Are You Better Off than You Were Four Years Ago?

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Four years ago, to the day, I think I was at my very own bridal shower, since I was about to be married the Saturday before the election. I had spent the spring working abroad and the summer temping and finally landed a full-time reporting job at the end of August, paying a glorious $350 a week. I lived in a spacious double house with my friend Claudia (see her entry below.) We started off with only one piece of living room furniture: a pink inflatable arm chair. Luckily, our collection grew from donations from friends and family, and we didn’t care because we were finally on our own.

I have to say that MY life is better now than four years ago. Mainly because it's more stable; I have a great full-time job, I like being married, I have two great dogs. But my situation a few months ago was not as good because I had an unstable, seasonal job, very representative of either the bad economy or corporate apathy for the entry level worker. And, I still live in an 800 square foot apartment with some very eccentric neighbors.

The question of the 4 years really asks about the election cycle, and I think that it’s interesting to try to link your life to something the Head of State has done. Certainly, if I were in the military, my life would be directly affected. Changes in the tax laws have affected me minimally – I’m just now making enough for it to matter.My latest concern is why do people who fear "tax and spend" think it's better for my taxes to Iraqi schools and police departments and not the ones in the US? I'm very concerned about the "spend and owe" policies we currently are operating under, because that will directly affect me.

The major change for me is that I’ve moved from the industrial North to the booming South. That job as a reporter and my husband’s 38-hour-a-week-no-benefits job motivated us to go elsewhere after our careers reached a dead end. The decline of big Northern cities is related to the decisions of Washington.

The steel industry’s decline, the exponential cost of health care, the competition of overseas jobs are all related to national policies. The general decline of manufacturing industries brought Cleveland down with it. Dan’s job was less than 40 hours a week so his company wouldn’t have to pay health care benefits. The lack of growth in Cleveland business has a lot to do with labor and products being produced more cheaply and less ethically overseas.

I voted for Al Gore in the last election, like any good Clevelander. I wish it would have been more effective. I would gladly pay higher taxes for more services and a better economy than deal with the skinflinting companies I’ve worked for and the sinking levels of funding for education and communities. I'd like to see our country reinvest in itself, both in corporate and government funds.

I’ve been upset with the Bush administration’s rhetoric and action against family planning funds in other countries, their suggestion that an amendment is needed to ban gay marriage, our decision to invade Iraq, our lack of diplomacy in the world and the environmental regulation rollbacks. But I can’t find a way to say that these things have directly affected me. It all points to the economy, stupid!
By Natalie Miller-Moore, Williamsburg, Virginia

Four years ago I was thinner. I had hair. I could stretch a buck farther.

In the waning days of the Clinton administration, we seemed to be in what John Kennedy called a “Pax Americana:” Our chief foe, Communism, had been vanquished. The economy was growing by leaps and bounds, thanks to a little invention called the Internet (and no, Al Gore didn’t invent it…he didn’t even say he did). The biggest thing we had to worry about was whether or not the president lied under oath about having the First Penis sucked.

Now, gas has gone up. Health insurance has gone up. I no longer feel secure in my job, through no fault of my own. We seem to be in the middle of a new cold war against terrorism, with no telling how it’ll end.

So the answer to that question is “No.” The bigger question is what can I do about it?

I’m not going to tell you to vote Dubya out of office. I’m not sure John Kerry can duplicate the Clinton years, or even if I want him to. I’m not sure either man is the one who’ll vanquish terror in our times. I wonder if the economy is just a cycle and things will get better.

There was a Peanuts cartoon many years ago where Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty were talking. I can’t remember which character said it, but someone said that when you’re younger, you ride in the back seat. You can fall asleep with nothing to worry about. But one day, you find yourself an adult, and there’s no getting back into the back seat. You have to drive.

Our parents lived through the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. The Vietnam War divided the nation like the war in Iraq can today.

Their parents had World War II to deal with and the Great Depression, which makes today’s economy look like Utopia.

Maybe things aren’t any worse than they were four years ago. Or 40. Or 60.

