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Hard times - it’s all relative
Posted By katie allison granju
This piece from the LA Times titled “Public Senses an Economy Going South” honestly reads like something from The Onion to me. It lays out the case that times are tough by spotlighting the “difficult” choices real Americans are facing just to make ends meet.
He sells heavy equipment on commission, and construction firms aren’t buying. Covelli has sold his Corvette, stopped taking his wife out to dinner, pulled his son from the ski team. He has withdrawn nearly $50,000 from his retirement accounts and started taking extra work, laying carpet and pouring concrete evenings and weekends. Still, he owes more than he earns, and he can’t seem to fix it.
The faltering economy costs Leslie Garza, 18, nearly an hour of sleep each morning; her mom won’t spend the gas money to drive her to downtown Los Angeles for her job scooping ice cream. So she sets the alarm early and takes the bus. Garza recently canceled her cellphone service to stretch her $450-a-week paycheck.
Enoch Brown, 49, a data- entry worker in Atlanta, said his annual household income is about $100,000.
Yet he’s riding public transportation to work so he can save on gas and parking.
I’m not denying that there are folks out there who are really struggling - including middle and upper middle class folks - but these anecdotes aren’t very persuasive in making the reporter’s point.
Jan 11th, 2008
It is all relative. The cost of living in LA or Atlanta vs Knoxville is very different.