Ch. 4 - It BeginsA Chapter by DGordon This chapter covers the events of April 2017. The EFA has now been implemented, and the fallout from the sweeping economic reform quickly becomes apparent to everyone, as the economy is devastated. It Begins Economic Developments in April 2017:
It was a warm, beautiful Saturday morning. The first day of April. It was around 6 A.M. when I was jolted awake. I had just had yet another nightmare, this one involved me falling endlessly, with a bunch of things falling alongside me. I saw numbers falling, like the numbers on a stock market board, and a line on a chart went crashing down with an explosive thud below me, followed by a ball of fire that rose up and singed me. I saw images that many people would associate with an economic crash. A long bread line, a business owner closing the doors of his shop for good, people jumping out of windows of skyscrapers, a homeless man holding a sign and a jar of change in front of a 7-Eleven, a news anchor giving a report on the horrible things happening all around. After what was probably a few minutes of that, even though it felt like hours, I awoke in a cold sweat, with a horrified look on my face, my heart pounding through my chest. I rubbed my eyes, and put on my glasses to check my cell phone to see what time it was, and at that point I realized that I probably shouldn’t fall back asleep, lest the nightmare continue. The day had come. A terrible feeling came over me as soon as I realized that it was April 1st, a cold chill ran down my spine. It was the day I, as well as many others, was dreading. I checked the news like I do every morning, hoping that maybe, just maybe, all that EFA stuff was just an elaborate and horribly cruel April Fool’s joke, that the news anchor was gonna scream out “April Fools, gotcha!” to the audience. No such luck, as the new reality of the Economic Freedom Act has set in. As I normally do on Saturday mornings after I wake up, I get dressed, brush my teeth, put on my deodorant and head out for my weekly errands. This trip would be different in one regard, I was going to take it upon myself to find out how the EFA would be affecting the people I encounter during my trip. As for myself, I have to make some changes to my life. For food, I’m going to change out the fast food and the more expensive grocery items. So no more steaks or pork chops or frozen pizzas or lasagna or pizza rolls or corn dogs or frozen burritos or even Hot Pockets for me. As for quick snacks, no more breakfast danishes or breakfast sandwiches or chips (I loved the barbecue Lay’s and Cheetos) or Chicken in a Bisket crackers or candy or cookies or taquitos or even the chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs (I’m not sure why, but chicken nuggets always tasted better when in the shape of dinosaurs). I was going to swap that out with more bread and cheap lunch meat for sandwiches. Maybe I could mix in peanut butter and jelly if they were on sale, and maybe some ground beef or chicken if I can get a great deal on it. I’ll also grab some tortillas to make a quesadilla or fill with rice and beans and meat. Also, no more nights out for drinks with the guys at work, which shouldn’t be a big deal, since all of them have to cut back too. At home, I had tried to get my landlord Sanjay, a sixty-ish, balding man of Indian descent, to reduce my monthly rent, since I was making over 500 dollars less per month than before. That didn’t work out for me, as he said that he had no wiggle room on the rent amount. There were still property taxes and a mortgage on the complex, Sanjay said in his fluent but difficult to understand accent, and he couldn’t reduce the rent for any of the tenants, unless we were willing to bear some of the cost for water and trash service, which would defeat the purpose of paying less rent. That sucks, but at least my rent is still a relatively affordable 850 dollars a month, which is rather cheap for Ontario (or anywhere else in southern California, one of the most expensive areas in the country), where most comparable apartments fetch about a thousand a month or more. In the condominium complexes that were being built up the street from me, those units were sure to go for close to two thousand per month, so I was lucky to find something for as cheap as I did. As for changes I made in the home. I am getting rid of the cable TV and Internet service to save some money, like millions of others were also doing. I didn’t watch that much TV anyways, and I have internet on my cell phone, which I was keeping on, at least for now, since I still need to communicate with the outside world. If I get another pay cut, I’ll probably have no choice but to get rid of the phone. My expenses will be pared back to food, cell phone, rent and utilities, and even then it would be really tight. I decided to make it a point to use less electricity, and less hot water, so I needed to take quick showers, as opposed to the lengthy twenty to thirty minute showers I had been accustomed to (I always enjoyed the solitude and the hot water in there). I was even considering going without car insurance, which would save me a bit, but would mean I would be running afoul of the law, as car insurance was required by law. I could also no longer afford the health insurance my job still offered, so hopefully I didn’t get sick or injured at all. For entertainment, no more trips to the movies with my family, no more trips to Dodger Stadium to catch a baseball game, no more bowling, no more trips to the aquarium or to museums, not even any random drives around town (gotta conserve that gas). I didn’t get to go out all that much on the income I had before, but now I wouldn’t get to at all anymore. I’ll just stay at home and either watch TV, or play a game. Maybe I’ll play on my Playstation 3, or maybe I’ll break out my copy of Strat-O-Matic Baseball, a board game that accurately recreates the game of baseball with cards and dice. With that game, I could always envision the game unfolding in my mind, almost as if I were actually at the ballpark. I can almost see the players, or smell the grass, or hear the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd. Games can be my escape, something to make me forget that everything is going to Hell, at least for a couple of hours. Well anyways, I headed out on that warm and sun-soaked spring morning to do my weekly grocery shopping. After leaving the house around 9 A.M., my first stop was going to be the Stater Brothers supermarket, located on Holt Boulevard and San Antonio Avenue in west Ontario, about a mile and a half from my house. After parking my car in a near-empty parking lot, I walk inside to a store that is emptier than usual. Usually the place is packed on Saturday mornings, but not today. The sight was actually a bit eerie. There were a few housewife-types milling around the food aisles, scoping out the items that are for sale, some with kids following them around, asking their parents for their favorite candy or cereals or whatever else. Some of the adults have their calculators out, trying to make every last penny count, since those pennies are scarcer for many now. One hollered at her two kids “I just told you, we can’t afford that right now!” in an exasperated voice. I had my revised weekly shopping list, and was looking for cheaper alternatives to the items I would customarily buy. I have to buckle down, if I’m going to be making 140 dollars a week less than I had been before. After letting out a big sigh while looking at my list, lamenting the things I will give up, I briskly go down the aisles, picking up the macaroni and cheese and ramen noodles, the can of beans and bag of rice, the cheapest spaghetti noodles and the cheap spaghetti sauce that comes in the can, the loaves of bread and the cheapest cuts of lunch meat I can find. I don’t care for the brand of lunch meat that I picked, the cheap store brand that came in a little plastic pouch, but it was the cheapest, so it will have to do. I’ll have to choke it down for now, until another brand has a sale here. I’m even swapping out the soda, which I admittedly would drink too much of, for a case of bottled water. Once I’m done, I push my cart up to the checkout line where I would pay for my goods. The cashier today is a pretty young lady named Sandra, who has helped me several times before. I think she might have flirted with me before, but my sense is terrible when it comes to that kind of stuff. I would definitely consider dating her if the opportunity arose. Sandra is in her mid-twenties, with long brown hair that’s put up in a ponytail for work, nice blue eyes and she normally flashes a very beautiful smile. Today is a different story, however, as she has a despondent, defeated look on her face today. “What’s wrong? You seem down today.” I question her as to what the problem is, despite the fact that I already knew damn well what the problem is. I saw my first opportunity to probe to find out more about her station in life. “I shouldn’t say this to a customer, but yes, I’m having a bad day. Feeling really down. Just got stuff on my mind.” She replied with a sigh, looking over her shoulder to see if anyone else can hear her. “You got your pay cut, didn’t you? This is April 1st, after all.” I whispered to Sandra after leaning in, so her bosses don’t hear. The employees are probably being ordered to not say anything. She is now close to done with scanning my items, when her manager, a forty-ish man named Chris (my neighbor and friend Franklin Jackson was also a manager at this store, but he was off on weekends) walked by, heading to the back of the store. Once he was completely out of sight, Sandra leaned in towards me. “My pay got cut almost in half, I went from thirteen bucks an hour to seven, and my health insurance got cut big time.” I noticed a tear now streaming down her cheek, and her voice starting to quiver. “I don’t know how I’m gonna feed my son, or buy him new clothes. He’s three and he’s growing fast, so we’re gonna need new clothes again soon….. I don’t know what to do. His bum of a dad won’t pitch in unless I get back together with him, that’s what he told me a few weeks ago, I asked him the day I found out about the big pay cut. And I can’t do that, not after he cheated on me with my so-called best friend. I don’t wanna go back to that. He’s trying to use all of this as leverage to get me back, and I can’t go back to that prick. I’m still so worried about how I’m gonna afford anything.” Sandra was now sniffling in between her sentences. “And I know I’m not the only one going through something like this. At least twice already today, I have encountered a customer having to put stuff back because they couldn’t afford everything they brought up to the counter. It’s always sad to watch, especially when it’s a parent telling their kid they can’t get something. It breaks my heart to see how upset the parent is, and now, since I am also in that spot, I am just feeling it extra bad today.” I was heartbroken while hearing Sandra’s story, which sounded so much like the other stories I had been hearing daily on the Renee Meadows show (well, seeing on my phone afterwards, since I don’t have cable TV anymore). This story hit much closer to home since I’m seeing it unfold before my very eyes, not to say that the other stories don’t hit close to home. For a split second, before remembering that I too am having my struggles, I wanted to offer my place as a home for Sandra and her son, whose name is Aiden. Sandra and I continued to talk for a little while, perhaps ten to fifteen minutes, since the manager Chris was still gone, and there weren’t very many customers this morning, a strange sight, as Sandra told me that the lines were usually pretty long at this time of day on Saturdays, to the point where another cashier was needed. Sandra told me that once her and Aiden’s father broke up, she moved in with her parents, but they too were struggling. Sandra’s mom had a job as a social worker at the San Bernardino County Social Services office, but since those social programs got axed, she lost her job. Friday, March 31st was her last day, which consisted of checking up on her cases to see if they were going to be too badly hurt by losing their benefits (of course, many of them were going to be badly hurt). “She gave out her phone number to many of them when they talked in her last few days, so she can continue to check on them.” Sandra told me that day. Her father actually was lucky that he didn’t get a pay cut at his job at a computer store. His boss was adamant about not cutting the pay of any of his workers. I wished that more bosses were like that. Since Sandra couldn’t afford any daycare for little Aiden anymore, her mom would have to step in and watch him whenever she worked. Between her and her father’s earnings, it would be a struggle to afford food and pay the mortgage on their nice three-bedroom house in the northern end of Ontario, in a much nicer neighborhood than the neighborhood I call home. Despite these struggles, Sandra actually considered herself lucky in a way. Some of her coworkers were talking about starting to skip meals in anticipation of not having enough money, and she said at least one of them was having suicidal thoughts. Adriana, one of the other cashiers, and a personal friend of Sandra’s, was preparing to sleep in her van once the month was over and she didn’t have the money for the May rent. And that was just the employees that kept their jobs. Several of the store’s workers were now laid-off, a move that was supposed to be temporary, and many of the remaining workers, on top of getting a pay cut, also are now working fewer hours, as well as losing their health insurance, which became too expensive for most of the workers. According to what Chris had told Sandra a few days earlier, those workers who were laid off were to get their jobs back once business picked back up. “I hope that it does pick up, eventually. I fear it may not, though.” I told Sandra, with a resigned tone to my voice. “It looks like so many people are going to sink under the waves because of these new changes, and I think it will be a long, LONG time before it gets better…..if it ever does get better. Things are gonna get way, WAY worse before they get better again.” Once we saw Chris’ portly figure reappear in the distance, we concluded our conversation. Sandra and I said our goodbyes and I went to push my shopping cart out to my car, a beat-up grey 2002 Toyota Corolla that I got from my father, which needed some repairs to the brake system that I couldn’t afford now. I actually wish that the brake system had started faltering a few months earlier, so I could have been able to fix it. I guess I should consider myself lucky, since my car still ran, but if it stopped working, I would be in a world of trouble, as my work is fifteen miles from home. Speaking of my car troubles, the next stop on my itinerary for the morning was the local AutoZone, located about a mile and a half down Holt Boulevard in Montclair, to get a bottle of brake fluid. Since my car started leaking brake fluid a week and a half ago, this was the second time I had to put more in, and I had already used up my previous bottle in attempting to ensure that there is enough. There would be nothing worse than losing my ability to use my brakes while on the road. With this stop, I saw yet another opportunity to see how regular working people were coping with the EFA. I walked into the AutoZone, and guess what, it was also emptier than usual. In fact, I was the only customer in the whole store, when there were usually a few people buying items or chatting up the employees about all things automotive. I grabbed my bottle of fluid and hastily proceeded to the checkout counter, where a tall, thin, bearded gentleman named Todd helped me. Todd, who looked to be around thirty, was also on the grumpy side that morning, no smile and a downbeat voice as he scanned my brake fluid. I was hesitant to ask, but I was just too curious. I looked both ways to see if there was any sign of management, and jumped right into asking him: “So, Todd, did you get a pay cut today?” “Yeah, from twelve to eight bucks an hour. I’m so pissed, I’ve been here for two years, and this is what they do to me.” He somberly replied. “ I show up every day, I’ve never even called in sick. My annual reviews are excellent, and managers give me shout outs to their bosses. But I still get this big pay cut. Like, I don’t get it. It makes no sense.” “They always say that if you work hard, you will get ahead in life. But we all know what a crock that is…..Anyways, how are you gonna manage? I mean, will you still be able to make ends meet?” I ask him, curious as to how he will cope with the loss of income. He also tells me that his wife of ten years got a pay cut as well, even steeper than his. She apparently works as a nursing assistant in a convalescent home in Glendora, and her pay dropped from twelve dollars an hour all the way to six, a fifty percent drop. So now, their pay combined will be only slightly more than what they were each making before the pay cuts. Despite his disappointment at his new pay rate, and the lack of loyalty that his employer of two years showed him, Todd seemed cautiously optimistic. “Thank God we don’t have any kids, ‘cuz I wouldn’t wanna raise them in these tough times. Anyways, I think me and the wife will manage. We live in a tiny, cheap studio in Pomona. Not a good neighborhood, but we were going over the numbers, and we can pull it off. It won’t be comfortable at all, but we will scrape by.” His voice lowered and he let out a deep sigh. “That’s all we really can do, I guess. I guess I can say that me and my wife have our health, and we do both have jobs. I have a few friends and family members who are getting laid off. Even my dad, who has been at his job for twenty-two years, got his pay cut, and his company stopped offering health insurance. He has diabetes, and that insulin is expensive! Like, I’m talking hundreds of bucks a month. Him and my mom are looking to sell their house and move into something cheaper, like a little apartment. It’s gonna be tough for everyone.” My mind now racing after my errand run, I go home to drop off my groceries at my apartment. Once that is complete, I decide to head over and give my family a visit, to kick back and perhaps have a laugh, but also to see how they are holding up. I did promise my mom that I would stop by once I finished my shopping, it had been a few weeks since I was over there. Knowing that they would miss their fast food, I swing by to grab some cheap burgers from