My Dad and his visits 05/28/2025

Photo of my two when they were three and five. Photo by my dad.

I am fortunate to have an active, healthy, elderly father who is still part of my life. Each week he treks into Athens, a 30 mile trip each way, to get groceries. Sometimes he stops by to chat or drop off something. This week we sat down for over an hour to catch up. As always, we discuss health and wealth, politics and people, and books, movies, and other entertainments like the new mini tube amp he gave Lance. 

This week he came with news of warning. There is a lot of it since January 20th, 2025. His final point of mild optimism, that the courts and SCOTUS will save us from Trump 2.0, has long since disappeared and he follows the news cycle like a captain looking for icebergs. Alas, he is not a wealthy man except in graciousness, kindness, common sense, and a keen intellect, so I guess he has true, lasting wealth which benefits his offspring. He has taken it upon himself to sound sirens to his remaining daughter and my deserving family. My sister's family, who had a hand in her devastating and preventable death, does not warrant either his wisdom or words anymore. As her birthday approaches, my birthday, tied to hers by mere days on the monthly calendar, seems less joyful. Damn their stupid, evangelical, internet sourced, science denying, Trump loyal, murderous ideology.

Dad's news flowed and the topic was money, specifically how the Republicans have well and truly fucked life for ordinary Americans: we the non millionaires, non billionaires, non villainaires. Everyone's health insurance costs are expected to rise an average of 15% thanks to the big beautiful budget busting, tax-breaks-for-the-wealthy bill. Some will see increases of 75% if they are on the ACA (Obamacare) as tax breaks have been eliminated. My Dad pointed out that more young people may stop buying healthcare under the ACA . When that happens, the insurance pool shrinks as healthy bodies flee and reduces the available funds in the overall fund and raises risk and projected costs.

A number of other provisions under the big stupid bill will see services reduced, hospitals shut down due to Medicare and Medicaid spending reductions, and more costs due to the tariffs. Prescription medicines and their components, medical devices, and supplies coming from overseas will cost more thanks to Trump's temper tantrum tariffs. All of these things translate into higher premiums, higher copays for doctors, higher copays for meds, and higher deductibles. Less coverage for more money.

In addition, Dad emphasized that everyone's grocery prices will continue to rise. Simply, it's down to (1) reduced labor thanks to Trump's terror campaign against immigrants, (2) Trump's idiotic tariffs, (3) a greed based economy, and (4) climate change. 

Dad also emphasized that all things automotive will increase in cost. Higher new car prices. Fewer affordable used cars. Higher car parts prices which affects new and used cars, even domestic made. Higher auto insurance due to climate change disaster and increased repair costs.

Then there was the news that the big budget busting bill eliminated tax incentives for clean energy. Everyone will see increases in utility bill costs. Outside of Texas, all states and regions are set up to support the grids that cross borders. Texas is currently in self destruct mode as it welcomes bit coin mining and AI centers to stress and deplete its grid. For the rest of us, when wind turbine farms in Kansas and solar farms in Georgia generate energy, that power goes into shared regional grids. Now all of these clean energies will cost more and we'll all pay more.

Dad asked after Peter, our 27 year old adult son who lives with us. He was fortunate to finally find a full time job with full benefits this year. Since graduating magna cum laude in three years from UGA, his life has drastically changed. He became ill with UC and PSC, lost over 60 pounds, and was hospitalized twice to save his life. 

Eventually the doctors found a chemo drug that worked wonders until it didn't. But it did give Peter's liver time to heal. Another life saving drug in the form of a once-a-day pill came along and he was released from the transplant doctor's care and he has rebounded for a while now. Or as his doctor put it earlier this year, he's in remission. He watches his diet, never drinks, and avoids destructive behaviors as a matter of common sense.

During the worst parts of his illness, a period exceeding 2 years, he had to work part time in a low wage job to accommodate his illness and pay for it too. Sick leave is not a right in the US but he had a flexible employer who understood and gave a damn. Fortunately, his boss had been a friend since grade school. Because of the ACA law allowing him to stay on our health insurance until age 26, plus the ACA insurance before this job, he had reasonable health insurance coverage. By reasonable, I exaggerate a tad because his annual ACA deductible came in around $9,000.00. That amount was technically less than his gross annual income but spending the bulk of your income on healthcare leaves little to actually live on. 

With PT status, and a hourly wage twice the GA state-level minimum wage, he lived under our roof during his illness. Now, despite finally finding a FT job with benefits, he remains here. I have set up a strict budget for him with a goal emphasizing saving, something which was not an option with the outrageous deductibles, co pays, and general medical costs in our profit driven medical system. The reality is that rent has reached 50% of net pay for those living at or up to 2.5 times the poverty rate. And rent does not include utilities. Add in car insurance, repairs and maintenance, groceries, and the never ending medical co pays and deductibles, I anticipate Peter will remain under our roof for a few more years. 

Working, and still being at 2.5 times the poverty rate is the reality for one third of Americans. Of that third, a third of those are living at or under the poverty rate. Imagine working full time and still not earning enough to live on. Imagine working a couple of PT jobs and still not earning enough to live on. Roughly a quarter of young people have returned home to live with family. In 2026, it is expected to rise to one third of those under 35. 

