Chapter 7: What Have We Done?

This chapter describes the events of June 2017. The economy is collapsing in full force, taking down everyone and everything with it.

What Have We Done?

Economic Developments in June 2017:

• The unemployment rate continues to escalate, rising to 21.3 percent, as employers shed another 6,982,000, breaking the record for worst monthly job losses, set in April. The economy has seen 19.7 million jobs lost in just three months.

• Many workers who manage to remain employed do see their hours reduced. A lack of work in many workplaces causes many employers to send workers home many days. The underemployment rate shoots up to 54.1 percent, and that’s just among those who are counted in the labor force. The true number is likely much higher, as millions have given up looking for work in recent months, and are no longer counted in the workforce.

• And for the hours that workers manage to work, there are more reductions in wages, as wages fall another 10.8 percent for the month of May. Wages are falling sharply across all income levels, even high-income professionals who weren’t hit as hard in earlier months. Wage cuts occur in part to make up for the catastrophic drop in business revenues, but also because firms try to undercut each other’s prices.

• The average household income fell another 23.1 percent in the month of June, the sharpest drop on record. Many families are now running out of places in their household budgets to cut, many are cutting back on things like food and shelter now.

• Stock markets worldwide predictably continue their tumble, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes the month of June just below 5,000, the lowest level it has been at since the 1990’s.

• The unmitigated slide of incomes continues to clobber the retail industry, as retail sales fall another 27.3 percent. Mass closings of retail stores happen all over the country, as retailers attempt to cut their mushrooming losses. Many large retail chains continue to close their lower-performing locations.

• The drop in retail spending, of course, hammers the manufacturing sector, as manufacturing in the U.S. falls another 22.7 percent. This drop pales in comparison to drops seen in poorer countries, as the mass closing of factories in those places continues unabated.

• Businesses desperately try to bring customers into their doors, as prices fall 4.1 percent. Economists worry deeply about the accelerating deflation, which is seen as a sign that the worst is yet to come.

• The rate of business failures skyrockets in the month of June, as many downturn-weary business owners give up trying to make things work in the face of huge operating losses, and shut their doors for good. Closed up shops from all types of businesses now dot the landscape of cities and towns everywhere.

• The official poverty rate in the United States in June now stands at 58.6 percent, as complete ruin now seemingly looms right around the corner for many households.

• Many vacant buildings, such as former restaurants now operate as soup kitchens, as community leaders in communities all over nation team up to provide food, clothing, and shelter to the rapidly growing ranks of the needy. These efforts are admirable, and provide lots of help to those in need, but the demand for these services is far too great for private charity to meet all the need. Estimates of the homeless population double once again in June, to over 12.5 million homeless individuals. Harrisvilles everywhere are rapidly filling up. Nations all over the globe report a similar phenomenon.

By the start of the month of June 2017, we were now two months post-EFA. The mass dislocation caused by the economic changes was far-reaching, and readily apparent to everyone. Despite predictions to the contrary, the rate at which the economy was dropping was accelerating rapidly, as job losses and business closures began to pile up, and take a serious toll on the American people. By early June, one could see everywhere around them what was going on. A drive around Ontario, California, or anywhere else for that matter, revealed the extent of the damage being wrought by the Economic Freedom Act. My driving now focused on, not only getting to my destination, but also looking at the now-empty storefronts of businesses that had been shuttered. Just within two to three miles of my house, a dollar store, a party supply store, a car dealership, a burger place, a Mexican food restaurant, a bakery, a taekwondo studio, an Albertson’s supermarket, two smaller markets, a religious bookstore, three or four manufacturing facilities (I’m not quite sure what they made at those places), a Target store, a hardware store, three furniture stores, a computer repair shop, several construction sites, two contractor businesses, a couple of warehouses, a gas station, a law office, two auto mechanics, and two motels all closed their doors. Heck, even a strip club about two miles from my house shut down, which proved that, in this economy, not even sex sold anymore. This was just a sample of what I saw, surely in every community, the same was happening. I nearly broke down one day looking at all of this, just wondering what was to happen, to the small business owners who poured their blood, sweat and tears into their businesses, to the employees who lost their jobs when the business closed, and to the families of all the affected individuals. All of these people would see their lives destroyed in an instant, and in many cases, with nowhere else to turn. Indeed, all it took was for one bit of misfortune to throw most people into the ranks of the destitute.

One evening in June, after coming home from work, I saw up this up close and personal, and it was something that hit very close to home for me. This particular small business closure crushed me more than any other, as it was my very first job. Yes, after thirty-three years in business, Video Star was closing its doors for good. Business had been down for a couple of years, due to customers finding other sources to view movies such as Netflix (an online movie service), Redbox (a little self-service kiosk, located inside supermarkets and other stores, that one could rent movies from) or On-Demand movies, where one can order a movie and watch it without leaving the house. Despite those pressures, some video rental stores, such as Video Star, continue to survive. Many still liked the concept of walking around the store, browsing the titles, asking the clerk what is good. There was also the idea of supporting small local businesses that appealed to some individuals. Unfortunately, the downturn was the final straw for my old boss Raj, as he saw no way he could possibly stay open with nobody able to rent movies. It had to be incredibly painful for Raj, who had emigrated here from his native India to make a better life for himself and his wife Priya. That store was the very first business he owned, and it was the last he had still open, other than some rental properties he owned. Raj, a short man of about seventy with thick glasses that magnified his eyes when you looked at him, had referred to Video Star as his baby. Video Star was actually the very first video store to open in the city of Ontario, and it was the last to remain open. Whether it was myself or my mother, someone in my family had worked at that store.

That warm Monday evening in June, as I was on my way home from work, I decided to make a quick stop there, just to see how the place was holding up, before heading to Stater Bros. to pick up a couple of things for dinner. As I pulled up to the store, located in the middle of an aging strip mall on Fourth Street just east of Mountain Avenue in Ontario, when I noticed a ‘Going Out of Business” sign on the front window. Shocked and appalled and not at all surprised, I just had to pop in to see it for myself. The store was having a clearance sale, where they sell off all of its inventory to try to get as much money as possible, as well as get rid of the inventory. As I walked in, I saw my old manager Judy, a tall, slim Hispanic woman about my age, working at the register, attending to customers. Once the line calmed down about five minutes later, she greeted me with a hug:

“Hey Will, how’s everything going with you?” She asked.

“Eh, not so good, and I imagine it isn’t very good for you either.” I replied, noticing that even the clearance sale isn’t bringing in too many customers. “I can’t believe that this is happening. I figured that it would happen at some point, but it is still so saddening to actually see it.

“Yeah, it sucks, but I’ll manage somehow, I guess.” She said with a slight smirk which quickly turned into a frown.

“The economy must have done a number on this place, if Raj is deciding to close it down.” I inquired.

“Yeah, it was really bad, business dropped like 50 percent in April, then another 25 percent in May, every day was really slow. We let one employee go, then another, and Raj had to cut our pay, which he already did in April when the minimum wage went away. I’m making only five dollars an hour now, and the other girl who works here, she’s only at four dollars an hour. Even before Raj decided to close down, I was having a really hard time making rent, so I moved back in with my parents. I skipped a few meals so my little girl can eat. She can’t go without eating. Also, I need surgery on my leg, it has been really hurting for a few months . A doctor told me back in March that I need surgery on the leg, but once April started, I didn’t have Medi-Cal anymore, and I can’t afford any health insurance, so I can’t get the surgery. My leg will just get worse and worse, and I can’t do anything about it.” Judy told me as she walked back towards the register with a noticeable limp. “Well anyways, Raj told me last Monday that the store was going out of business. He didn’t take it well, he cried when he told me. Like, not just a few tears, he broke down. I had never seen him do that before. He had a really bad day. He is having a bad time, just like the rest of us. He is closing this store down, his son’s dentist office isn’t getting customers, and he had to start eviction proceedings on two of his tenants. He isn’t doing well at all.” Judy described to me.