the McDonald’s on Mission Boulevard, right down the street from their house. While waiting for my food inside the restaurant, I overhear the clerks asking each other what they were now getting paid. They knew they all had their pay slashed, but were curious nonetheless. Virtually all locations saw their most or all of their staff get paycuts. The American workers probably got cuts that were less steep than their European and Australian counterparts (some European nations and Australia and New Zealand saw fast food workers making the equivalent of 15 to 20 dollars per hour), but the cuts still hurt nonetheless. Since I was on a mission to inquire about the workers, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop in on this conversation. Normally, talking about such things at the workplace is a big no-no, but apparently even the shift manager, a thirty-ish Latino man named Jorge, was chiming in, not caring to discipline his fellow workers since he too, got his pay cut to just six dollars an hour. The workers at McDonald’s, who were already among the lowest paid around even before the EFA took effect, got the biggest cuts in their wages that I had heard up to that point. Many of these workers saw their pay fall to between a horrid three and five dollars per hour, depending on the experience level of the worker and the greediness of the franchise owner. Opponents of the minimum wage always asserted that these minimum-wage jobs were “for teenagers and people just entering the workforce to gain job experience, or to have a little spending money”. What one would actually see at these low-wage workplaces went to the contrary of that thinking. For example, the average minimum-wage worker was about thirty. Many of them had children, and many of them even had college degrees! To be sure, there were a couple workers at that McDonald’s that looked to be in their late teens, but many of them were older. Jessica, the short, blonde-haired Latina woman who took my order, looked to be in her late twenties. Her pay fell to four dollars and fifty cents per hour, and she informed us all that her struggles to feed her three small children would be even worse than before. On top of that, she lost her WIC, which was a social program that helped many women with small children to provide food, milk, and juice for those children. The man grilling the food, whose name I heard to be Dante, was a tall, balding, middle-aged African-American man. His pay fell to five dollars an hour, which was the highest figure I heard other than the manager’s wage. “Seven years I’ve been here, and this is how I get treated!” Dante hollered to anyone who would hear, echoing the frustrations of hard-working, loyal employees elsewhere. Moreover, several of the employees in the McDonald’s that day also lost the SNAP benefits they had previously received so they would have enough to eat, as well as the Medicaid insurance they used for health insurance. A large portion of low-wage workers, such as fast food workers, used SNAP benefits and Medicaid insurance since their employers paid them so little, so losing their benefits and getting their already meager pay reduced made their existence extra tough now. I was riveted by all this information, though not surprised by it, so I stayed to hear them talk for a few minutes after my food was prepared. Other customers who were eating or in line to order listened in as well, as many of them can also relate to what the employees were discussing. One woman chimed in that the pay at her job as a home care aide fell by two dollars per hour, and the man at a table on the other end of the restaurant saw his pay drop by a dollar and a half an hour. They were the only other customers in the restaurant besides myself, which was also a topic of discussion among the workers. “We are usually a lot more busy than this, especially this time of day. Usually we got the lunch rush pouring in here. We usually have a hard time keeping up with the orders, and the drive thru is normally backed up, but there’s nobody there right now.” Dante the cook announced to anyone who was listening. After the discussion died down, I grabbed my bags of McDouble cheeseburgers and fries, and left. I pulled up to my family’s new house, a mobile home that my parents got the year before, not long after I moved out of the house in Montclair. This mobile home was located in the city of Chino (which was located to the south of both Montclair and Ontario), on the corner of Ramona Avenue and Philadelphia Street. It was a nice mobile home complex, with rows and rows of similar looking mobile homes. The mobile home was smaller than their previous place, but it was nicer and cheaper, and the area seemed safer than the old neighborhood. I pulled up, with bags of McDonald’s food in tow, and went to knock on the door. My mom, who looked kind of sickly that day, opened up the door and let me in. “Will, what’s up buddy?”, my mom hollered as she let me in. I give her a big hug and give her the bag of food. “Why thank you so much, I didn’t know when I was gonna have McDonald’s again! The girls are gonna be so excited to see you and the food. They were going crazy. They’re worried sick wondering what is going to happen to us!” She told me, before letting out a big, deep cough. She had been doing that lately, which deeply worried me because she has smoked cigarettes for a long time. It seemed that nearly four decades of smoking was now finally catching up to her. “You really need to get that checked out, since you guys are paying more for the insurance, you might as well use it. I really hope it’s not cancer or emphysema or anything like that. I have heard that cough the last few times I’ve been here.” I told her. My mom was always close to me. She was now fifty-two years of age, with shoulder-length and slightly graying hair, and a face that looked like a female version of my face. In fact, we were often mistaken for twins by strangers. I always went to her when I had a dilemma, she often gave me good advice, whether it was about money, or school, or my job, or even dating. I don’t know how I would take losing her, it would just crush me. While my mom, Leann, and Briana were devouring their double cheeseburgers and their fries, my mom started to tell me some more details of their situation. See, not only did my dad see a cut in the pay he received by three cents per mile, he also found out that the route he has been driving for close to five years, a long, winding, mountainous route to and from Denver, Colorado, will become less regular, at least for now. Since the volume of goods trucking companies were transporting is decreasing sharply for the time being, drivers will be getting less regular assignments, and therefore, much smaller paychecks. Some drivers were hit more than others. For instance, many drivers got the “temporary” layoffs that workers in other industries were getting. Luckily, my dad, who had been recognized by Covenant Transport as one of the top drivers in the whole company, will keep his route, he just will run the route a bit less than before. Hopefully, if he loses the route for a couple of days, he can make a smaller run in the interim, something local that he can complete in less than a day. “Man, that’s rough!” I said, obviously concerned for my family’s situation. “I can move back in with you guys and help if that is ever needed. Everybody is getting hit hard by these new changes. Me, my neighbor, my coworkers, everyone I have been coming across today. Those poor McDonald’s workers are all getting like four or five bucks an hour now! I hope people can get through this. This is all turning out to be as brutal as I feared.” I rambled, as I am wont to do when talking about this topic. Once the meal was over, my mom turned the volume back up on the TV, where she was watching the local news. Of course, one of the first stories was about the extent of the pay cuts that were happening to large segments of the workforce, as well as those who lost their jobs to “temporary layoffs” such as what Sandra had told me about while at Stater Bros. I had reached a point where I didn’t want to hear about it, this story was just further depressing me. The reporter, named Susan Takahashi, had traveled to several businesses, talking to anyone who would talk to her, since doing this could mean the worker lost the job, and whatever income they had left. The stories we heard on the TV were much like the stories I had already heard from family, from coworkers, from neighbors, and even from other people I had heard from. It turned out that tipped workers, such as waiters and waitresses, were the hardest hit of anybody pay-wise. They already were paid far below the normal minimum wage (the tipped minimum wage was a pitiful two dollars and thirteen cents an hour), and the tips were supposed to make up the difference. Well, many restaurant owners saw an opportunity to reduce costs when the EFA took effect, and decided to not pay their tipped employees anything at all. These workers would now receive paychecks of zero dollars and zero cents. Yes, tips would now make up the entirety of the income of these employees, who worked at places that were seeing noticeable decreases in the number of customers. They now relied entirely on the generosity of the customers they served, many of which weren’t exactly generous or kind to service employees. If a customer didn’t leave a tip, then the server didn’t get paid for the work they did waiting on that customer. In a mix of sadness and full-on rage, I turned to my mom. “See, exactly what I said would happen! Exactly the way I have been describing it to everybody. Everyone will be harmed by this in the long run. If it keeps going this way, we are totally fucked! It’s over for us.” I said as I threw up my arms in exasperation, with my voice getting louder with each sentence. “You think that we are really going to collapse?” My mom said back to me, remembering that I told her that these things in the story would happen. “I know Leann has been talking about this too, she says you two talk about it a lot….. I hope it doesn’t end this way, I hope your prediction is wrong, but I also trust that you know what you’re talking about. You usually are right about this kind of stuff. People are gonna freak out and lose their minds once everyone starves and is homeless or whatever.” “Mom, for the sake of us all, I hope I’m wrong too”. I replied, with an exasperated look on my face. That was followed by an awkward silence, as I sat there, just thinking, and getting more depressed by the second. As the news continued, we learned of another story, this one coming out of New York, and was even more tragic than hearing of the workers’ pay cuts. We were told the tale of a man named Alonzo (last name withheld), a homeless African-American man of about sixty, who lived on the streets of New York City. At about 11:30 P.M., he entered NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, complaining about intense abdominal pains. Up until midnight of April 1st, hospitals were forbidden from turning away patients, no matter their insurance status or ability to pay. However, shortly after midnight, hospital staff informed him that he would have to leave, that he would not be treated that night due to inability to pay. The EFA had done away with that regulation, and hospitals were now able to refuse service to those they knew could not afford the care. As it turns out, the order had come from higher ups, as the staff did not want to comply, but did out of fear of finding themselves unemployed. Shortly after sunrise, poor Alonzo was found two blocks from the hospital, dead from a case of appendicitis. He would have most likely survived if he was treated that night. There were hundreds of reported instances of hospitals turning patients away that night, all over the country. But Alonzo’s case was the most widely reported of them, because of the tragic ending. Because of this, he would be proclaimed “the first victim of the EFA.” The spot where he was found was soon covered with flowers and a cross, with strangers mourning the man’s untimely passing. We sat and continued to watch TV for a couple of hours, watching various programs ranging from the local news to some lighter reality fare. I typically didn’t care for the reality TV shows that clogged the airwaves then, but I found it a welcome respite amidst the relentless bad news that was already pouring in from all corners. The conversation turned to lighter topics, like how Briana was doing in school. Now thirteen years old, Briana looked much like her older sister Leann, with similar interests and taste in music, but was much more personable, but also a bit more of a troublemaker at times. She was to complete middle school next month, and she was doing quite well in her studies. She had her struggles in recent years, but was now really hitting her stride, she even stopped getting into trouble at school as much. She had always had a bit of a temper, but she was now calming down somewhat. I was so proud of her when I found out she made the honor roll the previous semester, getting all A’s and B’s in her classes. We also talked about the weather, or what such and such celebrity did, you know, the typical small talk. I needed the small talk at this point, it was something to shut my brain off for a bit, to keep me from thinking about what was going on in the world. Sometime after 3 P.M., I bid my family farewell for the day. I told them I would visit more often, these visits always helped me reconnect with the family, and it was nice not sitting in my apartment all alone, as that did get annoying at times. I walked out the door and got back in my car to head home. Once I was back at my apartment, I just lounged around, playing video games or watching TV or taking a short nap on the couch, but my mind would inevitably drift back towards the major economic predicament we were all now mired in. I just couldn’t get into any activity, no matter how much I generally enjoy the activity. Once the weekend ended, it was time to get back to work. Monday, April 3rd was my first day at work since the EFA took effect, so it was my first day at my new, reduced pay rate. One could tell that morale at the office had taken a hit. Reggie wasn’t his usual talkative self, and Hannah wasn’t twirling her hair and flirting with the guys in the other departments like she usually would (I think she now had a thing going with Jim from Marketing, at least that was what the talk was on the rumor mill). The office at Milton Plastics felt like a morgue, as the employees just jumped right into their work. Hell, even Mr. Milton himself didn’t seem too happy, as he snapped at Reggie for a lack of timeliness with a report. I hope he pulled the stick out of his a*s before he snapped at me, because I was in no mood to deal with any of it. I tried to keep up with my work, just processing payments for our suppliers, like any other day. However, I couldn’t keep the thoughts of doom from consuming my mental capacity. I would just drift off into a trance-like state for a couple of minutes at a time, just thinking, even though I was in the middle of making a payment with the company credit card. I would snap out of it, and look at my half-finished email, before getting back to working on the task at hand. Despite that, I still finished my work quicker than usual, as there was less of it. I finished my work for the time being at about eleven in the morning, and took a break. Before long, everyone else joined me in the break room. Why did many of my coworkers join me? Well, I caught something on the news when perusing the Internet throughout the morning, the big news story of the day. Contrary to the claims by right-wing pundits that the markets would love the EFA, the stock market cratered throughout the morning hours, a bloodbath which continued all the way until the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, the nerve center of the world’s financial markets. See, one thing investors in stocks don’t like is uncertainty, and the Economic Freedom Act definitely produced uncertainty, as the reports of mass pay cuts and depressed sales had gotten around. This news, which was reported by every major non right-wing outlet, sparked fears of a major recession. For instance, the Huffington Post referred to the day as “Black Monday” and “the start of the Second Great Depression.” There were large selloffs throughout all industries and sectors. This selloff was a global one, starting with the Asian stock markets hours earlier, during the late night and wee morning hours in the U.S. That was followed by a mass selloff in European markets, which finally cascaded into a mass selloff here in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas. I knew this would happen, as it was part of my big prediction, and I did hear about the market crashes in Asia and Europe on the morning news as I was getting ready for work. All told, tens of trillions of wealth from all corners of the globe evaporated in just one day, the largest single-day loss of wealth in history. “It looks like the rich will be joining the rest of us in the bread lines soon enough” I told Reggie as we nervously watched everything unfold on a TV set in the office, where most of the office staff was now ensconced, riveted by the big historical event now unfolding right in front of us. By the closing bell at 4 P.M. Eastern Time (1 P.M. in the Pacific Time Zone), the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the primary barometer of the stock market, had fallen a record 2,772 points. The previous biggest point drop for one day was 777 points, so this was certainly a historic development. The Dow, as many liked to call it, fell by an astonishing thirteen percent, similar to the percentage drop of October 24th, 1929, the first day of the stock market crash that signified the start of the Great Depression, and the second largest percentage drop in history. The other stock indexes, including the NASDAQ and the S&P 500, reported similar percentage drops. Indeed, even the mostly wealthy investor class was now feeling the pain along with the rest of us, the policies that they had pushed relentlessly for were set to hurt them too. Me and my coworkers remained glued to the break room TV, hanging on every development as they came in. We could do this, since there wasn’t a whole lot of work to be done that day. Milton didn’t even come in to give us any crap for taking such a long break. We watched the numbers sink lower and lower and lower as the day went on, and the markets were not improving, as they often do