As my Dad inquired about Peter, the subject of our finances arose. Despite Peter contributing to groceries and the utilities, I had already been reassessing our budget. I've been worrying about the rising food costs and the utilities which have drastically risen. The Bible Belt is known for it's hellish summer temps. This December I have to account for a new tax bill for an adjacent parcel of land we now own. It gives us a full conservation buffer around our homestead but Dad noted that we are well shy of the 15 acres needed for a conservation easement and resulting tax break which he enjoys at his home. 

We returned to Peter's inability to leave home. Despite his 8 year long relationship, he and Megan can not afford a place of their own. She also works in healthcare with Peter, landing her first FT job with benefits this year. As my Dad and I discussed the financials constraints, I admitted that Lance and I live a better life with Peter at home. We eat better. We have fewer worries about the bills being paid with his one-third utility contribution. We have someone to run the occasional errand and help with chores. As I added in my opinion that we would be worse off without him here, Dad pointed out that Peter would be worse off living apart from us. We all get along better together. 

As I passed along my Dad's advice to our daughter, I reminded her to buy in bulk, save more, and build buffers into her budget. I don't know what we'd do if our daughter had to move back home. At this point we'd have to build on an extension which would likely cost more than our home cost in 2003. But we'd find a way.

***************************

There seems to be so little hope for young people these days. I was reminded of this piece I read in the NYT:

What Do You Tell a College Student Graduating Into This America?

April 10, 2025 by Frank Bruni, an American journalist writing for The New York Times since 1995. Bruni joined Duke University in June 2021 as Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy in the Sanford School of Public Policy. 

It’s a hell of a thing to be surrounded by college seniors a month away from heading out into this new America, a land of malice and madness. My fellow professors and I are supposed to have nuggets of optimism at the ready, gauzy and gooey encomiums about infinite possibilities, the march of progress and that apocryphal arc, the one that bends toward justice. But all I’ve got is the metastasizing pit of fear in my own gut.

An unfamiliar student appeared at my office door the other day. Her eyes were red. Watery. It’s pollen season here in North Carolina, but I knew that wasn’t why. She was shopping for some consolation, some inspiration, and I guess my shingle looked as promising as any other.

“Where,” she asked me, “do you find hope?”

I had to stop myself from quipping that I’d sent out a search party but its members hadn’t come back, probably because they’d been wrongly detained at the border. I realized that I was stumped — that I hadn’t yet plotted a path to the far side of anger and sorrow. I owed her one. I remembered all the anxiety and uncertainty I felt at her age, the gnawing suspense of being on the threshold of adulthood with no clue what it had in store for me. I can’t imagine that state of mind and flux of emotions with a political moment like this one thrown into the roiling mix.

It’s at this point that I’m obliged to note that my office is at Duke, that my students have the privilege of attending one of the country’s most selective and affluent universities and that simply getting a college degree, any college degree, gives them a big advantage. In fact, America landed in this mess partly because of the inattention to such divides — financial, educational, cultural — and the perpetuation of rules and rites that coddled and flattered one self-impressed class of Americans while condescending to everyone else. I say that not out of any obligation. I say it because it’s true.

And some of what President Trump is doing is exploding that system, trying to reassemble the American economy in a manner that revitalizes neglected sectors and scrambles the cast of winners and losers. He’s after something analogous with his cultural revolution. Less research, more manufacturing. Fewer experts, more evangelists. Enough with roughage; bring on the beef. Let men be brutes and women be trad wives.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the student at my door and college students throughout the country made all sorts of decisions and nurtured all kinds of expectations based on one version of America only to encounter, less than three furious months into Trump’s second presidency, a much, much different one. It’s a situation suffused with bitter ironies: Those students have often been caricatured and vilified for not seeing enough good in America — for focusing on its betrayals rather than its ideals — and now they’re watching its leader betray those ideals daily, hourly, with a shrug or a smirk or, at least metaphorically, a cackle.

The world is always heaving beneath our feet. We’re the beneficiaries or casualties of its shape at a given moment. But is that what I’m supposed to tell a young woman trying to figure out her place and her plan?

Does it do justice to what she’s witnessing — to the Trump administration’s abandonment of, and indifference to, a man consigned to a hellhole in El Salvador because of an administrative error? To Trump’s morally perverse rewrite of history, in which Ukraine is evil and Russia rightly aggrieved? To his pardoning of the savages who smashed their way into the Capitol and bloodied police officers on Jan. 6, 2021? To his veneration of autocrats and his administration’s fervent efforts to turn him into one? To its conception of power not as a blessing that compels you to be generous but as a bludgeon that allows you to be cruel?

This is not merely a change in the rules. It’s the collapse of decency and dignity.

What will this season’s college commencement speakers say? I’m baffled. I’m also selfishly interested — maybe there are lines in their scripts I can crib. By what political or psychological sleight of hand will they predict a bright future after a spell of darkness? Will they be able to dance around all these chilling omens on a day when they’re supposed to perform an oratorical jig?

Some service-minded students who’d hoped to work for precisely the sorts of agencies and advocacy groups razed by Elon Musk and DOGE are regrouping. So are some science-focused students who’d set their sights on doing important research. They’ll figure out an alternative.

But what’s the fallback for a teetering democracy? That’s what was troubling the student at my door. That’s what I had to address.

I said that her shock at the current turn of events is a reminder that we never know what’s coming next, and while that question mark can be terrifying, it can also be a solace. I said that the unpredictability of the story reflected its many authors, she and I among them. We have by no means reached a point of helplessness, but we will most certainly get there if we declare defeat too soon. Hope isn’t an option. It’s an obligation.