Now that I’ve turned 80, I look back and I’m troubled by what I see today. We have a Republican Party leaning toward autocracy and 70 million Americans who seem to support that idea. We have cable news networks lying to the public for profit. Home computers and iPhones have become representative of a growing nightmare. Our privacy is in jeopardy.

Some elected officials don’t seem to care about how wide and quickly the gap between income and the cost of living is growing. Working families are becoming homeless. Unions, like them or not, had always kept salaries in line with living costs, but unions have been annihilated. Unions were always blamed for price increases. Today, it’s the multimillionaire CEOs, CFOs and COOs who are responsible.

Then there’s deregulation, another Republican favorite. Throw the rules away. Let corporate America pollute the air and contaminate the water while raising costs. Wall Street loves it. In the 70s, the minimum wage was $2.65 and we could afford an apartment, food, a used car. We even had a few bucks for fun. Considering cost of living increases, from then to now, we would need a $25 minimum wage to live as we did back then.

Watching kids today, it breaks my heart. When I was that age, I was living a fun social life, with an apartment and a car. Kids the same age I was are working two jobs today to stay afloat. What’s happening to us?

Doug Davis
Windham