The Shame of Downward Mobility

We're pleased to announce we've started posting on Stylishly Cheap Living. On this blog, we will write about how we try to make our living costs go down, and living quality go up! We hope you'll find something of interest.

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A spectre is haunting the USA: Ruin and homelessness for hundreds of thousands of formerly hard-working, decent, law-abiding citizens. In spite of the import of the subject, this is not a story you will read much about in the mainstream media, or even in the blogosphere. It seems bank bailouts are infinitely more newsworthy, somehow.

Our efforts to find coverage on mushrooming homelessness have yielded only a few stories gleaned typically from local news such as this report , and this one.

We suspect the news blackout comes from a simple psychological bias. Downward mobility is just not part of the script that Americans have for themselves either individually or collectively. The 'American Dream', the 'American Way of Life', and the American 'Free-Enterprise System' are all about making it, if not making it big. There is no reverse gear.

Aside from the copious shame newly homeless individuals heap upon themselves as they see their lives dissolve, there is more broadly in the public consciousness "no place at the table" for them. They must be invisibilised, if you will.

Out of the public eye, they are also out of the public policy arena. Where in Mr. Obama's recession-cure are additional funds for soup kitchens and shelters? Religious, non-profit, and local governmental agencies serving the destitute are being stretched to near the breaking point. This situation will be worsening in the coming months and, because no one is really paying any attention, will create a stealth crisis of gigantic proportions.