The Way We Live Now: day to day. Week to week. Paycheck to paycheck. Hand to hand. From sea to shining sea, let us all say a prayer for our unemployed, suffering fellow Americans. The CEOs among them, at least.

Down on the Florida coast, it's a week-by-week struggle for Dedra Barker to pay the mortgage and support her daughter, because the oil spill has driven away all the customers of her rental house business. Are we to feel sorry for her? She still has a house, for now, as well as food, presumably.

Farmers are begging the government to ease its prohibitions on exports to Cuba, so they might have a chance to sell some sorghum to our southerly neighbors, or at least trade them some sorghum for a well-preserved 1955 Chevy. Are we to weep for these breadbasket-fillers? Are American mouths not good enough for their precious sorghum?

The Fed now says that the economic recovery is "slower than expected." Must they "do something" about it? They are not made of magic, after all.

One-third of middle-income workers will be broke 20 years into retirement, and that's twice as long as most low-income workers will have. Is this where we are supposed to shed tears for them? Why did they fail to plan—or should we say plan to fail?

And while everyone else is out there looking for an emotional handout in the form of your sympathy, who is keeping a brave face, a strong chin, and a respectable golf handicap? Our nation's unemployed CEOs, who are forced to bide their time engaged in menial tasks like "making créme caramel in the kitchen of her 13,400-square-foot home" as they wait for their next respectable job offer.

Now is when you let the tears flow, America. We've let down our very best.

[Pic via]