Re: Disaster for U.S. citizens
Dear President Obama:
Many many Americans like myself who were comfortably in the middle or upper middle class are in great trouble. Large numbers have lost their jobs. I'm sure you know what that means. Suddenly, without jobs, one cannot pay one's bills, resulting in shame and retribution. Those who cannot pay their mortgages lose their houses, but how to pay rental bills with no salary? What is to become of all these people? As you know, job losses have been tremendous.
I don't see how all these bereft people's basic needs will be accomodated without the kind of massive public work programs that my distant cousin Franklin Roosevelt instituted in the last great depression. Many of the responses your administration have made are only a drop in the bucket of what will be needed. They, also, tend to benefit the highest earners, and many measures will not provide solutions immediately.
I am sure you are aware that even those, such as myself with a tenured job in a state educational institution with increased scope due to the crisis, are earning less but having larger bills, due to interest increases on borrowed money. We, too, may have to give up our houses, and the benefits from our future pensions and current health insurance are shrinking. We are putting off healthcare because it costs so much more. We are not buying anything unnecessary.
We do not yet face disaster but those who depended on our business do, since we can no longer spend money in the industries they worked for.
I'm not convinced that your economic advisors who are trying to "stimulate" the economy to persuade citizens to start spending again understand that people whose pensions have been gutted and whose work careers placed at serious risk are unnlikely to spend freely again in their lifetimes. I'm minded of what happened to the spending habits of my mother and grandparents, who went through the great depression. They remained very restrained in the use of money their entire lives.
It's important that you and your administrative people keep in touch with what is happening here on the ground. If you don't, I think it will make your approaches less than effective at a time when great effectiveness is necessary for a solution.
