kalm wrote:CID1990 wrote:
In you first sentence, you left out “making stupid choices” and “buying the latest iPhone”
You sort of danced around it in the next para, but the bottom line is that we are a runaway consumer society and very few people live within their means (which, BTW, is totally do-able)
I don’t do better than my parents. That’s a choice, not some external force keeping me down. I didn’t want to spend my life reaching into people’s mouths or teaching algebra to other people’s brats. But I love what I do and I do it on the cheap. And when it comes time, I’ll have enough for my kids to go to school (I’m pushing trade school.... college is overrated and if I could go back in time I’d go to one of those Yankee maritime schools and study lofting and drafting)
Every one of the industries you mentioned chases our stupid consumerism. Insurance costs chase our desire to live in that gated community. Healthcare costs chase our desire to live forever (MRI machines cost money)... and every doctor wants the 50 foot Hallberg-Rassy instead of the Baba 40.
We can bitch all we want about these “external” forces all we want, but in the end, as Pogo said, “We have seen the enemy and he is us”
I really don't disagree with any of this and I think we're on the same page.
My parents were children during the Great Depression. In 2009, I handed my mom a Time Magazine article on how to survive the Great Recession (cut all unnecessary spending, keep saving, hold on to your current job, look for investment opportunities, recycle, reuse, live a little bit longer with the old things etc). She read it, chuckled, and said, 'I've been doing these things my whole life.'
Believe me, I think most people in this country do t have a CLUE about privation. I know I don’t, I didn’t live through it.
My grandfather was a dentist from the 1920s until the 1960s. He took hogs and cattle as payment for dentures, and that was from the rich farmers. Usually he was “dentist without borders” right in his own home. My dad continued that by being the only dentist from Burlington to Oxford NC who would accept Medicaid. We didn’t suffer, but we weren’t doing vacations in The Hamptons, either. I had just enough clothes, a pair of canvas sneaks, loafers for church, and a pair of boots for slogging after quail and deer. My allowance was 5 bucks a week when I turned 15 and I earned the shit out of it.
My parents lived through rationing and occasional hunger. My mother (whose parents didn’t know much about jimmy hats) had five siblings. Papa was a High-Tider fisherman and Nanny was a teacher. They duct taped shoes together, and the tops of tube socks when the elastic wore out.
I have little sympathy for people these days. Especially seeing how people live in other parts of the world (and they are mostly happy because they live within their means)
My only consolation is that if the shit goes down while I am alive, I know how to grow my food, defend where I grow it, and live simply. Or I can teach young whippersnappers how to do it.