Sunday, September 19, 2010

Middle Class Extinction

The television news and political commentary I watch, and the print news, magazines and books I read, and the information I view on the internet, plus my own personal experience all combine to give me the sinking feeling that the middle class is on its way out.

At a minimum, the middle class is being seriously eroded, especially over the last 2 years, but prior to that as well. If the current rate of erosion doesn't stop and actually turn around, the middle class will be on its way to becoming extinct. If that happens, watch out. The world will be composed of two classes: the super-rich and the super-poor.

I am so convinced in this regard that I don't feel the need or desire to do a bunch of research that would prove this discomfiting feeling beyond the shadow of a doubt. The cumulative picture is pretty damn clear. But today the CBS show "Sunday Morning" cited these statistics from the US Census Bureau, and they prove my gut fears:

- the American poverty rate is 14.3%, the highest it's been in 15 years.

- 4 million more Americans fell into poverty last year, increasing the total number living in poverty from 40 million to 44 million. This means 1 in 7 Americans live in poverty. The child poverty rate is 1 in 5.

- The number of Americans without health insurance climbed from 46 million to 51 million last year.

I've no doubt that Canada and Europe have the exact same sort of issues, except for the health insurance problem (thank goodness).

And what about the millions upon millions of people hovering just on the edge of the poverty stats? That is a really scary thought. The world's economic woes are far from over; we will never be out of the woods.

People all over are experiencing these fears, and reacting in different ways. These fears are probably at the root of the "Tea Party" movement in the US that is currently accused of "hijacking" the Republican party. Movements like this are polarizing and cloud the real issues we all need to grapple with.

Constructive, democratic, consensus-building leadership is under serious threat as the politics and political style (negative campaigning, fear mongering, "attack" politics that disregard the facts etc.) continue to proliferate and succeed. But, as long as people are deeply angry and scared witless, and are without any better leadership ideas and options, they will continue to rally to the simplistic and polarizing wings as it makes them feel better and that they are doing something.

Unfortunately, while they are busy raging and splintering society, the very things they seek to protect (jobs, economic security, freedom to pursue happiness etc.) continue to fade away.

A major, collective attitude adjustment is needed, one that the recent wake-up calls (e.g., economic collapse) have failed to produce. But will it happen?

Todo bien. (It's all good.)

Thursday, September 16, 2010

The State of My Nation

I just read a blog post with some good financial tips, and also took a survey about money, financial planning and investing. In addition, this week I have been taking financial stock of my business (earnings to date and year end projections), so I've got money on the brain.

It's certainly official in my world - the economy completely tanked starting in the fall of 2008, and I'm not seeing much in the way of recovery as of this date (2 years later). My 2010 earnings will be 19% of the amount I earned in 2008. That is an 81% drop in earnings.

I am just the tip of the iceberg. My circumstances and experience are replicated and experienced by untold thousands of people just like me - self-employed consultants who only get jobs if our prospective clients can afford our services. And far fewer businesses and individuals can afford anything these days. They are all trying to keep the lights on themselves. Things continue to be pretty grim.

I immediately have to look on the bright side. I am currently paying a mere fraction of the income taxes I usually pay. I also managed to earn this 19% of my previous income level working for just 7 months (I used to work for 9 months when generating the higher amount). And I am still able to set my own hours and working conditions, which is priceless to me. No office-prison and wage-slave situation for me! I can still earn more, and in far fewer hours, working for myself than entering the salaried workforce.

Things would have to get much, much worse than this before I'd look for a regular job. And then, if things were much, much worse there likely wouldn't even BE any salaried jobs available. So I must do what I can, where I am, with what I've got.

Todo bien. (It's all good.)

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Hurting "Henry"

I feel like a complete idiot. We've had "Henry", our brand new Ford "Adrenalin" model Sport Trac for 8 whole days...and this evening I backed Henry's left rear fender smack into a concrete planter in a parking lot...while my husband stood and watched in total disbelief.

I've been driving for over 33 years and have never had an accident. Other people have hit me, but I have never caused an accident. I did put two minor scrapes on our old Sport Trac, but nothing that dented anything or that affected the paint job. That pretty clean track record ended this evening.

It happened at the parking lot of the marina where we moor our boat. John had dropped me off in Nanaimo from our cottage early this evening as I have to deliver a full day workshop tomorrow in Victoria. I was worried about backing out of the marina parking spot because close on my left side was a boat stored on a trailer, and I didn't want to make too sharp a turn backing up and scrape my front left end. I turned completely around to look directly out the back of the truck and it all looked clear. Due to heavy rain this weekend, not many people had taken their boats out, so the parking lot was completely empty at the end where I was backing up.

