our people over here. At a time when so many middle-class families are reeling from the economic crisis—and our country is facing the harsh one-two punch of more people in need at the exact moment social services are being slashed to the bone—that seems like the most perverted of priorities.
Berkeley professor Ananya Roy87 defines the troubled state of America not so much as a fiscal crisis as “a crisis of priorities.” And Representative Barney Frank88, who has been one of the few in Washington arguing for the need to cut military spending, says that our military overcommitments have “devastated our ability to improve our quality of life through government programs.” Looking at the money we’ve spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, Frank says, “We would have had $1 trillion now to help fix the economy and do the things for our people that they deserve.”
The National Priorities Project (NPP) provides a useful online tool that brings this bud get trade-off to life by showing—specifically—all the things that could have been done with the money spent on Afghanistan and Iraq. For example, according to the NPP89, since 2003, more than $747 billion of taxpayer money has been spent in Iraq. That could have provided:
• 115 million people with low-income health care for a year;
• or 98 million places in a Head Start program;
• or funding for more than 11 million elementary school teachers;
• or 11 million police officers;
• or 13 million firefighters;
• or 94.7 million college scholarships.
While unaffordable college tuition prevents many qualified young people from achieving the American Dream, we are continuing to spend billions on outdated and redundant military defense programs, including pricey relics of the Cold War, such as the F-22 fighter, the Osprey transport helicopter, and America’s hugely expensive nuclear triad—bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles—designed to annihilate a Soviet empire that no longer exists.
If we don’t come to our senses and get our deeply misguided priorities back in order, America could find itself a superpower turned Third World nation—dead from our own hand.
BRENDA CARTER
I was a manager of information systems at the same company for thirteen years. I thought my job was secure. All the purchasing approval and bud get monitoring went through me. I attended weekly board meetings. I was well liked.
One day the chief operating officer gave me a high-priority project. I never suspected I would be laid off the next day. When I arrived and said my “good mornings,” my co-workers in finance and administration looked a little sad and they did not respond to my greeting in the normal fashion. I shrugged it off, went to my office, and put down my briefcase.
My phone rang. It was my boss. He told me to come to his office. He told me I was being laid off due to bud get constraints. He said he was sorry but his hands were tied. He told me that since I was a longtime employee I would not be escorted immediately out of the building, and I could take as much time as I needed to remove my belongings.
Since I was at my office most hours of the day, I’d made it feel like home, with plants, pictures, and other personal items. As the manager of information systems, I was the one called to terminate employee user names and passwords. To allow me to clear my office knowing I had access to that information told me my boss trusted me and didn’t want me to be humiliated in front of my co-workers.
Imagine getting up every day for thirteen years to go to the same job and suddenly that part of your life just ceases. I cried and cried and cried. I just could not believe it. I did the jobs of three people. How will they make it without me? Some days I did not get out of bed. I wondered why I wasn’t given the option of demotion. My seniority should have counted for something.
Now I spend my days searching for work. It’s hard to compete for jobs at my age. I hate putting my previous salary and age on applications. They are red flags. I developed a wall of rejection letters. I took it down because it started to depress me.
To broaden my opportunities and keep my mind fresh, I began taking technology courses in college. I also passed the real estate exam. I’m trying to make it by any means necessary, even selling my homemade candy door-to-door. The candy sold well, but it takes gas to travel. I have had only good feedback about the candy so I’ll continue to pursue this dream, moving my sales online.
I applied for unemployment, and am back in the role of house wife. My children are adults now. They think the world of me. They cannot believe I have been out of work for so long. In their minds I was the one who was going to be a millionaire. I sometimes feel that I let them down.
I have been out of work since 2007. After all the years I have worked and raised a family, I’m now dealing with threats to turn off my utilities and repossess my car.
What have I learned from being unemployed? That it’s frustrating and demoralizing. I have learned that I don’t want to be dependent on a Congress that obviously does not have America’s best interests at heart. I have learned to have more compassion for people who are in this situation.
I know there are many stories out there and mine is not the worst, but at times it feels like it is. It’s like waking up in the same nightmare every day with no way out. There is a scripture I hold on to and say to myself when I open my eyes in the morning: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” My response is, “Lord, I am asking for Your help, knocking on the door, asking you to open it and find favor on my family this day.”
Chapter 2 NIGHTMARE ON MAIN STREET
America has long been known as the land of opportunity. So what happens when that opportunity vanishes, when the jobs that served as the gateway to the American Dream disappear, never to return? What happens when educational opportunities and the historical underpinning of our vision of ourselves as a nation give way? What steps into the void?
In a word: fear.
The fear that America is in decline—that our greatest triumphs are behind us. The fear that the jobs we have lost are gone forever. The fear that the middle class is on an extended death march—and that the American Dream of a secure, comfortable standard of living has become as outdated as an Edsel with an eight-track player.
We look at our obliterated 401(k)s and dwindling pensions, and hear the whispers about Social Security going broke, and we wonder if we will ever be able to retire—let alone maintain our standard of living into our sunset years. Golden visions of post-work leisure time have been replaced by dark, fevered flashes of deprivation—of having to decide between eating and paying for the medicine we need. Of letting our homes go into foreclosure to scrape together the money to live on.
The void is filled by the fear that America is becoming a nation of haves and have-nots—and that millions are in danger of becoming permanent members of the have-nots. Forget Freddy Krueger. The real nightmare is not happening on Elm Street. It’s happening on Main Street. And it’s not scantily clad teens being slashed—it’s jobs and incomes and stability and quality of life. It’s our future.
And we’re afraid—very afraid—that the worst may not be over, and that the real economy, as opposed to the one on Wall Street, is still melting down. The housing crisis is still raging. The first run of foreclosures was because of subprime loans; the second run is because of people thrown out of work. And the government’s loan modification programs won’t be of any help with this round of foreclosures. As Newsweek’s Nancy Cook pointed out,90 “If you’re unemployed, you don’t qualify for a loan modification.” And then there is the coming commercial property crisis and a potential credit card meltdown.
So we look at the suffering all around