“Oh my goodness, that’s terrible. I imagine he didn’t take to closing Video Star down very well at all.” I replied to her. “Well anyways, how is little Lily? She’s gotta be, what, almost three now?” I asked about her young daughter, who I hadn’t seen since I was still working there. I do remember how adorable she was, with her giant smile.

“She’s okay, getting big. I just am worried about the future. I don’t know how I’m gonna provide for her. My husband Andrew got his pay and hours cut at his job at the warehouse, so things are getting really tough. Lily is growing out of her clothes, and I can’t really afford now clothes. Her birthday is at the end of next month, but I can’t afford a birthday present of a party for her.” She told me with a sigh before helping a customer who had gotten in line with a stack of movies, all being sold at steep discounts, sometimes as much as 80 percent.

Things had gotten so bad for people that the store wasn’t attracting that many customers despite selling off movies as incredibly low prices. Some of the movies were under a dollar, and even new titles were five dollars, but people had so little spending money, so little discretionary income, that many couldn’t splurge, not even a little bit. This lack of buying power hit some industries harder than others, but soon enough, it could swallow up the entire economy, like it was already threatening to do. Many businesses, such as Video Star, simply couldn’t withstand the lack of demand any longer. The whole building where Video Star was located had fallen on hard times, as a bait and tackle place, a liquor store and a water store were also closed down or had a “Going Out of Business” sign on the front window indicating they too were soon to go out of business. The building across the street saw closures of a bakery, a Chinese food restaurant and a Rite Aid pharmacy in the last couple of months. The whole area of northwest Ontario, my stomping grounds while growing up, was in deep decline, just like countless others. It was a depressing sight for myself, as well as the people who called this area home. There had been plenty of downturns before, but nothing like this. I don’t think anyone had planned for, or even expected, things going this bad, this fast. The EFA had created far too big a shock for the system to hold up. Furthermore, it removed the programs, like food stamps and unemployment insurance, that served as shock absorbers to reduce the pain caused by downturns. The economy was clearly, and possibly irreparably broken.

The businesses that were trying to hold out and weather the worsening storm were continuing to take a hit. More wage cuts and layoffs were in store for the surviving companies, as they hoped to survive and thrive when and if conditions returned to anything resembling normal. I saw it at the Stater Bros. supermarket where I shopped, where fewer customers, with ever-shrinking grocery budgets, meant that more workers had to be laid off. My cashier friend Sandra worried immensely whenever she was called to speak to another employee, especially a manager (my buddy Franklin was now her manager), she recounted the way she broke out into a cold sweat and her heart raced whenever someone wanted to talk to her. Another one of her friends, a stocker named Randy, lost his job in the new round of job cuts in early June, and hasn’t been heard from since. The job cuts were clearly getting to her, as her workplace was apparently close-knit, the employee were mostly friends with each other. Sandra also told me that she really felt for the customers. “They buy less and less. I see more people having to put things back because they don’t have enough money. I’m tempted to pull a few bucks out of my wallet to help them, but then I realize that I can’t afford it either. It seems that every week is slower than the one before it. So many are losing their jobs, and in this community, a lot of families used food stamps. Food stamps going away really, really hurt those families. I can’t help for everyone who is hurting right now. I stand over Aiden some nights as he is sleeping, and I just worry about what is next. Will I get let go next time they lay people off? Can I afford to feed him? I don’t know if my dad will keep his job, or if I will keep mine. I’m so stressed. I cry a lot, and my hair is falling out in big clumps. But I can’t show that to Aiden. I have to be strong for him.”

Over at AutoZone, where I recently had to buy another bottle of brake fluid for my car (I really wish I could fix that), I asked about Todd, the guy I bought my last bottle from back in April. Carlos, the burly, thirtyish Latino man who managed the store, told me that Todd was let go two weeks earlier, when the store downsized. Carlos also told me that apparently, Todd’s wife lost her job the very same day, when the Montclair Target store she was a cashier at closed down. My heart sank when I heard that, hoping that they had someplace to go, perhaps with relatives or something. “I hope they don’t end up in the Harrisville”, I told Carlos as I wrapped up my purchase and left to go put the fluid in my car. I hoped I would bump into Todd, just to see how he and his wife were doing. My mind couldn’t help but think of everyone that I knew, what had happened to them in the last couple of months. I thought about how everyone I encountered in my day-to-day life had been adversely affected by the events of the last few months. These thoughts now occupied every spare bit of space in my head. I couldn’t escape the thoughts, no matter how much I tried. Whether I was at work or trying to watch a sporting event on the TV or i cooking or in the shower, it consumed me. I couldn’t help but wonder how people were doing during this overwhelming time.

I kept seeing signs of trouble in any store I walked in, the signs that a business was failing. Not just the glaring lack of customers, but also things like reductions of business hours, or in the number of products any given place carried, or in the quality of the products being offered. I saw entire sections of stores being phased out, like at the Kmart in east Ontario or at several stores at the Ontario Mills mall. I saw places offering promotions that seemed increasingly desperate. I saw maintenance fall by the wayside, as stores slowly fell apart. Messes and stains were left uncleaned and many businesses stopped giving customers access to restrooms. I saw fear in the eyes of employees, especially in chain stores which were on the verge of closing. They knew that their store was on the list of locations that were to be potentially shut down. Every retail chain was now closing locations, or planning to do so, in the wake of catastrophically bad sales, and there was a pervasive fear, a paranoia even, that their jobs were the next to get the axe. Even those employees who kept their jobs kept them at lower pay rates and fewer hours per week.

Speaking of which, one Wednesday afternoon in June, I decided to visit an old friend at lunchtime, someone I had not seen in a couple of months. Before the downturn, I would frequent a wonderful little Mexican restaurant located on Birch Street, just a few blocks down the road from the office named Rodrigo’s. This place had the most delectable tacos, burritos and nachos. I ate there perhaps once a week, and I got my pal Reggie to start eating there as well, he got as hooked to it as I did. Unfortunately, I hadn’t eaten there since March (I believe March 20th was the last time) because I had to cut eating out pretty much completely out of my budget in order to continue to afford the necessities like rent and groceries. But on this day, I had a few bucks to spare, and I had a craving for the carne asada nachos that I loved so much, so I stopped by. I also wanted to speak to my friend Rodrigo, the owner of the restaurant, just to see how he was doing. Rodrigo Andrade, a short, stocky Mexican man in his mid 50’s, opened his little restaurant back in the late 1980’s, using some family recipes and a small business loan from the local bank. He poured his heart and soul into this restaurant, and for many years, he was here seven days a week, taking orders, receiving shipments of ingredients, and even preparing the orders, whatever was needed of him that day to  make sure the place succeeded. The success of the business gave him and his wife Maria a decent life, allowing them to buy a nice little house in Santa Ana, to pay for piano lessons for his two sons, then their football equipment (one of the boys, Hector, starred at running back in high school), then eventually paid for their college educations at UCLA, where both boys currently attended. But now, like seemingly every other business, this restaurant had fallen on hard times.

“Oh my God, Will! How are you doing my friend? Long time, no see!” Rodrigo asked me in his unmistakable accent. He was either thrilled to see me, or just thrilled to see a customer walk into the doors.

“I’m hanging in there as good as I can, how about you?” I asked him back.

“Honestly, not so good. I’m not getting too many customers these days.” Rodrigo somberly relied, shaking his head in the process. “My business is down about 60 percent, I’m losing lots of money. I had to lay off two of my employees, and use cheaper ingredients. It hurts knowing that I’m feeding the customers walking through my door lower quality stuff, but I had to. I don’t know how much longer I can stay open. If it keeps slowing down, I will have to close.”

