In the Name of the American Dream

I've lost over $20k in the last twelve months...all due to the crazy stock market. It's one of those things people tell you to do...save for your old age- i.e., your retirement. Something I really never thought much about since I was a teacher & barely made enough to pay my bills. Plus, I literally thought there was somebody at the school district putting money away for me so I can retire when I turn 55 or something. I was young & couldn't fathom the idea of putting money aside (over what was being taken out of my paycheck) for later when there were so many things I wanted to do, like travel to Europe every chance I got.

But one day while still living in San Francisco, I saw an old woman walking, or rather, shuffling her feet down the street to catch the same bus I was getting on. I watched her waiting for the bus as she leaned her weak old body against the tree. She looked miserable, withered, thin & tired; and when the bus finally came, it took her about a million years to get on. There are many homeless people in SF, but for some reason, I had a panic attack watching this old lady painstakingly get on the bus.

I imagined myself at sixty, poor & old, having to take the bus because I was too poor to get around any other way. Being poor is no big deal when you're young, but the thought of having to live off of a $600/month social security check after retirement frightened me, especially since I tend to lust after poor boys & there was no chance of them ever supporting my ass. (Also my dad had always said he was leaving all his money to the poor when he died... so I knew I couldn't rely on a possible inheritance.)

As I tend to be with everything I delve into, I went nuts with this idea of not being poor & homeless at sixty, and researched high & low reading up on everything that could possibly help me secure my future, financially. Luck would have it, I found this Mayor's Housing Program which helps you buy a place if you're poor as most teachers are; and subsequently learned that our government gives us a huge tax break when we owe a lot of money to the bank like we do when we buy a house. (Unless you're very rich & can buy a house with cash, most of us can only afford to buy a house & pretend it's ours when the bank gives us a huge loan.)

So here I was, living in a phat loft in San Francisco with money borrowed from the bank & getting a huge pay increase because I didn't have to pay as much tax as I used to when I didn't owe anyone any money. So with that extra cash flow, I got on the internet & started looking at mutual funds-something my mom had told me to do a long time ago, but never paid any attention to. I started putting a little of what I could afford into something called the Roth IRA, rented out my place to rich NY yuppies who thought $3000/month rent was a bargain in SF during the summers months I wasn't working, and traveled to Europe.

I was living the American dream- owning a house, getting a tax break, collecting money as a landlord during my off months, fattening up my portfolio (the stock market) and traveling. While I was amassing my wealth, I patted myself on the back for being so smart with my money. I wasn't going out & buying brand name clothes but was saving for my future. I was not driving a fancy car nor shopping at Wal-Mart (strangely, I actually never saw a Wal-Mart until I came to Utah) or the Gap & doing other things that supported the big, bad corporations. I started frequenting second hand stores & educated myself by reading books like No Logo by Naomi Klein.

Until No Logo, I really didn't realize the price we pay, or rather some third-world country factory workers pay for the brands we can't live without or the cheap bargains we hunt for at places like Wal-Mart. I mean I always had the upper-middle class guilt for having grown up so comfortably with everything I ever wanted when so many lived without. But this book gave new meaning to consumerism & made me look at the choices I was making through a new lense. I paid attention to the way I shopped not only out of the middle class guilt, but also because I realized my choices affected people & societies around the world.

Stupidly however, I never connected my method of saving with the big corporations I had begun to detest (watch the Corporation ) until I stumbled on another book by Naomi- the Shock Doctrine. I've been reading it feverishly since I got my hands on it last week as well as reading the Nation on line. Consequently, a few days into reading this book, all this mayhem erupted on Wall Street. First I freaked that my savings had essentially dropped 20% & saw myself walking the streets as a bag lady in my sixties. Then as I continued to learn more about our global economy- the way free market & capitalism are essentially wiping out much of the so called "middle class or working class" around the world, increasing poverty as well as the mega rich (which none of us who read this post will ever be)- I realized my house buying & stock buying aided in creating this crisis.

Big corporations like the banks, investment firms, and huge insurance companies like the AIG have used ordinary people like me to amass a ton of money for the greedy few & now the stupid government is bailing them out which means our tax dollar, which should be paying for our schools, health care, and the elderly (so people like us don't have to worry about becoming poor in our old age), is essentially covering the cash those rich few (okay, a lot more than a few) used to buy million dollar vacation houses & toys around the world, I'm sure, while putting the rest in some secret Swiss bank accounts. (I know someone who bought a $3 million apartment in cash in NYC. He's a hedge fund guy who works for one of those investment companies, and he's considered poor next to some of these Swiss account holders.)

I'm not sorry about losing my money anymore. I'm shocked at what we have done in the name of prosperity & capitalism. It always astounded me how many people go hungry even in the States, and I wanted to murder people who'd say those people making $1/week working at those horrible factories that manufacture all the things we buy here in the States are better off than how they lived before. (They have a choice, I remember Miles saying...who's pro capitalism to the max,) but I could never really backup my argument against it or tell why I thought socialism was better with any solid facts other than my own lofty ideas...until now.

Well, from a person who's tried her damndest to stay out of politics (because in my quest for Zen, I've opted to work on myself rather than try to get involved in something I felt I had no control over), I'm telling you, you must educate yourself with the goings-on of the world with a book like this one. You have to read the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. It will blow your mind.
(It's at the library.) And then read this article on the Nation & see what the Latin Americans are doing.

I know my blog is supposed be about the goings-on of my little life in SLC, but I'm consumed at the moment with the goings on of the world. Once you read this book, you'll understand why.