Wow, Daisy I think you are spot on. I live in an area where jobs are plentiful, but they are low paying and rarely come with adequate health insurance. The cost of rent/mortgages exceeds 40% if not more of most folks income. Our water/sewer is over 100.00 month and although our electricity provider says it provides the lowest cost of electricity in the nation, my bill often exceeds 265.00. Our car insurance and homeowners insurance rates are sky high because we are a “high insurance fraud” state. I have asked the family if they would be interested in moving but so far no one wants to. I spend so much time trying to cut costs everywhere. I always feel guilty like I am not doing enough or I am not frugal enough. The truth is, its just too expensive to live. I am going to school to be an RN. This will help safe guard us when the next recession hits. My husband works in the construction and engineering business so it took us years to recover from the last recession. But I believe we will see a gradual decline just as you have described. I saw this first hand with an friend from Venezuela in 2003. She told me then that the government had frozen her families assets and she was unable to return to Venezuela because she was now broke. Look at Venezuela now in 2019. It took awhile to collapse, but it did indeed collapse.
