Reality Check FROM Americans

Hello Everyone,

I feel it is time for a reality check. Many of you will disagree with me and start to slamming. So be it.

This is what I see on a daily basis. Like it or not it's the truth to MILLIONS of Americans.

As many of you know I work in a coin shop pretty much full time these days. We buy coins, jewelry, watches and a smattering of other “old stuff” the boss thinks he might make a buck on. He's done this for over 40 years.
He's as cheap as they come. He's a success. He gave me work when I really needed it. He's my friend.

A few months ago I found a dime in “junk silver” that he paid a dollar for. He sold it for $825. I got nothing but a thank you. He wouldn't have found it believe me. It was slow and I DID the work. He paid me for my time. I'm good with that. It was HIS coin and came into HIS shop. Not MY shop and not MY coin.

Now WHO sells this stuff? A cast of characters believe me. We have regulars that hit garage sales etc. These people hustle to make a buck. They're making ends meet. They know where to sell their booty.

Many come in with “old jewelry” like the TV ads. We pay better. They sell it – to make ends meet.

Sometimes stuff comes in that we suspect is stolen. There are forms to fill out. They can get somewhat belligerent. We tell them to leave.

We buy from a lot of elderly people. Some just want to get rid of it but believe me MOST are making ends meet.
These people could be YOUR mother, YOUR father except they have no help. Many have lost pensions and seen their property taxes skyrocket in this area.
So they worked hard for a specific company ALL of their lives so they could come into a coin shop and sell stuff to make ends meet?
Back in the day if you worked hard for a company for years you had a pension, insurance etc. You put your time in and you were taken care of. Is this how it works now? Now it's empty promises and it's acceptable.

So do I like buying from these people so the boss can make money? Of course not. He and I have discussed this. Bottom line is if we don't buy it someone else will and usually pay less.
I have worked in jobs where I have seen many “sob stories” but still did my job. You need thick skin for this believe me.
Could you do it? Could you look an 82 year old woman in the eye and buy her mother's wedding ring for $100? It's a part of the job most will NEVER see.

Yes, I do it and only hope she hangs on a bit longer. I have my own problems you know. Silly things like where to spend my vacation, what new pair of shoes to wear etc.

Okay, the last line was not true. I don't worry about where to spend my next vacation or what new pair of shoes to wear. I have a job and I do it.

In the past week I have bought from a woman that had a rather severe stroke. She was in with her son. She now uses a walker. I had the pleasure of hearing her whole story – how she is still relearning things like talking and walking. We bought her stuff so they could make ends meet. We needed ID so we took her son's. She was able to sign. Good for her!

Had a 22 year old kid. Going to college and working. Needed gas money for work. Bought his stuff – all $16.18 worth. Now he can get to work.

A lady sold a bunch of proof sets. She spent her whole check on her daughter in Wisconsin. Seems her daughter pretty much shattered her leg in a baseball game. Collision at home plate.
Still needs to pay her bills. She was in twice this week actually.

I may be rambling but as I said. So be it.

I see a small cross section of everyday America at the shop. These people are no different than you. They have fallen on hard times and the numbers are increasing.
Do they complain about high gas prices, taxes, cost of food, lack of insurance? Yes but not to the extent you might think.

They're making ends meet. They don't scorn the “successful” or want “your” stuff. Many of them were successful. That's the point.
Of course when you've worked hard all your life, are working hard – doing what is asked of you at your job which, no matter how small, is an integral part of the American society as a whole it can become quite frustrating.

These people do not want anything more than a decent life that they have worked for. May not be as smart or successful as many think they are but still an integral and IRREPLACEABLE part of our society.


Our middle class is disappearing. Don't give a damn what ANY politician or poll says. I see it everyday.

Bottom line here is how do we REALLY fix it?

It can't continue how it is. All hell's gonna break loose.

Thanks for reading.

clembo

 

It sounds like the poor folks you describe don't have their sh!t together. To sell an heirloom for $100, or a handful of metal for less, as a response to bad economics is not proper rational behavior. Your examples don't sound like middle-class income earners who are down with the economy, they sound like folks who probably sucked in school and now suck at life. You want to "fix" them?

 

Didn't read it all that will did you Invictus? There's a lot more to it than your "fix the losers" scenario.

Read it again. I mean REALLY read it.

