Middle Class My Ass

WARNING: The following rant is negative. I will not even try to be upbeat. I believe you will see that my anger is justified.

Middle class Americans are being squeezed like pus from a pimple. I can't even use the term middle class Americans seriously. There is no middle class. We are lower middle class or maybe even poverty dwellers. In most cases this financial hardship is caused by outside sources. Thieving banks, soul-less Wall Streeters, moronic politicians and the condescending rich. We fight and strive and struggle and work, and still fall further and further behind until there is no comfort, no safety, no goddamn peace of mind.
These words were inspired by a horrible thing that happened to a couple I know. Friends of mine. In the interest of anonymity I will call them Steve and Chris. Their story is typical of the majority of people our age - the middle fifties folks who have worked all their lives, raised kids, and should be looking forward to a comfortable retirement, but instead live in fear and uncertainty and the worry that their "golden years" will be painful and hopeless.
We get laid off because our employers are consolidating or the economy sucks or the management is incompetent. We are forced to accept jobs for half the pay we were previously earning because the job market sucks. Our houses have been devalued because investors and banks played games in the market and we are the ones who suffer. It no longer matters how hard you work or how honest you are or how much you hoped your home would be worth after twenty five years. You have no control.
Steve and Chris have been through all of this.
They hate winter - obviously intelligent people - they want to sell their home and move to Florida. They can't because the housing market sucks THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN.
Their home was robbed yesterday. Chris got home and the criminal scum were IN THE HOUSE. She called out Steve's name thinking he was home and the thieves fled. They took jewelry, collectibles, memories and hope. They lost stuff that was worth something financially and stuff that was worth something emotionally. Jewelry inherited from parents, jewelry given to each other.
They were violated. Their sense of safety in their own home was destroyed. Steve told me that the financial struggles they have endured robbed them of their future. Losing items that were emotionally valuable to them robbed them of their past. There are no more powerful words than that.
Robbery is a random thing and extreme. But the point is, how much can hard working people take? Steve and Chris never gave up. They made adjustments, kept working hard and kept on hoping. As many of us do.
What exactly are they supposed to hang on to now?
They have been robbed by the privileged, and now they have been robbed by criminal scum.
It is an extreme and painful symbol to me of the hopelessness of the "middle class."
I hope Steve and Chris are not mad at me for talking about their situation. It comes from intense anger and I don't always think clearly when I am pissed off. If I was wrong to do this I apologize deeply.
I just could not help myself.