goodbye middle class

I’ve been asked to address the socio-economic climate of our times. On the one hand, it’s not always easy to think of things to blather on about- I’m grateful for the challenge. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure where I fall on that scale. How am I to resist just bitching about rich people and how I am to shape my empathy for people poorer than me. My middle-class voice has been somewhat dampened after joining so many others in taking the earned income credit on last year’s tax forms. I would begin in the early eighties when I was young and didn’t even hold the expectation of greater security, just because I was working harder than most people around me. From washing dishes for people who could afford to eat in restaurants I moved on to cleaning their houses. My clients were what I supposed to be rich people. Because I spent my days traveling from one warm and well-furnished home to another and now had enough money to make a car payment, eat at Red Lobster, and wear izod shirts, I may have been seduced into thinking I was rich too. I was also in the position to observe what college professors spent on art and pedigree dogs, and what dentists spent on motorcycles and pot. And in the case of my richest clients (Dr. J; Secretary Of Transportation, Drew Lewis; Jimmy Trachtenburg, [something] for the Eagles), I could even imagine what it cost to stay out of Philadelphia for most of the year. That’s the kind of wealth I aspired to. Princess Di offered the most attractive option- to marry up. (But alas, I was already in love with a guitar player). We decided to work hard and keep shooting for the American dream. For a while there it looked possible. It wasn’t until we had actually reached the ceiling of our consumer credit that the floor fell away. I had about a year to see it coming. W takes the nomination, our stocks and retirement funds wither, and at my job they bring in some asshole in penny loafers to whip things into shape. [sound of the air going out of a tire]. The thing that saved our hinies was buying an investment property pre-W and selling it off in time to make a fair profit. I’m sure plenty of people in our circumstances who took the hit ‘decruited and divested’ without real property to sell off have a sadder story to tell than the six underemployed years that followed for me. When federally funded programs were cut in the Reagan dynasty [and mental institutions were basically emptied onto the streets of Philadelphia], I had no investments to protect. We packed up for Delaware and didn’t look back. In that ‘sluggish economy’ at least the entertainment industry didn’t take as bad a hit as say people who had sunk their money into inner-city real estate [without the assets to float them until they stood a prayer of making any kind of profit on their improvements]. By the mid-eighties most of the inner-city clients we cleaned for lost their stomach for that cycles’ 'urban renaissance'. I’m pretty sure they are the ones who’ve managed to move farther and farther out, working from home and populating ‘McMansions’ on plots of land named ‘Doe Run’ and ‘Fox Chase’- (the very things that were plowed over and rumpus rooms dug into). In any case, they probably didn’t have to watch their job be handed over to a twenty-five year old [Calcuttan]. The more marked lack of a ‘trickle down’ from the Bush cuts has meant such a higher burden placed on local government. Their solution; raise local taxes and cut services..., so little burden placed on corporate king pins- their solution; cut funding for the arts (no longer a necessary tax shelter); ditch the local economies who sold them their land for little more than a promise and who changed zonings and bent roads to bring their people to work quicker; raise prices to finance their quick retreat to Indonesia; and throw some of the extra cash at the assholes in penny loafers who dreamed it all up. This raises a question. Where are the rich people. Sightings are rare- and I don’t mean rich like ‘drives a Lexus’. Those people own well-situated dry cleaning establishments or sell crack. Rich people, if I ever really knew them, and I think I did-are gone. Well, the ones who are going to movie star jail for driving drunk or slapping their maid eventually end up on Larry King- but I mean the Astors' and the Guggenheims'. People with enough class to stick around and 'Found' something. (Come to think of it, the 'Society Page' is gone too). (Melinda and Bill- Good Job, I'm wrong a lot of the time.) The truly wealthy seem to be so engrossed in becoming wealthier still that living, shopping, and paying taxes in the United States has become 'de classe'. If any of their windfalls are trickling down, it's to family members. ('Death Tax', pleez!) [I knew this was where I was headed!] But who do we blame? The opportunistic Mexicans of course. They are just totally getting over on us- living in mobile homes and on condemned properties, augmenting their high life-styles with Catholic charities. They’re just running away with our six dollar an hour jobs (laughing all the way to the check cashing agency). And now that the coffers are 'beyond empty' (to use the crossword puzzle phraseology), what have the engineers of your two hundred dollar tax cut dreamed up? Fences. GMAFBreak. [Hey Lou Dobbs], Now that the word is out about how stupid we are for decimating our middle class, we have a lot more to worry about than writing a national language into law. ( I happen to know that an illegal immigrant can get in and out of a Wal-Mart as fast as an American). I can't imagine that even Chinese people aren't coming here to shop for 'Holiday' lites (ooh, I'm sorry, it's 'CHRISTmas lites again) and Sketchers. There is no end to this diatribe. There is- but it's pretty predictable and easily dismissed. I'll quote some editor of something (proper nouns will follow- I'm past researching right now), "It's like he stole his Daddy's car and crashed it into the world!" That was spoke easily two years ago. She had no idea.
Many ethnicities have [seemingly] been slurred in the production of this article. Again, research will follow, along with a version clearly denoting 'Idiom' and/or 'Sarcasm'. But don't hold back on hate mail-I can suffer anything but a misspelling.