It's working it's way up the food chain.

 

Yeah it sucks, times are tough.

People need to plan on taking care of themself, and not having " The Man" do it. Unfortunatly, many of these people relied on The Man to take care of them, and now are in trouble.

It'll only get worse as we baby boomers get older. Screw The Man and plan ahead for yourself.

Need a better job? Get a better education.
Cant afford the rent? Get a smaller place.
Can't pay the taxes? Don't even go there...but ask why are they so high next time you vote you can vote for a candidate that will not raise them.

I go through this with my union brainwashed parents. My mother is in Detroit hangin by a thread. Poor planning. YES I HELP HER, of course I do. My dad retired from Ford after 30 years, he's the last of the last of Ford lifers who got out with a pension and some stock and healthcare.

We as a society have to wean ourself off the government plan and start our own freakin plan. Dont ask for a fish, learn to fish. Stop blaming the economy when times are tough, and take some responsibility and blame our decisions that got us here, the make plans to change our situation and make better decisions.

Look at poor Ed McMahon. lost his house because the economy went sour, right? NO, he lost his house because he was a freakin idiot with his money !!!!!! Look at all the foreclosures, poor people got screwed by the economy right? WRONG, they got screwed by bad decisions that THEY made.

 

Reading back, that sounds harsh.

My intent was, depend on yourself, nothing more.

 

I don't see that you've indicated that you're describing the middle class, yet you seemed to conclude that the middle class is falling. Connect the dots for me.

Meanwhile what I do see is behavior which is in the illogical realm of desperately undereducated and underemployed, i.e. those who settle to the bottom of society. Who takes the time to scrounge up less than $20 worth of trinkets for gas money to get to work? He must have one dire career in order for his job to not cover the cost of transportation. And so on for the others.

 

invictus, people make mistakes. They might not plan ahead, or not do or do something, that has them in some trouble. We all face a point like that, or will in our lives. We're human. Sometimes, that $100 that you'll get off your mom's wedding ring is what'll keep you going. Some people don't have any other place to turn (which is what it sounds like from what I read, or the woman most likely wouldn't have sold the ring.) I wouldn't be down on someone and call that irrational behaiover, I'd look at it more as survival of the fittest. JMO, and I could be missing something totally.

Phoenix

 

Well I guess I have to point it out to you if it's not logical Invictus. It's not just losers. I sometimes actually talk to these people. My face to face communication skills are pretty good actually.

One "group" that always gets me is retired school teachers. You know - the people that may have actually taught a lot of children various subjects so they could grow up and be "successful'.

Yep, losers like that. Of course they're "losers" because they didn't invest properly, got paid too little. Hell, they had the gall to acually think about the future of our children! Children like you. I agree - just toss them off to the side. NOT.

Yes, I see it all. People "hustling", people that have to pay a bill (like NOW), even the medical professions. Bills are bills and people have to pay them dude.

I work in a coin shop NOT a pawn shop. We don't cater to "street urchins" and actually most pawn shops don't either.

Want to see it for real? Go ask a coin shop or pawn shop owner if you can sit back and observe for a few days. You won't see "bums" walking in off the street all day. You'll see a lot of people that are "professionals" in their trade suddenly trying to make ends meet.

A very sad scenario.

Phoenix is 14(?) and he nailed it immediately. That's what it's all about.

 

Clem,
I get the point you are trying to make but there is no way to honestly answer this without seeming insensitive. I truly believe you reap what you sow. The stories may be heart wrenching when you get their versions but I have seen too many cases where the sob story and the reality don't match up. Don't get me wrong, bad things happen to good people and if my parents, relatives, friends, etc experience trouble, I'm there for them. My church supports many families, my wife & I chair the Giving Tree to make sure no kids go without food, school clothes, Christmas, etc but it gets frustrating when you go into home after home delivering food to people who claim they can't afford to buy it themselves but find they are able to buy cigarettes, beer, playstations, dvd's and everything else. And don't even suggest that they get a job- you'll hear excuses you never dreamed of!! Bad backs must be hereditary.
But what do you do? The kids are the ones I'm concerned about & they shouldn't be punished. I could care less if some able-bodied adult goes hungry because they are too lazy to work or too immature to plan for their future. These parents should be required to contribute whatever they can whether it is manual labor, data entry, child care, whatever.
Government has made it too easy & socailly acceptable to be a parasite on the system.

