For about the last year they tell me the economy has been on the road to recovery. I’m not sure what that means, but it doesn’t seem to mean much of anything to regular working people. I pretty sure when they talk about the recovery they’re speaking about how the banks and large corporations are now stabilized and no longer in danger of collapse.

You may have forgotten about them since people don’t seem to mention their roles as much, but if you can recall they’re the guys primarily responsible for crashing the economy.

America acted quickly and spent nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayer money to bail them out and now they’re back to reporting profitable gains. At the time our lawmakers handed out the cash, most of us probably thought that didn’t seem so bad. Mostly I think that’s because there’s been a delay from when regulators, businessmen and government officials recognized the issue to when it actually impacted the rest of us.

As you read through the headlines in New York State these days, be prepared to hear about the most desperate state cutbacks since the depression. Schools are being shuttered, swaths of government employees laid off and public service on all fronts are being drastically reduced.

Welcome to the cost of recovery.

Maybe they call it a recovery because in a sense this is as good as it is going to get for the foreseeable economic future. In effect the recovery didn’t come to us but rather we came to it, in the form of reduced expectations. There is no shortage of public officials telling us that the new America is “more with less”... that is unless you’re rich of course.

I can’t help but point out here that while most Americans have lost income due to increased costs, stagnant pay and reduced public services, the richest among us have seen a steady growth of profitability.