POVERTY 2.0

Sun 12.4.22

Below is a post from December 2008, during our last recession.  I am living in NYC working in show biz, background player, that is.  The recession by that time was fairly serious.  Wall Street honchos were losing their jobs; that’s where most of the money fueling the the city came from, and also a good chunk of the state.  And it was Christmas time:

I'm supposed to show up at 6:30 am at the Rockefeller Plaza on 51st Street, and look for an empty store formerly occupied by Sharper Image. That will be the holding area for tomorrow's shoot of 30 Rock. I couldn't see myself trying to find that location at 6 in the morning, so I went down to Rockefeller Center today to check out the site and found it easily enough with the help of a doorman down the street. The area is packed, a line snaking from Radio City Music Hall all the way across the block and round the corner waits to get in to see the Rockettes do their thing.

People bustling on the street, shopping, with the kids, chomping on a big salted pretzel, knish, or hot dog. We may be poorer, but we still know how to have a good time. There is a difference this year to the holiday season, its less frantic. Being poorer doesn't stop you from being glamorous, flirtatious, intriguing, intelligent and witty. Rather, I'd say money tampers these attributes. Because money seeks to insure its own accretion, insurance against any downfall becomes a prime goal. Insurance against theft, against medical bills, against death, for the house, the car, the children's education, life becomes a search for security and protection.

Every day now another piece of our economic infrastructure crumbles. I went to my bank's website to check my balance and discovered that Commerce Bank had become TD Bank. TD? What in the world is that? Commerce used the color red as its symbol and used it in their dŽcor. Not to TD taste, their color is green, so I now have a bank that's red and green. Actually TD stands for Toronto Dominion, yes a Canadian bank is moving in to the country.

Schumer on the cover of the Sunday Times with Wall Street honchos, is spouting off about Wall Street being the city most important business. That's not true. New York would die without its artists from fashion design to architecture, poetry to music, the culinary arts, the designers in all fields, the Rockettes, the rock & rollers. When we lose sight of these values, we become unbalanced, like Schumer and the rest of Congress who allowed Wall Street a free hand, no rules attached, go for it guys.

They did. Life is not about making money, it's about having a good time, and money is only the fuel, not the vehicle that gets you there. Truly, there is no insurance against life. It will find you.

As true today as then.  We haven’t reached the center of the storm yet, but it’s coming. We see it in the supermarkets, the stores.  Next, comes the ballooning energy costs for heating oil, gasoline. Life is becoming more expensive.  But poverty is doable; we’ll figure it out.