the facts of the story are the amount of dollars left in the personal/family budget after paying the new “affordable care” premiums and deductibles- the insecurity and personal economic cutbacks that come from not being able to afford any health insurance at all-the reality of living with a smaller job and smaller paycheck-the reality that food bills are up and utiltity bills are borderline frightening and while it is now the obama norm, it hasn’t gotten easier to pay $3.50-$4 per gallon of gasoline
heating our house to a comfortable temperature has now become a luxury item in our budget, so in winter months we just don’t have much extra to spend - seldom go to the mall or shopping anywhere
but I think with obamacare, the democrats finally outdid themselves in raiding the family budget. where did they think most people would have all that extra money?
Even worse, the tight budgets have led to a catastrophic decline in the birthrate; retailers have to hope the porous borders let in enough replacement Americans (though these are usually more shrewd with their money). As more and more people are living paycheck to paycheck, the only people I see freely spending are 1) government workers, particularly tenured teachers and others with seniority (protection from layoffs) and 2) wealthy childless people. There are simply not enough of them to keep all those stores in business.
Living in a dying state (NJ), there are a lot of great secondhand deals around as Americans liquidate and flee. Even Wal-Mart can’t compete with the low prices, and older American goods in good shape are much more sturdy than the cheap Red Chinese garbage peddled in stores.
A while back, I watched a Sean Hannity segment with a panel of guests, both left and right. Hannity asked a Lib, "is there a limit to how much a person should be taxed?" The first reply was a deer-in-the-headlights gaze and then a mumbled incoherent response. ALL of the rest of the Dem/Libs in the panel could not or would not answer the question, except for a some unrelated and distracting blathering. My first thought was...we are so screwed.
What will happen to the economy when the consumers paying with freebie government entitlements courtesy of the productive class, stop getting their sustenance? Never mind the EBT riots, will Wal-Mart even be able to pay its electric bill?
Seems like there’s a huge bubble of trouble out there waiting to pop.