“Yeah, it’s tough all over, unfortunately. A lot of people can’t afford to eat out anymore. I have been eating nothing but sandwiches, leftover spaghetti, and Top Ramen for lunch. But today, I decided to stop by. I miss it here, so I decided to splurge today. It sucks that spending five bucks is now considered splurging, but I got my pay cut, and I can barely afford both rent and food now. Stuff like eating out and trips to anywhere are out of the question for me, and for most other people that I talk to. You’re not the only business owner facing this issue, not even close. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is hurting.” I told Rodrigo with a sigh.

We continued talking for a few minutes after I ordered my customary order of carne asada nachos, he told me while the cook was preparing my food that he was worried about going out of business. Rodrigo clearly despaired about the fact that he wouldn’t be able to pay for his sons to continue college, which was a shame since Oscar, the older of the two boys, had just one more year at UCLA, where he was a biology major. Hector wanted to go to law school, but that now looked to be out of the question, at least for the time being. Rodrigo had a nice nest egg saved up for retirement when it was time to get out of the restaurant game, but he was now afraid he would have to dip into the fund to keep from losing his house. His mortgage had just four years left on it, and it would be terrible to lose the house, even if its value was now plummeting (the house was now worth close to 100,000 dollars less than it was in March). We continued to talk while we ate, and I told him my situation was after he told me his. Once I finished my nachos, which were just as delicious as I remembered, I had to get back to work. Rodrigo thanked me profusely for dropping by, that it was good to see me come in. “I hope I can come in more, I’ll stop by whenever my budget allows” I told Rodrigo as I walked out the door, hoping that the place would still be around whenever I got the hankering for those nachos again.

Closer to home, I saw the pain people in the neighborhood felt. I watched two more families get thrown out of their houses in the apartment complex next door, one of which had a newborn baby boy. I didn’t know them, I don’t even recall seeing the tenants, a young Hispanic couple, before that balmy evening. But it still stung to watch the Sheriff’s Deputy forcing them out, removing their worldly possessions as they watched helplessly. I actually walked over to help the father of the baby boy pick up their possessions that the Sheriff’s Department was carelessly throwing on the lawn, while the mother, a thin woman with flowing black hair who could not have been older than twenty-one or twenty-two, made phone calls on the couple’s phone to relatives, all while the little one, whose name I was told was Isaac, screamed his head off. Finally, after about three hours, the parents of the woman showed up with a pickup truck that had a trailer attached. I offered to help load the truck and trailer, but I was told it would not be necessary. The man who I helped, who told me his name was Mike, thanked me and offered me twenty dollars for my trouble, which I refused. “No, no, you and your family need that twenty more than I do. Anyways, I wish you guys the best of luck.” I told Mike as we shook hands. As Mike walked off to help his girlfriend’s parents load his family’s stuff, I headed back into my apartment to reheat the macaroni and cheese that I finished cooking before I heard the commotion outside. I couldn’t help but think of that poor family as I ate and got ready for bed. Thankfully they had a place to go to in their time of need, unlike many others. I thought of what the future had in store for the young couple and little Isaac, who was probably just a few weeks old. I wonder what situation they were now living in, if the house was overcrowded, if the mom’s parents were still gainfully employed.

I heard that the people five houses down the street got tossed out of their house, as well as the family two houses past them. I also heard that the landlord of the house next to them was losing the property to foreclosure, and the bank was sure to throw those tenants out once they got the deed to the home. Thankfully, our landlord Sanjay saw the hardship that his tenants were going through and, despite the collapsing business at his business ventures, which caused him to struggle to make his payments on the mortgage of the apartment complex, he reduced everybody’s rent fifty dollars a month. Better to get a bit less from everybody, than to risk getting zero from some of us, I guess. Amidst the pain everyone was experiencing, I noticed one thing in myself that was starting to disturb me. Each eviction, each homeless person, each person going hungry or losing their job, was bothering me less. Was I losing my humanity, or was I just going numb to the suffering?

Speaking of suffering, there was plenty of it to go around. The number of Americans falling into extreme poverty (having income less than half of the official poverty line), according to a June report by the Center of American Progress, tripled between May and June. The demand for food, for clothing, for shelter, overwhelmed the already limited ability of charity groups to help, leading many to have to cease operations, at least temporarily. Thousands of churches all over the nation, on top of operating kitchens, began establishing makeshift shelters to help absorb the newly homeless. News stories of families sleeping in the pews of churches made headlines. Even despite the outpouring of support of church groups and other charities, the Harrisvilles continued to fill up rapidly. The shantytowns were now coalescing into their own makeshift communities, with families making little houses and schools, clinics, and even courts forming to serve the new communities of the unfortunate. The local soup kitchens moved their operations closer to the Harrisvilles in many places, sometimes even locating themselves on the grounds of whatever park or lot the Harrisville occupied. In all, the homeless population spiked to over nine million in June, as the rate of evictions and foreclosures rose even faster in June than it did in May. The number of people in poverty, at least according to official government figures, neared two-hundred million, nearly sixty percent of the population, as millions more middle-class and working-class individuals slid into poverty.

Looking further up, even those higher up the economic ladder felt the pinch. As I explained before, small business owners were losing business rapidly, and many were facing the loss of the businesses they had worked so hard building. Professionals such as doctors, lawyers, among others, saw drops in their incomes too, as their number of customers dropped sharply. Furthermore, professionals in the corporate world felt the pinch as well, as their companies laid off people in all departments, and even closed down department during the downturn, as revenues plummeted. This, combined with the cratering stock markets, took a toll. Unlike past downturns, nobody, no matter who they were, what they did, how well off they were, came out ahead. Indeed, everyone knew somebody who got a pay cut, lost a job, or lost a business. Indeed, in the month of June, every income group in the United States saw a decline in their median household income of at least 17 percent since just a month earlier. In fact, the richest 20 percent of the population saw the largest decline of any quintile of the income distribution in June. The downturn hit them a month or two slower than it did the poorest 20 percent, who saw a complete decimation of their standard of living immediately, but it eventually caught up to them as well, as their businesses and practices hemorrhaged customers, their professional jobs got eliminated, their home values tanked, and their stock portfolios got clobbered. According to Forbes magazine, an estimated 60 percent of the total American wealth had disappeared since the end of March. For comparison, about 30 percent of the total American wealth was lost in the entire Great Recession, which lasted two years. It was not lost on many that it was the exact economic policies that publications like Forbes had been calling for for years that caused the unprecedented destruction of wealth and jobs. In fact, Forbes was one of the leading cheerleaders for the Economic Freedom Act when it was proposed, publishing many glowing articles arguing in favor of the EFA. One February article had declared the passing of the EFA “The return of American greatness, and of the markets”, and stating that it would “usher in an era of unprecedented prosperity and growth, and make the United States the land of opportunity”. Just three months in, the American people got their verdict on the Economic Freedom Act, and it was unprecedented all right, just in the opposite direction that Forbes was predicting.