With no cars anywhere in sight, I backed up in a much wider arc than I would have if cars had been parked in all the marked spots. My arc kept me clear of the boat on the trailer, but took my left rear end directly into a concrete planter that was out of my range of vision. It would have been visible in my left side mirror, but I was looking out the back over my right shoulder and it was not visible from that vantage point. As John looked on (before heading back to the cottage in our boat), I bumped into and scraped along this colourful concrete planter thing.

I couldn't hear him yelling at me when he saw what I was headed for. First, that truck is soundproof! Also, John had just been trying out playing his downloaded songs via the USB port built into the truck's audio/tech system. It worked just fine. I hadn't adjusted the volume down yet, so James Taylor was wailing about "fire and rain" as I splashed through the rain to kiss some concrete.

This just doesn't sit right. It's so unlike me. Yet, I did it.

It. Is. My. Fault.

I'll take Henry in to get the repairs done this week. I won't feel better until he's fixed. But now I am scared to drive him, especially parking and backing up. Sigh.

Todo bien. (It's all good.)

Customer Disservice

I feel I have officially entered "Old Fogey Codgerville" because I am continuously dissappointed and upset by the incredibly poor service we experience almost everywhere.

We bought our new vehicle from a very chipper and upbeat "Gen Y" fellow who seemed unable to hear/understand and deliver on our expectations (i.e, when you get the phone call that your new car is "all ready for pick-up", you don't expect to arrive and spend 2.5 more hours while they dick around with final prep). It was clear truck sales is not his dream job; he really came to life telling us about his true passion for marine biology and studying whales. We were told to expect to receive a customer satisfaction survey and that ticking anything other than "Complete Satisfaction" constituted a failing mark for him. Suffice it to say the survey will be going in the garbage. We weren't completely satisfied and I have no confidence they would understand what we felt they needed to do to improve. We told him verbally several times what our expectations were and how to meet them, and it all fell on deaf ears.

I can't seem to convince my Internet Service Provider (ISP) that hosts my business e-mail and .com site to permanently give me adequate memory space on their server. They expand it for a while, and then rejig something on their servers, my space gets reduced, and business e-mail starts bouncing back undeliverable. I really need to switch ISPs, but feel in my heart it's likely I will have problems with any ISP to whom I give my business. I just don't have a lot of faith that anyone knows what they are doing, especially in tech area.

My husband has been living a nightmare with the phone company (Telus). He dropped his cell phone in the water, so needed a new one. Telus's website and phone support leave a lot to be desired. No matter when you phone them, you get the message that "call volumes and wait times are higher than expected" and then you spend hours getting bounced around, sometimes cut off, and poor, inattentive service when you do get a live person on the phone.

In John's case, he ordered a new phone and specified in some detail that he wanted a flip phone (i.e., covered buttons so it doesn't "pocket dial") and the Telus rep assured him that's what he was getting. John checked later on what had been recommended and ordered for him, and it was NOT a flip phone, and customer reviews complained it "pocket dialled" - in other words it was exactly what he had said he did not want. He called back and waited all over again to explain and correct the problem.

The new phone finally arrived and he was unable to get it activated by using the website. He had to call Telus, wait in that purgatory of a phone queue, argue with them about their ridiculous $25.00 fee to turn his new phone on and, when they did do an activation (by a supervisor!) they activated an old Samsung phone he used to have and not the new one they just sent him, so he had to call again and repeat the whole process to get this corrected. I sincerely thought his head was going to explode.

On top of the cell phone nonsense, our Telus wireless modem at the cottage isn't working and it took another 3 hours with two technicians before they were finally convinced to comply with John's original request to simply send us a new modem. Fingers crossed it works when it arrives.

That's my venting. No solutions in sight. Seems you just have to expect problems these days, and be pleasantly surprised if there aren't screw ups.

Todo bien. (It's all good.)

Before I Am Dust

Last Sunday, I scattered my mother's ashes at the stretch of beach she had specified. She died earlier this year, and I was keeping the ashes until my older sister (who I refer to as "Gigi") decided what she was comfortable with regarding timing and her participation in scattering the ashes.

As readers may know from other blog posts, my sister and I are seriously and permanently estranged due to our differences over our mother's final months (managing her illness and finances, and related disagreements and hurts, led us to mutually tear our relationship apart).

