Dear Joe,
In your reply to the lady who wrote in about the California housing bubble ("Signs that real estate bubble has popped"), you wrote: "I suspect losing one's home and its attending spell inducing goods and services and being out on the street will do the trick."
I have a story for you. An acquaintance/friend of mine is so thoroughly brainwashed and "out of it" that she spent all her money, retirement funds plus a sizable inheritance in five years. She has been homeless now for an entire year and do you know what she STILL does? If she has any cash, she will either buy a glass of wine at a bar or buy some piece of shit at a yard sale.
She has a storage unit with her remaining consumer commodities in it, the ones she bought during her spending spree. Things like collectible Star Wars figures that are worth big money, she says. Her three gigantic TVs are spread in locations around town during the two to three month period when she got evicted. All she can think about is getting a place where she can watch TV again every day and night. She doesn't really enjoy couch surfing at my place because we don't watch TV and we eat boring vegetables and rice that are not ready-to-eat.
Part of getting back on her feet to her means a place with a microwave that she can cook all her boxed food in. She has stayed with us probably six weeks over the course of the last year and EVERY TIME she stays over she asks several times where the microwave is and why we don't get one.
By the way, she's 57. She's only one of many homeless people here in real estate hell called Ashland, Oregon but she has no insight into her situation and no political or philosophical rationale for being homeless, she just is and getting back to spending and consuming is what she wants.
My own situation is grim too. I've been income-deficient for the five years I've been here. I have 20 years experience in my field and I'll be damned if I will work for any despotic assholes for $9.00 an hour. Luckily I had savings and I live like I'm on welfare or retired, $800 a month for all the bills. It sucks but being a prisoner of debt would suck more. Wish me luck, getting to $1500 per month in my livelihood endeavors will get me off food stamps and I'll have $700 a month to sock back into the cushion account. That is, if the banks don't fail.
I wonder, really wonder, if even homelessness will bring brainwashed Americans to their senses.
Love your thinking, Joe, keep it up. We need you!
Best regards,
Janet
Ashland, Oregon
