"A Chicken In Every Pot"

Tonight as I was playing my nightly game of solitaire, my mind kept wandering to the class my husband and I are taking together. It is called "Getting Ahead in a Getting By World" (or something like that). It is to help us get out of the cycle of just "getting by".

I'm not a politician. I only took a couple of secretarial classes at YSU about 30 years ago. I DO have a high school diploma.

Here's my point. When the steel mills closed, and, over the years, all the other industry was moved overseas, even I, with my limited education, could see the downfall of our economy.

Our country was a "middle class" country and we were proud of it. Remember "a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage"? The land of opportunity? That was because we were a thriving middle class culture. Factories and industries flourished and provided our populace with employment that put "a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage".

So when the bulk of that industry was shipped overseas because of this country's greed, (I guess we wanted ten chickens, a BMW, and a Mercedes).....even I could see where this would lead.

All those jobs....LOST!

All those people....unemployed.

Our middle class is decreasing and our lower class is growing by leaps and bounds and few of them, if any, don't even have a pot to pee in, let alone a chicken.

Our welfare system.....ho boy! What a mess....if by chance someone in a lower class gets a job that pays minimum wage, we take their food stamps away and any benefits they have so that it is virtually impossible for them to get ahead. So many just remain unemployed, so that they could feed their families and get health insurance for them.

Here's my question (I got sidetracked), if I could see this coming as an uneducated individual...how come the people who voted to send this work away didn't see this coming?

What did they think was going to happen to all those people working in those factories?

I don't know when I got so frustrated with this country and the way things have been crumbling. Maybe when in January of 2006 I (as a food pantry director) gave food to 45 families.

Or maybe it was when, in January 2007, I gave food to 65 families.

Or maybe it's this year, on January 29, I have given food to over 127 families just this month.

Or maybe it's when my children must get reduced lunches (at school) and we have a hard time scraping up the $2 a week for that!

I've never been one to argue politics. I've never felt smart enough and that everyone is entitled to their opinion. But, it's becoming clearer and clearer to me where this country is headed and it's NOT a pretty picture.

So much for the "land of opportunity".

So what do we do? How do we change things? CAN things change? What do you think? Go ahead....I could take it!