The mood of the nation had grown very downbeat amidst the mass economic dislocation, and in many cases, that uneasiness turned into outright anger. People lashed out in various ways, some peaceful, some not so much. Folks all over the country were demanding their state and local government provide relief for those being affected, which was by this point, well, everyone. During the Great Depression, before the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt established the beginnings of the federal safety net, states and municipalities provided relief to some of their more destitute residents. Seeing that the Harris Administration had no interest of recreating any aspect of the safety net, people turned to their state and local governments for help. Demonstrations took place in all fifty states, full of people demanding some relief, any relief, for those who lost their jobs, or got their pay cut. The protesters had another demand, as they demanded that police and sheriff’s departments slow down or stop the wave of evictions that were throwing millions into homelessness. These protests were mostly peaceful, but in a few places like Los Angeles and Chicago, a few individuals resorted to violence, looting stores and stealing merchandise. Of course, many in the media, especially Fox News, highlighted the violence, with one Fox host decrying the protesters as “thugs who just want free stuff and threw a tantrum when they didn’t get it”. Even though the protests began to fizzle shortly afterwards, most states, including California, looked into the feasibility of creating relief programs for their residents, hoping to reduce the amount of suffering. Individual cities, including Ontario and several surrounding cities such as Pomona, Chino and Upland, held meetings about the possibility of providing poor relief as well. The realities of the downturn quickly dashed these plans, as the collapse in tax revenues flowing into state and municipal coffers was already decimating their budgets, leaving no room for any sort of relief funds. To the contrary, state and local governments had to further tighten their belts, laying off teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other city workers. City buildings such as community centers and libraries were reducing hours and even closing in many places. Public works projects, like road and highway repairs, came to a screeching halt as well. The belt-tightening did indirectly lead to one protest demand being fulfilled, as some cities and counties did indeed reduce the number of evictions being carried out. Cook County, Illinois (where Chicago was located) did put in place a moratorium on evictions, much to the chagrin of landlords and realty companies, some of whom resorted to private police forces to evict tenants. The reductions of police forces everywhere came at the worst possible time, unfortunately, as the downturn led to more and more people turning to illegal acts in an effort to get by. All over the nation, there was a surge in many types of crime, especially vandalism and robbery. Many desperate people turned to getting any sort of money they can, even if it belonged to others. News broadcasts cautioned everyone to be extra careful amidst the crime wave. All this added to the somber mood of the country.

One long-running magazine, a progressive publication called The Nation, attempted to capture the pulse of the country. One issue in June asked readers to submit stories of how they were affected by the downturn of the last few months. The responses came in fast and furious, as thousands came in from all over the United States, from people of all walks of life. The magazine received far too many responses to print, but they decided to post the submissions on their website. Many of the responses were alike, concerning job losses and cuts in pay. One poor fellow in Florida got his pay cut four times in one month. One lady in Milwaukee was getting paid just one dollar per hour at the Burger King she worked at. Many of the submissions came from small business owners who were on the verge of losing their businesses, and others came from doctors who weren’t receiving payment from many of their patients. Other responses involved multiple hardships, as many people had to take in elderly parents who lost their Social Security (I personally saw this happen to my pal Franklin), while seeing reductions in income or job losses. Other submissions detailed even more heartbreaking situations. One guy in Maine wrote about how he had not eaten in over a week as he drove from town to town looking for a job, any job. Many responses came from people living in their cars, or were very close to doing so. More than a few came from people who had lost at least one loved one. One older woman from Portland, Oregon wrote that her eldest son killed his family before turning the gun on himself. One man in Mississippi lost his wife after she could no longer afford her medications. He felt that he wouldn’t stick around much longer, an outcome he seemed to welcome. I read many hundreds of these letters on my phone, as these were just a smattering of what I saw as I spent countless hours reading the stories.

Perhaps the most heartwrenching story of all, at least to me, came from a thirty-one year old single mother named Amy Harris (no relation to President Harris) from Miami, Florida. She lost both of her jobs within a week of each other in late April, one as a hotel maid, the other at her local Wal-Mart. She tried desperately to scrape up the income needed to keep a roof over the head of her son and daughter, who were six and four, respectively. She sold her car and many of her possessions for amounts well below their value, and even tried her hand at prostitution to raise cash. Nothing worked, however, as she had to send her kids away to her ex-husband’s mother, something she had promised them she would never do. She detailed how heartbroken her children were, how they hugged and cried their eyes out. Amy was evicted from her apartment in early June, and was bathing herself at the city library while attempting, in vain, to find employment. In fact, she typed this letter to The Nation from a computer in the library. Amy finished the letter saying that once she finishes the letter, she will take her few remaining things, a can of change, some clothes, and her pictures of her and her kids, and enter the local Harrisville. My heart sunk as I read that story, and I had to have cried at least twenty or thirty times during my reading of these submissions (I guess I had not lost all of my feeling towards the suffering of others). The Nation finished with this:

This is just a small sampling of the pain being felt all across this great nation of ours. There are countless other stories just like these, of people who are sinking under the waves, who are on the verge of giving up on life, if they already haven’t. Us here at The Nation feared that the Economic Freedom Act would lead to this. Hopefully the United States will one day recapture its former prosperity, but for now we must band together and make it through these dark days. We have to ask of ourselves: What have we done?

Indeed, that is what I constantly asked myself as I spent hours perusing these submissions. I spent every free moment I had going over as many as I could. I saw examples of many of the letters in my own life. The story of the manager of the failing Applebee’s location in Texas reminded me greatly of my pal Rodrigo. The teacher from Waukesha, Wisconsin weaved a tale that made me recall what Reggie’s wife Melissa had told me some time back. The countless stories of the pay and hour reductions made me think of myself, as well as virtually everyone else I knew. The stories of those who had a reasonably decent life, only to see it vanish in the blink of an eye made me think of those poor individuals begging on the street corners and filling up the Harrisvilles. The letters resonated with anyone who read them, because virtually everyone either knew many people who were in the exact predicaments being faced by those who submitted letters, or were in those situations themselves. These were the stories of the pain and suffering happening everywhere. Sure, we all saw it in our daily lives, in our communities, but this issue of The Nation drove home the point that this was happening to every community in the country.

Looking around the economy in the month of June, we see more and more sectors taking a dive. The contagion was spreading rapidly, threatening to take everything down. The continued erosion of incomes led to another 27 percent drop in retail sales, as the conditions in stores deteriorated rapidly, as I explained before. Towards the end of June, Walmart announced closures of nearly 500 locations, Target closed up 350, Kmart shut down half of their remaining locations, and countless small retailers closed their doors for good. In turn, manufacturing saw its largest dive yet, as factories at home and abroad closed up operations. Every category of manufacturing, from the smallest items to the largest big-ticket items, saw drops that have never been seen before. We were now hearing about the possibility of the major auto manufacturers being of danger of bankruptcy once again, after finally recovering from the fallout of the Great Recession. The destruction of fragile economies in the developing world continued unabated, as the factories closed up, mining operations grounded to a halt due to lack of demand for materials, and farmers saw declines in income. The income gains seen in the developing world in recent decades were rapidly disappearing, as did gains in fighting hunger and disease.

On the real estate front, housing prices dropped another 24 percent, and by the end of June, over 75 percent of holders of mortgages were “underwater”, meaning that they owed more on their mortgages than the house was now worth, as home prices had fallen by close to half in a matter of just three months. The average home price had fallen to levels below what we saw at the depth of the housing crisis, and the number of new housing starts had dropped to a multi-decade low. Housing experts were now predicting a new crisis, dwarfing the last one in size in scope, unless “fundamental economic changes are made soon. Namely, the reversal of the Economic Freedom Act.” Putting additional drag on the housing industry was the provision in the EFA’s tax code overhaul that ended the tax credit on mortgage interest expense. Homebuyers were able to write that off in the past, which made it easier to buy a home. That was no longer an option, which may have scared off some of those who were still in the position to be able to buy a home. As we see, the figures from sector after sector were screaming the same thing. The past three months were, by every conceivable economic measure, the worst in the long history of the United States.

