Our Current Workforce: Where? Why? My Take on Today’s Economic Impact on Those Now Working, Many Without Benefits and at Low Pay and My Thoughts on Timelines and Percentages:
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As an early Boomer, I would never presume to have the right to lecture adults far younger than me about the current economics of the everyday lives of hardworking people. It’s an apples to oranges thing.
May I invite those among us who are early Boomers and beyond to “Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear.” (At our age, you picked up on that allusion.
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In our age group, we remember when we never really had to give much, if any, thought to healthcare costs. In fact, I had a shoebox where I kept receipts for prescription drugs that we had paid for and then, after quite a while, sent them to the insurance company for reimbursement.
Then came the drug card — the Trojan Horse. People loved flashing that plastic. Meanwhile, Big Pharma could just keep on raising prices, behind the scenes, while the consumer was “happy” with the convenience and no “cost” with the drug card. Now, drug prices are out of control, even some old generics. (Please spare me the old line about research and the pipeline. Yeah. I know. And while, of course, drug companies should be innovating and moving ahead, that is not the whole picture — just the old company line.)
And as far as the overall costs of health insurance coverage goes — premiums, OP, etc., look up the stock price, including the 52-week high and low, of UNH (United Healthcare). Lots of money has been made by stockholders, and, of course, CEOs while the little people foot the bills for all that profit. Doctors now, too often, must fall under the control of the contracted insurance companies, rather than being able to practice medicine as they want and know how to do. (And please spare me from being called a commie pinko or some such thing. I have a comfort level with owning stocks. But I choose them myself. I refuse to own stock in an insurance company because I do not want to own a piece of people not being able to afford or get what they need while huge profits are being made. I can find other stocks to buy.)
My point, one of them anyway, is that the percentage of income that must be paid for healthcare coverage by those a generation behind us is far beyond what we had to pay in our working years. Healthcare is a mess and I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. But nobody wants to work on middle-ground answers anymore.
Another ridiculous percentage cost is the percentage of family income that a college education costs now. Young people often have to begin their adult lives saddled with mind-boggling debt, even if they work along the way. I think my entire first year of college was less than $1500. Of course, that was a long time ago, but even so, that amount was not an impossible, overwhelming percentage of my family’s income, and it was an amount of money that it was actually possible for students to make a dent in by working and saving for along the way. I find today’s college costs to be an obscenity, especially when looked at as a percentage of a working family’s income.
The other thing that is happening more and more, to those younger than us, is that companies are “downsizing” with an all too obvious hit on their older employees who are likely to be costing the company more in salary. Actually, this started before now, but an awareness of age-discrimination once seemed to be given a little more thought — not always but sometimes. Now it seems like open season. Too many stories around of those being hit in their highest earning years but before eligibility for SS and Medicare and at an age making it far more difficult to find a good job with benefits.
Therefore, my fellow elder-Boomers and Beyond, I am just saying that before going into that monotonous lecture mode like Charlie Brown’s teacher (remember that, “Wah. Wah. Wah.” thing) I think we need to stop and think about where we have been in this country’s timeline. We knew the days when the middle class was the backbone of this country, built this country. We are losing our middle class, the backbone is breaking under ridiculous, impossible percentage-of-income costs of things we took for granted.