Are you better off than 4 years ago

[pbrower2a]

Four years ago --

When I was discussing news with foreigners I was trying to separate my country as a nation from its leadership. The economy was at the start of the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, and few people then knew how bad it could be. The US had lost much of the credibility that it had when George H W Bush and Bill Clinton were President.  That is back.

My investments are finally doing well -- and I bought in in November 2009 -- and I figure that I could easily get some work if I didn't have a family situation in which I am an unpaid domestic servant/ nurse's aide who hopes that I can outlast my elderly parents and start to have a real life (you can probably tell that I am a poor fit for a hick town that is the only one in which those two sentimental geezers  could possibly live in and that I find insufferable). In my mid-50s, beggars can't be choosers when it comes to work. My life was a wreck before 2008, so that hasn't changed.

In 2008 we all had legitimate fear of a second Great Depression. That fear is no longer germane to my life. I consider that I could easily have ended up homeless and eventually in the morgue...