We were now entering the summer months, the time of year when families would normally going on vacations. It was at this time that the leisure and hospitality industry really felt the pain of the downturn. The resorts that dot vacation hotspots, from beautiful mountain settings to pristine beaches, all took massive hits. Resorts both in the U.S. and abroad, reported less than half of their usual business, as countless families cancelled vacations due to economic hardship. The economies in tropical nations such as Thailand, the Bahamas and Jamaica saw horrendous effects on their economies. Jamaica saw a decline in the size of their workforce of close to ten percent in the month of June alone, as the resorts that employed a significant portion of their people pared back or even closed down. Even here in the United States, resort towns, many of which would be bustling and full of tourists this time of year, more resembled ghost towns. Cruise lines saw declines in business of over fifty percent, despite the mass discounts some cruise lines were offering in an effort to lure in customers. Here in southern California, not just the beaches, but also the amusement parks. California was long known as a prime destination for people looking for exciting roller coasters. Predictably, the amusement parks saw mass declines in their attendance figures. Even the world famous Disneyland, located in Anaheim, saw a decline in attendance of over one-third, and had to respond by slashing ticket prices by 25 percent. In late June, another southern California park, Six Flags Magic Mountain (located north of Los Angeles), announced that it would close for the year after the Fourth of July weekend, citing a drop in revenues of over 65 percent. The hotel industry was also hammered too. A report in mid-June showed that the hotel casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada, a popular destination for gambling and partying, saw sharp drops in their numbers, leaving them to offer crazy discounts to increase their business. One extreme example occurred at Excalibur, who lowered their room prices on weekdays to a low, low price of ten dollars a night. The hotels around airports, resorts and amusement parks saw their business decline drastically as well. The fact of the matter was that people simply did not have the funds to go out and relax and have fun. When folks had such trouble buying food and paying for housing, they sure were not going to make family trips. In turn, many of those who staffed those destinations lost their jobs. Resort towns saw their unemployment spike at even faster rates than the rest of the country.

The field of education also really felt the pinch by this point. May and June are when schools let out for the summer. At the end of the school year, school districts all over the nation, and the world, had hard choices to make. The revenues flowing in to pay for schools had shrunk far more than even the worst-case scenario forecasts had predicted. DIstricts had to chop programs, such as sports and music programs, as well as lay off teachers. The end of the school year marked the end of the teaching careers of countless teachers, with over four-hundred thousand losing their jobs in a matter of weeks. Many school districts prioritized keeping the more experienced teachers, while others simply kept those who were willing to take the biggest pay cuts. The vast majority of those shapers of minds who would return for the next school year would be making far less than before. Furthermore, some districts even decided that the upcoming school year would be shorter than the recently concluded year, up to two months shorter in some cases. Administrators justified this by saying that fewer school days was better than letting go of even more teachers, or even closing schools, which was a route that many other districts went. Once the next academic year started, many students would have to travel further to attend school, and would have to do so as most school districts ended busing services as a belt-tightening measure.

Colleges and universities were perhaps even harder-hit than grade schools. The ending of federal student aid programs meant that many students had to conclude their studies before they could get their degrees. At the time of the enactment of the Economic Freedom Act, about half of college students received some sort of federal financial aid to go to school, with others getting some aid from the states they lived in. The EFA ended all federal aid programs, leaving the students to either foot the bill all on their own, get some sort of private student loan from a bank, or drop out. Since many students were unable to pay the high costs of tuition, and banks were loath to give college loans due to the worsening credit crunch, many had no choice but to drop out, giving up on their studies, and on their dreams. In turn, colleges, ranging from community colleges to the most prestigious universities, had to trim their staffs, leaving many instructors and professors without jobs, and no opportunities to work elsewhere. Conservatives insisted that getting the government out of giving money for college would drop the price of college enough for students to pay their way through school, and even though many schools did announce drops in tuition for the following academic year, the reductions were nowhere near enough for people to keep attending school. The end of the 2016-17 academic year was a depressing time at schools and colleges all over the country, many students knowing that all the hard work they had put in their studies would be all for naught. Also, teachers and professors would be grading tests and papers for the final time. Furthermore, those students who were graduating were now to enter the worst job market in U.S. history.

Even looking away from the business and economic news, one can see the effects of the worsening downturn. In health news, a report released by Harvard University showed that, due to the ending of the Medicare health care program for seniors, as well as reduced access to doctors and medicines for younger Americans due to fewer employers offering insurance plans as well as the ending of Medicaid, the life expectancy of a typical American was estimated to drop from seventy-nine years to just sixty-three years in just the next two years, a figure not seen in the United States since the 1940’s. Life expectancies were expected to take similar drops in other nations as well. The life expectancies in working-class areas were expected to drop more than middle-class and affluent areas. Another report from the magazine Psychology Today said that the typical American adult was exhibiting dangerous levels of stress, due to the enormous financial struggles of the last few months. A prolonged downturn, which most expected by this point, will lead to heightened levels of mental illness and perhaps even extremist attitudes. The downturn, which most observers now expected to last several years, was sending many folks to an early grave.

By the month of June, the entertainment landscape had been completely altered compared to just a few months before. The movie industry had ground largely to a halt, with the number of films in production down over 80 percent. The movies that had not been postponed fared terribly, with no film having an opening weekend topping ten million dollars. Theaters were practically ghost towns during what is normally the busiest time of the year for them. Theatrical shows saw the effects of the downturn as well, as many shows, even some of the top shows on Broadway, had to offer deep discounts in order to attract viewers. It got so bad that many of the lesser-name productions were postponed for the time being. The music industry saw similar declines, as most concert tours were cancelled or postponed. Observers expressed worry that the whole of the entertainment industry, which had grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, was not going to recover. Instead of covering who was dating who, or who was producing what, magazines like Entertainment Weekly were now talking about who’s show or tour was cancelled, or what percentage drop we saw at the box office that week. The world of entertainment is normally the most immune to economic strife, as downturns often have little impact compared to other industries. Even during the Great Depression, people flocked to movies, or music shows, or theatrical shows, or art exhibits, as a way to escape the problems of the world, at least temporarily. The fact that the entertainment sector took just as big a hit as other sectors, in the eyes of many, displayed that this was no ordinary downturn. This was something else entirely.

The drop of incomes and job losses had a profound, far-reaching effect on the world of sports as well. Far fewer people were attending and watching games, I even found myself paying far less attention to sports, which was a new development for me. I guess just trying to eat and have a place to live, and paying attention to everything else going on took up all my time and energy. I cared more about the unemployment rate, or the number of new housing starts, than I did the day’s baseball scores, which was a shame because my beloved Dodgers were playing great, taking over first place by the end of the month. Even despite their strong play, they struggled to draw more than twenty thousand fans to their home games for the month of June, when crowds of forty-five to fifty thousand were common for them. As a result, that news took the front page of the sports section of the Los Angeles Times, instead of their latest winning streak.

Teams in all sports were playing in front of empty stadiums and arenas. Less popular leagues had far smaller margin for error. For example, Major League Soccer, a soccer league that had existed for over twenty years and had just recently really gained a following in the U.S., announced that the current season would be its last, at least until conditions improved. Attendance had fallen over eighty percent, and every team was losing money. Several team owners wondered out loud if their teams would last the season without folding. Even more popular sports struggled mightily as well. The owners of the National Basketball Association announced that there would indeed be a lockout starting July 1st. The lockout, already presumed to be likely once the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the league’s Player’s Association (the player’s union) expired, was now set to be a prolonged, drag-out fight. The new economic climate meant that the owners were to seek significant concessions from the players. They wanted massive cuts in player salaries, even for players currently under contract. One proposal floating around called for voiding all player contracts, so ownership can negotiate new terms for all the league’s players. Either way, people on both sides of the impending labor dispute were in agreement on one thing: Chances were very high that there would be at least one season cancelled entirely. The owners knew that they would all lose money the upcoming year, as attendance and TV ratings tanked at the end of the season. Despite an exciting season and postseason, won by the San Antonio Spurs in a thrilling seven-game NBA Finals over the Cleveland Cavaliers, led by LeBron James (considered by many to be the most iconic player of the era), the money coming into the league fell off a cliff starting in April, a trend that seemed sure to continue. In the National Football League, the most popular league in America by far, the team owners got a 40 percent reduction in player salaries for the upcoming season, which was to start in September. They claimed it was necessary for the league to continue to operate, as teams reported a 60 percent drop in season ticket sales for the 2017 NFL season.

