"Are you better off than you were four years ago?"
My answer is a resounding "Yep."
In 2005 I owed a lot more than I do now. I would have to guess that the typical Merikan owes more now than then. I distinctly remember a dispatcher at WAPA who told me how, sixteen years after he bought his Greenhaven home, he owed more than the day he bought it. I simply cannot imagine that he's atypical. We cashed out refi'ed until rates approached near-zero, and even then we kept on doin' it while housing prices kept climbing. All that money, all that money, all that hallucinated wealth, has been wiped out, either by consumers buying shit they didn't need or by consumers defaulting on their responsibilities to pay back their debts. Those willing to pay off their debts (a diminishing pool by the way), will be paying for the next forty years.
In 2005, I had less savings. Today, my savings is larger and growing, in diversified holdings. I imagine my fellow Americans didn't have shit saved in 2005 (errr...capital gains were savings) and have even less saved today...although, I do hear that we are beginning to reverse that trend...people now are hoarding cash for their inevitable layoffs. So the guy selling movie tickets and popcorn in Elk Grove is saving his $9 an hour instead of buying movie tickets and popcorn himself in Rancho Cordova, so the ticket seller and popcorn maker in Rancho Cordova isn't driving to Elk Grove to buy movie tickets and popcorn because his hours have been slashed. Saving is so wrong, it should be made illegal.
In 2005, a had a well-paying shitty job at the CAISO, fleecing California electricity ratepayers, under the ruse of electric markets. Let the market decide. Free markets are the cure. The free market will save the middle class. Free market capitalism reigns supreme. Today, I've got a job producing electric power rather than marketing power produced elsewhere by others. This isn't a job that's going to disappear when we can no longer flip condos.
In 2005, I had no public transportation options to Folsom, and under the best of conditions I could only commute by bike 5% with absolutely no gasoline savings because the CAISO didn't have bike lockers. The more affluent your workforce, the more Lexus's are in the parking lots who's owners live in Serrano who would rather torch their genitals before riding a bicycle to work. The CAISO didn't give a damn about workforce showering, health and fitness, or commuting options. Today, I'm 95% car-free.
Things are definitely brighter and more beautiful in 2009. Wouldn't you agree?
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