Brilliant observation, Ms. Harris: "Perhaps this is how wealth corrupts: not by making people evil, but by creating psychological distance from the lived experiences of others. Wealth allows people to internalize ‘success’ as a reward that affirms their superiority and assuages any lingering guilt." What a terrific article. Thank you.
The psychological distance is actually just insulation from consequence. That's what money gives you. Not recognizing the extraordinary advantage just being able to pay a problem away gives a person is not just a moral failing, it's an intellectual one.
Your friend is not your friend. That is a sycophant of capitalism who will let people suffer and die because they "didn't work hard enough"
Not only that but it leads to a media landscape where the ruling paradigm is reinforced leading to a polarization between the lower class of those who internalize the hate ("I work 100 hour weeks, so should everyone") or those who are aware and reflect the hate back upwards
This is the core of Harris' excellent post. I have many friends who grapple with their luck and surprising wealth, mostly unconsciously.
Think about the person in LA who bought a house in 2010 that has doubled in price. Ok factor in inflation, the risk of buying in that market/time - they are relevant. And consider what it took to gather the down payment, figure out insurance, plan for repairs/maintenance. Fine.
Now think about a person trying to do the same today, just 15 years later - daunting to say the least.
So the lucky person from 2010 is saying, yeah I lucked out, or more likely is thinking "I Earned That" equity and therefore thinks they have no connection to the system that helped create the current inequality. No guilt, no responsibility, no sense of commonality in our society. Bodes poorly when $38T federal debt, rigged banking and money system, politicized federal reserve system, etc fall apart (slowly or quickly) - but economic cycles will not be denied forever.
The 9/11 attackers were not being paid. Osama bin Laden lost money leaving the family mafia for the jihad world. The Bondi Beach attackers weren't paid, although they're now celebrated in their home county. In Urdu of course, performative regrets are published in English for the rubes.
Wow very astute article and yes the blinders are on folks like your associate Jonas. I worked in an entrepreneurial company as a marketer in 2004, our IT pro was a lovely man from Hyderabad India. We worked closely together on websites, etc. And once our CEO made a passing comment to us about how it wasn’t difficult to travel— you could just do all your work in the back of the limo or fly first class. We just looked at each other with a smirk because no limo picks us up when we schlep ourselves and our baggage from our economy seats at the airport to some hotel. It was one of those funny yet revealing moments that showed us some people never walk a mile in a different pair of shoes! Our CEO was a kind and generous man but he had the blinders as well.
Omg my face and head was going sideways as I read doing your work in the back of a limo. Fly first class? I’m a bit taken aback. What’s interesting is I’ve been among very wealthy, ultra wealthy people. I’ve never heard this disconnect. Maybe these folks know better to keep quiet. I guess my question is how much money do you have to have in order to forget how much life costs? The disconnect about so much is so disturbing.
"The human Rights of Women are among those uncountable and naturally unalienable Rights of the Formation Document of this shared American Republic & Declaratory Charter of Our Natural Rights, which guarantees forever the Equal Station it entitles both Women and Men to."
The below reaffirmation and redeclaration by men that the abovesaid is the Supreme Law of these Lands, which is in Full Force with Legal Effect to this day—For the reunification of our Country as one People against tyranny of all forms:
Thanks for sharing. Coastal media executives are the most out of touch people on the planet, most of his income probably went towards making propaganda. Does Jonas have any kids? If he did, he might see the struggles young people are going through. Also would bet that he votes Democrat.
That’s a great question. He’s childless, has no spouse or partner, his mother recently died, and his father is in hospice.
So in every respect but money, he’s a remarkably poor individual. I actually feel a little sorry for him, which is why I have managed to show compassion through the years, even as his perspective and empathy for others has narrowed.
Sounds like Jonas' perception of himself and his own self-worth has become entrenched in what he sees as his only personal attribute --
money.
He's comically replaced the human life "landmarks" with net worth. Sounds like his adamant rejection of those without the only thing he personally can boast is a reversal of his own self-rejection, turning the tables on society so he can see himself as worthy by his own metric.
This is how incels are shaped, incidentally. Rejecting those who reject them, with violent judgmentalism.
Jonas is a predictable result of the severe individualism myopia that characterizes American culture. I'm unsurprised that he chooses to make a living selling sensationalized fiction, as he's so skilled at denial of his own reality.
Agreed — well-said. I didn’t include this in my piece, but Jonas was a bookish “outsider” in high school, banished to the social fringes. As a black girl in a nearly all-white prep school I was also on the fringes, but I’ve always tried to balance my professional “success” with a sense of empathy — a “There but for the grace of God” mentality that my parents instilled in me.