I haven’t decided if that makes me feel better.
By Vince Guerrieri, Pittsburgh, Pennslyvania

Four years ago, I had just graduated from an Ivy League college with a degree in religion. Like most liberal arts students, I spent most of that first "adult" summer wondering how I would transition from ethereal academics to real-world jobby-job. I was trained to read and study. I was an expert 5-to-8-page paper writer. Amazingly, there weren't many employers seeking research papers on apocalyptic literature or offensive art.

It took a few months, but I did it. I found a job working on a crisis hotline and then a second job teaching SAT classes. Three months later, I found a full time position with good wages and fully paid health insurance and a pension and sick and vacation leave. A real (sigh) job.

For almost everyone I knew, the job search worked out. We all found what we were looking for, or something close.

Today, I'm still doing the same work I was hired for, full time health insurance and all. And it's the only job I know of in my circle of friends with a pension and sick and vacation and all the accoutrements. My housemates, drinking buddies, neighbors and friends of friends all grew up middle class and went to college; all are now working class. Grocery store clerk, landscape architect, carpenter, massage therapist. Only the clerk has insurance. That's what's out there. That's what they do.

The law students and managers have theirs, so it's not a total wash. But I don't want to be a lawyer or a boss. I just want a 40-hour-week middle class job with good pay and benefits. Trouble is, I don't know of many. None that aren't union, at least.
By Bev Guttag, Portland, Oregon

Four years ago, the fall of 2000, I was a new college graduate. I had been hired to start a new job in January 2001. In the meantime, I was waiting tables and working on the campaign staff of Congressman Dennis Kucinich, which became the Democratic Coordinated Campaign. As in, I worked on the Gore presidential campaign, the one in Ohio that the pundits now say he shouldn't have abandoned. I shared the upstairs of a double house with my friend Natalie, who was starting a journalism career and also waiting tables, and planning her wedding.

In many ways I would say I am better off than I was four years ago, and in other ways I am not. I know this is not necessarily a political question, but as Gloria Steinem once said, the personal is the political. It' s impossible for me to merely relate my own experience here.

The ways in which I am better off now is that I have since gotten married, changed careers to one in which I am happier, bought a house, bought a new car, then a used car, got two dogs, and have all my material needs and many wants satisfied. Not in that order. So, it is easy to say I am better off than I was four years ago.

But when I look at our country it makes me very sad to see some of the things happening today that are different from four years ago. The US could have worked out a peaceful solution in Iraq; we don't need to be fighting this war. Last year I was a student teacher in an inner city school. I can tell you first hand that when people talk about the achievement gap, or one educational system for the rich and one for everyone else, it is real. And it is ugly.

There are also ways the current political climate has affected me personally. I wanted to teach in one of those inner city schools, but I couldn't find a job. Budget shortfalls caused by the poor economy in Ohio and the money being spent on No Child Left Behind requirements led to 4,000 teachers being laid off in this state. I was lucky to find a job in a teaching-related position at a private school. My grad school tuition went up $1000 in one year due to decreased federal and state funding. Property taxes where we bought our home have already been raised once, for library funding, and may be raised again for a school levy if it passes. The state income tax went up 1%.

Now, like I said, I am doing OK, except for my huge student loan debt. But I, and many people, could be doing a lot better without some of the changes that have happened over the last four years. The Bush administration chose to go to war in Iraq, and have spent over a $100 billion dollars and will probably double that before it's done. They chose to give a tax cut to the richest Americans. Without those two decisions, we would have the money to fully fund the No Child Left Behind Act (or better yet, fund for actual education instead of standardized testing) and fund higher education.

I could probably go on and write a manifesto on all the changes I'd like to see in the next four years. Or all the things I'd like to go back and erase from the last four years. But I'll just stick to the two things I care about most. I know the situation in Iraq is a tangled mess and there's no easy way out. But I'd like to see us get out of there as soon as reasonably possible.

And I'd like to see a president and congress who will cooperate (stop laughing) to fix the unfunded mandate for education. There needs to be standards, but reasonable ones, that allow teachers to teach and students to learn without taking a test every five minutes. There are two things educators know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that help children learn. Those things are smaller class sizes and keeping students on task. To do that we need more teachers, and that means spending more money, or spending the current money differently.

