, A&F Auto Parts, were opening a new branch in Phoenix, Arizona, and they wanted Jimmy to be the manager. This new job opportunity came with a big bump up in pay, so this move would much better help him provide for his wife and daughters. He accepted the offer, and the Sanchez family moved off to Arizona in September of 2015, eventually buying a home in the suburb of Glendale. The Sanchez family would come back to California every couple of months for holidays and for the girls’ birthdays, since Jimmy’s family still lived in southern California. I would make it a point to see than them at least once when they were in town, but other than that, I didn’t have much contact with Jimmy, other than the occasional text message or Facebook post. The last talk I had with him, which occurred back in February, ended awkwardly. Our talk had turned to politics for some reason, and I told him and Nicole my predictions for the economy.The Economic Freedom Act had recently been announced, and was the hot topic in the news. I was telling them what I thought was going to happen, with my usual meticulous detail, and Jimmy didn’t want to hear it. The doom and gloom talk got him down. “Dude, I don’t wanna hear about that. That s**t won’t happen. Harris is a moron, and I sure as f**k didn’t vote for him, but he won’t f**k things up that badly. It isn’t possible for things to get as bad as you say they will, and saying that is just depressing!” he snapped at me. I dropped the subject after that, and he spent most of the rest of the time talking to Nicole while I played with the girls, who were, of course, quickly growing. Other than a brief discussion about the upcoming Dodgers season, he didn’t really say a word to me the rest of the time he was in town. I think that what I had said really struck a nerve with him and Nicole. I do wonder if they acted the way they did because they didn’t want to see the nice life they had built together would come crashing down.

Speaking of crashing down, the next time I talked to Jimmy was on Friday, May 12th, the day of the worst market crash ever. It was close to noon, and there wasn’t much work going on in my office at all. Myself and the other employees were huddled around a radio. We were listening to news reports throughout the day, which indicated that the stock market was sinking lower, and lower, and lower. The tension as we listened to the reports was palpable, we were seeing a new Great Depression unfold before us. We nervously kept listening to the recap of what was going on, of the negative economic reports that day, and the cascading crashes of worldwide markets over the previous twenty-four hours. When lunch time came, I decided to give my old pal Jimmy a call, assuming he was on his lunch break as well. I had to see how he was responding to the events of that fateful Friday.

“Hey, what’s up Will? It’s a surprise to get a call from you, I haven’t heard from you in a while! How’s it goin’ man?” He answered. I’ll admit, perhaps I had not been that good of a friend, since this was the first time I had called my best friend in three months.

“I’m not so good, just having a tough day” I answered him, wondering how to ask him how he was holding up.

“What’s the matter Will?” He asked, clearly puzzled as to the purpose of this call.

“I got a quick question for you...do you own any stocks?” I asked, an odd question to say the least, but a relevant one to ask today.

“Ummmm, no” Jimmy responded, certainly befuddled at my odd question.

“Good” I told him, sounding relieved.

“Huh? What the hell are you talking about? Why would you ask me that? That’s a really weird question. You’ve been acting weird every time we talk” He was now more bewildered than before. It sounds like he did not know what was happening that day.

“I take that you haven’t seen the news today man. You should check it out, it’s pretty fucked up. Turn the TV to just about any channel, or turn on the radio, and you will find out what I mean.” I replied to him with a somber tone.

“Okay, I’ll check it out, give me a sec” He took a moment to turn on the TV set that was located in his office, and clicked a few channels until he found some news, a quick glance at the news gave him a clue as to what I was talking about.

“What the f**k? Wow, that’s crazy man! It’s like we’re living through history class!” He was now plenty aware of the stock market crash unfolding before our very eyes.

“Yeah, that’s why I asked that question. I was worried how your family was doing, we hadn’t talked in awhile, and the last time we talked, it didn’t go over well. That’s why I called.” I told him, with a worried tone in my voice.

“Damn man….this is crazy. By the way, I’m sorry about that. I remember some of what you were saying that day, and you were totally right about it. I do have some stock, in my 401(k) plan here at work. I don’t really check that s**t, but it sounds like it is way smaller today. Work has been slow, I hear most places have been slow. I got my pay cut a bit last week, like fifty bucks a week, and I was ordered to let go a couple of the guys here at the office. That really sucked. I hope to never have to do that again, those guys were crushed when I told them they lost their jobs. Due, I know their families, and one of the guys plays on my softball team, and now their lives are f*****g ruined, and I feel like I’m the cause of it. I hope that s**t doesn’t keep getting worse, but looking at the news, it looks like it’s probably going to.” He told me, putting the pieces together in his head now.

“S**t, I’m sorry you had to go through that. I don’t think I could do such a thing to anyone. That had to crush you.” I responded to him.

“Hey buddy, I have to go, I got a customer at the door of the office. Thank you for calling me, it is always good to hear your voice.” He told me.

“Same here man, we’ll talk again soon. Take care buddy.” I told him before hanging up the phone, and pulling out my ham sandwich and bag of ramen noodles. It was good to hear my friend’s voice. I do worry about this situation was affecting him and his family, and everyone else for that matter. The worries, the predictions, everything just grew sharper in my mind, sharper than it ever has been. Things were going horribly, and were to only get worse. Down it goes, indeed.

Author's Note

This is a first draft, not a finished product. I'm always looking for ways to improve it, either by new ideas to add or changes to the dialogue.