On to politics, all of the struggles of the American people in the last few months were taking a dramatic toll on the Harris Administration. By the end of June, the approval rating of David Harris had tanked to a miserable 11 percent. Honestly, I have no idea how it was even that high, given what was going on. Harris had absolutely no support outside of the far-right base that propelled him to the White House, and many people were openly advocating for his impeachment. Time magazine ran an issue with an ominous picture of President Harris with the headline “Is This the End of the Line for David Harris?”. Democrats in Congress, however, insisted that no impeachment proceedings were in the works, probably because they didn’t have anywhere near enough votes for it. The public would have certainly approved it if they had any say in that particular matter, as there were protests of him and his policies all over the nation, many of which drew large crowds.

In early June, several members of the Harris Administration turned in their resignations, including a few of his closest economic advisors. At a press conference in Washington D.C., economic advisor Travis Williams, a tall, slender man in his early-thirties, spoke for the group, stating that they simply couldn’t continue working for the administration. The path that President Harris was taking went against what the people wanted, and they wanted no part of it, either. The economic advisors claimed that they asked both President Harris and Vice President Branson to roll back at least some of the provisions of the Economic Freedom Act several times since it was passed, to no avail. When they were unable to convince the administration to alter its course, they left, but stopped short of completely renouncing the ideology that led the nation to where it now was. The group claimed that the Economic Freedom Act was, overall, a good thing, but they disagreed with the implementation. “We felt, unlike some of President Harris’ economic team, that this should have been phased in in several stages, not all at once. That would have reduced the level of shock to the economy at large, and we would likely not be seeing the economic dislocation we are seeing right now. Unfortunately for us, and it appears, the American people, the viewpoints of the others won out with the President.” Stated Williams at the end of the press conference.

In an attempt to stop the bleeding, President Harris took to the Rose Garden of the White House on the afternoon of Monday, June 12th. That hot, humid June afternoon, Harris once again attempted to calm the increasingly frayed nerves of the American people. Harris finally acknowledged, two and a half months after the Economic Freedom Act took effect, that the nation is in crisis. “We are in a crisis of employment, of housing, of confidence”, he stated in front of a throng of reporters from all over the country, “but I know all about the character of the people of this great nation, we will overcome this, and emerge stronger than ever.” Harris also asserted that the course of action that he took was the correct one, stating that “if we go back now, it will solve nothing, we will just go back to the problems we were facing before.” Of course, the vast majority of the public would have gladly traded in our current crisis for the problems we had before. At least then they had roofs over their heads and three meals a day. President Harris made it abundantly clear that day that there would be no change in the economic policy that he set forth in the form of the EFA. I remember listening to that speech during a lull at work, I also remember letting out a string of four-letter words at the radio on my desk, which included several insults directed at the President, and referring to him as different things. I dropped so many f-bombs that Reggie perked his head up, then got up and went over to me wondering what I was so mad about. He then grabbed his chair and pulled it next to mine, so he can listen to the rest of the twelve-minute long speech. At the end, we both just looked at each other and shook our heads. We, like most of the rest of the U.S. population, were fed up.

“This ain’t gonna end pretty. It’s turning out exactly how I was fearing.” I told Reggie while still shaking my head like a busted bobblehead doll.

“If he don’t change anything, people are gonna turn on him. We might have like a revolution or a civil war or somethin’. A lot of people are gonna suffer, and a lot of people are gonna die.” Reggie responded to me. “The twins are gonna grow up like this, they’re gonna have such a s****y life, with no hope for the future. How are they gonna go to school? How are Melissa and I gonna provide for them if I get another pay cut or lose my job? Melissa will be making way less next school year than this year. She got a cut of twelve grand a year! Will we end up in a Harrisville?” Reggie started wiping tears from his eyes and face by the end of it. I couldn’t really respond to that, I didn’t know what to say. I can’t quite know the feeling parents must have had during this time, the uneasiness and helplessness they had. The closest I could feel was the fear of what would happen to Leann and Briana. I just sat there in silence, with a despondent look on my face, as he got up and slinked back over to his desk. He just sat there reflecting, partially because he was so shaken up, and partially because there was not that much work to do.

In predictable fashion, the media ripped President Harris’ speech, calling him delusional and out of touch. The response was near-universal, with only a few fringe right-wing outlets and Fox News giving anything resembling praise. The fact that Harris insisted on not changing course even one iota drew the ire of most talking heads. A CNN personality named Andy Copper went as far as to say that continuing the way things were was “national suicide”. Indeed, it seemed that, unless we changed course soon, the injury afflicted by the EFA would be too much to recover from. It truly did feel like economic suicide. Many commentators lamented the fact that Harris was refusing to admit that his signature piece of legislation was a catastrophic failure.

The reaction to Harris’ speech was starting to die down when, several days later, some of his former economic advisors took to the airwaves to criticize their former boss. On Thursday, June 15th, on two separate programs on CNN, Eric Bell and Frank Stanford, who quit alongside Travis Williams about a week earlier, told the nation what they thought about the economic situation. Bell, an overweight, sweaty, bespectacled man of about fifty, said that he still agreed that the Economic Freedom Act was necessary, but the Harris Administration should have gone about it differently. He felt that the EFA should have been implemented gradually, over the course of several years. He told host Will Rudolph that he tried to convince President Harris to phase out Social Security and Medicare gradually, instead of wipe them out right away. “Our team got calls from several executives from the AARP, begging us to try to convince the President to reconsider eliminating those programs. They said it would devastate seniors all over the country, which is happening. They had publicly tried to convince President Harris to spare Social Security and Medicare, to no avail, so they called every member of the economic advisory board, asking them to try to sway him. I was one who tried to convince Harris, but he was undeterred.” Bell told Rudolph during Rudolph’s prime time program. Bell then expressed a half-assed regret about what happened to the elderly of America. He also tried to get the administration to gradually reduce the funds for social programs until they were defunded, also to no avail. Bell insisted that the EFA “could have worked, it really could have, if it was implemented sensibly”. Not even a couple hours later, Frank Stanford, a fortyish pipsqueak of a man with a voice to match, went further than his former colleague did. He completely renounced the far-right economic ideals he had for his entire adult life. “I was wrong, and the nation, the world even, is paying the price for what I, and the rest of the administration have done.” Stanford said contritely, wiping tears from his eyes in the process. He finished his segment with host Jacob Tanner by calling on President Harris, as well as Congress, to reverse all the provisions of the EFA, restoring government spending and taxation levels to what they were before the EFA took effect.

The day after being repudiated by two of his former advisors, President Harris, for some reason, felt the need to take to the airwaves again. In another lunchtime address, this time from the Oval Office of the White House. With an air of desperation, Harris confirmed that he will indeed be staying the course, no matter what his former employees felt about it. “I know that many Americans, including some former members of my Administration, are questioning the course of action I have taken. I reassure you that this great nation is, for the first time in a long time, on the right track. The Economic Freedom Act was put into place for the good of the nation, and will build the character of this great land of ours. We will be a stronger nation, a freer nation, because of it.” As soon as the speech ended, the stock markets once again crashed, just like after his last speech, and the one before that. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell close to 900 points within five minutes of the conclusion of the speech. Both Wall Street and Main Street were in agreement that David Harris should just shut up.