after a big selloff. Due to the events of Monday, April 3rd, now known as “Black Monday”, the world economy was shaken to its core. The stock losses did not stop that day, as the markets continued lower as uncertainty reigned, and the job losses started to pile up in record numbers. The Dow fell another 12 percent the following day. Then, after moving down and up and down the rest of the week, it cratered another 11 percent on Monday, April 10th. After a slight recovery, stocks would fall more whenever there was bad news, which became distressingly common as the month progressed. All told, the markets finished the month of April more than thirty-five percent lower than at the beginning of the month. This was the largest single-month drop in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Occasionally, the markets would tick up a bit, but then the slide downward began once again. Wealthy investors, as well as regular workers who had their retirement funds in 401(k) funds (a fund where employees put a portion of their paychecks, with some money matched by their employers, into securities such as stocks), were hard-hit by the stock losses. In a feeble attempt to calm everyone’s nerves, President Harris made a press conference in front of the White House on the afternoon of April 3rd. This was actually his first speech since he unveiled the EFA, and it was about the events that were caused by the fateful act. In his speech, President Harris, in his usual calm, understated style, admitted that his policy was going to cause some economic pain, the first such admission from him, or anyone else in his administration, all of whom had done nothing but tout the supposed benefits of the EFA in all of their appearances on Fox News and other assorted news sources. There was to be a mild-to-moderate recession, lasting for no longer than six months, he said. He also downplayed the mounting concerns of his ever-growing cadre of critics about the negative effects of the Economic Freedom Act, calling the reports of massive wage cuts overblown. Relatively few workers saw pay cuts, his advisors had told him, completely ignorant of what was actually happening. Despite the developments since the EFA was implemented, Harris continued to insist that this was the right course of action, and that “the economy would emerge from the recession, stronger than ever as a result of this policy. What we’re doing is resetting our economic system, to a more natural state. The proper way for an economy to work.” After Harris’ six-minute speech was over, he retreated back into the White House with the aides who had stood by his side as he gave his remarks on that chilly, wind-swept afternoon in Washington D.C., and the markets continued to plunge, falling even faster than they were before the press conference. In fact, CNN and MSNBC had put up the real-time Dow Jones Industrial Index on the bottom of the screen during and after he spoke, and the numbers were just going down, and down, and down. Another little quip that the President made during the speech that was telling came when he mentioned the pay cuts. He had said that “people just aren’t telling me that these supposed massive cuts in people’s wages are happening. I think the opponents of the Economic Freedom Act are desperate, and want to use these nasty scare tactics to make things sound much worse than the reality, which is the simple fact that people aren’t getting their pay cut on a large scale.” People didn’t take too kindly to his assertion, as social media blew up immediately upon the ending of the speech. In a genius move, the Democratic National Committee made a new topic on Twitter (a social media site where people can express their thoughts in small, bite-size pieces) called #TellPresidentHarris. Within minutes, responses were flooding in from all over the country, making the topic the number one Twitter topic in the world within just a few hours. The responses came quickly and fiercely, as folks from all walks of life aired their grievances with President Harris and the EFA. Comments ranged from “I got my pay cut in half. Tell Harris that!”, to “I lost my job and health benefits, and so did most of my friends and coworkers. Now we’re being gaslit into believing that what we are seeing isn’t happening.”, to “I got my pay cut and I don’t get food stamps no more, does Harris expect us to starve? Now I have to pay either rent or buy food. Can’t do both anymore.”, to “I work for a food bank, and lines are stretching as far as the eye can see!”, to “Harris ended financial aid for college students, so I have to quit school once this semester ends. I can’t afford $16,000 a year, I don’t even make that much a year!” The people were telling President Harris, all right. The number of comments reached into the millions, and people from other countries were chiming in with their struggles caused by the sweeping economic changes. The topic became a true global phenomenon, with people not only calling out David Harris, but also chiming in about their respective leaders. Unfortunately, the pain and misery caused by the EFA and similar policies was also a global phenomenon. Like I mentioned before, stock markets worldwide crashed along with the U.S. stock market. Many countries, such as France and Germany fell even harder than the U.S., France’s main stock index fell a whopping 29 percent in just one day, while Germany’s fell 24.5 percent, with most other European markets falling between 15 and 25 percent. When President Harris proposed the EFA, and his counterparts in other nations followed suit, either willingly or otherwise, they timed their changes to all take effect on April 1st. The whole world jumped into the abyss at the same time, marching right off the cliff together. Despite the mass global protests all throughout the months of February and March, and continuing into April, the new policies went into effect as planned. All the economies of the wealthier nations (the developed world, as they were called) fell victim to similar forces as what was transpiring in the U.S., with millions losing their jobs, and many of those who remained getting their incomes slashed. Seniors in those countries also lost their government retirement pensions, and had to enter the job markets once again in their old age. Furthermore, every other developed nation other than the United States had universal health coverage, with everyone covered using tax dollars. Every nation made wholesale changes to their healthcare systems, as they dismantled their universal healthcare systems. This caused the protests across those nations to intensify, as this was, quite literally, a life-or-death situation for many, many people. Indeed, this new reality was an even bigger adjustment for the other nations of the developed world. While those who could afford it did sign up for the private health plans that existed in their countries (most nations did have some existing healthcare insurers, and they saw growth in the number of people they cover), and a good number of firms extended health insurance plans to their staff for the first time, many in these nations now had to do without. Medication regimens were disrupted or even stopped, many disease treatment plans were done away with, and much care was denied when it would never have previously. Furthermore, the care that was being given out had sharply jumped in price. Not only did the rest of the developed world have some type of universal healthcare system, they also had strict price controls to keep costs down. These safeguards were also done away with, at the demand of the United States and health providers, so prices instantly jumped. Not to the level that was seen in the United States, but it was a far cry from what it cost in the pre-EFA world. Treatments that had cost perhaps 50 to 100 dollars now cost closer to a thousand. Many medicines also jumped to prices ten times or even more than what they had before. The biggest shock in healthcare costs occurred in the United Kingdom, which was one of only two nations (Cuba was the other) who had zero out-of-pocket costs to patients for accessing healthcare. Some of the increases in out-of-pocket costs were blunted by the reductions in taxes that accompanied the new economic system, but many who once had access to healthcare were now going without, with dire consequences. Countless people who knew they had stable coverage before were now trying to navigate the new health insurance firms to find the coverage they wanted. And many seniors and people with chronic health conditions and diseases found themselves out in the cold, left to suffer as no plan would take them on due to their “preexisting conditions.” This left most retirees and disabled individuals having to cover costs of medicines and doctor visits out of pocket, right as their main sources of income disappeared. “I don’t know how my husband and I will get our medicines or go to hospital. Our children can only help us so much, and neither of us want to be a burden on them for the rest of our lives. This new system is a disaster, and will lead to much death and misery.” Remarked a British retiree about losing her NHS coverage. Furthermore, the change from universal healthcare to a free market healthcare system led to a logistical nightmare in country after country. Doctors and hospitals were unaccustomed to navigating the web of who had what insurance, and what each insurance would cover for each patient, and the wait for an insurance company to authorize payment for a procedure or medication. Healthcare systems everywhere were snarled to the point of paralysis. “This is a bloody nightmare.” Remarked one English doctor. “With the NHS, the patient just came in, and we only worried about getting them taken care of. Now we have to wait on an authorization, and if they say they won’t cover it, we have to turn to an ailing patient, who has bigger worries on their mind at that moment, and tell them that they would have to pay out of pocket, or we cannot help them. This is not how practising medicine should work at all. We shouldn’t have to worry about collecting payment or being able to pay, the focus should be on healing the patient. People are going to die because of these changes. People are already dying because of these changes.” Rich and poor countries alike were hit hard by the sharp economic downturn starting in April 2017. In fact, poorer countries (also called the developing world), whose economies were often based on manufacturing or the procurement of raw materials for goods, were hit the hardest of all. Since demand in rich countries fell hard, the need for workers in poor countries’ main industries also went down, with international firms instituting mass layoffs and leaving families entirely without income. There was far less demand for the exports of these nations, and firms had far less access to credit, far less foreign investment as firms everywhere mostly stopped investing, and even far less money sent back from people who emigrated to wealthier countries, who could not afford to send as much of the money they made back to their home countries. All of these factors had a devastating impact on the economies of developing countries. Countless factories and mines throughout the world were shuttered, throwing untold millions out of work. Economic ministers of countries all over the world spoke of dire consequences in their home countries. On top of all that, the poorest individuals all over the world often relied on food aid from foreign governments to eat, and that aid was ended, causing mass food shortages, especially once small farms all over the world started failing in large numbers. News stories from international news sources showed the mass starvation being experienced in the poorest parts of the world. The Middle East-based network Al-Jazeera referred to it as “The Great Destruction.” Their reporting condemned the role the U.S. played in shaping this new economic reality. “America accused this part of the world of harboring weapons of mass destruction, when it was them who has now unleashed the biggest weapon of mass destruction of all. David Harris is the one most responsible for the devastation that is occurring. And of course, it is the poorest in the world who are paying the price for their greed.” Food riots broke out in several countries throughout the month of April, with more to follow. Experts with the World Bank estimated that the number of people who fell into poverty worldwide on April 1st, 2017 may exceed two, or even three billion. Those who were already in poverty fell into even worse poverty, and the amount of people facing starvation rose sharply. Several nations were already in famine-like conditions before April 2017, and their suffering was exacerbated by economic events. Furthermore, they were surely joined by millions of others in their horrific suffering. There was no way to accurately measure that quickly. Needless to say, misery abounded everywhere. There wasn’t as much attention or news airtime given to the struggles of the developing world, but they were feeling the pain much the same as their wealthier counterparts, and in many cases, much worse. In fact, a UNICEF report in late April stated that the sharpest drops in income, and the sharpest increases in unemployment, were occurring in the nations of Latin America, Africa, and central and southern Asia, the poorest nations in the world. The economic downturn spread like a virus quickly to all corners of the globe. That’s not to say that people took this new reality sitting down. As I mentioned before, there were mass protests against these austerity measures in cities all over the world. The largest took place in large cities and national capitals, the protest in London alone involved over three million people. Protests in Vancouver, London, Berlin, and Beijing, among others topped one million each. These were mostly seniors, college students who would now have to pay more in tuition (or pay for tuition for the first time, in some nations) to continue their studies, and people who were thrown out of work, but many people who remained employed risked getting fired to join in as well. These protests weren’t suppressed in all cases either, as police officers would join in at times. After all, many of them saw cuts in their pay and benefits as well. The protests did die down somewhat as the weeks passed, as many workers were told by their employers they would lose their jobs if they were seen to be among the protestors, and what little income they had, if they protested in any way. Furthermore, many of these protests were cracked down on by the authorities. Several nations, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Poland sent their military into major cities to institute curfews and round up any protestors who wouldn’t disperse, effectively putting martial law into place. Night after night, cops and/or troops had to put down protests in hundreds of cities all over the world. On April 5th, a crackdown in Toronto, Canada resulted in 38 deaths and over a thousand arrested. Two days later, Ottawa, the capital of Canada, saw 17 killed by the authorities, plus another thousand or so arrested. Throughout April and into early May, before the demonstrations began to die down, city after city saw enormous damage, sometimes accompanied by more loss of life. In all, Canada alone saw over two-hundred dead, and over one billion dollars of damage done. Britain saw over one-hundred deaths throughout the country, as well as Germany, Italy, Greece, and Spain. Every nation in Europe witnessed some level of unrest. The largest toll, however, occurred in France. French authorities followed suit in establishing curfews and dispatching troops in most of their bigger cities. French workers turned to a familiar tactic that had previously worked when the workers felt the pinch: A general strike. French workers called the general strike, where workers from a wide variety of industries walk off their jobs en masse, in hopes of preventing anti-worker measures. Unfortunately for the workers who participated in the strike, a key provision in each nation’s EFA allowed employers to retaliate against labor activity (such as strikes, or even union organizing) and fire any worker they wished. The general strike, which had been a key tool of French laborers in the past, fizzled out within days, when tens of thousands of workers had been fired from their respective jobs. The rest of the workers quickly called off the strike and returned to work. However, the protests and marches didn’t fizzle out, despite the crackdowns. Many French cities and towns saw significant destruction by the protests. Large groups of people, many of them wearing yellow vests, burned down businesses and torched cop cars. They targeted businesses who fired workers during the general strike, as well as those who participated in cutting the pay of their employees. A key chant in many European protests went something along the lines of “You bring down pay, we bring down your business!”. When one city was cleared by the military, another demonstration would pop up in another city, all across the nation. Most mornings, people would walk about town, cleaning up glass and surveying the damage. Despite the destruction going on all around them, most French citizens supported the protests. One elderly Parisian woman, who spoke to the newspaper Le Parisien on the condition of maintaining her anonymity, remarked of the protests in mid-April:
