To see how socialism will look in 10 years, check out the elderly unemployed

Today's WSJ has another anecdotal article on the economy today, this time on the elderly unemployed. Three in their 80s, one 90 year old, and a 76 year old--all unemployed. They have social security, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, various government social services like 27 months of paid job training--I don't think any were in government housing. In short, they are our future, because Obama is destroying our economy. He's following the pattern of the 1930s when Hoover and FDR threw money at the problem and deepened the Depression. Our pensions will be worthless soon if business can't recover. We are, or were, a capitalist country and so far all his proposals and plans like destroying our energy industry, the absurd plans to control the climate, and nationalizing banks, auto industry and health care, huge segments of the economy, do not bode well for the future of the USA. Our future is these workers. Barely getting by with all the generosity a bloated government wishes to bestow.

I suspect those in the story who have families would have help if they wanted it, or else they raised some very spoiled children. The divorced 80 year old raised 7 children, and if none of them help her, there's probably material for a novel. The 90 year old has six sons. Two of these workers took out home equity loans when things were good a few years back. Another never married and has outlived all her relatives.

Actually, the 90 year old isn't unemployed. When she quit waitressing at 85, she went into a job training program.

Getting hired isn't impossible. Dorothy Adams, 90, who raised six sons, had been a waitress. She quit at age 85 because of the physical demands. She couldn't make it on $8,000 a year in Social Security and $1,140 in food stamps, so she enrolled in an Experience Works training program in central Pennsylvania.

She got a job last year at a home-health-care agency. She drives to the homes of elderly adults who are sick and homebound. She reads them their mail, takes them to appointments, helps them dress and prepares light meals. She gets paid $7.50 an hour, plus mileage reimbursement.

Social Security and Food Stamps were intended to supplement, not support. These people did not have private pensions like 401k or 403b or defined benefit plans. If the markets can't recover under Obama, neither will we.