Tim Rogers: Numbers that matter

Good morning. For anyone who follows the news, here were the relevant numbers from last week: -634, +429, -519, +423, +125.

Those, of course, are the roller coaster swings that the stock market put us through as investors, traders, economists, bankers and all of the other assorted Wall Street types tried to read the tea leaves of what the downgrading of our debt by Standard and Poor really meant.

Are we lurching toward the long-feared “double dip” recession, or were we just seeing enterprising speculators taking advantage of the situation to rack up tremendous profits by selling high and buying low?

Personally, I have no way of knowing since I am not by any stretch of the imagination an active trader.

In fact, most of us have no way to impact what is happening on Wall Street.

If we are lucky, we have our money in a 401(k) fund or an IRA and we are just hoping that it will be worth enough when we retire that it will be able to help us through our senior years with the assistance of Medicare and Social Security.

Unfortunately, the events of the last three weeks haven’t helped any of us as the Dow has lost nearly 11 percent of its value during that time period, causing all of us to grip our wallets a little tighter.

Sadly, an increasing number of Americans don’t even have this small security net to fall back on. Either they aren’t making enough to cover the bills right now or they had to raid their retirement funds just to make it through the last several years and suffered the double blow of decreased retirement savings and the enormous tax hit from Uncle Sam that accompanies having to use this money.

No, for the vast majority of Americans and people who live in the Dalton area, the Wall Street numbers from last week might as well have have been the celebrity news of the week.

For most of us, what is happening on Wall Street has about as much to do with our lives as what the rich and famous are doing in Hollywood.

For most of us, the debate about whether the country is going to enter into a double dip is just words. Regardless of what the so-called experts tell us, most us around here haven’t climbed out of the first one.

Our wages are still down. Many of us are still unemployed. Those of us fortunate to be employed find that, if the companies we are working for are making more money, it sure isn’t trickling down to us.

I was thinking about this as I read another story that I think spoke more meaningfully to many of us than how Wall Street did.

Strangely, it was about the booming market for luxury items.

Reading it, I discovered that the demand for all kinds of high-end items is way up including Mercedes that cost more than $200,000, Chanel sequined tweed coats from Nordstrom’s that cost more than $9,000 and $2,495 thigh-high suede boots from Saks.

Thank goodness, I thought, that I would look terrible in thigh-high boots.

Tucked at the bottom of this long list of gluttony was the kicker, however.

Walmart, the story said, has started selling smaller packages of toilet paper. Many of its shoppers, it seems, don’t have it in the budget to buy the larger multipacks.

We have always had the mega-rich. They are nothing new and for the most part we can ignore them and the lives they live behind the gates of their estates.

What we aren’t used to in America, however, is the fact that more and more of us are slipping backwards into the class that can’t afford the multipack of toilet paper.

More than 100 years ago, this country was reeling from the economic devastation that a series of recessions had caused during the 1890s. We were just finishing what historians call the Gilded Age, a period where giant businesses ran the country and the economy went through tremendous boom and bust periods.

A small number of Americans made tremendous fortunes during this period, but greater numbers of Americans’ lives were destroyed by the unchecked greed that Washington allowed to flourish by its inactivity.

Finally, at the beginning of the 20th century, reformers from both parties said enough is enough. They put in place common sense changes that protected Americans from basic things such as consumer fraud and broke apart the giant monopolies that had been created over the previous 30 years.

Many of these reforms helped begin the creation of what we know as the American Middle Class and launched us into the Great American Century.

What we are seeing now is the slow erosion of the middle class.

The American Dream is to make it from the middle class into the ranks of the rich. More people, however, are being lost out the back end as the opportunities to get ahead are slowly squeezed.

Unfortunately, no one driving a $200,000 Mercedes on Wall Street or in Washington sees this. They have no concept of what is really happening to the American economy because they only hobnob with the $9,000 jacket set.

The numbers that really matter to most of us aren’t the Dow Jones, but the ones we see on our paycheck, at the grocery store and at the gas pump.

They tell the real story.

And they suggest that the vast majority of us are closer to the single pack class than we are to needing new $2,495 boots.

Tim Rogers is editor of The Daily Citizen. He can be reached at timrogers@daltoncitizen.com.

Editorials

Search Results

Discussion

Site Map

Contact Us