“I know they are fighting for the workers, and the students, and the children, and the elders who lost their pensions. So I support what they are doing, even though they are breaking a lot of things. Many of those who are not rioting are giving food and water to those who are, because they are working to reverse the nasty new laws that are now in effect. These laws are wrong, and they always will be wrong. When unjust laws are passed, it is the duty of the people to resist, to make our voices heard. And that is what we are doing. All of my family and my friends feel the same way, because we know how good we had it before this horrible new law existed. I had my old age pension taken away, and now I can no longer live on my own. I now have to live with my eldest son, and his expenses now go up in order to take care of me. And his salary at his job was cut, so now we are having trouble with finances when we didn’t before. Many of my friends are dealing with similar issues, and it is heartbreaking. We knew that, with the system we had before, we would be taken care of, and that our leadership represented us. We saw what the United States was like, and most French do not want a system like that.” There were protests in the United States too, to be sure, but they weren’t nearly on the scope of what was occurring elsewhere. There were fairly large protests in places such as Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, among others, these protests were more muted, and were much more short-lived than their international counterparts. The usual suspects were present, but they were now joined by the swelling ranks of the unemployed. Most large cities saw at least one anti-EFA demonstration in the month of April. Despite the concerns of the people, and the fact that the protests were heavily promoted, and organized in some cases by the Democratic Party, there were still many others that were apathetic, to the point that some didn’t seem to know what was going on, and how much they were being harmed. Another factor that contributed to the seeming lack of fervor on the part of Americans was the continued insistence from many employers that any participation in protests would not be tolerated, and would result in immediate termination. Many employed individuals wouldn’t risk losing what little they had left to demonstrate, even if they were fired up by images of protests flaring up everywhere that were showing up on the news everyday. Furthermore, many states and localities, especially areas dominated by Republicans, were making it illegal to protest, implementing heavy fines and even jail time for protesters. More than twenty U.S. states passed laws meant to stifle the protests. A number of these states, most notably North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Louisiana, instituted lengthy minimum prison sentences for those who “cause disorder or damage” at a demonstration, a subjective term that was put up to police to determine. Most of the Republican-led states instituted a plan to strip voting rights from those who protested. A couple of states, Florida and Texas, even made it legal to run over protesters if they were blocking a roadway, which was a common method of protest. Between the threats from their bosses and the possible legal troubles, there was plenty to deter people from standing up for what they believed in. Indeed, as I predicted and told people repeatedly over the last several months, the EFA wreaked absolute havoc on the economy. Starting on April 1st, over two and a half million federal employees lost their jobs, due to the closure of dozens of federal departments and the ending of social programs. Furthermore, millions of employees working for state and local governments also got their jobs axed. Most of the social programs were administered by the states, so state and local governments saw declines of their workforces as well. Many of these government jobs were propped up with federal spending, such as grants. Once the spending dried up, those jobs did so as well. The holes that were blown in budgets all over the nation led to the reduction of government workforces everywhere, affecting a wide variety of professions. Indeed, everything from teachers to firefighters to police to housing and community development to librarians to transportation workers to general administrators found themselves unemployed as well. This pace of reductions was even more pronounced in the red states. Republicans, who had long wanted to drastically slash government payrolls, followed the lead of the federal government and shrunk their governments as well. These states shuttered most of their departments wholesale. Everything from health to hospitals to parks and natural resources to transportation to education were slashed to the bone. Some more extreme examples included Kansas letting go of nearly half of their teachers. Idaho shut down all of its government-run hospitals, while every state got rid of at least some of their hospitals. Numerous cities and counties closed down their libraries or public health departments or their parks and recreation departments or anything else they could trim. To be sure, all states had to cut back dramatically, due to a combination of the aforementioned federal dollars evaporating and analysis showing state and local tax revenues would crater due to the new law. But the rate of government job trimming was far higher in the red states than in the blue ones. The reductions of consumer spending brought about by the job losses, as well as the mass pay cuts received by tens of millions of workers, decimated the retail sector of the economy. Before the collapse, consumer spending made up a whole seventy percent of the U.S. economy. Once the EFA knocked the legs out from under consumers, the retail sector was bound to topple right over. And the pinch was immediate, with enormous losses across all kinds of stores. Retail businesses tried anything to get customers in the door. Many places offered deep discounts on many of their items to spur sales. They cut out as many of their poor-selling items and brands as they could, as well as brands from companies who were themselves shutting down. Grocery stores suffered due to not only the lower buying power of their customer base, but also the loss of government spending on their products, as a full 10 percent of grocery sales were purchased using SNAP benefits before the EFA scrapped the program. Different stores saw differing declines in business. Discount stores such as dollar stores saw the smallest declines, followed by grocery stores. Places that sold necessities fared somewhat better than places that sold luxuries and other non-necessities. For instance, department stores saw a drop off in sales of nearing 50 percent in April alone. Clothing and accessory stores saw a drop of 90 percent by the end of May, as households scaled back their non-necessity spending to close to nothing, in order to better afford basics such as food and shelter. If one needed new clothes, they were more likely to go to a discount store, or perhaps even a thrift store, instead of a more traditional clothing store. As the month wore on, business conditions deteriorated further, and businesses started to really feel the pinch caused by the appalling lack of buying power that many consumers now had. Businesses big and small, many of which were profitable before April, or at least breaking even, were now headed towards massive losses. Business owners, who were initially ecstatic with the changes brought about by the EFA, were now cursing its existence now that their businesses were hemorrhaging money. To counter the loss of revenues, companies everywhere had to cut their expenses somehow. They closed down operations that weren’t performing to expectations, and cut back on capital purchases. Advertising was slashed by over half on average, with many firms cutting out marketing and advertising for the time. Of course, they cut back in other ways as well, whether by another round of wage cuts on top of the ones they may have already given out (retail saw some of the largest pay cuts of any economic sector), or letting go of workers whose services were no longer needed due to the lack of customers. Businesses everywhere were cutting back on their number of employees, leaving most of them understaffed, with no reinforcements on the way. Watching the news everyday, it seems like the top story most days starting in mid-to-late April was that this company or that company was conducting mass layoffs. Twenty thousand here, fifty thousand there, or such and such number of store locations were closing, the onslaught was relentless. The business reports on local news broadcasts kept me informed on that front, in which the news was always ugly. Walmart dropped the biggest bomb of them all that month, announcing that over one hundred and fifty thousand of their associates, one-tenth of their workforce, were to receive “temporary layoffs”. Each mass layoff shook the business world to its core, as talk turned to exactly which company would make a layoff announcement next. On top of the mass job losses, talk of further pay reductions abounded, and now some workers who were unscathed at the beginning of the month felt the pain of the pay cuts. “This is what a retail Armageddon looks like, folks.” Remarked CNBC host Holly Golden. “Every day, we’re hearing of a new retailer retrenching. The sheer amount of jobs being shed is beginning to raise concern for the financial markets, and more and more investors are talking about moving to the sidelines. These initial weeks with the EFA are turning out far worse than the rosy expectations of the Harris administration, and I would imagine that they must be growing very concerned. Every large retailer is now operating locations with skeleton crews, as few people as they can get away with to operate their locations and still be able to reasonably serve customers. The reduction in customers and foot traffic being reported by retailers is proving to be far worse than originally forecast. I’m being told by industry insiders that things will get a lot worse before they get better again. Credit is freezing up again, like it does during any downturn, and business is the opposite of booming. We’re only going to see further retrenchment in the coming months, but insiders remain hopeful that better days will return.” By the end of April, businesses, especially small businesses, were beginning to close. Despite most of the chatter being about the corporate behemoths who were all struggling, smaller businesses fared the worst of all. Smaller firms were more prone to cash flow issues, meaning that a sharp drop in customers would lead to an ability to pay bills, such as rent and payroll and the purchase of inventory. Small, local businesses cut back on employees even faster than larger firms. For instance, a shop that may have had five employees may now only have two or three. Their goal had gone from thriving and expansion to merely weathering the storm and surviving. Furthermore, the number of new business startups cratered, falling to almost nothing, as nobody was insane enough to try to start up a business in this climate. A late-April edition of Newsweek magazine had a headline called “What Happened to the Entrepreneur?”, with a lengthy article dedicated to the new obstacles facing would-be entrepreneurs, ranging from the incredible uncertainty of the business climate, to the lack of customers caused by the downturn, to the lack of capital available to startup companies, caused by a severe tightening of credit, which banks said would last until there were signs of recovery. Indeed, experts believed that now was definitely not the time for new firms to enter the market, and there was little optimism in the short and medium-term for the business environment to improve once again. For job seekers, many of whom had just lost their jobs, the job market was, by far, the worst that anyone had ever seen. The want ads of the newspapers were largely empty of job openings, as were job-hunting websites like Indeed and Monster and CareerBuilder. The unemployed were not only competing with each other, they were competing with millions of seniors who lost their Social Security benefits and needed to reenter the workforce. To worsen matters, many of those who remained employed quickly realized that, after their pay and/or hour reductions, they were not making enough to make ends meet, meaning that they would need another job to go with the job, or jobs in some cases, that they already had. Due to the convergence of these factors, the ratio of job seekers to open jobs shot up to over fifty to one, and even over one hundred to one in some locales. In comparison, the ratio during the depths of the Great Recession of the previous decade was five to one. The unprecedented glut of job seekers only served to create further downward pressure on wages, wages that were already in freefall. Employers were eager to hold that fact over the heads over their workers, as it allowed them to cut pay and benefits further. If the employee balked at the crummier pay, then there were plenty of people who could replace them who were more willing to take the lower wage. Even more depressing than seeing retirees trying to reenter the workforce was the fact that disabled individuals also lost their benefits, and were trying to find work in a world that largely did not help the disabled. Those who suffered from devastating injuries or from debilitating ailments were now expected to find work, with all of their income gone. Furthermore, the disabled had to compete with the newly unemployed for the same jobs, if they can even find openings in that market. “I am trying to find anything at all in order to keep a roof over my head.” Remarked James Norris to the Los Angeles Times. Norris, who became confined to a wheelchair due to a car accident, continued: “All these conservatives keep saying ‘well, the disabled can get office jobs, they don’t need the disability checks’, but when I apply to different desk jobs, I’m competing with all these able-bodied people, and of course the bosses will pick those people over a guy in a wheelchair. I couldn’t even get to one of the interviews, because the building’s elevator was broken. Between the lack of accessibility and the discrimination, people like me have no chance.” Those who were unemployed became increasingly desperate, and depression (and sometimes suicidal thoughts) set in among many individuals once they realized the seriousness of their situations. Those who had income still were increasingly frugal with their money. They cut back on their food purchases, buying cheaper foods, not eating out nearly as much, and they held off on any spending that wasn’t completely necessary. They weren’t about to buy a new appliance or a new automobile, and they were also reducing their household expenses, so no new shoes or books or toys for the kids, or really anything else for that matter. Even household essentials saw a big hit in their sales. Relative luxuries like cable TV and cell phones were cut by millions of people, and people were buying far fewer articles of clothing. The cable companies lost over half of their customers in just one month. Most households also cut out trips to sporting events, movies, and any sort of travel, such as vacations or trips to see friends or family. Despite all this cutting back, the drastic drop of discretionary incomes (the amount households have leftover after necessities such as food and shelter) led many households to take on ever more debt, running up large credit card bills and resorting to predatory payday lenders, who were little more than legal loan sharks, with their sky-high interest rates (often in excess of several hundred percent). The level of indebtedness was sure to rise even further, and many households wouldn’t have the money to pay it back. As a result, we were seeing a new bubble that was sure to burst soon, and once it did, it would not be pretty. And if none of this was palatable to you, you could turn to theft. Theft, along with many other crimes, began to spike in the month of April. Much of this manifested in people shoplifting food from their local store, in order to feed themselves or their families. Home robberies and muggings and carjackings also soared. The news pounced on these stories, especially Fox News, who was always eager to instill fear in their largely white, conservative viewer base. Police departments all over the country worked with business owners to try to stem the tide of shoplifting. “If you see any theft while at a store, please report it to either the police department or the store management or clerk. We need to work together to stop the wave of thefts.” Said Ben Grant, the Chief of the Ontario Police Department. The wave of shoplifting produced very bitter, divisive debate among the citizenry. Some said that all theft is wrong, no matter the purpose of it, while others were of the belief that stealing food to feed oneself or one’s family was permissible. I, as well as most of the people I knew, were firmly in the latter camp. My philosophy was, if I saw someone stealing food, I didn’t see nothin’! My buddy Franklin, as a grocery store manager, was forced to be on the forefront of the war on shoplifters. I remember him telling me all about the new policy he was to enforce: “Corporate gave us all a new directive, told all the managers that we have to be extra watchful for theft. We have to get on the clerks and stockers to make sure no theft happens. If any employee sees anyone trying to steal anything, we have to make an effort to keep them from getting away. And if we don’t make a sufficient effort, then we are fired on the spot, no matter who you are, even if you’re a general manager…..I’m conflicted about the whole thing, man. I don’t want the store to lose money, because we would have to let more people go, or even close down, since Corporate is talking about closing locations now. But people need to eat, and I can respect people taking risks to make sure their family eats. I’ve seen a couple of people take stuff, and I haven’t said nothing. I know I risk my job whenever that happens, but I can’t stand to see people suffer like that, and to have them locked up, that just makes their situation worse. But Chris, he’s always on the prowl to snuff out that stuff. I watched him catch a stocker sneaking some food, he fired her on the spot! I’ve seen him follow people out the store and accost them, asking to see their receipt. And most of the time, they’re paying customers! I saw him yell at this Latino couple, accusing them of shoplifting. Then they showed him the receipt, and he was so embarrassed. The customers yelled at him, called him a racist, which he denies of course. But now that I think of it, I really only see him go after people of color.” If you opened up a newspaper or turned on the television, you were bombarded by stories of those who were sinking beneath the waves in the new economy. Every day, it was something different. Even when I went on social media, I read posts by my friends, documenting their struggles. Which ones saw their paychecks shrink? Which ones found themselves out of work? Which ones would struggle to make rent next month, or not make it at all? It was alarming to read and hear so many stories like this simultaneously, it hurt to know that so many people I cared about were hurting so much. Indeed, this was the first indicator to many that something was amiss. Those who were not previously paying attention to current events sure were now. Even my mother would fill me in on various family members who were having a hard time. Part of me felt for them and their