Midnight grocery runs capture economic desperation

   An AP story that's being flashed on the usual news carriers today reveals the hard times that Americans have found themselves immersed in. From the article:

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9IMAS8G1.htm
FREDRICKSBURG, Va. (AP) -- Once a month, just after midnight, the beeping checkout scanners at a Walmart just off Interstate 95 come alive in a chorus of financial desperation.
Here and at grocery stores across the country, the chimes come just after food stamps and other monthly government benefits drop into the accounts of shoppers who have been rationing things like milk, ground beef and toilet paper and can finally stock up again.
Shoppers mill around the store after 11 p.m., killing time until their accounts are replenished. When midnight strikes, they rush for the checkout counter.
"The kids are sleeping, so we go do what we've gotta do. Money is tight," Martin Young said as he and his wife pushed two carts piled high with ground beef, toilet paper and other items.
The couple said they need food-stamp benefits, which are electronically deposited onto debit cards, because his job as a restaurant server doesn't quite cover expenses for their five children.
"We try to get here between 10:30 and 11 because we know we've got a lot of stuff to get. That way by 12 o'clock we're at the line cashing out and done," he said.

   I knew things were bad but didn't know they were this shitty. Here we are in 2010 with iPods, iPads, blazing fast internet, and the Hubble Telescope peering into the universe above our heads and Americans are waiting around in supermarkets like a 2010 version of Communist Russia? The debit cards have replaced the ration tickets but the gist is the same. It brings a tear to my eye when society never seems to evolve in a continual path but devolves and evolves in cycles. Two steps forward and one step back is how the world works and it's a damn shame.