From Middle Class to Food Stamps to Homeless

Working hard and getting a bachelors degree is no guarantee that you will not end up on food stamps. The current economic crisis in the United States, and particularly in Michigan, has left many qualified workers ending up in total poverty. This crisis has affected people far and wide from every economic sector of this once great country. According to the New York Times, one in eight Americans and one in four children are already on the rolls for the welfare system nationwide.

Laid-off middle class workers are running out of unemployment and their 401(k)s. What happens to us when all runs out and we are living on nothing but food stamps? We do not want bigger government taking care of us, we want to work and take care of ourselves. We want to be able to pay our bills. Until there are once again jobs for people to go to, there will be no turn around for our current economic crisis.

We the middle class have never been on public assistance and do not want a hand out. We want a hand up. What is going to happen to us?

My husband is a 59-year-old laid-off plastic engineer who cannot find work. Our story is not much different from many of the other millions of people facing this crisis. With an unexpected job loss, car payments to make, credit card bills and not enough money to sustain us for the rest of our lives, we have lost the car, fallen way behind on credit cards and all of our savings are gone. We make enough on unemployment to cover our mortgage and COBRA insurance. Once the unemployment runs out, we will have no money to pay for anything. Then what?

Ending up on food stamps was not our plan. Forty plus years of hard work, raising a family and trying to live right and do the right things has come to a dead end. What happened to the American dream? Our lives and the lives of so many others were not supposed to end up this way.

We live in Michigan, the hardest hit in unemployment since the auto crisis. In Michigan one in five people are on some type of assistance. These are staggering numbers. Michigan, a state that only a few years ago could not get enough workers to fill all the jobs, now is filled with the unemployed, foreclosed homes, and closed factories. And believe me when I say this is not all due to unions. The majority of the auto jobs in Michigan are non-union jobs. Unions have not been strong here for a very long time.

There may be a turnaround coming but I do not believe it is going to turn around quick enough to save thousands of working class people from losing everything. The middle class, the backbone of the working people, is collapsing here. How many will be going from middle class to food stamps to homeless?

Source: JASON DEPARLE, " The Safety Net " The New York Times