For whatever reason, Jonas lacks this and seems to resent the socially-rewarding aspects of life — relationships, family — that he lacked in youth and has failed to develop as an adult.
I’m thinking about writing a piece about this, but it strikes me as not coincidental that much of the wealth being amassed now is held by genius-level, borderline autistic men who lack social skills and a deeper connection and understanding of how life and relationships work with “real” people, not screens and machines. I’m broad-stroking, of course, but I think there’s something to this.
This, 💯. In spite of everything Jonas said and what he believes, I can’t bring myself to hate him. What I feel most is sadness and pity. He is simply a reflection of how deeply our society has failed us.
That reminds me of 🍊💩 too. His “family” doesn’t count; he acquired them like he does his “trump towers”. What’s more telling is that he would never understand why someone would have a pet. All he has to fill that vacuum is more & more money.
I wish it were possible to arrive at a blanket statement as to what will cause how someone reacts to acquiring wealth.
Look at how “sports stars” who come from poor backgrounds, react. Some try to distance themselves from their past & acquire things, while others try to pay back for their “good luck”.
You literally have no idea what you are talking about here. Maybe listen to one of your "own" like Bill Mahr describe the man- not the character you love to hate.
This man in the essay bears no resemblance to DJT.
Wondering if he reads your writing and if he will see himself in it. How devastating to see your evaluation of him as a remarkably poor individual in every respect but money.
Um … Why would Jonas ‘vote Democrat’? Policies supported by Democrats have produced the ‘social safety net’.
If Jonas truly believes that people in need are losers who haven’t tried hard enough, then - as President Obama has pointed out - he has the Republican point of view that: ‘You’re on your own!’
According to Jonas, worthy people don’t have disabilities, don’t age, don’t get sick, don’t have children with cancer or any other mysterious condition requiring medical expertise, don’t face unfair headwinds in the job or real estate realm (possibly because of race, religion, national origin, gender, or condition of servitude), never die or develop complications during the ever-present dangers of pregnancy & childbirth, never fall victim to injury resulting from unsafe working conditions or from working too long at physically punishing jobs, don’t experience wage theft or usurious interest rates … & on & on.
So they wouldn’t need Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP or WIC benefits, consumer protection, affordable health insurance, voting rights, or any of the other protections put into place by Democrats & fought tooth and nail by Republicans!
I would almost think ‘Jonas’ was a Straw Man, except that I too have interacted with real people who seemed nice enough but turned out to have a surprisingly backward & mean outlook.
Thanks for helping us understand that there are indeed those who have reaped the benefits of our experiment in constitutional government & some progress in defining, expanding, following, & reassessing the rule of law, only to turn on others who try to live in the same world under the same advantages.
As the child of a “letter carrier”, what they were called back then, who raised his family in the home he owned with his wife, Jonas can go straight to hell. That letter carrier was a union vice-president and was so good at arbitration and negotiation, he was poached to work on the other side in labor relations. He did that with his high school education because he wasn’t afforded a GI bill to attend college and couldn’t afford it. The sweeping generalizations Jonas has are infuriating and disgust me to say the least. The fact the he is, in fact, A MINORITY himself seems to be lost on him. He seems to have the disease I like to call “wanna be white-itis”. Jonas will at some, point if it hasn’t happened already, learn that he is not part of the club either. No amount of money will change that. I have experienced similar attitudes from a former friend who came here from Nicaragua. We were friends for 20yrs but I always knew deep down she wanted to be white adjacent, part of the club her brown skin, and indigenous features, would never allow. I want to thank you for writing this bc this is not an uncommon story. Many will not experience this or understand without your story. IMHO that man is not your friend and never was. There’s a saying about friendship, it’s for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Whatever the reason or season, it is in your best interest to not make this a lifetime.
Meanings of words change over time. In 2024 Democrats primary platform they ran on was preserving democracy. So, no, you are wrong. Based on how we use the term now, democrats are the democracy party and republicans are not.
…do those types go on long diatribes about hating the working poor?
from what OP wrote they came from the same class background, he didnt inherit or social attitudes which is usually how those types come to their delusional beliefs
Hate to say it but I work among many who are. I do not despise my coworkers. OTHER than being Dumpists and not being able to see ANY connection between Dumpism and their own precarious economic situations, they're nice people. (Yet, they're the first people to creep outside with a gun hidden behind their back because there's a poor homeless woman sitting against the building trying to get out of the rain. Not a fan of that, either.)
I am really sorry for these people. I am sorry for the condition some of them are in. Most of them are avid churchgoers and I suspect some of the Dumpism comes from fundamentalist religion.
