We are the 99%

So I've been reading these:

We Are the 99 Percent

There are about 50 more every 12 hours, sometimes more.  It's become the most active feed in my RSS.  It is monumentally depressing.

Sometimes you read one and you feel like... ok, you made some mistakes.  Other times I am thinking... right, well no system is going to be able to account for that.  But mostly I think... damn, there oughta be a law.

And then I think a lot about my bank balance and the security of my job.

Truth be told many of these people, even the disastrous ones are better off than others.  Most of these folks went to college.  Most people don't go to college.  Most of these folks appear to be fairly technically knowledgeable.  Many, many people are not.  As a sample it appears to be a fairly well educated mostly left leaning group.  But one wonders if that only means that it's barely the tip of a monumentally depressing iceberg.

Some things just leap out at you after a dozen or so posts:

It is unquestionably time for single payer federal health insurance.  These people with huge medical debt, or insurance deductibles with five digits - we're better than this.  It's time to get it done.

As an aside, we need to better promote the CHIP programs.  Reading about people saying their infants can't get health care because they don't have insurance while knowing that there are governmental programs in existence that the writers must be unaware of is tragic.

If we can't get universal health insurance then we need some kind of government lending program.  30 year loans at 0% for health expenses.  You'd wind up owing your soul to the company store, but it's gotta be better than tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt to go to the doctor.  Dental ought to be covered too.

There should be unlimited unemployment hardship forbearances for student loans.  Can't pay if you can't find work.

We should get together and have the government liberate people from underwater mortgages.  The buyers ought to get a piece of the money they put in back - not all of it, but something to work with.  The government should put the screws to the lenders to settle for pennies on the dollar - or just a flat write off for the companies that were bailed out at taxpayer expense.  Can't have people who could find work elsewhere unable to move because they can't sell their house.  The government can sell the houses or donate them to not for profits.  People got rich selling houses we didn't need to people that couldn't afford them and then the profit takers got bailed out when the scheme collapsed.  We need to help the people on the ground.

There ought to be a tax credit for taking anyone into your household.  Adult child, parent, grandparent, anyone not able to stand on their own two feet.

Apparently something needs to be done around divorce settlements and support.  People ought not be able to walk away from debt, leaving it to their ex.  Maybe support should be like a mortgage, where you borrow the whole amount up front to guarantee it and then pay it back over time, or maybe not the whole amount, but something like 24 months in an escrow account.  Something so there is a backstop against missed payments.

Oh, and did I say we need single payer, universal, federal health insurance?  Yeah.  Now.

I read this thing day after day and get more depressed and scared.  It's time for something substantive to be done.