It's us, too.

This letter is specifically (and lovingly) written to an activist friend of mine who is attempting to convince people that the economic-collapse is not affecting people “like us” who don’t have 401Ks or money invested in the stock market, but you can read it too.

My Dear Friends,

By now, we’ve all heard the rumors that America is leading the world in an economic collapse. How we got to this point, the meaning behind the numbers ticking across the bottom of the screen, and the tossing around of taxpayer money to folks in the automotive and banking industries only help to confuse the situation to those of us who aren’t economists. I’m writing today to address a very specific concern among so many of my peers who seem to think that this economic crisis is somehow not affecting folk who fit into the category of working poor families.

It’s true. We never had 401Ks to lose. We didn’t lose any money in the stock market because we didn’t have any to invest in the first place. But we did have jobs. We were able to go the grocery store and buy mozzarella cheese. This is not the case anymore.

For sure, prices at the grocery store have gone up. Easy example: standard mozzarella cheese blocks have gone from somewhere around five dollars to eight dollars. And yes, sometimes prices go up on particular items. It’s about more than cheese.

We can’t pay for rising prices because we don’t have any extra money. Thanks to the loss of revenue, we’re not getting a Christmas bonus this year. We’re not getting overtime pay. If we work for tips, (anyone in the service industry – your manicurist, waitress, pizza delivery guy, etc.) we are making less than half of what we made last year. Not to mention the layoffs.

Just because we don’t necessarily understand the green ticking numbers at the bottom of the screen doesn’t mean they’re arbitrary. They indicate a loss of profits for a company. Companies are not arbitrary either. We are companies. When companies lose money, that means people lose money. When people lose money, they make budget cuts. The budget cuts they make are us. They lose money, they fire us. When they fire us, we don’t do things like get haircuts or go out to eat. When we stop doing things like getting haircuts and going out to eat, the people who work at the salon and the restaurant don’t make tips. When they don’t make tips, they go home with nothing. There is no hourly wage.

When companies lose money, they stop doing things like building additions to their workplaces or repainting their living rooms. When they stop doing those things, construction workers spend the day staring at each other in meeting spots around the country, waiting for hours for someone to need something. When that doesn’t happen, they go home empty handed.

The economy is set up in such a way that if it falls, we all fall. Granted, some of us are better at living without money than others, however, the system we are familiar with assumes that we have places we can go if we are in severe financial hardship, like food banks, or emergency shelters. These places are not equipped to deal with the magnitude of jobless folk that the crisis is producing. Many of us have begun to supplement our joblessness with prostitution, drug sales, and theft.

And yes, sweet friend. These are not new ideas. Millions of Americans, generally people of color, generally women, generally in ghettoized neighborhoods have been privy to this kind of underground market for generations. We need not forget about these folk that capitalism already abandoned due to their inability to produce. People with mental illness. People who never learned how to read. People who were born into circumstances which breed more poverty. Life is harder for these folk now too, if that’s possible. Lines are long at free breakfast kitchens. Food supplies are dwindling at food pantries. Shelters are full. Ugly gets uglier.

My point, dear friend, is simply this: It’s not just them and their 401Ks. It’s us too.