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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Taking charge to earn a berth ... Motorcyclist who rear-ended semi in critical condition ... Police association, city, agree on contract terms ... Taking charge to earn a berth ... Motorcyclist who rear-ended semi in critical condition ... Police association, city, agree on contract terms ... GUEST OPINION Guest Opinion: Everybody knows Comment By Andy Seles DailyTidings.com By Andy Seles Posted Jun. 18, 2016 at 12:01 AM By Andy Seles Posted Jun. 18, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Social News Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That's how it goes Everybody knows — Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows” A recent poll found two-thirds of Americans have difficulty coming up with $1,000 in an emergency. How many of us acknowledge our financial woes to our relatives, friends and neighbors? While sex, politics and religion are considered taboo subjects in polite conversation, money is so taboo it doesn’t even make the list. I brought it up among friends, and a couple brave souls responded. One octogenarian confessed he had, years earlier, taken out a reverse mortgage. Since he no longer has enough equity to qualify for a loan, he now has one less emergency resource. A septuagenarian shared that a catastrophic illness and $100,000 hospital bill had forced him back into the workforce. The taboo against personal financial disclosure has deep roots in our competitive, capitalist culture that glorifies individual effort and defines success almost exclusively in monetary terms. Financial failure is considered cause for personal shame, even though the cards in a “winner-takes-all” system are stacked against most of us. We desperately try to adjust to the “new economy,” working more for less, monetizing our assets (think Uber, Airbnb, etc.), existing in a state of denial and focusing on the symptoms of a rigged economy rather than confronting the root cause of our race to the bottom. Refreshingly, Neil Gabler has broken this code of silence, blowing the whistle on our dysfunctional economy with his article in the May Atlantic, “The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans.” Gabler cites a Federal Reserve study that revealed 47 percent of respondents could cover a $400 expense only by borrowing or selling something. Gabler freely admits what he calls his own “financial impotence” (“because it has many of the characteristics of sexual impotence, not least of which is the desperate need to mask it and pretend everything is going swimmingly”). He quotes Brad Klontz, a financial psychologist at Creighton University: “You are more likely to hear from your buddy that he is on Viagra than that he has credit-card problems.” Gabler notes the financial squeeze is happening to most of us: the poor, middle-class professionals, the soon-to-retire, retirees, high school grads and college grads alike. According to the Russell Sage Foundation, the inflation-adjusted net worth of a median household, $87,992 in 2003, had declined to $54,500 by 2013. Our post-World War II egalitarian prosperity has succumbed to ubiquitous financial insecurity. For 30-40 years the working class has been much like the proverbial frog in the pot, boiling too slowly to notice that its goose (pardon the mixed metaphor) is cooked. From her lofty perch, Hillary Clinton likes to tout “incremental change” as a practical political reality. It certainly has been an economic reality; the working class has incrementally lost ground since her husband instituted neoliberal policies that eliminated trade barriers and deregulated big banks and big business, stifling organized labor as it incrementally transferred wealth to the top 1 percent. Her announcement that she would appoint her husband as her economic adviser was a signal to the well-heeled that the ship of state would stay its neoliberal course. A recent Pew poll found 72 percent of citizens feel stressed about money at least some of the time. Half of respondents struggled to make ends meet after an economic emergency. (A combination of wage stagnation and rising health care and college costs are the drags that make household economic shocks so challenging.) Disillusionment and financial impotence have led to the anger and resentment now playing out on our ship of state. Some of our crew, eager for scapegoats, want to throw their “loser” shipmates overboard. Some would like to redirect our sails, but this ship is so rigidly rigged that nothing short of a massive mutiny will alter iits course. That is unlikely when few of us have the courage to admit to one another just how financially desperate we really are, something that, ironically, everybody knows. Andy Seles lives in Ashland. By Andy Seles DailyTidings.com By Andy Seles Posted Jun. 18, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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