pain, but part of me thought they maybe deserved it, they were mostly staunch Republicans. I unfriended a number of them for posting too much pro-Harris stuff. I would point that out to my mom too, but she told me I shouldn’t relish in their suffering. Maybe she was right. As I said, everyone was now struggling, or had read or heard of a friends, family members, coworkers, or classmates who were. The most famous of these social media posts, which numbered in the millions, belonged to a waitress from Phoenix, Arizona. Lillian Erickson eloquently detailed her new reality in a Facebook post in late April, a post that quickly went viral (spread rapidly to the point where most people were at least familiar with it). Within several days, her post had tens of thousands of comments and was shared over one hundred thousand times. One of those shares came from your truly, as I usually would like to highlight stuff like this on my page, probably much to the chagrin of my non-political friends. While there were some jackasses (for lack of a better term) who blamed her for her predicament, the vast majority of the comments were quite sympathetic to her plight. After all, we all knew a Lillian Erickson in our lives, or perhaps we were in the same pickle as Lillian. Ms. Erickson, a waitress at Outback Steakhouse in a well-off neighborhood in Phoenix, outlined her situation: “As my friends and family know, I have fallen into quite the struggle. What people don’t fully know is the depths of that struggle. At my job at Outback Steakhouse, I do not earn any actual wage. Yes, at the start of April, I was informed by management that my pay would come solely from the tips I earn while working. My livelihood would be reliant solely upon the generosity of the customers I served. All the servers would get no actual wage from the company, neither would the hosts or the bus people. After asking around various restaurant employee groups I belong to online, it is apparently this way at all the other restaurants owned by Bloomin’ Brands. Other large restaurant corporations such as Darden Restaurants are doing the same thing to all their workers. No wonder these corporations lobbied so hard for the EFA to pass. At first I thought that I would be fine living solely off of tips, seeing that I work at a restaurant in a relatively well-off part of the city. However, business has gone way down, even here. Some nights, the restaurant is very close to empty, or even completely empty, to the point where management sends people home early and changes scheduling to reduce how many people are on a shift. Furthermore, a larger portion of my customers are not leaving tips at all. Before it was no more than 10 percent who wouldn’t tip, but now that has risen to 25 to 30 percent, at least. You know what that means? It means I do not get paid at all for my service, for that hour that the customer was there. I have literally worked for free. Do you know how cruel and demeaning that is, to have to work hard, and end up getting nothing for it? Overall, my pay is now less than half than I was making before, and to make things worse, the restaurant is cutting hours because it is so slow! Between me and my boyfriend Mark, we were living fairly decently before the EFA, we made okay money between my job and his job at the Amazon warehouse. But both of us have taken huge paycuts, as Amazon cut pay to the bone too. I don’t know if we will make May rent or not, and I hear of so many around me who face the same issue, they find themselves choosing between paying rent or eating food, or buying diapers and formula, or whatever they need. Me and Mark have taken pay cuts, so have two of my best friends, several of my cousins, my older brother, and two of my aunts. Mark’s best friend and his dad had even worse luck, as they both got laid off. I have noticed, and I am sure that many of you have as well, that something is clearly not right. So many jobs, from servers to warehouse workers to truck drivers to home health aides to janitors to medical assistants to clerks to teachers to fast food workers to electricians, have seen their pay fall swiftly and suddenly, to where they can no longer afford the expenses needed to just stay alive. Even higher-paying jobs like accountants and office workers and dentists are seeing drops in pay. So many have been thrown out of work. And all I ask is why? How can this be the best way forward? I know many Americans struggled before this, but this is ridiculous, and it is getting out of hand quickly. As soon as these greedy corporations got a chance to drop their workers’ pay, they did, and we are all paying the price for it. Me and Mark are skipping meals, and we may be homeless in a matter of weeks. I am having a hard time sleeping, as these thoughts weigh on me so much, and last night, when I was showering, a big clump of my hair fell out. My manager noticed right away when I came in for today’s shift. I am trying to get a second job to bring in more money, but nobody is hiring at all. I tried to apply at Amazon, to work in the same warehouse Mark works in, but they are cutting positions. Once I heard that, I fear that Mark will be in the next batch of job cuts. All of this keeps me awake at night, and I have nightmares when I do manage to fall asleep. I tried to drive for Uber or Lyft, but they aren’t adding any new drivers right now, they got so many applicants after the job and wage cuts. People are hurting all over, and it looks like it will get worse before it gets better. Every job, no matter what it is, should pay enough for the worker to have a decent living if they work hard. I know that that is a controversial thing to say, but basic compassion really shouldn’t be controversial. With this new system, that is not the case, at all. This law has really brought out the ugliness of our society. I guess I’ll finish my rant with this….I implore our President to change things back the way they were, before there is too much damage. We need to repair what has been done to so many good, hardworking people. His one little law has caused so much damage already, and it will only cause more damage unless it is reversed. I hope it is not too late to fix things. Unfortunately, I fear that may already be the case for me.” That post caught fire all over social media, obtaining over three million “reacts” on Facebook, and hundreds of thousands of comments, many of which were people giving their respective predicaments. It was also “shared” by over a million people, which spurred further engagement on the subject. Furthermore, it spawned many copycat posts, from people of all walks of life. People who felt their livelihoods slipping away, who wanted to get their voices heard. I wanted to make a post, but I was not sure I could put things as eloquently as Lillian Erickson did. Each one of these stories just put me in more of a depressive stupor, it just confirmed what I had been fearing for the last several months. With each passing day, the mountain of evidence pointing to economic collapse grew bigger and bigger, to the point where it was now overshadowing everything else. Like I said before, the retail sector was hardest hit immediately, well other than perhaps the government employees. Stores from supermarkets to small boutique shops to specialty stores to big box stores like Walmart and Target which sell a huge variety of items, serving customers from all socioeconomic classes, began to dramatically reduce employment, since there weren’t enough customers to justify keeping the employees around at that time. Not only were there far fewer customers, the customers that did come in spent less, as they tried to scrimp and save wherever they could, to stretch fewer dollars. Restaurants started letting workers go as well, as restaurants became increasingly empty. Most families responded to the loss of income by eating at home more in order to save money, which immediately proved to be catastrophic to most restaurants, big and small. Retail stores coped in various ways to the reduction of customers. As I said before, many started to lay off workers, such as cashiers and stockers, once it became apparent that business was going to drop drastically. A late April survey of retail managers from across the U.S. showed that 98 percent of the managers felt that business was slower at the end of the month than it was at the beginning (the other 2 percent were probably lying), and that 75 percent felt compelled to lay off staff (or more staff) within a month if there was no improvement. Worst of all, 82 percent felt that their stores would not last a year in these conditions. This survey made national headlines, right as more folks were waking up to the catastrophic effects of the EFA. See, not even the most negative forecasts of the effect of the Economic Freedom Act expected the retail sector to fall this hard, this fast. The prominent economist Saul Kreuger expressed his astonishment at how quickly things were falling apart: “As you may have read, my forecasts for the first months of the Economic Freedom Act were among the most pessimistic of anyone. The Republicans had long pushed for the changes made with the EFA, and now we will all pay the consequences. It was painfully clear from the outset that conditions in the various sectors would deteriorate before too long. What I didn’t foresee, however, was just how fast this would happen, and how much it would disintegrate in such a short period of time. If you asked me back in February, I would have guessed that the retail sector would take about six months or more to crater 20 or so percent, but it has happened in just a few weeks! The Republicans who rammed this bill through have to be realizing by now, just how badly they messed up with the EFA. If they don’t, they are even more out of touch that I thought. If they do, I don’t know how they can possibly sleep at night, knowing the devastation they caused so they can placate the Reed brothers and their ilk.”
Another common measure retailers took was to put in place more aggressive discounts for their items. Stores routinely had specials where they marked down items in order to turn over the inventory faster, especially for the items that were not moving at all. Most retailers also began reducing the amount of inventory that they purchased from suppliers at the beginning of the month in response to the uncertainty gripping the economy. Of course, this had a cascading effect on all of the suppliers and manufacturers, who now were losing business, and had to enact their own mass layoffs, throwing even more out of work and shrinking the customer base even further. Furthermore, some larger and mid-size retail chains decided to hold off on plans to add or renovate stores, which had yet another effect on the construction firms that would have done the building on new locations. And many chains had put in place by the end of the month plans to close some of their more underperforming locations, another move that contributed to the mass job losses in the month of April. The troubles in the retail sector set off a domino effect that threatened to take other sectors of the economy down as well. Before long, wholesalers, those firms who buy merchandise from manufacturers and are the primary suppliers of goods bought by retailers, felt the pinch of the decrease in consumer spending. Within weeks, these wholesalers noticed that economic conditions were hitting retailers much harder than expected, and that the orders were coming in much slower than before. On top of that, they also noticed that some of their retail customers were paying later and later, which led to fears that a number of retailers wouldn’t pay at all. This led to cash flow problems for suppliers, and led them to cut back on their expenses. Of course, this meant laying off some of their employees, continuing the vicious cycle in employment that the EFA set in motion, as every sector of the economy shed a huge number of jobs in April. Many wholesalers also decided to tighten up their credit terms for their customers, with some even cutting back the amount of business they conducted with customers who paid late. Customers who they would have been lenient with in better times would get no such slack now. Some suppliers responded by not allowing any time to pay, stores would now need to pay for merchandise up front, which would have a devastating effect on smaller stores, many of which had to shut down. Conversely, they also added discounts and incentives to their customers who paid early. Some wholesaler companies made the decision to stretch out the payment schedules, or attempted to negotiate new payment terms, for payments they made to their own suppliers, the manufacturers who actually produced the goods. As you can see, the effects of the downturn quickly spread all the way up and down the supply chain, negatively affecting every single link on the chain, from the production of each product, all the way to the end sale to the customer. Before long, the shock suffered by the retail and wholesale sectors spread to manufacturing, as well as to transportation and warehousing. The lack of demand for goods caused inventory stocks to rise quickly. Since store shelves were now staying full, there was no need to produce more inventory. Factories all over the country starting reducing, or even halting, production, laying off workers in the process. Warehouses were now fuller than ever, and there were fewer workers to load goods and move them around. Transportation, the sector my dad was in, needed fewer drivers, since there were fewer goods to transport. As you can see, one sector tumbling leads to other parts of the intricate web of the economy coming down as well. Every sector of the economy saw job losses in the month of April, some more than others, but every part of the economy felt the pain. There were far fewer people and companies who had the means to obtain goods and services, and the providers of those goods and services had to cut back of production and lay off workers, thus reducing the demand even more. The contagion was soon to spread and take out the rest of the economy. Another especially hard-hit sector was the healthcare industry. The repeal of Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the fact that many employers were now shedding their health coverage for their workers, meant that most people now couldn’t see a doctor. For low-income people all over the country, the loss of the Medicaid insurance program was combined with the loss of the community health centers that served poorer communities. The EFA scrapped the federal grants that went to these health centers, as well as the Medicaid insurance that provided the bulk of the revenues that flowed to these facilities. By 2017, there were 1,400 community health centers in the United States, who provided various services to a total of 28 million Americans. And now, these people were scrambling to find a new route to secure medical services. Most simply had to go without now. “The loss of our Federally Qualified Health Centers is a devastating blow to low-income communities everywhere. Our centers provided medical, dental, and behavioral healthcare to so many people in the surrounding area. We had three clinics, and had plans to open a fourth before the EFA was announced. We served several thousand area residents every single year, and now, I don’t know where they are gonna get care. Their clinic has been closed, and most of them have no insurance now with Medicaid gone. Any underlying health issues they have will simply get worse, and that is my biggest worry for them. I also can’t help but feel for the brilliant employees who worked here, the doctors and dentists and their assistants, the tech people and administrative people and the front desk people. They are all out of jobs too, and they’re terrified. I had to console several people those final days that we were open, so many employees and patients were in here crying and hugging. It is really heartwrenching, all of it.” Remarked Silvia Herrera, the CEO of Parktree Community Health Center, which was the main Community Health Center in the area, with offices in Pomona and Ontario. On April 1st, over 100 million Americans lost their healthcare coverage they received through government programs. Tens of millions more lost the insurance they received from their employers, as companies everywhere decided to retrench in order to cut costs. In many cases, health insurance was the first thing they cut, as they would either move to cheaper plans, or end the coverage completely, leaving their workers in the lurch, at risk of adverse health effects. That would mean that many were now going without medications, or had to delay or stop treatment or therapy. Those with chronic health problems were heavily affected, left to suffer in pain and anguish, or even die. Eminently treatable illnesses like diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, lupus, and many others were now untreatable for many. In more serious cases like with diabetics who needed insulin every day, many of these individuals would pass away from complications that they can no longer afford to treat. Insulin would cost several hundred dollars per month, leaving it out of reach for many who need it. The risk of death for wide swaths of the population skyrocketed as time went on. Furthermore, ailments now were left undiagnosed, as people had no choice but to forego treatments and screenings that would have detected things like cancer or heart disease. Someone whose cancer would have been caught in time for them to get treatment and survive would now be caught far later, too late in many cases. “I had the choice of getting the lump checked, or making next month’s rent.” Remarked Claudia Melgar to the Los Angeles Times. “I found this lump on my breast, and I had just lost my health insurance three days earlier. Luckily, I acted quick and was able to have a nonprofit help with testing and treatment. It did turn out to be cancer, and I start my treatment soon….. I would have had to either go bankrupt or get sicker and die. I know that so many people won’t be as lucky. Even with the help I got, I still have to pay some out of pocket costs of getting treated. My family is helping out some with that, which again is a resource that many people do not have the luxury of having. And hospitals will not treat you unless they know you can pay up. They don’t have to take people who can’t pay anymore.” As a result of this upheaval, medical offices in all fields and specialties began laying off nurses, assistants, front desk workers, and in some cases, even