Forget Wall Street and Capitol Hill; We just want to get through the day

Forget Wall Street and Capitol Hill; We just want to get through the day
                        
Well, the stock market went on a wild ride last week. Congress is still debating who to put on its first-string debating team; you know, the people who are going to spend more time arguing about debt and what’s getting cut and whose taxes won’t get raised. The decision by Standard & Poor’s to lower the country’s bond rating threw the global markets into a tailspin. The GOP Presidential candidates are debating who’s wrong and how each one of them is going to fix it. And so my question is: do you really care? More importantly, do you even understand? I don’t. I’m not even sure I want to understand. This was part of a dinner-table discussion the other night, after Husband and I sat staring at the news, with all the up-and-down charts and the talking heads predicting more gloom and doom for the economy. So, if you look past all that, I said to Husband, what’s the bottom line? We agreed on the answer, at least our answer. We don’t really understand The Whole Machine, nor do we understand how the federal government fits into it. But, we did agree, most Americans want to have a job, a decent place to live, two vehicles in the garage, food on the table, some money for vacation and the hope they can retire before they die. It’s pretty simple. I’d add to that they’d like the security of health care and a nice school for their kids. All the complex machinations of the market, the infighting in Washington, the endless speculation – it’s just white noise to most of us. This is what I know: both husband and I get up in the morning in our house, which – while hardly paid for – is in no imminent danger of foreclosure. We both go to our jobs, for which we are thankful. We pay our credit card bill each month, even when paying it hurts a bit. It’s better than paying the finance charge. We are hardly penny-pinchers, nor do we spend money like there’s no tomorrow. We consider ourselves neither conservative nor liberal. We are middle-of-the-road folk in the Middle Class of Middle America. We don’t dream of immense wealth, nor do we want to face the prospect of being poor. My guess is that we are like most Americans. Most of our financial and emotional energy is spent on the here and now. Every now and then we get a break. Sometimes we suffer a setback. Somehow, we survive. We don’t expect the government to help us, nor do we expect the government to get in our way. The problems of Washington and Wall Street seem distant to us, since we are just trying to survive and maybe put a penny back here and there. Maybe that seems pedestrian to those movers and shakers. Maybe we should be more astute when it comes to How Things Get Done. But for now, we have our good days and our bad days and either way, we’re pretty happy.


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