 

Just because you think something would be meaningful to you doesn't mean that the next person will think the same thing. I have seen people selling off old letters that their grandparents wrote to each other in WWI, just for the value of the stamps on them. Frankly, some people do not attach themselves to material things that may have been in their family for ages. You might not know the whole story of the lady selling her mother's wedding ring. Perhaps there was not much of a relationship that existed there.

In addition you have those "What If" moments, ala when you see something on Antiques Roadshow that has been in a family for generations, but is worth a tonne of money and you think of the things you could do with that money, like put braces in kids faces pay for school etc.

In summary, things mean more to others often. That is why we buy and sell these objects instead of dragging them around all our lives.

 

A choice several divorces cleaning him of half his fortune along the way in the last 40 years contributed to the demise of his burgeoning earnings also. His current wife strikes me as a golddigger that stuck around when the old fart hit bottom instead of dumping him.

 

Sometimes their whole life is a series of mistakes. At some point, you must concede that it is a sign of poor stock. The fittest are surviving without reaching such depths, you are actually seeing the least-fit in action in most of Clembo's scenarios.

 

Granting that you feel for the people pawning off their trinkets at your coin shop, you're still wrestling with a non-sequitur connecting the destitute who visit your shop and the macroeconomics of middle-class stability.

As for teachers, you bring into the discussion a group of people who were willing to work for relatively low wages in exchange for the eases of job stability, summers off, and a narrow skillset.

Don't forget the military- I've seen retired CSMs working as car salesmen.

 

David,

Actually I have no problem with your reponse. It's one of the better ones I've seen actually becuase there is something we can BOTH relate to.
That common thread being we've both seen the "destitute" in the their natural habitat. More video games, electtic gadgets etc. than I'll ever own.

I worked in the Rent to Own industry for five years. Believe me I saw a lot. What I really DID see a lot of was people like those that you have mentioned. Too damn lazy or immature to get and KEEP a job. But they still had a better TV than me and often ate better due to food stamps.
You're darn right on that one David. These people lived to work the system. They have been around, they will continue to be around and they teach it to their children unfortunately.

I gave a few examples of SOME of the people I see at the shop and a few others seem to think these people are automatically "losers". Guys I've seen and heard enough sob stories in my life. Probably more than most will.
You really DO get hardened to it and this is why it bothers me.

A LOT of the people that I see are not the typical "losers". You do get a feel for it after a while believe me.

I mean look back 30-40 years ago. These "losers" did what MILLIONS of other Americans did. They worked a job, put a way money, had a pension plan etc.
As LevelHeaded put it they were brainwashed by the unions.

That was a norm and it worked for most of them. Who would have thought that terrorism would become a huge problem? Who could predict how technolgy would change things? Who could predict that gas could go up 25 cents per gallon in a single day?

Now for those that say "well it's a survival of the fittest" world let me ask you this? How is your crystal ball working? Are you sure what you've invested in etc. are going to be sound in 30 years or so? Or course you don't because things change and these days they cnange even faster.

I honestly couldn't care less about those that "work the system". Those that are suddenly finding themselves in this position is another story. We just cast them aside like trash?
How much trash can this country tolerate? What's next "trash camps?" Work all day and you get rhree meals and a place to sleep?

It's not a rosy picture folks.

Finally, David's concern for children. I agree wholeheartedly. What becomes of them? Do they get dumped with the trash as well?

"Dumping the trash" is not a solution. IT IS a way to make the problem even worse for years to come.

 

Great post Dan.... I agree with OP. and I have nothing to add

 

Lets see US foreclosures up by 55% on the previouse year according to July's figures now that is some 272,000 people are they all loosers?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7560113.stm

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/t.../construction_and_property/article4401141.ece

http://uk.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUKWAT00974720080709

According to real estate data firm RealtyTrac, 2.2 million foreclosure procedures were filed in 2007. And foreclosures soared by 121 percent during April to June this year compared to the same period a year ago.

