Human Costs of a Bad Economy

I have been traveling around the country for the past 90 days through the Midwest, the east coast and the south and staying in a lot of hotels.  Most recently my hotel in Daytona Beach.

Now my hotel is right on the ocean.  In fact my balcony faces the ocean and the pool.  All in all not a bad place that I got for $32.50 a night.  Now Daytona Beach is a resort town.  All most all of the business here comes from the tourists.  With the state of the economy there are virtually no tourists around, the hotels and restaurants are getting almost no business.  Ditto for the tourist shops.  You can almost watch them close all up and down Atlantic Boulevard.

As a geek I make pretty good money.  As a matter of fact I probably make more then any of the cooks, house keepers or shopkeepers around here.  it is sad when you hear some have cut back on hours to less then 20 hours a week.  I mean they already don't make that much and now they make half of that and most of them are not that well off.

You can only hope it gets better soon for all of us.