As for my life, I can definitely say that I shared the same sense of unease that everyone else seemed to have. I woke up every morning worried, for myself and my family. I woke up wondering if this was the day I lost my job. I wondered if I would have enough to make the rent and have enough to eat. Would I have to get in those increasingly long bread lines forming outside of various buildings? I drove by that line in front of a little, nondescript tan building on Holt Boulevard and Bon View Street that belonged to the Mercy House charity (which did help my family once, years ago when my father had his spell of unemployment during the Great Recession) that some days stretched over a half of a mile, full of jobless folks and people coming from the Harrisville near Ontario International Airport. The fine folks at Mercy House would hand out food, bottles of water, and other essentials, such as clothes, shoes, and toiletries, to those in dire need of even the basics. I had thought of maybe getting some things to help stretch my increasingly thin budget, but I couldn’t do it. My conscience wouldn’t allow it, not with so many others who need it more than me at this point. I felt that, even making ten dollars an hour, I probably classified as upper-middle class by now. I did try to recommend the place to Juan, as his boys sorely needed new clothes and shoes. Of course, Juan had too much pride, and refused to go in that line. In fact, I think that he felt hurt simply because I mentioned it. He saw it as begging for a handout, and he would not do such a thing, no matter the benefits to his children. Me and his wife Lucia tried talking sense into him, but he remained steadfast. “Please stop bringing it up! It just makes me feel worse about not working!” Juan barked at me and Lucia, at which point we remained silent, and I went back home. I know it killed Juan to think of getting help of any kind, but I had to try anyways. As the old saying went, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Speaking of desperate, it had reached the point that people would wait hours just for a sandwich and a bottle of water, which was much appreciated by the people on these hot June days. In late June, southern California had a bad heat wave that saw temperatures reach 105 degrees in Ontario. I felt terrible for those poor souls who had confined themselves to the Harrisvilles. The city of Ontario contained two Harrisvilles now, one near the airport, just north of Interstate 10 east of Vineyard Avenue on a large undeveloped land plot. The other was on the west side of town, in Anthony Munoz Hall of Fame Park, which was located on 4th Street west of Mountain Avenue, just a block or so from Video Star, where I worked while in college. My greatest fear, even greater than getting in that bread line, was having to live in one of those Harrisvilles.

Not only did I fear for myself, I feared for all those that I cared about. My family, my friends, my coworkers, what would become of them? Would they lose their jobs or their homes or starve? I remember that at least once everyday I would have this overwhelming sense of dread come over me, hanging over me like a dark cloud. I was never happy, or even content, and I would break down crying probably about once a week (I always was considered an emotional person). I started losing weight, partly from stress, and partly due to eating less. I stopped caring about my personal appearance, and had started growing a bushy beard, as I don’t think I had shaved since early May. I started to dread every text message I received, every phone call I would get, because maybe, just maybe, that was someone telling me some terrible, terrible news. I never was a particularly religious person, but I occasionally found myself praying, praying for myself and everyone else I knew, heck praying for everyone in general, to get through this, to weather this storm.

For my lifestyle, I continued to cut corners anywhere I could. I bought cheaper and cheaper food, I think I ate Top Ramen for lunch at work four or five days in a row one week. I bought the cheapest stuff I can find, that included bread, lunch meat, peanut butter. Instead of buying a case of bottled water, I reused old bottles for a little while, filling them with tap water. The tap water tasted absolutely horrible, and was likely full of harmful chemicals (especially now, with most environmental regulations eliminated), but it was free, so I had to make do. I tried clipping coupons, which helped a little bit, but many stores had stopped offering coupons, as they were losing too much money to be giving any sort of offers. I even used as little gas and electricity as I possibly could, so as to lower my energy bills. I did as little driving as possible, even though gas was well under two dollars a gallon now. I only drove to work, to run my errands and for visits to my family. I took to seeing them every weekend, as we kept each other strong through all of the struggles. We would catch up, tell each other what was happening in our lives, and tried to keep the mood light with some funny movie or a nice card game or two. During the week, I would just read or watch TV. I would read the news on the Internet on my phone, looking for what else is going wrong. For months now, I voraciously consumed as much news as I could, keeping track of the stories and economic figures. If I’m not doing that, I’m reading through my library of books, reading about either politics, economics or baseball, the topics of 90 percent of what sat on my bookshelf.

My family was starting to buckle financially. By June, the trucking industry was seeing mass layoffs, with every major firm in the industry laying off thousands. Furthermore, many of the smaller firms and independent owner-operators had fallen by the wayside. The drivers who weren’t laid off were getting much less work to do. For instance, my dad was driving no more than four days a week, as opposed to the four to six days a week he had been driving in the past. The second week of June, he was told to stay home entirely. From what he had been telling me, Covenant Transport was having its drivers rotate weeks where they made no trips, so as to allow more drivers to get routes, as the amount of goods being transported had fallen by over 60 percent from just three months earlier. It was because of that fact that my dad feared that another round of layoffs was coming soon. Was he going to lose his job? He would call my mother while on his route, fretting about some bad news he heard, or some rumor that more jobs were on the chopping block, or that his load was cancelled. Those rumors just made him circle back to that question, a question that hung over our heads during a time where my parents and Leann were already struggling to pay the monthly rent at the mobile home. Leann got another pay cut at Claire’s, a drop of two dollars an hour, while seeing even fewer hours than before. Leann was especially despondent, between the pay cut and the fact that she lost her financial aid at school. For a little while, she held out hope that maybe she can pay her own way through, since she was still attending Chaffey College, a relatively cheap community college. Those hopes were dashed between her pay cut and our father’s reduction in days working. The whole family was worse for the wear, as food became increasingly scarce at the house due to financial struggles. My father had grown accustomed to eating steak or fried chicken or spaghetti during his days home, but now those things were replaced with sandwiches, Top Ramen and microwavable burritos. Furthermore, my mom’s cough just kept getting worse, and she was losing a noticeable amount of weight. The family was hoping that was due to a lack of food, since she was skipping meals in order to make sure the girls had enough to eat, but I suspected much worse.

Everyone else I cared about and interacted with regularly was having their problems. Right next door, the Morales family was having major problems. The lack of local construction projects was taking a toll on them, since Juan was stuck staying home most days. It quickly became clear that poor Juan was going stir crazy from being home so much. He had saved and was very prudent with his money in case the family fell on hard times, but I can tell that the downturn was taking a major toll on the Morales household. Lucia complained that all they ate was rice and beans and tortillas, and I could hear arguments between Juan and Lucia through the walls. Juan was uncharacteristically belligerent at times, which I can understand, and was clearly dealing with bouts of depression. “I feel like a failure, Will! I can’t feed my family, I have to burn through the savings I have worked so hard to build. I can’t even by my sons new shoes! I feel like nothing!” Juan told me one balmy evening when we stood outside, leaning up against the railing. Franklin was faring better than most, but only because he was now working sixty to seventy hours a week, now that he managed two Stater Brothers locations. Despite all the extra hours, he was still making a bit less per week than he was back in March. Frank and the rest of the Jackson family was still skimping on expenses like just about everyone else, cutting back on the meals out that his family had made at least once a week before, meals I would sometimes accompany them to, and their weekly trips to the movies had become monthly trips to the movies. Frank did like to mention that he was losing weight due to more home-cooked meals, and his wife Jackie was pretty good with finding good prices for their meat and produce. She would get all the store advertisements that we all got in the mail every week. One evening when they invited me over for a lovely chicken dinner (I missed meat very much), I saw on the kitchen table all of the ads laid out side-by-side. Jackie, a tall, slender African-American woman with a giant smile which lights up the room, told me how she coped with the decrease in household income, and the fact there was an extra mouth to feed. She looked at every single item she needed to buy, and found the very best deal for every single thing, breaking it down by store. She would take her lists and hit each and every store, getting everything wherever it was cheapest. She plotted her route in a way that led to the fewest possible miles driven, to conserve on gas. I felt it was very crafty, and I told her that I would consider doing the same. “My only regret” she told me, “is that we don’t have a backyard so I can grow some of the fruits and vegetables myself.”

