ETHAN AND PATRICIA STRUGGLE (CONtINUED)

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                   None of this includes sales taxes, cell phone taxes, cable taxes, payment of copays and deductibles for health care paid out of their take home income reducing that $4,685.00 another $165.00 on average bringing disposable income to $4,520.00 per month.

                  With rent, utilities, food, transportation, clothing, cable, health care, rental insurance, miscellaneous expenses, and expenses not planned for, always popping up as we all know, Ethan and Patricia are short each month. Their combined incomes are absorbed 100% plus more by expenses necessary to meet a minimum way of life with no savings.

                  Ethan and Patricia reached out to their employer for a raise, a slight raise. None comes.

                  They turned to their government for help with purchase of food and payment of rent. No help is available. They make too much. 

                  Their employer speaks to them in ways one would never speak to family. Overworked and underpaid is their life. 

                 Abuse of power, lack of respect, ageism, sexism, and just total disregard for people are typical. Policies do not support working people turning a blind eye to the worker creating a toxic culture. 

                Help appears in the form of ads in the mail from credit card companies promising relief but in the end more debt is the reality. Interest reaching as high as 28% means more hours of work to pay interest. In a pinch is the ‘pay-day’ loan with interest of 400%.

               Ethan and Patricia are not alone but of a vast majority of Americans struggling each day coming up short at the end of each day. They are among the largest group of Americans working as receptionists, clerks of all types, secretaries, customer service representatives, sales agents, counter clerks, and workers in fast food restaurants. 

               When you shop at Walmart, look at the people working there and you will see how Americans work and look. When you buy that hamburger at McDonalds, you will see before you the face of the American worker.

               Dreams of a happy family with children are elusive, replaced with endless stress for survival. 

              Medical care is a luxury. Transportation is hard. Sleep is a luxury. Relations are strained. Credit and debt are a trap. Dreams get smaller, soon disappearing. An unexpected loss breaks them.

             The United States is not alone by far in possessing vast minerals and natural resources, but of the few it is possessing the best workers. In recent days the best of our people, the best of our workers, are being trampled upon by a system catering to the few at the top in wealth and income pushing America’s best assets, its workers, the Ethans and Patricias, to the bottom in wealth and income.

               Despite genuine and sincere efforts, American workers are failing to live no better than the serfs of old European Feudalism.

               Ethan and Patricia live as the sunflower seed lives. Left alone the seed remains a seed. Left alone, Ethan and Patricia are just another young couple going nowhere. 

              But each, the sunflower and Ethan and Patricia, possess potency and the actuality of the potency in the sunflower seed is the sunflower blossom. The actuality of the potency in Ethan and Patricia is productive and happy citizenship.

              The potency of the sunflower seed reaches its actuality when planted in the right soil receiving the right amount of water and sunshine. 

The potency of Ethan and Patricia reaches its actuality when receiving the benefit of rules necessary to their development.