Dear President Bush,
I have been saving for retirement for fifteen years. I have -18.9% return on my investment. Although I am a cautious investor with a graduate degree in finance, I was unable to survive the market downturn which hit me hard beginning in 2001. I stayed away from internet stocks and other high-fliers, but was unable to guess the extent to which companies were lying on financial statements, nor the extent to which Wall St. analysts were lying about their analysis.
If you proceed with your present plan, I will not receive enough social security to help me during retirement. Half my parents retirement income comes from social security. The other half from their company sponsored pension fund. I have never worked for a company with a pension fund because most pension funds have been eliminated.
When I retire, I will have no pension, almost no social security, and the very small sum of money that may survive the vicissitudes of the investment market. In reality, I will not be able to retire at any age.
Yet, my work in the information technology field is being not only out-sourced, but in-sourced also. When my department requests additional employees, we must wait until they can be brought in from overseas. Even temporary employees must be brought from overseas. I work 60 to 80 hours a week to keep my management from thinking that it would be cheaper to replace me with a worker imported from overseas.
I work for a Fortune 2500 firm which will remain nameless. Because our parent company has been bid-rigging for years and recently was investigated, our stock has recently severely declined. This has had a negative impact on our investments through the company stock option program.
From every direction my government and private industry is working against typical middle class wage earners like myself. You want to cut my social security benefits. You encourage outsourcing my job by keeping in place tax incentives. Now I hear that you want to increase my taxes by getting rid of my mortgage and state income tax deductions, so that you can decrease the taxes of people who already have lots of savings.
I'm not asking for any help. Just please, stop doing so much harm, harm to the middle class wage earners. We're the oil in the machinery of this country. We help the rich get richer, and keep the poor from completely starving. We're squeezed from every direction. Our benefits only decrease; our taxes only increase; our real wages steadily decline; our expenses steadily increase; and yet we continue to show up to work early and stay late in order to put in our 14 hour days week in and week out.
We don't have any lobbyists. No one in government needs to consider us. There is no profit and no glory to championing the middle class wage earner. Yet, no democracy can survive without a large and healthy middle class.
Regards,
Jag Hwawck Ulaga
Pronunciation: 'jag 'wäk ü 'läg ä
(Just Another Glamourless Hard Working American Who Can't Keep Up Let Alone Get Ahead)
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