At work, the situation was getting, shall I say, more tense than ever. The office resembled a morgue many days, the employees sounded and looked defeated. It was a level of morale that I imagined existed at most workplaces these days. It felt like any day now that the next paycut or worse, a round of layoffs was in the offing at Milton Plastics. Everyone in the office knew that business had tanked more than 50 percent in just the last three months, and that all trends pointed towards a continued downslide in sales. We were losing accounts left and right as retail stores retrenched, closing down locations and offering fewer products, and our orders to our overseas factories just kept going down. I had people in Sales or Marketing going over to my cubicle just to ask me what our numbers were, people who previously never talked to me. I was specifically instructed by Reggie not to give any of that info out, but that would only serve to stoke their interest and fears more. Speaking of Reggie, he was not his usual festive self these days. Even on our car rides to and from the office to his house, he wasn’t saying much, when he would normally talk my ear off about this and that. At work, he said barely a peep, probably from feeling Mr. Milton practically breathing down his neck all the time. Hannah, the accounts receivable clerk who sat nearest to me, told me that she had to move back in with her parents. She had herself a nice little apartment in Fullerton, a few miles down the road, but with her paycut in April, she felt it best to move back home, going back to her childhood bedroom. She was saving money on rent, but the commute was far longer. Her parents lived in San Clemente, about forty miles from the office. She would drive an hour or more to and from work each day, which she hated with a passion, but it was definitely preferable to falling behind on rent or wondering where her next meal would come from. Her parents were relatively well off, her father being a successful businessman, but even they were beginning to fall on hard times, her dad’s swimming pool supply shop was beginning to lose money, and their stock portfolio was getting clobbered by the seemingly weekly stock market crashes One day, Hannah mentioned in passing that her parents had lost over half of their net worth in three months. It seemed that the downturn was now hitting everyone, all up and down the income ladder. We were all seemingly hanging by a thread, and one day, that thread just may snap.

The afternoon of Friday, June 30th proved to be the dreaded day, as Mr. Milton walked into the office at 3:35 P.M., looking morose. I knew that look, he was about to let someone go. “Carlton, Anderson, I need to talk to you in my office.” Mr. Milton said in a voice that resembled a doctor giving a patient a bad diagnosis. Dave Carlton and Rick Anderson, the two longest tenured members of the accounting department, were the ones losing their jobs. Poor Dave looked like he just witnessed a murder, he got up and walked to the office with slumped shoulders. Rick marched to the office while wiping a tear from his eye. I couldn’t help but feel for them, their lives were about to be shattered, and they knew it. I know that Dave’s wife was working as an operations manager at some company, so perhaps they could stay afloat until he can hopefully find something else. He had twenty-four years of accounting experience, there still has to be some demand for his skills, right? As for Rick, his wife didn’t work, so they now had no income to speak of. They were already talking about sending their two kids, aged thirteen and eight, away to his wife’s sister in Washington State, and now it looks like they would be accompanying their children up north. On top of the two workers let go in the accounting department, there were cuts made in the human resources department, as well as the technical department. Milton Plastics let go of thirty percent of their workforce that fateful Friday afternoon, with the remaining employees receiving an across-the-board two dollar an hour pay cut. Reggie was spared the pay cut, but only because he was given most of the workload that Rick and Dave formerly handled. After Dave and Rick were sent on their way, Mr. Milton called Reggie into the back office, but he was called back for a different reason. He was informed that he was now the new head of the Accounting department. The rest of that workload went to me, but my pay was still cut, from ten to eight dollars an hour. When driving Reggie home, we both let out our frustrations.

“Well, there goes the breathing room I got when my landlord lowered my rent! I don’t know how I’m gonna stay in my house” I told Reggie with a mix of sadness and outright rage. “I have to cut back even more. I just might have to let my electricity and gas get shut off! I really gotta buckle down and figure out how to move forward after this.”

“Hey man, you’ll pull through this. You’re a smart, mentally tough guy, and you can handle anything that comes your way. Also, I’ll help out if you need.” Reggie replied, trying to assure me that things will be okay. “You’re really smart, you’ll figure this out.”

“I don’t know what I can do. My pay will go down by 320 bucks a month. I guess I can clip coupons, or sell stuff on eBay or something, or try pawning my stuff. Most pawn shops have stopped buying stuff, people were selling stuff to get cash after the economy went to s**t.” I told him, depressed beyond belief.

“What I don’t know is how the f**k I’m gonna do the job of three people! Twelve bucks an hour to do all that. Rick and Dave were both really hard workers, they did a lot around there, I got no idea how I will do my work AND theirs. I’m so bummed about what happened to them. What are they gonna do? They both worked there forever, and Milton does them like that?” Reggie retorted, now fuming mad.

“Sounds like Milton let them go cuz they made the most money of anyone in the department. He wanted to cut costs as much as possible. Sales are down almost 60 percent in just three months. The next round of job cuts could involve one, or both of us. If that happens, I really don’t know what I’ll do.” I now sounded really down. It was at this point that we pulled up to his house. Once we arrived, Reggie invited me for dinner for hamburgers, an offer I gladly accepted. I now had two families serving me meat, so my stomach was happy for the time being. The thoughts of despair quickly rushed back into my head during the drive home, what was I going to do about the drop in my income?

That night, while laying in bed, I did my usual scrolling through the day’s news, as well as my Facebook feed. Going on Facebook was quite depressing in recent months. I saw posts about friends and family losing jobs, getting pay cuts, getting kicked out of houses, even losing loved ones. News sites would just sum up the carnage of what was going on the world lately. What company was laying off more employees, or going belly up? How many points did the stock markets drop today? I was about to sever my ties to this interconnected world, like so many others have. I was going to call Metro PCS, my low-cost phone carrier, and cut my phone internet to save some money. They were offering lower-cost monthly plans, the cheapest of which had no internet. As much as I hated losing my Internet access, I needed to cut my expenses in the wake of my paycut. I remember the last thing I saw that night, it was a segment on the Real Talk With Bob Martin, the HBO program whose outspoken liberal host made his dire prediction last year on what would happen if David Harris were to win the presidency. Bob Martin’s prediction of impending economic collapse was coming true, unfortunately. Nobody was more saddened by that then Martin himself. That night was the final episode of Real Talk, and Martin, while sitting alongside some of his favorite guests, made his final statement:

“Well, this is it. The end of the line for the show. I was right about the disaster that David Harris would bring, but I truly wish that I wasn’t. We are going through a time of unprecedented upheaval, with countless people all over the country, all over the world, displaced economically. I foretold a Great Depression on steroids last year, as you may recall, but what has happened in the last three months has been far worse than anything I could have ever imagined. We are entering a time of great sorrow, a new dark age if you will. I have never been more scared of anything in my life, and I know that others are going through the same. Far too many people are ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed. Here in Los Angeles, the parks are filling up with homeless individuals. Men, women and children by the thousands packing into these Harrisvilles. Our unemployment rate has quadrupled in just three months. That’s unheard of. The number of homeless on any given night has grown fifteenfold in this country in just three months. What we are witnessing is the absolute nightmare scenario. This is it, the end of our economy, possibly the end of the United States of America, possibly even the end of civilization as we know it. All I know about the ongoing experiment of the Harris Administration, is that this will not end well. I thank all of you who have watched the show over the last fourteen years, I thank all of my guests for the lively debate. I wish each and every one of you the best of luck.”

After watching that, I put my phone down on the nightstand next to my bed, and I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness overcome me. I started to weep while laying in bed. All of my thoughts and fears circling my head. That was a sleepless night for me. Even if I was able to fall asleep, I knew I would have a horrible nightmare. What Bob Martin talked about on his show was exactly what I had been fearing would happen for a number of months. I hoped and prayed that bad things wouldn’t happen. I wanted nothing more than to be wrong in the predictions that I had been telling everyone who would listen, but I was turning out to be right. It was going to be a long, painful road for everyone.

Author's Note

Like my other chapters, this is a first draft, far from a finished product. I would always like feedback on my work.