Am I better off than I was four years ago? Maybe so. But an injury to one is an injury to all. And I see many injured people around me.
By Claudia Smyczek Raleigh, Cleveland, Ohio

Four years ago I had just graduated college, started working full-time, and had absolutely no money. In fact, I had to sweet talk the Bursars office to allow me to graduate and release my transcripts because I still owed my final semester’s tuition. I lived in a small 2 bedroom apartment with my long time friend and party machine Schaeff. Our TV didn’t have a remote and was setting on a wooden spool (it was nicely varnished, however). Other furniture has mix of crates, treasures from dumpster divin’, and Goodwill rarities. I had been dating a terrific redhead for about a year, but really refused to get serious.

Shortly after that America woke up from its vacation from history, integrity was restored in the Oval Office. A welcome change, the ‘if it feels good do it’ mentality was reseated in its proper place in LA not in Washington (grab that cigar Monica!). I used Bush’s tax refund to pay off last of that tuition debt.

A year later I was on verge of a obtaining a better job when some crazy Arabs flew a couple planes into the Towers, my prospective employer froze all hiring. Some fellow by the name of Osama was responsible. That name was familiar, oh yeah he’s the guy Clinton lobbed a couple cruise missiles at to divert attention from his impeachment. Oh yeah, he’s the same guy that was behind the 1993 Tower attacks and the USS Cole. But the US was on vacation, right?

Sometime in there I bought a house, finally got serious with that redhead and married her, then I had a son. During that time, Al Queda has been ravaged, two countries have been liberated and are poised to join the free world by the most successful military campaigns in history.

Seriously though, while politics have had an impact on my life in the last 4 years, it is of a magnitude far less than my (and my wife’s) personal decisions. Today, I have been steadily progressing in my career, we have much less debt, we are making plans to buy a bigger house and expand the family. I am again on the verge of a job with better opportunity.

Am I better off 4 years ago, absolutely, without a single doubt. I plan on being able to say the same thing 4 years from now, if I can’t its probably not going to be due to politics. And as for this election, of course Bush is a moron, but at least he has integrity. And for Kerry, this is all the Dems could muster, seriously? Really? What’s goin’ on here? Bring back that angry Lockbox guy.
By Geoffery Moore, Dayton, Ohio

Four years ago I was a happy, healthy, well-fed Bush supporter, raised a republican through the efforts of my oldest brother. When my liberal friends told me W. was a moron, I argued that you cannot hold the way a man talks against him: “The guy went to Yale, for cryin’ out loud. He was the governor of Texas. The man owned a baseball team. He can’t be THAT dumb.

I was in my junior year at Bowling Green, I had just turned 20 and was pretty damn excited to vote in my first presidential election. I went to the polls still feeling the effects of a rough Saturday night. I flirted with the cute girl in the booth next to me and I helped George Bush win Ohio by 150,000 votes. Good for me. Good for America.

Then about a year later – oh, say, somewhere between Sept. 10 and 12 maybe? – things started to go downhill for the country. It didn’t really happen for me until some time later. No, I lived high on the hog until graduation the next summer.

But before I graduated, I was offered a job at a small newspaper in Ohio. I turned that down to look for employment closer to home in Detroit. Sure, I found that job, but it lasted all of 10 months before the company was eaten up by the economy. They eliminated the editorial staff and turned us all loose. The powers that be decided that it was cheaper to just run ads and axe, you know, the news. The Monroe Guardian was turned into a homeless man’s Sears catalog and there was no room for a sports writer and his gaudy 23,500 dollar annual salary.

But optimism reigned in my life and I guaranteed a new, better, higher paying job within two months. I assumed that there was a job out there for me that included a company car, management-issued dollar bills for the titty-bar and a 1 p.m. start time. Of course, this was back when I didn’t follow politics too closely and I failed to realize that the economy had fallen into an outhouse toilet.

But for two months I held my head up high, depending on a paltry severance check and my parent’s grocery bill. Resumes were sent out, but not answered. Connections were sought, but not returned. Job listings were as scarce as a mountain lions in the ocean.

About three months after my lay-off I decided to swallow my pride and become a statistic. Yeah I was one of the 4 to 6 percent of Americans getting unemployment. Optimism was waning and, despite the assurances of a growing economy from the government, job openings were still scarce.

