Reckon you could survive in the US if you lost your job and your house and had to start from scratch?
Try making it through the month in Spent, a short but interesting browser game produced by a US charity to make an important point that eludes far too many of us until it’s too late.
Someone should do an Australian version. Our health system is better – but our housing is getting worse.
Moved On 
I made it with 280 bucks left over, but I’m assuming stuff thats in my life now, like growing or sourcing food from people who grow it cheap/free. Not having a mobile phone, being actually capable of fixing my car (cheaply too) and if I can’t pa in law is a retired genius mechanic, plumbing etc etc. My actual rent actually is around 600 bucks a month and I live about 60 km from the nearest rural cities. Oh I got sacked for talking about a union so I got a bit militant but the game didn’t mention that.
For an aust’n version tho .. different medical issues, but not that different. Better employment prospects I spose than the US right now, better wages and conditions and a better safety net. Keep the dental issues. Rego in NSW at least 100 bucks a month. Dunno what the rental/housing situation is around cities but I suspect its a lot worse than mine. Probably better access to food with minimal effort (more work preparing meals tho, not much more and its fun) the grocery section needs to be more appropriate.
You don’t need to play this game to work out what is going on, the U.S. is going down the tubes at lightning speed. The pain has only just started, and it will spread to Australia sooner than later. Obama is re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and the U.S. like the Titanic is going to founder. The right wing greedy syphilitic bastards in America that have caused this fiasco, are covering up their malfeasance by creating the biggest pass the buck con trick, ever perpetrated on the American people.
They will soon have the poor schmucks who work in the five and dimes, hamburger joints and other factories on three bucks an hour, convinced it is all their fault. They have a media outlet spreading the right wing talking points bullshit 24/7 and it appears to be working.
This is the wedge politics being played at its finest, all to negate the fall out from the on coming economic collapse. No more is this clearer in our own country, than the debate on asylum seekers, and a possible mining tax. As sure as eggs the Muslims, Greens, and the union movement, will be carrying the can for what is about to go down.
But hey lets have a bit of good ol lefty/righty gobedy gook, to explain it all away. I’m sure as’ shit happens’ the lefty intellectuals who go around with their head shoved up, just like our righteous right wing friends arses all the time, will no doubt have a nicely worded explanation for it all. GREED will do for me.
This is allegedly a suicide note from an unemployed American with no unemployment benefit left. (I say allegedly cos I’m not sure, but … the original site the letter appeared on is gone. Pretty soon after the guy posted the letter.)
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/disillusioned-99er-shares-his-disappointment-american-dream
I haven’t been poor in Australia in more than a decade, and that was really only a student thing anyway, I’m now comfortably middle class (and proud of it), but in a way I’m glad I had those lean years, I think it gives you some flavour of what the world is like for lots of Australians (lets not even mention the global south). It’s pretty stuffed up, though I reckon I’d prefer to be poor in this country than just about anywhere.
lynot – Do you think Huxley would be proud that he predicted the current US so accurately? 🙂
“lynot – Do you think Huxley would be proud that he predicted the current US so accurately? ”
Aldous was a man with a great insight into the future and new where we as a species, were headed. I am not totally pessimistic though, a new dawn will emerge, but we will have to have a lot more suffering yet. Let’s see, a couple of terms of Abbott at the wheel, a term of Palin might do it.
Maybe Cameron just may be the catalyst for change, when the plebes find out his mates are not going to take a cut in life style, the penny may just drop.
What ever, we are headed for dark days that’s for sure. And that is money not! in the bank.
“Maybe Cameron just may be the catalyst for change”
Oh I totally put all my money into futures stock in the upcoming market in un-obtainium – It’s going to be huge… oh… sorry, you didn’t mean James? Oh…
🙂
When combined with human ingenuity and used as fuel in a second generation fusion reactor, un-obtainium will solve the problem of peak energy once and for all.
“Oh I totally put all my money into futures stock in the upcoming market in un-obtainium – It’s going to be huge… oh… sorry, you didn’t mean James? Oh… ”
Of course, the M.E is the first cab off the rank.