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=129187

This is why people are selling off there assets and family keepsakes not because they are too lazy to work (In most cases we all know of exceptions)

 

Weren't the banks taking unusual risks in their lending practices, as in, lending money to folks less able to repay (people whom the underwriters would have previously considered "losers" under more conservative math)? Then you add in the people who don't have the sense to understand what an ARM is. Add a group of bad risks to a group of shallow thinkers, turn up a little financial pressure, and there's your increase in foreclosures. However the foreclosures are occurring in the lowest ranks of homebuyers, aren't they? Amongst the very people who shouldn't have gotten the loans to begin with?

Keep in mind also the relative percent of foreclosures vs. functioning loans in this large country to put those raw numbers into perspective.

Keep in mind also that allowing foreclosure can be a calculated decision, like bankruptcy, so those numbers aren't 100% against the homeowners' will. Some of them may be thinking like economists and choosing not to throw good money after bad.

However we're diverging, as a person of any income level can stupidly make themselves house-poor. This doesn't mean that the middle-class is therefore imploding and selling heirlooms in fits of shortsightedness.

 

Foreclosures are so high because of a cpl reasons.

For one, the lending industry was giving away mortgages to anybody with a pulse, no-doc ( no documentation ) loans, interest only loans etc etc.

There was also intense pressure on the banks from advocate groups to not ask for something as basic as proof of CITIZENSHIP. Yes, citizenship as a requirement was called racial profiling.

Now, with the crackdowns, many illegal aliens are simply walking away from homes, they are on every street here. Bank of America is the worst, and continues to give credit to anyone with a Mexican metricula card, a form of scam ID used by the Mexican government to add " legitimacy " to the illegals.

#1: Buy what you can afford
#2: Get a fixed rate mortgage and don't play the numbers unless you are a pro and understand the interest market.
#3: Dont buy a house unless you have a year of payments in reserve

My wife and I are middle class earners, we are in zero danger of foreclosure, as we made smart decisions when buying our home 4 years ago.

If you follow the above rules, you are in near zero danger of losing your home.

Therefore, it falls again, not on the government, but on your decisions, but it is so easy to blame the economy or the government when your poor thought process burns you. Blame someone else.

 

Unfortunatly the Morgage lenders Banks etc were handing out morgages like confetti at many times the salary of the borower, we have the same problem over here as a number of the institutions are related.
But no it is not just the low income earners who are been hit it is also the middle income families. as for blame then a great deal of it lies with the morgage providers who as I say handed them out also in the mix is the economy, if interest rates rise then morgage repayments go up (Unless you have a fixed rate) then there are the other economic factors if the cost of living rises as well you have less money to spend add to this the possibility of job losses due to a stagnating or falling economic growth in certain areas of the country.
So no you can not just blame the borrower it is in many cases a combination of events.
I quite agree with Jack on the Citizenship issue that is a necessity there are way to many scams happening in this field.

The good thing is that your Goverment is intervining in a positive manner to help try and ease the situation

President Bush Has Implemented Programs To Stabilize Our Nation's Housing And Financial Markets

This week, President Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which contains several critically important provisions to help stabilize the Nation's housing market, financial system, and broader economy. The law provides the Treasury Department with the temporary authority to assure continued access to liquidity and capital to the mortgage-lending government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In addition, the Administration strongly supports the creation of a stronger and more effective regulatory oversight regime for the GSEs.

Last year, the President launched FHASecure, which has helped more than 290,000 families avoid foreclosure by refinancing into safe Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured mortgages. The President and his Administration also helped facilitate formation of the private-sector HOPE NOW Alliance, which has helped approximately 1.9 million families stay in their homes since July 2007.


The Treasury Department has issued more than 112 million stimulus payments, totaling more than $92 billion, under the bipartisan economic growth package that President Bush signed into law. Payments will continue to be sent out in small batches through the remainder of the year. The growth package is returning more than $150 billion back to American families and businesses this year.


An independent study finds that the rebate checks are providing a substantial boost to the national economy. According to the study's results, most people are spending their rebates on durable goods and services – such as appliances, electronics, and furniture – than on items such as groceries and apparel. The margin was impressive – an average of $180 on durable goods and services, compared to $90 on groceries and apparel. The study projects that nondurable consumer spending will be boosted by 4.1 percent in the current quarter. (Northwestern University Professor Jonathan Parker and University of Chicago Professor Christian Broda, "The Impact Of The 2008 Tax Rebates On Consumer Spending: Preliminary Evidence," 7/29/08)

 

I paid extra on my mortgage with my stimulus handout.