doctors. It was kind of hard to keep them around if there weren’t very many patients. Some hospitals in various parts of the country even had to close, causing people to have to travel further and further to receive any kind of medical treatment, if they had the means to seek out treatment at all. This effect was most felt in small, rural communities, many of which depended on Medicaid and Medicare dollars to keep their doors open. By the end of August, over 75 percent of rural hospitals in the United States had closed their doors for good. Healthcare was now a luxury that only the well-off can afford, and even if you could afford it, you might have to travel further to access it. Many people had to travel long distances, sometimes several hours, in order to get to their nearest hospital. Furthermore, those in nursing homes, as well as individuals with disabilities, lost their Medicaid insurance, leaving them completely unable to receive any treatment. Families, many of whom had just seen a reduction, or even complete loss of income, had to take in their elderly relatives who were being removed from nursing homes, or taking on an extra burden in treating their disabled loved ones. The effects of the EFA not only increased physical pain, but affected the mental state of countless people as well. The effects of this new economic downturn often had an effect on the mental health of those who lost a job, or got a cut in their pay, leading to far higher levels of stress and depression, which was sure to manifest itself in negative ways. Many of the Americans who saw a deterioration in their station in life took to blaming themselves, despite the fact that the deterioration was largely beyond their control. Beyond the effects on the physical health of the American people, we saw a loss of most of our nation’s mental health resources. The same forces that saw the elimination of countless hospitals, clinics, and community health centers also took down countless other nonprofits, such as those who address mental health issues. Mental health centers performed various services in their communities, such as medication management, therapist services, home health visits, residential placements in mental health facilities, mental health crisis response, assistance with transition from mental facilities back into the community, and even assistance with food, transportation, and even rent. These nonprofits also served primarily low-income people, and operated using a variety of grants from government and private sources, as well as Medicaid and Medicare payments. With the ending of the federal grants (and many state grants, as some of those came from federal funds) and all government healthcare programs, these places had to either scale services way back, or close down themselves. Decried Mark Thompson, the head of Frontier Behavioral Health in Spokane, Washington: “As of April 1st, we had to make the regrettable decision to close the doors of all of our 30-plus facilities throughout the Spokane area. Our executive team and our board saw no way forward, with most of our revenue sources dissolved overnight. We took the last few weeks of operations to try to find other placement for them, whether it be with other agencies, or with some charity care, or with family, if they aren’t living with family already. But a lot of the people in placement are just going to end up on the streets, with no help. And a lot of people who were managing their conditions with medication, well…..most of them will no longer have access to those medications, and that will also have horrifying consequences.” For many, going off of one’s meds and losing their therapy or shelter or food had a catastrophic effect on those who lost their mental health services. Many who had obtained shelter through various programs found themselves homeless. The vast majority had no means to get back on their meds, which wrecked their mental states. This led to unthinkable misery, whether it be people shutting down mentally and being unable to work or go to school or really do anything. For others, they lashed out and alienated themselves from family or friends. For others such as schizophrenics, they lost their grip of reality, leading to misery for themselves and their loved ones. Furthermore, there was a rash of high-profile crimes committed by those who lost their treatment, such as attacks on loved ones, or even random people by those who had now had no ability to control their emotions or thoughts. For instance, there was a Los Angeles man who went on a rampage with a machete on the streets of L.A., attacking nine people out on the street, killing four of them. He was later revealed to be a schizophrenic, who lost his access to the medications that allowed him to function in society. Numerous other instances of violence such as this were recorded and reported on throughout the country. For thousands of these vulnerable individuals, the EFA was the last straw for them. By mid-April, many of these unfortunate folks were ending their own lives. One man, Joseph Markovicz from Boulder, Colorado, shot himself right in front of the building where he had been getting treatment just weeks earlier. Or there was Teresa Hammond from Akron, Ohio, who jumped off the All-America Bridge during rush hour. She left a note behind for her family, lamenting the loss of her mental health services. Stories like these came in from all over the country, to where it became a big topic of discussion in newspapers and news broadcasts. The loss of mental health services such as medications was estimated to lead to over two-thousand suicides in the United States in the month of April alone. That was over two-thousand families mourning the death of a loved one. Spokane, Washington, the city where Frontier Behavioral Health was located, saw a whopping six of them, most of which jumped off various bridges that crossed the Spokane River. With these stories making national headlines and leaving communities shaken to their core, people were realizing the horrors the EFA was visiting upon the most vulnerable communities in our society. While most were sympathetic towards those mentally ill who were in desperate need of help, some, well, weren’t. This is where we learn about Michael Helling. Michael Helling, a thirtyish conservative personality with big hair and a bigger mouth, was perhaps the most popular right-wing celebrity on YouTube, the social media site where anyone can record videos and upload them to watch and comment on. The host of the show Yelling With Helling, which would attract millions of views each episode, was no stranger to controversy, as he was known to make waves with racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic statements. On a number of occasions, Helling was suspended from YouTube, which immediately led to Helling playing the victim, saying he was being silenced. That was a popular right-wing tactic when they were called out on their hatred for any reason, they always said they were losing their right to free speech. Any reasonable person can see through the ruse, conservatives did not want free speech for all, they just wanted to say awful s**t and suffer no consequences. Because they were glad to try to stifle the other side. Anyways, on Yelling With Helling, the conversation turned to the worsening crisis of suicides among the mentally ill. And of course, Michael Helling just had to utter the most ugly, vile opinion on the subject: “We keep hearing of all of these mentally ill people offing themselves. All because they lost their meds or their therapy or their food or housing because of the EFA. The left is going to blame the EFA for anything bad that happens from now until the end of time. They’re mad that we won, that we got the EFA to happen, and I welcome any hatred from them. Here at Yelling With Helling, we always welcome the hatred of the extreme left. But back to the loonies who are offing themselves…..isn’t this actually a good thing? I mean, American cities now have less crazy people in them, that would actually make our cities and towns safer, wouldn’t it? I don’t know about you out there, but a lot of the times I felt unsafe, it was because of some whack job on the street, or hitting me up for change in front of a 7-11……And these people who are offing themselves in public, I would find some cuckoo jumping off a bridge to be pretty entertaining, I could get some laughs out of it. And perhaps the most important thing of all, with these people no longer among us, isn’t that just improving the gene pool? Not only are they now dead, but they also can’t procreate. They aren’t mucking up the gene pool anymore. To me, this is a win-win!” Helling’s comments sparked an instant uproar, with the left-leaning publication Right Wing Watch calling it “the last straw for Michael Helling…..He has a long trail of horrifying statements, chock full of racism, sexism, homophobia, and the like, but this takes the cake. If YouTube has any sense at all, they will kick Helling off of their platform permanently. His vile hatred has no place in a decent society.” And surely enough, YouTube did just that, banning his channel permanently two days after his remarks. The banning sparked fierce debate, with many either joyous that this cretin was no longer able to spew his gross invective to millions anymore, while others opposed his banning on First Amendment grounds, saying that Michael Helling has a right to free speech, no matter how awful that speech is. However, Helling never lost his right to talk, he just suffered consequences for his hatred. He can always foul the airwaves elsewhere, which is exactly what he did, as he quickly found a home at Fox News, joining their late night lineup. Nevertheless, his vile remarks aside, our society definitely had bigger fish to fry. Indeed, every aspect of our lives was affected by the EFA, from important aspects such as our livelihoods and our health, to trivial ones such as entertainment and sports. People often turned to things such as TV, movies, music or sports to get an escape from their everyday lives, and to be entertained. This was seemingly more true than ever during times of economic duress. A big thing that the Great Depression of the 1930’s was remembered for, other than the massive economic decline of course, was the movies, music, literature and art that were produced. People during that decade flocked to movie theaters in unprecedented numbers, to watch a movie that would provide escape from the hardships they were facing, at least for a little while. People produced great literary works and pieces of art, capturing the pain and the suffering of the times. Would people do the same now? Well, it seemed from the early returns of the box office figures, that the answer was a resounding “no”. During and after the first weekend of April, the big talk on the entertainment shows was just how poorly the movies released in recent weeks did that first weekend. The release schedule leading up to the start of April was the typical mishmash of sequels, remakes and reboots that had characterized that era of filmmaking. When all was said and done, the top movie of the weekend of March 31st-April 2nd was a live-action remake of a Disney classic animated film called Beauty and the Beast. The movie, which was actually in its second weekend of release, made a seemingly pitiful fourteen million dollars, a jaw-dropping fall from its opening weekend, which saw it earn close to sixty-four million dollars. For comparison, the box office champ the first weekend of April the year before made a whopping sixty-eight million dollars, also in its second weekend. When all was said and done, the box office was down a hideous 67 percent from the same weekend the year before, the largest year-to-year drop for a weekend ever recorded. Simply put, people just didn’t have the money to go to the theater, even at the slightly lower prices now being offered, which were no doubt created by wage cuts to the employees who sold the tickets, made the popcorn, filled the drinks and cleaned the theaters after each showing. As the weeks went on, no movie, even big-budget films that would have racked up hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars in years past, put up numbers that were even close to what the studio executives anticipated when the script was approved and shooting began, which often took place a year or two in advance of the release of the movie. Within weeks, shooting on other big-budget films was starting to be halted until further notice. The movie world began to grind to a screeching halt due to the economic downturn. This of course had huge ripple effects towards many people. Not only did the actors and directors lose out on work, but so did many others who worked in this industry, from studio lot employees to the camera operators to the sound employees to the the visual effects people to the cinematographers to the production assistants, and the countless other people who worked tirelessly to make these films. This sharp downturn in the moviegoing business also had more ripple effects. On April 10th, right after the second straight weekend of dismal box office returns, the CEO of AMC, the world’s largest chain of movie theaters, announced immediate closures of lesser-performing theaters, with over one thousand locations shuttering that day. Three days later, their main U.S. rivals, Regal Entertainment and Cinemark, followed suit, with each closing 10 to 20 percent of their theaters. Other large chains all over the world made similar moves by the end of the month, followed by more closures in the months to come. “This move will allow us to redouble our efforts to bring you the finest in movie entertainment.” Quoted a spokesperson for AMC. “AMC is committed to continuing that fine tradition. This restructuring will no doubt be a slight inconvenience for some of our patrons, but there are still many locations for them to attend. And AMC will be in better position moving forward.” A similar phenomenon was also happening in other areas of the entertainment world. In music, current and upcoming tours, including tours of many of the biggest artists around, were starting to report difficulties selling the tour dates, all throughout the country, and all over the world. This was to be expected, given the lack of movie tickets that were being sold, and surely other forms of entertainment would see similar struggles. The new grim economic realities were expected to hit the music world even harder, as concert tickets tended to be much more pricey than movie tickets, even in the cheaper seating areas. By mid-April, many artists were simply canceling tour dates, and in some cases, even entire tours, due to lack of ticket sales. The pinch on the music industry was even tougher on newer acts, as record labels focused on their bigger names to try to weather the storm. It was now becoming impossible to break into the industry, as most executives stopped signing new talent. Musical performers who may have, in better times, become the big new stars of 2017 were not even given a chance to show off their talents. And of course, the same thing happened in the sports world. April marked the end of regular season play for both basketball and hockey, as well as the beginning of baseball season. It was jarring to see so many empty seats in arenas all over the country, even for teams that weren’t very good and saw no hope for postseason play. Much of the talk on sports radio and TV shows focused not on the action on the field, but the lack of fans in the stands, as even many good, competitive teams were now struggling to sell out their games, when many of them were packing the house just a few short months ago. The news on sports-centric networks such as ESPN was parsing attendance figures across the different sports instead of final scores and player statistics during their shows. A few days into April, a controversy flared up that stretched into the political world, and hit home for millions of Americans. It was on April 3th, the first full day of the regular season for baseball. Every year, this was one of my favorite days of the year, as thoughts of home runs and strikeouts and my favorite team winning a World Series championship danced through my head, as well as the heads of baseball fans everywhere. And inevitably, the talk among the commentators turned to the subject of Major League Baseball attendance for Opening Day. Opening Day games would usually sell out, as fans packed the stadiums to mark the start of their favorite team’s season. This year, as expected by some, was completely different. A majority of the Opening Day games did not sell out, and some teams had to resort to deeply discounting their tickets, which were usually somewhat more expensive for Opening Day, just to get people into the stadium. One of the announcers on the ESPN team, a former ballplayer named Tim Jackson who had been announcing games for the sports network for several years, decided to make his statement during the national broadcast of one of the night’s games, which I saw the next morning on the Internet, since I no longer have cable TV, and couldn’t watch the game. “Looking around the big leagues, between today and yesterday, twelve of fifteen Opening Day games didn’t sell out, that is just crazy! Did you ever think you’d see such a thing? Even tonight, there’s a whole lot of empty seats here at the ballpark, though that isn’t out of the ordinary here in Oakland, they have always had trouble attracting fans. But they would at least sell out Opening Day every year!” “Yeah it is something isn’t it? And it seems to be happening all around the world of sports, the Tampa Bay Rays didn’t even reach fifteen thousand fans for their Opening Day game yesterday, despite the fact they were playing the Yankees. The fans just aren’t coming now. There’s a lot of speculation as to why that is happening. As for tonight’s game, this is a crowd that one would expect for some random game in August against a last-place team, not on Opening Day.” Replied John Willis, the other guy in the broadcast booth for that game between the Los Angeles Angels and the Oakland Athletics, by all accounts a close contest which the Athletics won by a score of 4-2, in front of a small crowd of just nineteen thousand. The A’s, as they were commonly called, usually struggled to draw fans to their aging, dilapidated stadium, but that was an incredibly low figure for an Opening Day game. “You know why that is, John? It’s the actions of President Harris. His policies are causing immense harm to everyone. Yeah, we see it in the sports