Desperation has moved into this once-middle-class exurb of Fort Myers, where hammers used to pound.
Its straight-ahead stare was hidden amid the chatter of 221 families waiting for free bread at Faith Lutheran Church on a recent Friday morning, and it had appeared a block away a few days earlier, as laid-off construction workers in flannel shirts scavenged through trash bags at a home foreclosure, grabbing wires, CDs, anything that could be sold.
“I knew it was coming,” said Gloria Chilson, 56, the former owner of the house, as she watched strangers pick through her belongings. “You take what you can; you try not to care.”
Welcome to the American dream in high reverse. Lehigh Acres is one of countless sprawling exurbs that the housing boom drastically reshaped, and now, the bust is testing whether the experience of shared struggle will pull people together or tear them apart.
While Congress squabbles and dithers about Obama’s economic recovery plan, more people will join the bread lines. These Congressmen and Senators get paid and benefits, their families are secure in their homes, yet other Americans are being kicked out of their homes and are being forced onto the welfare rolls because of job loss. How can they look their fellow citizens in the eye without feeling a sense of shame because they dither and squabble while others are cold, hungry, and homeless? I am sick and disgusted with them!
How did they look us in the eye while they were borrowing money they could not repay to finance a lifestyle they could not afford while looking down on those of us who were responsible with our own money?
How do they look us in the eye and ask/demand that we help them keep their McMansions?
For years and years, I would drive by these new developments and wonder how people could afford to buy them, how they could afford the taxes on them, and how they could heat and cool them. I wondered how folks were driving the multiple $40-50K cars parked in the driveways of these McMansions.
Now, they want me, my children, and my grandchildren to be in debt for our entire lives to finance their profligacy. I am sick and disgusted with them…yet, I continue to give to the food banks and shelters, etc. I just don’t want another Trillion Dollar debt added to my shoulders to pay for economic idiots and the pride of keeping up with the Jones’…or even bonuses for CEOs that run companies into bankruptcy. I wish to be left alone. Yet, I remain in Christian service and hope and pray and sacrifice to help.
Get rid of minimum wage and guaranteed benefits. Nobody is going to hire a homeless guy with no skills if you have to pay him minimum wage. They are mostly exoffenders with drug habits and they are not worth minimum wage. In the Depression, folks worked for a square meal. They got work experience, began steady habits, and acquired references. With those they worked their way up. It is not true that there are no jobs available. There are no jobs available for minimum wage with full taxes and benefits. Illegal immigrants who work under the table can still find work. My church is filled with them. They manage to live off the work they find (though in crowded conditions).
Get rid of zoning and agriculture laws and taxation of smalll business. Folks can’t afford to maintain two houses, one for their office and one for their home. Let them do what folks do in China. Put up a sign in their subdivision saying “Grandma’s kitchen. Homemade dinner “$4.00” or let them sell the products of their backyard agriculture out of their homes. Let doctors, and dentists and automechanics work out of their homes. Why do we need stupid subdivisions where nobody is allowed to do anything but relax, sleep and play?
Get rid of lawsuits. I am not going to hire you to work on my house if you can pretend to trip and fall, and then turn around and sue me, and take away the house I hired you to work on. Nor will physicians see patients for free if they can be sued and bankrupted by a patient on the make. Get rid of the stupid medicaid/medicare regulations that says that medicaid/medicare has to get the lowest price, and that it is “fraud and abuse” to see somebody who obviously can’t afford care for free.
Get rid of environmental standards. I should be able to keep goats and bees in my back yard. It’s my back yard.
Get rid of Social Security for anybody but the obviously disabled. (I’m not talking about so called “bipolar” disorder). I’m talking about folks who can’t walk or knit. Healthy older Americans should work like everybody else.
And finally, put in usury laws. Go back to having seven year mortgages and have jubilee years at the end of seven years, so that folks in debt can see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Have jubilee years for folks with a criminal record. If they stay clean for seven years, the criminal offense gets wiped out so they have half a chance of finding employment in the legitimate economy.
The above would be far better than running up the national credit card even more to keep living in McMansions at the expense of our children, grandchildren, great grandchilden and generations beyond. Why should we beggar our posterity in order to continue to keep up with the Jones’? We don’t even LIKE the Jones’.