The old man lay quietly beneath the heavy blankets, listening in the dark to the hushed sounds of the small apartment. Somewhere overhead the heating unit hummed as warm air attempted to breach the barrier of cold that had settled heavily in the small bedroom. The old man could feel cold's nip on his sunken cheeks and crag of a nose; he had taken to wearing a nightcap to protect his balding head. Wisps of white peaked out from underneath. He wore his hair long these days, what little he had left. No longer an executive, the other workers at the plant could've cared less that the straggly wisps worked their way down almost to his shoulders. Barber's were a luxury and his wife's hands shook so much from the palsy that he would no longer let her near him with anything sharp.
Colder than normal, he thought, and that was saying something. He and is wife, whose labored breathing was muffled, but still audible, even buried as she was under the heavy, woollen blankets, kept the thermostat turned down as far as they could tolerate during the cold winter months. What with electricity rates having climbed steadily over the years, it was just too big a hit to their budget to keep the apartment heated to more than the bare minimum. He felt the cold gnawing away at his joints and settling into his bones, despite the extra blankets.
He could just make out the muted rush of winter's cold breath on the nearby window as gusts pushed against the concrete and brick complex. It was going to be another windy, cold day by the sound of it, he thought, already dreading the walk to the nearby bus stop. It would take him perhaps ten minutes to shuffle the six blocks to the metro stop. He didn't move very fast anymore. Both hips had been replaced a while back, along with his left knee. He'd been fortunate that his employer still provided medical coverage, not many did anymore since the government had entered the business. His employer's coverage was more expensive, took a bigger bite out of his meager salary, but at least he could get into see a doctor without a six month wait. Medicare wasn't an option since he still worked; the government had dropped coverage for seniors who were still working as part of the 2030 "austerity" initiative, designed to save America from having to declare a formal bankruptcy.
A soft, steady tick tick tick brought him back to the apartment. The alarm clock hadn't gone off yet, it wasn't quite 5:30, but he'd awakened a few minutes early. The ticking came not from the alarm clock, but from what many would consider an antique these days, an old-fashion wind up grandfather's clock that stood in the corner of the small bedroom, next to the single wooden dresser. The grandfather's clock was really the only thing the old couple owned of any interest. The rest of the furniture was cheaply made from pressed wood. It was merely functional at best. The old man knew his wife desperately wanted to replace the worn out furniture. Many of the wooden pieces were scratched and even splintered, but who could afford new furniture these days? Still, the furniture served its purpose, and they'd gotten it years ago before prices had risen sharply, the result of the rest of the world outbidding Americans for lumber... and for everything else for that matter. The U.S. dollar just could not compete, which meant everything cost more in dollars.
It wasn't a big apartment building, perhaps a hundred units in all, populated by those who couldn't afford more spacious quarters uptown. The apartments were efficiency units, kitchen, small dining area, a living room and a bedroom, no more than 750 square feet all in. Still, it was a roof over their head and only cost a couple week's wages, and it was definitely better than the barracks that'd been built a few years back to hold the indigent - baby boomers who weren't even able to afford a place of their own, all 35 million of them.
He exhaled as he shifted in bed, making sure not to let the covers slip from him, not yet. He might have a couple more minutes before the alarm went off. He didn't want to look at it, didn't want to see that it was time. A few more minutes to rest before getting ready, in the cold and dark, for another day at the plant. The irony of working at a coaling station did not escape him. After all, he'd spent most of his career as an economist working for Big Oil, much of his time taken up trying to figure out an economically viable solution to transitioning the energy industry to a successor energy source, one that would satisfy the Green movement, proving to them that Big Oil was serious about developing clean alternate energy sources. It was actually true of course. The energy industry quite understood that oil was a finite and diminishing resource that would need to be replaced with something else. The problem was how to economically make the transition to whatever that something else was while staying in business. Of course the lack of a strategic energy policy and the sharp drop in the value of the U.S. dollar had forced the U.S. to abandon most environmental goals. It had turned out that much of the Green movement was a luxury for the rich.
Coal had come back in a big way in the United States after the dollar's slow motion collapse sent the price of oil to $200 a barrel. The environmentalists howled their outrage when Congress passed the legislation lifting all bans on the use of coal by utilities and what few manufacturing plants remained in the country. The politicians had even cleared the way for the return of coal fired heating units in multi-unit housing, recognizing that 79 million baby boomers and countless younger voters would turn them out of office if they didn't let Americans keep their electricity. After all, America was the Saudi Arabia of coal, and it only made sense to use those natural resources that the country still controlled, regardless of the environmental impact.
The inflation that had swept the country over the last decade had wiped out many retirement nest eggs besides his own. He recalled having read years earlier that 50% of all baby boomers would run out of money before they died, an estimate based on a mere 3% inflation rate, below the historical 4.5%, and well below the high single digits that had prevailed for much of the last twenty years. He'd been confident he wouldn't be one of them though. He'd already saved close to $2 million by the time he'd turned fifty, a retirement portfolio capable of throwing off $80,000 in income per annum while still lasting at least 30-years, or so he'd been taught. His defined benefit plan would pay him an additional $950,000 lump sum when he turned 59-years old, and he was still saving in his 401(k). No, he'd been downright smug at the time! He simply hadn't realized what high-single digit inflation could do to an investment portfolio. Hadn't realized that the dollar was losing 37% of its value every 10-years at the historical 4.5% inflation rate that had prevailed post World War II and had lost 97% of its value since the Federal Reserve's creation in 1913.
The old man let his mind wander back over the decades to a time when he'd just turned fifty, a time when both the Republican and Democratic parties had lost their senses and were spending money they didn't have on initiatives that provided no long-term benefits to America, saddling generations of Americans with debt they couldn't possibly pay back. The politicians had recklessly created credit, encouraging asset bubble after asset bubble in an attempt to jump start the economy and, in so doing, buy votes for themselves. The madness had continued right up until the riots. The high unemployment rates and rising inflation had led to millions struggling simply to survive. Some of those millions eventually took to the streets to protest $8 bread and $10 gas. The price controls hadn't worked, nor had the government's attempts to run the country's farms through a combination of price controls and tax incentives.
The old man shifted once again under the heavy blankets. The cold was still gnawing at his face, his wife was still sleeping heavily at his side, but he knew it was almost time. He rolled onto his side and silenced the alarm before it went off. His wife worked nights at a meatpacking plant and had only come in a few hours ago. He knew she was bone-weary and arthritic pain made it hard for her to sleep. He didn't want to wake her unnecessarily. Slowly he slid from under the covers, shivering as the cold air enveloped him in its icy embrace. He sat momentarily on the side of the bed, taking a mental inventory of his aches and pains, wiggling his toes and ankles to make sure he'd be able to stand up without losing his balance and falling. He couldn't afford anymore broken bones. Damn lucky they even had jobs!
Satisfied that he could stand, he rose slowly and shuffled to the closet. Getting dressed before the cold invaded his very core was important he'd found, otherwise he tended to stay cold all day. Reaching the closet, he slid open the door and hurriedly reached for one of his two heavy woollen shirts. Thank god his wife had been able to mend it, he thought as he slipped it on, a new shirt was definitely not in their budget this year! As he reached for his blue jeans another thought struck him and he grunted in mild surprise. Eighty years old today, he thought, as he slipped into the jeans...
