Over the years I'm feeling anxiety more an more regularly as what I wrote continues to manifest itself in realty. Today this short story from Fallacies of Vision entitled Manufacturing Change is becoming more and more real. How far from this speculation are we really?

Except from:
Fallacies of Vision by Allan J. Ashinoff

Manufacturing Change

Jess Smiley awoke with a dry and bitter taste in his mouth. The foggy recollection of last night’s farewell party at Dunham and Keane, and the several tequila shots his former co-workers talked him into, slowly came into focus.

“Son of a –“He couldn't help but say, as the simple motion of reaching for the water bottle that he routinely kept on his nightstand/end table caused a throbbing explosion of pain inside his skull.

Why the hell did I do this to myself again? He thought.

Slowly, hoping to minimize the pounding in his skull, he pulled himself from his bed, stretched his sinewy frame, and began, with some difficultly, returning his bed to its alternate function - a couch. Although he detested the painfully uncomfortable contraption, which proved equally as tortuous in either of its phases, it was the only way the Department of Social Welfare could fit both pieces of furniture in the tiny 500 square foot apartment they assigned him.
Placing cushions on the couch to finalize its transformation, Jess crossed the apartment and stood in the corner that served as his kitchen nook. As was his routine, he pulled open the drawer below the compact food preparation multi-appliance to retrieve this weeks last food allotment – a sealed silver-foil bag containing two thick four inch meal biscuits, and a single white filter pillow stuffed with just enough ground coffee to make two eight ounce cups. Without thinking, he placed the filter pouch in the appropriate compartment, added the proper amount of water and tapped the coffee machines power button. A few moments later, the smell of coffee began to fill the apartment as a narrow brown stream of steaming liquid began to fill the coffee pot. Jess, his mind still foggy from sleep, waited for the pot to fill half way before he placed the two breakfast biscuits in the microwave component of his multi-appliance and set the timer for twenty seconds. The smell of the warming meal biscuits and the brewing coffee caused Jess’ already queasy stomach to turn.
In his condition, he knew it would be better to eat something light, perhaps a few pieces of toast and with a few glassed of water or juice. But someone in government, no doubt a politician, determined that these dry, nearly flavorless biscuits provided optimal nutrition for a young man of Jess’ age, height, and weight. It didn’t matter if he liked the nutra-bars or if he even considered them palatable. The Federal Health Care System was law. And, because the health and well being of every person was the financial responsibility of the federal government, processes were enacted to ensure the fitness of every citizen. While consumption of the biscuits was not mandatory for anyone not on government assistance, it was commonly considered an act of voluntary compliance to consume them. Personal sacrifice is the cornerstone of the common good. Jess told himself as he washed down the last dry bite of biscuit number two with the last mouthful of his bitter decaf coffee. If eating two of the apple and cinnamon biscuits and drinking organic black decaffeinated coffee each morning offered any chance of changing Jess’’ social status, he was all for it.
Although he was disappointed that the Dunham and Keane Office Supply Distribution Hub didn’t request an extension of his work billet, he really couldn’t be surprised. The Department of Economic Security, because of his father’’s actions and through no fault of his own, classified him as a Floater, a quasi-citizen, a potential miscreant. Until such time he could prove to the Feds that his father’s views and opinions were not his own, he would continue to be denied the rights and benefits entitled to full citizen of the United States –– this was the cost of being the son of Benjamin Smiley, Malcontent.

Over the last three years, beginning the day after his father was taken away, he’d been assigned odd jobs to work: a janitor, a library assistant, a substitute math teacher, a bit assembly line worker, a carnival ride operator, a sanitation worker, an assembler at a foam injection plant, a city bus driver, and, most recently, a warehouse worker at an office supply distribution center. It was an endless and seemingly random procession of jobs based on what the Department of Economic Security determined to be society’s most urgent need. Unfortunately for Jess, it didn’t matter how well he performed his duties, how quickly he worked or how well he got along with his co-workers, a Floater seldom, if ever, remained at any assignment more than its allotted time – typically a few days, a few weeks, but never an entire month. A Floater, because of the potential threat they represented to society, was not entitled to any degree of normalcy or security.

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