world, manifesting in these attendance totals, but it’s happening everywhere, man! This damn EFA, or whatever it’s called, it’s ruining us John! Honestly, this is just the start of it, it may get a lot worse before it gets better!” Tim shot back, apparently seeing this to be the right time to make a political statement. “Now Tim, are we sure we should be injecting politics into this? This is a baseball broadcast, after all. We should do our best to be apolitical for our audience, we do have viewers of all political stripes.” John tried cutting off Jackson’s statement. “Yeah, I’m sure John. With all due respect, this is something we should be talking about. This may be a baseball game, but this issue goes far beyond the world of baseball. People need to see that, many people do see that. Did you see what happened in our nation’s capitol today? During the traditional throwing of the first pitch by the President on Opening Day, Harris was booed mercilessly when he threw out the first pitch at the Nationals game in Washington earlier today. From the moment he came out to the moment he threw the pitch and for several minutes after he left the field, the fans booed harder than I’ve ever heard booing. The announcer had to intervene to try to stop it, to no avail. The people know what’s up. It’s important to know what’s up. And for those of you who voted for this, you need to know what’s up too, because what they voted in is the cause of this misery. I honestly don’t care if this offends your sensibilities or makes you uncomfortable, but y’all need to know. Whether or not you’re seeing it or experiencing it personally, it is happening….. I know what I’m saying right now is controversial, it will probably subject me to discipline, but the truth is far more important than a game, and it’s far more important than the feelings of some of those watching this game right now. You can look all around you, all around the world. People are hurting, they are suffering, they are even dying due to the newly implemented policies!” Tim probably would have continued, but there were “technical difficulties” with the network feed at that point. A short time later, the broadcast resumed, with only John Willis in the booth. Predictably, the remarks caused a firestorm of controversy, even if they were full of truth. And also predictably, conservatives were livid, calling for Jackson to be fired, and threatening to boycott ESPN if he wasn’t. I mean, how dare he call out their horrific belief system? Jackson was suspended for a week, at which point he returned to calling Major League Baseball games alongside his partner John Willis. As the month wore on, much of the focus remained on the attendance figures, which had continued to drop, going lower and lower as time went on. For instance, that paltry attendance figure for the Tampa Bay Rays from Opening Day turned out to be the highest they would draw through all of their home games. Every team saw sharp declines in attendance and memorabilia sales. This obscured a mighty fine start to the new season, in which my beloved Los Angeles Dodgers got off to a great start, as well as the emergence of a wave of incredible young star players who were poised to make their mark on the sport. Too bad many people simply did not have the money to see sporting events, or even watch them on TV, as more teams had moved most, if not all of their games to cable TV in recent years. In recent years, the cost of going to a sporting event had escalated rapidly, out of the reach of many. And this was magnified by the sharp drop in incomes throughout the nation, causing the aforementioned difficulties. Those sharp discounts teams were trying at the start of the season became permanent in most cases, but the attendance totals continued to drop. In late April, a Major League Baseball representative declared that the thirty MLB franchises were now fearing “several billion” in losses this year, and that “a major restructuring of the financial order of the sport will be necessary if this continues. Furthermore, there is a realistic chance that, if these trends are not reversed soon, some franchises may not survive.” When one looked all around and saw the big picture during the month of April 2017, most of us saw a world descending into chaos. One didn’t need to turn on the TV or log into Facebook or Twitter to see the writing on the wall. I surely saw it every single day, everywhere I went. I saw it in the people begging for pocket change or a dollar for something to eat or drink while standing in front of a store. I saw it in the new homeless encampments that were springing up everywhere. I saw increasingly empty stores and businesses, desperate for customers to spend the money they no longer had. I saw the exasperation of my neighbors who had to turn to charity for help, or who had to see their elderly mother go without the medications that keep her alive. I saw it in my coworker who is skipping lunch every day to make sure that his kids go to school with lunch. Which brings me to the story of Tom Wilson. Tom, a kindly, balding, bespectacled gentleman who worked in the sales department handling some of our sales accounts, got a bigger pay cut than I did for some reason, despite having more experience with the company. Combined with the fact that his wife lost her job as an assistant at the dental office where she had worked for eight years, money was now incredibly tight in the Wilson household. Tom’s newly-reduced income was now the only income the family had. The Wilsons made it a point to make sure that their three kids, ages ten, seven and five, never missed a meal, even if it meant they were going to be missing many meals. I actually never talked much to Tom, despite the fact that we worked some fifty feet from each other, until one Wednesday morning in mid-April, when I heard a weird rumbling coming from his direction. It turned out to be the sound of his stomach grumbling, which I heard all the way from my workstation. I caught up with him at lunch time, and noticing that he didn’t have anything to eat with him, I pulled out one of the two ham sandwiches with mustard on the cheap store brand of bread that I had brought with me that day, and offered it up to him so he can at least get something into his stomach. “Hey Tom, the pay cuts getting to you?” I asked, concerned as I handed the sandwich to him. He looked at me like I saved his life. “Are you sure Will?..... I, I, I can’t.” He stuttered to me, seemingly embarrassed that someone would offer him food. “No, take it, it sounds like you need it more than I do.” I replied to him, as he grabbed the sandwich out of my hand and started to take a small bite, while I pulled out and unwrapped the other sandwich. “You been hearing the stomach growling, I was afraid that others would hear it. I’ve been so self-conscious of that every day lately….. I have only been eating once a day lately, gotta make sure my kids have enough, you know. Me and the wife always tell my kids we’re not hungry, to make sure they have enough to eat every night. We’re starving, but if we say that, the kids will insist on giving us some of their share. My oldest already has holes in one of his shoes, the middle child is getting the hand me downs from the oldest now, and the youngest is outgrowing her clothes, and there’s no money to get her any new clothes, so the least I could do is make sure they don’t go hungry.” He said, as he took a few more bites, savoring the ham. “Oh, and my car is acting up, the transmission is on the fritz or something, that literally just started last week. It took a while to get it to start this morning, and I was a bit late to work because of it. You know how Milton doesn’t like tardiness, I’m just glad he didn’t notice it. If it keeps up, I gotta grab my bike and start pedaling to work every day. Do you know how hard that will be when eating once a day?” “Man, I’m sorry you gotta go through this. You know what? I’ll make an extra sandwich everyday and bring it so you can have something in your stomach every day. It will help with your concentration, which always helps with job performance….. It takes a real provider to put himself through something like this to make sure his kids don’t go without.” I said, trying to reassure him. Tom then began to tear up. He was trying to hide that, but he wasn’t hiding it very well. “Since the pay cut, and my wife getting laid off, it’s been hard. We’re bringing in a little over one-quarter the money we used to. We are gonna burn through all of our savings just to make the May rent. After that, I don’t know. I looked into moving into a cheaper house or an apartment complex, but even then, I don’t think we can pull it off. Me and the wife have been talking about moving out to Maryland with her sister and her family. They can take us in for a while, apparently. Not sure if the car will make that long drive, or if we can even afford to make the trip, but it might be our best option.” Tom said, with a defeated tone in his voice. “I hope it works out for you guys, you seem like a good guy, you don’t deserve this. Nobody deserves what is going on right now. So many lives have been ruined by the changes our so-called President has made.” I said, before shaking my head. “I just ask myself how could it all go so wrong, so fast? We had a good life, we were comfortable, then just like that, it was gone. I have been so depressed, so has my wife….. I’m gonna be honest with you, I’ve had thoughts of ending my life, but then my children would have nothing at all. Is this the future they are gonna have?” Tom said, as he finished the sandwich. He then got up, and turned to me. “Thank you for the sandwich, and for listening to me. I really needed to vent to someone, and I think the wife doesn’t want to really hear it anymore. Your generosity will get me through this day, it gives me just a bit of hope for humanity.” The rest of my day went like usual, just going through my reports, and making my payments to the vendors who supplied us with the materials and products, though I’ve noticed there were fewer of them. Surely our business has gone down as well, like countless others have dealt with. I did hear later in the day that our orders did indeed drop, our products were not selling, which of course was no surprise. Walmart and Target are scaling back their purchases, not just of our products, but of everything they carry. Several of our other regularly recurring orders were canceled for the time being, Ken Milton bemoaned to anyone who would listen. I imagined that layoffs were possible, not just here in the Brea headquarters, but also at a distant factory in China, where our plastic containers were made. I had heard on the news that Chinese factories were laying off workers by the tens of millions, perhaps as many as one hundred million through the next couple of months. I mean, those workers were most likely already treated badly, making products for pitiful wages, but now they would have nothing at all. If the wealthier countries aren’t buying the things being made in these factories, then the factories would be idled, affecting all of those workers. Similar fates awaited workers toiling in factories all over the world. Countless individuals who would have no money for shelter or food or anything else. It just showed the truly global scope of the disaster we were all careening towards. Well anyways, once I got home from work, I looked for any sort of charities that could help my new friend Tom Wilson. I went on the Internet on my phone, to look for charities, such as food banks, or clothing drives, that can help people. Not surprisingly, I learned that all the local food banks found themselves overloaded now. Their demand has shot up between five and tenfold, while their donations have fallen dramatically. They give less food to each family to make sure more people at least receive something, but they still had to turn dozens of hungry families away everyday. One food bank director, a sweet, squeaky-voiced woman named Mia Lopez, sounded like she was in tears as she admitted to turning families away: “Every day, mothers break down crying when they learn we have run out of food for the day. It breaks my heart that those people are going hungry, I always think of those poor children who have to go to bed with nothing to eat. Many of these people just got their pay reduced, or they lost their job. There are more needy people than I have ever seen, and I have been here over twenty years. And every day, the line I see when I open gets longer and longer….. I cried when I turned away a family of seven this afternoon. I ran out of food for the day. Different charities and individuals are trying their best to donate as much food as they can, and I thank God every single day for their help, but there are simply too many people who need our help. I call around all the grocery stores, to see if they have anything they can donate, like items that are about to expire or have recently passed their sell by dates, but they’re mostly tapped out, because other food banks are reaching out to them as well, or they’re reducing their orders of merchandise because stuff isn’t selling, but some of these places are helping out in any way they can….. I have an extensive network of colleagues who work in food banks and other charities all over the country, and every one of them is experiencing the same exact thing right now. And most of us agree, things are only going to get worse. I talk to the people who come in here everyday, and their stories are mostly the same. One or both parents got their pay reduced, or one or both of them got laid off because business is slow. A lot of them had been getting cash assistance or food stamps, but those aren’t there anymore. I even had one mother a few days ago, who told me her son has autism, and they lost their SSI and their state medical insurance. The new law eliminated these programs that helped so many people, and now they’re scrambling. The mom of the autistic child said that they will probably end up on the street within a month or two, and she isn’t the only one who has told me that. A lot of these people are also worried about their housing situations, most of them won’t be able to make rent next month, and will have to live with others or be homeless….. There is suddenly so much pain all over. It’s all because of the changes Harris made. I mean, I want to support the President of the United States, but I simply can’t. He claims to be Christian, he claims to be a man of God, but he is not following the teachings of Jesus. Jesus said to help the poor and the sick, and Harris turned his back on them. He turned his back on the people he is supposed to lead. He simply is not presidential. He has ruined so many lives, and I am seeing the effects of that, every single day, and it kills me inside.” She told me all of this over the phone, in a tone that oscillated between sadness and anger. I thanked her for her time, and dialed the number for a group that was to be conducting a clothes drive. No such luck. I also learned that the homeless shelters were all full too, some of them were housing fifteen families when they only had capacity for eight. Many shelters resorted to trying to squeeze in as many people as possible, and in some cases, were having people sleep on the floor side-by-side once they ran out of beds. Even then, the shelters were having to turn away people to go live on the streets, or perhaps in their vehicles. I grew slightly more depressed with each phone call, and I started to weep for what was becoming of our society. I knew that finding help would be a tall order, I knew how badly strained charitable organizations were amidst the chaos. I saw the news stories of the food bank lines. All over the country, food banks saw lines that stretched for miles, as people waited, oftentimes all day, to secure something to eat for themselves and their loved ones. Videos popped up everywhere, or lines of cars as far as the eye can see. A line of cars in San Antonio, Texas stretched close to ten miles, the line full of people somberly waiting for hours, just for something to eat for a day or three. A similar scene unfolded in Los Angeles, as a food drive was conducted at Dodger Stadium, held when the Dodgers were out on a road trip, and financed partially by the team, as well as other charities in the city. The parking lot, usually filled with cheerful and excited fans ready to see their beloved boys in blue, was now filled with starving families at the end of their ropes, with lines snaking across the various parking lots. Families with crying children, homeless individuals, people who just want a bite to eat. Now, one didn’t need to turn on the news to see that something was clearly amiss. Anyone can see by just looking around them that things had gone horribly, horribly wrong. Even if a particular person wasn’t struggling to make ends meet, surely they had a family member, a friend, a coworker who was. As the month of April progressed, the situation continued to deteriorate rapidly. I saw more people begging for change or food in front of every business I walked into, there were several homeless folks living in the park several blocks from my work, I drove by them every morning, and every afternoon as I headed home. Likewise, the park down the street from my apartment saw the same thing. Every time I went by the park, there were more people there. They had pitched tents, and the city of Ontario, which normally cracked down hard on the homeless, decided not to intervene this time, maybe due to the fact that they, like other cities everywhere, were now more strapped for cash than usual, or perhaps they saw the plight of the less fortunate among their residents. Nevertheless, the city put out advisories requesting that children not play in certain parks for the time being, and telling all residents to avoid certain areas of the town. In fact, many cities did so. I don’t know if that was done out of concern for the safety of the children who frequented the park, or if it was done to vilify those who had taken refuge there (or maybe a bit of both), but it was still sad to see. I spoke to my neighbors, especially to my friends Juan and Franklin, just to see how they were holding up. Juan was especially down, he got his pay reduced twice in the month of April alone, as the construction industry was starting to get hit very hard. He told me that by the end of the month, construction projects had largely grinded to a halt, something Juan hoped and prayed was temporary. He was even being sent home early most days, or being told to not come in at