Mark Winston Griffith

Surviving the Lived Economy

May 20, 2008 - Crown Heights, Brooklyn, USA

The dangers of the American economy are getting pretty close to home. Literally.

Last night and this morning hundreds of people gathered at the church down the street from my home, at the corner of Dean Street and Nostrand Avenue, to mourn the passing of Audrey Smith Campbell. According to 1199, the healthcare workers union she belonged to, Ms. Campbell died as a result of the fact that the nursing home that employed her improperly terminated her health benefits, thus making it impossible for her to buy medicine for the asthma that eventually killed her.

Meanwhile a USA Today story reported yesterday that the number of people on food stamps is growing, with working families and professional people joining the ranks in huge numbers.

Economists are trying to decide if the U.S. is facing a recession. Despite what they ultimately conclude, people are experiencing the pain of today's "lived economy", a term introduced to me by a colleague from the Australian think tank, the Centre for Policy Development. I interpret "lived economy" as the actual, day-to-day struggles that working class people are enduring, an experience that has yet to be adequately addressed in deed by Washington politicians.

Take the foreclosure crisis which has been in full swing for more than a year now. This is one of those surreal, Hoover-esqe moments in our national history where the government is blithely unconscious to the economic pain that people around them are feeling. As the New York Times put it yesterday, "In responding to the subprime mortgage crisis, most Congressional Republicans and many Bush administration officials apparently believe they have time on their side. They are wrong." The fact that the crisis was in no small part enabled by failed government oversight and regulation of the lending industry makes the political lethargy in the face of record setting foreclosures even more disgraceful.

People abandoned by a broken health care system; professionals with graduate degrees filling soup kitchens; homeowners owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. This is life - and death - on my block and on countless streets across the country. Once again, it's the economy, stupid.

Mark Winston Griffith: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 8:00 AM, May 21, 2008 in Economic Opportunity
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