I just finished reading a very sad book, and it left me with some fairly pessimistic feelings about the future of our country.
And now that I’ve finished the book, I’ll probably watch the movie. I doubt it will make me feel much better.
“Nomadland” is the story of a phenomenon that goes far too unnoticed these days — Americans living what they call a “houseless” lifestyle. They don’t say they’re homeless, but their “homes” are vehicles. Some live in trailers, some in recreational vehicles, others in campers and still others just in their cars.
And while many of them would deny it, if this lifestyle is a choice, it’s only the least terrible of their options.
We have heard in recent years that 70 percent of American families are at least just getting by, just one of two missed paychecks from being on the street. The current pandemic and the resulting economic slowdown has made things even worse, and we won’t see the extent of it until eviction moratoriums end.
Twenty years ago, when I was working as a business reporter, I occasionally covered huge RV shows at the Fairplex in Pomona, California. It was literally amazing how posh some of the newer models were, with plasma screen TVs and queen size beds and great sound systems.
They started with price tags around a quarter of a million dollars, and after a few years of covering the shows, I came across a new model that went for $1 million. Believe it or not, it was an RV that you could drive into a lake and use it as a boat.
A million dollars.
There was one thing I could not understand, though. What sort of person who could afford to spend a million dollars on such a vehicle would want something like that.
I came up with one name.
Jethro Clampett.
Yes, I know he was a fictional character, but that’s sort of my point. The people on the road in “Nomadland” generally aren’t even driving new vehicles, let alone million-dollar ones.
I live in a fairly upscale retirement community, and we have a parking lot on the fringe of the development where people who own RVs and campers keep them when they’re not being used. Many of them are very nice looking, but remember, they belong to people who own homes and RVs.
I once thought it would be nice to have an RV for travel, but no matter what other problems it would cause, the deal-breaker for me is that I don’t drive well enough at age 71 to be confident driving a vehicle the size of a bus.
I don’t have any idea how many “houseless” people there are. but if you read “Nomadland” you’ll see there is nothing glamorous or exciting about the lifestyle. I get little enough from Social Security that if I were alone and that was my only income. I couldn’t make it without serious economizing. Yet some of the people interviewed for “Nomadland” get less than half of what I get.
So they hit the road, some of them picking crops in season, some working at Amazon warehouses and many doing both.
It is estimated that someone working a shift for Amazon will walk the equivalent of 12-13 miles on concrete floors. Not to mention doing a hundreds squats per shift.
We really are becoming one of the nastiest “free” countries in how we treat older people. Only half of the baby boomers have reached retirement age, so it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Tens of millions of people aren’t at all prepared for retirement and they will be a tremendous drag on the system.
Look at the camper van in the picture. Then imagine living in it in the heat of summer or the cold of winter. You can’t leave the engine running all night, so you’ve got to have another power source.
Sound bad? Then imagine you’re not alone. Imagine two or three people or even more are sharing your space.
This is where your country — our country — is heading. There is such an obscene concentration of wealth at the top that there are millions and millions of people at the bottom have no hope of ever having even an average life.
Read Joe Bageant’s “Deer Hunting With Jesus” and you’ll see how even when they have a chance to do the right thing, people cheat them into loans with higher interest rates than necessary.
This happened with thousands of loans in the subprime mortgage scandal 15 years or so ago, and the bewildered victims had a very common reaction.
“Why would they cheat us?”
Why indeed?
Doesn’t it seem as though there are a lot more people out there getting ahead by cheating other people? Those folks live very well, beyond their true abilities, and people who couldn’t afford to lose end up with lesser lifestyles through no fault of their own.
“Nomadland” looks more and more like a preview.
Bad times coming.
A hard rain’s gonna fall.