Personally, I would have been fine scattering the ashes immediately after the cremation, but Gigi wasn't ready. She didn't know if she could be present (she has a sick, elderly husband), or if she even wanted to be present.

Because of the state of our relationship, and the fact Gigi had been so distant and uninvolved in the years leading up to this point, I told her I'd be fine if she decided she wanted to take care of final act on her own somewhere in the future. I would give her the ashes and the rest would be up to her. I didn't have to be there (frankly, I felt I had been there throughout our mother's life).

I put the ashes away on a shelf in a closet and waited. A few months passed. Gigi eventually e-mailed me that she'd decided she was not coming west any time soon, nor did she want to take over this responsibility; she said I should just go ahead and take care of scattering the ashes sometime this summer. I told her I would. And I let her know the date and time I would be doing it so she could observe the moment however she chose.

The chosen beach is where my mother hung out in her beautiful, glorious youth; she and my father conducted a lot of their courtship there. It is the beach where I learned how to swim, on a family vacation in 1962. It's the beach where Gigi crossed paths with a huge Dungeness crab while wading, and screamed her head off - while our maternal grandmother waded out to her, caught the crab with her bare hands, and cooked him for dinner. This beach is where my father's ashes were scattered. Now my mother has joined him.

You can't scatter the ashes of the generation before you without a keen awareness that you are next up. The knowledge that our lifetimes are incredibly finite and quickly fleeting presses in. One moment I was three years old and learning to swim in that ocean. In what seems like the blink of an eye, I am 51 and scattering my mother's ashes into that same surf. One more eye blink and I will be within range of being dust myself.

I think my job in life right now is to figure out what I want to be, what I want to do, what I want to have, before I become dust. I am not talking about a "bucket list" so much as figuring out a path to the crematorium that is not paved in regrets.

Todo bien. (It's all good.)

Monday, September 6, 2010

A Scattering of Ashes

I've done the last thing I will ever officially need to do for my mother. Yesterday, on a quiet, calm, sunny Sunday morning, I scattered her ashes at the beach location she had specified.

The tide was low, so I walked quite far out on the firm, grey sand to reach the pebbly tidal pools where I could release her ashes onto some rippling waters.

I mentally said "The Lord's Prayer" as I carefully shook her ashen remains back into nature. I lingered momentarily over the "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us" part. I haven't forgiven her trespasses, and don't think I ever completely will. I certainly won't ever forget them.

What was most comforting about this final act was the full realization there can be no new trespasses. And I can deal with the memories of by-gone trespasses.

My mother wasn't the only one spiritually "released" on that beach yesterday.

Todo bien. (It's all good.)

Saturday, September 4, 2010

"Henry" Saves Us From Disaster

John and I have always named our cars; even before we met each other, we each had this habit. Not that every single car got named (John's owned more cars but named fewer), but the important ones seem to get dubbed with something. There's been Betty-Lou (a.k.a. Toyo-Glide), Dawson, Arrow, Beep, The Boss, and Dart, to name just a few of the vehicles that have been in our lives.

Late this past week, we did a trade-in and struck a deal for a new Ford. They had to locate the model and colour we wanted as they did not have it on the lot, so we knew it could be a few days before the new vehicle arrived for pick up.

We kept with our plans to leave town for the long weekend, tidied up the condo, closed drapes, and made sure lights etc. were off before locking up. Our last stop before leaving town for several days was at the dealership to sign the paperwork - then it would be off to the cottage.

We signed the paperwork and got the news that our new vehicle could be delivered as soon as the next day (today)! Being immediate-gratification-types, we decided to stick around town for one more day to get the new vehicle as soon as possible. So, we delayed the trip to the cottage for one night and headed home to put the groceries and some frozen food back in the fridge to be re-packed up today.

We got back to our condo and opened the front door to a loud noise and burning smell...John investigated and discovered the paper shredding machine in my office had turned on all by itself and was running full bore! We'd been gone about 2 hours at this point and, judging from the heat and smell of an overheated motor, this thing had been running for a while!

We just shuddered to think what could have happened if we hadn't unexpectedly decided to come home; I had not been due back for 4 days. We could easily have had a fire...and this would have been right on the heels of our condo flood disaster and the past 4 months of repairs.

We feel our new vehicle purchase spared us from another terrible disaster (not sure of the message though...spend thousands to save even more thousands?!?). John named the new truck "Henry" (as in Henry Ford) so we have Henry to thank for sending us home to avert a possible fire.

The evil paper shredder is now in "lock" mode and will not be able to run without a human to turn it on.

Todo bien. (It's all good.)