The New York Times just posted a report from an event Bernie Sanders held this morning in Iowa Falls, Iowa. It wasn’t the usual campaign event for Sanders:
Mr. Sanders often gives hour-long stump speeches and takes questions afterward. On Monday, however, the Vermont senator spent some 45 minutes asking people to describe relying on Social Security checks, paying for increasingly expensive medicine, and what it’s like to live on minimum-wage work. The responses he received were particularly emotional.
Now we’re getting to the very core of what has been driving Sanders’ campaign: how more and more people are being left behind in the richest nation on Earth.
Carrie Aldrich, 46, wept Monday as she told Senator Bernie Sanders and 200 other people about her struggles cycling though minimum-wage jobs, fighting to get disability checks for a joint disorder, and having to rely on her elderly parents for survival.
…
“It’s really, really hard,” she added. “I worked three, four, five jobs sometimes — always minimum wage. I have a degree. I’m divorced. I’ve been waiting for disability to come through, so my parents have to support me. It’s just hard.”
This is the America we’ve become. Where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class gets squeezed.
One person said a doctor had suggested getting a diabetic dog because the animal’s insulin would cost less than insulin designed for humans. One man said his medication for his diabetes went from costing $3.25 a month to more than $600 in the last few decades.
Anne Gordon, 65, who retired from her job a plastics factory, told Mr. Sanders that she lived on less than $10,000 a year because she didn’t have a pension.
Sanders summed up all that he had heard:
“It is not easy for people to stand up and say that,” Mr. Sanders said in response to Ms. Aldrich’s remarks. “But the truth is, until millions of people who are experiencing exactly what you guys are experiencing do say that, we don’t make change. So I thank you for saying that and for telling us what is going on in your life because the truth is you can’t make it on $12,000. You can’t live with dignity on $10,000 or less.”
Interesting read...