After five months, unemployment ran out and I was informed that the State of Michigan was no longer granting extensions and that I would no longer be receiving a check. Of course I would also no longer be counted for the unemployment rate, even though a job was nowhere to be found.

I finally found work through a temp service that I had signed up for months earlier. Of course, that job lasted three months before cutbacks meant I had to go.

Honestly, depression was not far off at that point. I had to ask myself if it was the economy or my talent to blame. I decided I was plenty talented enough when three other friends were laid off, or fearing layoffs within the next several months. Eventually I managed to snag a job. I actually started last week. I’m making 2,500 dollars less per year than my first job in 2001. And I lost a year of experience in my early 20’s, which will be impossible to get back.

Am I better off now than I was when I strolled into the polls and voted for Bush? Not in the least bit. In fact, I am just starting to recover. And while I blame a lost year of employment mainly on my bad decisions, I can’t say that the current administration helped me in the least bit. It just doesn’t make sense when fresh-faced college graduates are coming into a world that is losing professional jobs. Sure we could all go dig graves for 8 dollars an hour, as my family suggested to me several times. But where would that get the people that used four years of their lives studying to become the real future of America. How are we supposed to get real experience when our jobs are vanishing before we even get a chance to apply?

Needless to say my vote will not be for George Bush in November. My blind loyalty from 2000 has been replaces with a jaded frustration in 2004.

By Dan Nied, Detroit, MI

In some ways, I am exactly where I had hoped I would be four years ago. In other ways, I couldn’t be further from where I wanted to be.

Saying “I’m better off today than I was four years ago” has certain implications attached. It implies that I am more successful, make more money, and am happier than I was four years ago. It eludes that things have just been on an incline – which can be looked at as progress, but also as having to deal with increasing levels of difficulty in one’s life.

For people in their mid-20’s, one of our major concerns is making money. We spent (or our parents spent) a great deal of money for school, where before that, we assumed that we’d graduate, have all of these great offers, and then would be able to decide on the best job that paid the most money, right? Unfortunately, that type of scenario didn’t exist for me and I don’t know of anyone who was lucky enough to have multiple companies/organizations fighting over a recent college grad.

After graduating from Michigan State and working for two years, one would assume that I should be better off, right? But how much of that is based on my own hard work of getting where I am and how much is based on the support of my government? Maybe I’m looking at it pretty selfishly, but I think that if I wasn’t extremely aggressive in my job search – so aggressive that I moved to the east coast because of lack of good-paying jobs in Michigan – I wouldn’t be working for a powerful organization making the amount of money and living the type of lifestyle that I had hoped for. If I had gotten the job that was semi-promised to me while working for a General Motors contractor, I would not have considered moving. I spent the last 6 months of my last job searching for a new job in Michigan. I sent out close to 30 resumes which resulted in 4 interviews. But nothing that paid more than 2% - 3% more than what I was earning. I decided to be brave and look in other parts of the country, specifically Washington, DC and northern Virginia, where I would find a dozen PR and communications jobs for every one job in Michigan. I applied to about 20 jobs and had interviews with 8 firms. At the end of an exhausting three weeks of interviewing, I was offered a job by my top choice. And here I am, working three blocks away from the White House and supporting the one of the biggest lobbyists in Washington – the pharmaceutical industry.

In reality, I didn’t want to move away so soon. I grew up in the automotive world that is Detroit and had hoped to work for one of the “Big Three” auto companies. But when the position opened that I was supposed to be a shoe-in for, the job opening dissolved before anyone could even apply. The department had to reduce head-count and did what seems to be standard protocol lately - the work that that person was responsible for was divided and shuffled among others in the department.

I had to move my entire life so that I could find a job that was satisfying, decent-paying, and would be a valuable part of my ever-evolving resume. I tried desperately to try to find this kind of opportunity in Michigan, but for me at least, it didn’t exist.

Your job is where you spend so much of your life – it starts to become who you are if you are especially devoted to the product or cause you’re supporting. Jobs and the economy should be the focus of this election – not the war in Iraq, gay marriages, or drug importation.

By Kristen Van Dusen, Washington, D.C.