We Can't Afford It

I never had to worry very much about money when I was growing up. Not bragging, just stating a fact. We weren’t rich, but we were comfortable. So, imagine my surprise when I found myself newly divorced and having to live on a fraction of my former income. Contrary to popular belief among some groups, this is what generally happens to women who are not celebrities, when they divorce, even when the former husbands earn lots of money. This, and acquiring a reputation for being frigid.

I knew I had to get a job, so that’s what I set out to do. My experience as a legal secretary didn’t help me in this small town, because the lawyers all had to interact with my ex, and they considered it some kind of conflict of interest, I guess, to hire me. This meant I had to find a job of some other kind, and one that would pay less.

I also ran into another stumbling block. Business men here were reluctant to hire the ex-wife of someone who was reasonably prominent. I discovered I had no friends I could call my own. I did know one man, slightly, who was a manager in one of the factories here, who commented a few times in passing that he was thinking of hiring a secretary. I said, “What a coincidence! I’m looking for a secretarial job.” He dragged his feet for a while until I decided to take the bull by the horns. I was becoming desperate for a job, and didn’t want to have to move away, so I did what any red-blooded, liberated American woman would do. I got him drunk, and got him to agree to hire me. The first morning he came to work and saw me sitting there in front of my IBM Selectric, he looked pensively at me, as if he wondered what I was doing there, and if I had done something that he should have remembered to get him to hire me.

For the record, I didn’t have to do anything unladylike to get the job. He was just a pushover when he got sloshed, and I used that to my advantage. After working there for 10 years without any benefits except basic health insurance, I got another secretarial job (in a more conventional fashion) with a much larger company. In my second job, I received better benefits and vacation time, but no appreciable raise in pay. Fifteen years later, in the same job, I was pulling down $350.00 per month more than when I started working there.

By then, I was well acquainted with the phrase, “We can’t afford that.” My children never entirely embraced my level of acceptance of the phrase, but they certainly understood that when I said it, I meant it.

Factoid: Over 50% of households in this country have an income of under $50,000.00 per year. We have built a house of credit cards, and now, it is beginning to collapse under the weight of our debt.

Here’s my question:

Since big corporations won't have the integrity to regulate themselves, why can't we put back into effect all the regulations that the likes of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush cancelled, with the enthusiastic assistance of Congress and the Senate?

If we can’t bear to admit it to ourselves, why can’t realtors be required by law to say, “I’m sorry, but with your income level, you just can’t afford a house this expensive.” Why can’t bankers say, “You can’t afford another SUV, so how about a Ford Focus?” Why can’t General Mills/General Foods, etc., say, “We don’t really need to offer 14 varieties of everything and new and improved products every year to make a decent profit.”

Above all, why can’t my government learn to say, “We can’t afford it.”? “We can’t afford another war.” “We can’t afford to bail out another Corporation/Bank, City.” We can’t afford to deny our citizens Universal Health Care/Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security. “We can’t afford to let Pharmaceutical companies squeeze sick people to the point of having to decide whether to buy pills or groceries” “We can’t afford the bankruptcies/loan defaults/credit card debt.”

There is no shame in the phrase, “I can’t afford it.” The shame is in going ahead and spending, anyway.

I’d better stop, now. I’m beginning to hyperventilate.