all. His company was running on skeleton crews on the projects they still had. Thank goodness he was a frugal spender, as he didn’t have anything extravagant in his home. Heck, he still had the same TV set he had when he lived with his parents fifteen years earlier. Another function of his frugality, the most important of all, was that he had built up a nice savings account, something that can help the Morales family weather the hard times. He was still hurt by the fact that he had to pull his boys out of soccer, as well as cut their cable TV, but there was a silver lining to it all. The family was spending more time together. I even brought over a couple of board games I had laying around for them to play, and I often joined in their game nights. Too bad there were no more delicious plates of enchiladas, as they had cut that out of the budget. It was now lots of rice and beans and tortillas for the Morales family, but they still invited me over for dinner. The rice and beans was a nice change from the Hamburger Helper or sandwiches that I kept making for dinner, since it was cheap, and my cooking skills were rather limited (I generally had limited my meals to spaghetti, sandwiches, Hamburger Helper, or anything that can be thrown in the microwave). After one rousing game night, where Juan Jr. and Marcos won seemingly every game, me and Juan were talking outside of his front door. Juan was clearly stressed, like all of us were then. He even pulled out a cigarette that night, something he rarely ever did. He had stopped smoking regularly several years before, but kept a pack of his preferred Camel cigarettes handy in case he felt stressed like he was now. Juan wasn’t a particularly emotional man, but I guess the stress got the best of him that night. He was trying his best not to weep, but I saw a tear or two streaming down his cheek. “I feel like a failure, Will. I don’t know how much longer I can support Lucia and the boys. My paychecks barely cover the rent, nothing else. I have to dip in the savings for food, or gas, or to pay the utilities. Marcos needed new shoes, and I had to dip in the savings for that. I don’t know how long that savings will last. What happens if my truck breaks down? Or if the boys grow out of their clothes, or if one of them gets hurt? I have given Marcos a bunch of Junior’s old clothes, but that can only last for so long. I wanted to give Marcos an old pair of Junior’s shoes, but they were a size and a half too big, they looked like clown shoes on him…..I don’t know what to do now. No matter how much I think about it, I have no answers.” Juan rubbed his hand across his thinning, slightly graying hair, his voice trembling as he continued. “Lucia has been looking to apply to jobs too so we can make some more money, she has been trying all kinds of places, like restaurants and hotels, but nobody’s hiring anywhere! She was looking for a maid job, hotels used to always be looking for maids, they always needed bodies, but now they aren’t even hiring. I guess things have gotten that bad to where even they don’t need anybody. For waitressing jobs, same thing. It used to be so easy to pick up something like that. And the fact that she is trying to work just makes me feel even worse.” “Hey man, don’t blame yourself for this. So many people are blaming themselves, like somehow their boss cutting their pay was their fault, or losing their job was their fault. It’s not your fault, man.” I replied, trying to reassure Juan that this, all of this, is not his fault. He was the fourth person that week alone who blamed himself or herself for their predicament while speaking to me. Our society had conditioned us so thoroughly over the years to do that when things went wrong, as if it were some sort of personal failing when one was poor, as opposed to a horrible, oppressive system working as intended. “Thanks Will. I needed to hear that right now. You’re a good man. A good, honorable man….. And I know Lucia isn’t trying to hurt me by getting a job, it makes sense for her to at least try if we need more money. We need to overcome this, no matter how hard it might be….. We can get through this, right? Will things get better?” Juan questioned me, trying to assure himself that this wasn’t a permanent state of affairs. “I hope so Juan, we don’t deserve this, your family don’t deserve this, or any other family. You’re a good man too, a good family man. I’ve always aspired to be that as well. And whatever happens, we gotta stick together, and help each other in any way we can. That’s what friends do.” “Very true. If we stick together, we can manage all this. Also, my pay cut was the smallest on my crew. The other guys all got bigger cuts. Scott knows that they’re all undocumented, and they can’t say anything, or he’ll call immigration on them. He has no problem getting them deported, I’ve heard all the racist s**t he says about ‘the Mexicans’ and ‘the illegals’, or how he always listens to Rich Hallman while we ride in the truck to jobs….. Well anyways, I gotta get back into the house, the boys want me to tuck them into bed tonight, they told me that earlier. Thanks again for the talk.” Juan said with a solemn nod before giving me a hug, and retreating into his apartment. I then sat on the stairs right by my front door, like I would do if the weather outside was decent. I tried to collect my thoughts, but I could only think of the fresh hell we were all entering. Indeed, financial struggles abounded everywhere I looked. At least three of the tenants of the apartment complex were planning to move out at the end of the month. I heard that the Rojas family, who lived on the opposite corner of the building and who I didn’t talk to much, were going to move in with Mr. Rojas’ parents in L.A., even though ten people were already living in that two-bedroom house as is. The Warrens from two doors down couldn’t withstand the pay cut of Phil Warren, the head of the household, as well as his son’s job loss. According to Phil, they were going to stay as long as possible, but not pay rent, in hopes of finding something cheaper. If not, then they would just get evicted, and go from there. The Clarks, who lived in the next apartment over from the Warrens, saw both parents get pay cuts at their respective jobs, and had nowhere to go at all. All of my neighbors were in some sort of dire straits. The Jacksons were struggling as well, despite Frank’s job as a manager at the Stater Bros. His mom was forced to pick and choose which medications she would take, phasing out the ones she found to be “less important”, the first of which turned out to be her blood pressure medication. Frank was upset at this, of course, and tried to talk his dear old mother out of it, but his hands were tied. He looked into getting his mom signed up for some cheap health insurance. Nothing too fancy, just something to help with the cost of the medicines. Even if she would allow it, no insurance company would take Lisa Jackson on. She had preexisting conditions, so her insurance would have cost well into the hundreds of dollars per month, far too expensive for the family, and for countless other seniors who were now going without medical care completely. The family food budget was already stretched thin, but they didn’t have to worry much about clothes, as Frank’s wife Jackie had took it upon herself to learn how to sew. So now the Jackson kids may be seen running around in front of the building in clothes with sewed-up tears and patches, which became increasingly popular according to several people I spoke to. She did the same for Juan’s son Marcos when he tore a pair of his jeans. She offered to sew up a pair of my pants, an offer that I graciously accepted. I could not afford to buy new clothes at the moment, and I didn’t want to wear those torn pants to work. I saw families trying to adapt to the new reality anyway they knew how, whether it was learning to sew, or growing their own gardens for food, or scrounging up money in any way they could, by recycling or doing odd jobs. The money troubles my parents were now encountering finally got my mom to take all of those cans and bottles from their backyard and haul them off to the recycling center for some extra cash. “Without doing that, we might not have been able to eat that week.” She told me when I expressed surprise that she finally did the thing she said she would do for two months. I heard it at work too. I was still bringing a sandwich for poor Tom Wilson to eat everyday, and now Reggie was bringing him stuff too. A bag of chips one day, or maybe some cookies the next. Hannah, the Accounts Receivable clerk who sat next to me, gave him a few cans of Spaghetti O’s and some beans that had been sitting in her cupboard untouched for some time. A few other coworkers would bring what they could as well, essentially setting up an impromptu food drive for our struggling coworker. Tom was immensely grateful that his coworkers, who had their own struggles to deal with, were so giving to him in his time of need. His eyes welled up with tears as we handed him a big box full of various foodstuffs, and a few of us teared up a bit too, myself included. It was a shame that us here in the office had to run a food drive for our distressed coworker, but we all felt good that we could help a friend. At the same time, however, it was a damning indictment of the system. It, like so many other stories emanating from everyday people, was simultaneously heartwarming and infuriating. It didn’t have to be like this. It shouldn’t be like this. Everywhere, people were trying more extreme ways in order to come up with the funds needed to stay afloat. Many took to the fundraising site GoFundMe to ask people for rent money, to where rent requests became the second-biggest category on the entire site, behind only medical bills. Others resorted to holding car washes, like people used to do for funeral expenses for loved ones. A family would gather on a busy intersection, some of them holding signs and hollering “CAR WASH” to anyone who might be interested, while others set up shop in a parking lot and wash cars for anyone who pulled up, for a few bucks, of course. Others would search through garbage, looking for cans and bottles they could recycle, or anything they could hawk to a scrap yard for some cash. The number of requests for participation in medical studies soared, with people more willing to sell themselves to science in order to eat or make rent. Another common way for anyone to come up with some quick money was plasma donation. Thousands of donation centers would offer up money for donations of blood plasma, and the number of donations took off in the month of April. Unfortunately, these centers were quickly running out of money, and began to turn people away or further restrict how often one person could donate (federal regulations already limited people to two donations per week). A silver lining of this was that there was no longer a national plasma shortage, due to all the donations being made. Most plasma centers took to reducing the payments they gave out, using the surplus of plasma as their justification for the move. Others moved to non-cash payments, making offers of food staple items to those who donate, such as bread, milk, or other food they may have had donated to them. One day towards the end of the month, Reggie invited me to have dinner with his family. Before all this began, I ate with them every couple of weeks, somewhere decent, but not too fancy, such as one of the corporate chain restaurants that lined the main streets of cities and towns everywhere, places with names like Applebee’s or TGI Friday’s or Chili’s. This was the first time this month that I was invited, and it was to be at Reggie and Melissa’s home. It was a nice dinner, Melissa made some delicious chicken with barbecue sauce, coupled with some mashed potatoes and gravy and corn. Melissa’s sister Laura had joined us for dinner as well, as we had a nice conversation and shared some laughs. I learned that Laura was a teacher just like her sister, working at an elementary school in Anaheim. Laura, who was around thirty, really tall and thin, with her hair put up in a ponytail, told us how the unfolding economic crisis was hitting education. I knew that many college students were now having to quit due to the lack of financial aid, but I learned that grade schools were going to be hit hard too, which came as no surprise to me. Laura said that once the school year ended, in May or June, depending on the district, that thousands of California teachers were getting laid off. Laura told us how nervous she was that she would be one of the unlucky ones, as her school would announce who would stay and who would be let go on the final day of the school year, and not a moment earlier, to endure no teachers skip out if they find out they’re being jettisoned. Those who weren’t laid off, the lucky ones, if they can even be called that, were to receive pay cuts of upwards of one-third of their current pay. “It is the talk in the teacher’s lounges. Most of us, especially the newer teachers, worry about whether we will have a job in a few weeks, or if we will get switched to a new school. And if we are among the lucky ones, we will have to cover even more of the expenses for our classrooms, while making less money and teaching fuller classrooms with less support staff. But hey, the administrators are still trying to vote for a pay raise for themselves!” This was happening all over the country, as receipts from the local sales and property taxes that funded public school systems were cratering, and districts were feeling the pinch in ways rarely seen before. Some states were getting hit even harder by these cuts, which not only went to education, but also the state services that remained after the EFA cuts. Schools were already paring back their budgets for the next school year, whether by laying off teachers, or support staff, or both. Many school districts were even talking about closing entire schools, or stopping bus service, or even shortening the length of the school year. States like Kansas and Texas were talking about moving to a 4-day school week in order to reduce costs. Oklahoma, which already paid their teachers far less than the national average, announced across the board pay cuts of nearly 50 percent. Dozens of other states were to also implement severe pay cuts to an already drastically underpaid profession. Talk began of a nationwide teachers’ strike to commence at the outset of the next school year. Laura was already seeing students being affected by it. She saw kids in tattered clothes, and kids talking about overhearing their parents fighting about money. Kids openly talked in class about their parent who lost their job, or that there was no food in the house, or that they were to soon start living with other family or even in their cars. Schools were already trying to cut expenses, by canceling new textbook orders or not running the air conditioning, even on hotter days. Which must have been miserable when the temperatures all over Southern California approached 100 degrees in mid-April. The most heartbreaking story I heard from Laura that night was when she described hearing stomach rumbles from her spot in the front of the classroom, and seeing kids weak from hunger, slumped over in their desks with grimaces on their faces. She also told us stories where kids whose parents had not seen pay cuts bringing food from their homes to share with the hungry kids, stories that gave me a fleeting hope that things would be okay in the long run. It was sickening to hear the stories of the hungry kids. You see, for some poorer kids, the school lunch program that had been administered by the government was a significant source of food before the collapse. Of course, the school lunch program, which had provided free and low-cost meals at school for millions of kids nationwide, got axed by the Economic Freedom Act. The loss of free school lunches, combined with the pay cuts and job losses of the parents, proved to be a devastating blow for our nation’s children. I would try to listen to anyone who would talk about their hardships, as though I were some snooping journalist looking for a scoop. As I said, I heard from neighbors, coworkers, people I would encounter while going about my day, and most importantly, my family members. I watched the news everyday, voraciously consuming every story related to the unfolding economic calamity, to the point where I would be watching news broadcasts or reading stories on my phone into the wee morning hours, even on nights where I had work the following morning.. Every story about overrun food banks, or free medical or dental clinics with lines that stretched as far as the eye can see. Every story about a new economic report or a company announcing it was shedding employees. Every story about personal hardship. I wanted to see as many perspectives as I could, I wanted to see both the little picture and the big picture of the catastrophe that was happening before our very eyes. All of the bad news I heard depressed me, but I needed to know, just like many others needed to. People started paying attention to economic news, when they probably didn’t give a damn before. They probably didn’t previously know the unemployment rate, or what the Dow Jones finished at that day, but they sure as hell knew now. Too bad they didn’t pay attention until it was too late. Maybe if we were more informed before, we would have not elected the Idiot-In-Chief the previous fall. Nevertheless, what I heard, what I watched, what I read, what I saw with my own eyes, all painted a rich and very disturbing picture. The horrible, horrible things I had been predicting and foretelling for several months were coming true, one by one. I saw the crushing job losses, the massive stock losses, the increased hunger and homelessness coming from a mile away, and now it was here, and it hit everyone like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of dread and despair, a feeling shared by most people that I encountered. That depression that I had in December and January had only gotten even worse. And still, I couldn’t keep my eyes away from the source of that depression. As bad as it was in April, I feared that things would still get much, much worse. © 2022 DGordon |
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Added on March 9, 2022 Last Updated on March 9, 2022 Tags: Alternate History, Post-Apocalyptic, Political, Economics, Dystopian Author
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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