This encapsulates the problem (the biggest problem in our politics).
I know people just like Jonas
Consider the two perspectives.
If you challenged Jonas, he would strongly argue that he ‘does not hate the working class’. He would talk about all the ‘good charities’ he gives money to etc. He would probably even suggest ‘he tries to give people opportunities, but they have to work for it’
This is the ‘democrat’ voice that enrages progressives.
The problem is a reaction that ‘he hates the working class’ while emotionally satisfying ends any opportunity to move forward.
It puts members of the same party in opposition to each other.
Idk how repeating gop talking points screams “I vote democrat.” Unless your point is that there’s a two-faced wealthy portion of the party that you think he represents based on a “hunch”. Or simply based on him being coastal? Idk, weird comment to end that response on without context.
It is disheartening to find out that someone you thought you knew, isn't that person after all. It brings into question whether he's changed, or is more often the case, grown into the person he always was. It's usually the latter when they become comfortable with their circumstances. " I miss the person I thought you were".
I too used to believe the former, but increasingly see the latter and recognize there were indications earlier that got discounted as "that's not them"., but looking back there were signs that were overlooked. I think over time we get revealed.
The quote is from an SF artist acrylic piece. I'll see if I can find it. She does neat stuff.
I’m surprised that he made it as far as he has because his thinking is alarmingly lacking nuance in a rather low IQ way. I don’t know him, of course, but he seems quite simple minded and I don’t say that because I disagree with him.
I do agree that some people don’t manage their finances well, and some are lazy and entitled. There are people who are poor due to their own failures.
But a working class job should pay enough to purchase a modest home.
Where I grew up, blue collar and white collar were mixed; there was one earner — the dad. The big family in the small house across the street worked in the Sara Lee factory.
He wasn’t lazy. He had a lot of mouths to feed.
That house — 5 grand in 1962 — now sells for almost 400 grand, far exceeding the percentage a house should cost commensurate with many full time jobs.
I’ve never been able to break 6 figures myself. I’m not lazy. I work so hard just to get out of debt and so on there’s no time to “move up.”
He seems a little possessed by certain talking points.
Very common mindset , especially with men. And try to argue rationally and suddenly you’re accused of being a communist or socialist. A former Libertarian, I’ve become a fan of a certain amount of income redistribution through taxation. However I do think this country still offers the best opportunities for improving your station in life, relative to others .
Agree. What allows this country to still offer the best opportunity to improve our lot in life isn't our smoke-and-mirrors economy, but our Constitution -- which theoretically *should* enable us to vote out the people sustaining our broken system so we can pursue more solution-based options. I don't support government-compelled income redistribution, but I think we can accomplish a similar goal by eliminating the corporate stranglehold that has destroyed the free market. The free market works , but only if we allow it to work. The problem is that we haven't had a true free market in more than a century.
This country absolutely offers people from around the world the best opportunity to gain economic freedom via a free market economy, where hard work, common sense, and wisdom pay off more than anywhere else in the world.
Two examples. The barbershop I go to is run by two Jews, who came to this country with nothing from Uzbekistan. All they knew how to do was cut hair and do elementary business financial analysis. I have known them for about 20 years and I was talking to the wife of this pair a couple months ago and when I asked her about how their children are doing, she looked at me and smiled, “four kids, all out of college, no debt!” Admittedly, they have worked extraordinarily hard, but they’ve done this while learning English as a second language and without a college education.
And, my wife patronizes a nail salon that is owned by a Vietnamese refugee woman and where all the workers are refugees from that country. The woman is a ball of fire, but she didn’t come here with any wealth nor does she have a college education. What she has is a relentless work ethic. As I picked my wife up from the salon the other day, I asked the proprietor how things are going for her family and she lit right up. Her oldest, a son, is a Department of Defense computer expert. Her two youngest children, daughters are both medical doctors.
One has to wonder how they accomplished such things?
On the other hand, our HVAC guy is always trying to hire workers who won’t quit. He promises that he’ll teach them all the skills they need and says that if they take 4 courses in accounting and finance, combined with their OJT learning, there is no reason they can’t start their own businesses within 10-15 years. 90% of his employees quit within a year because repairing AC’s in a hot climate is “unpleasant”.
We know that bad things happen to good people, and I think most of us favor a social safety net for people who are floored by external factors such as disease, requirements to care for elderly relatives or disabled children, etc. The question then becomes how much the rest of us should be paying people who simply don’t work that hard, make terrible life choices with predictable bad outcomes and choose short term gratification while ignoring the long-term implications of doing do.
BTW, my grandfather was a mailman as was my next-door neighbor when I was a child. They were both great people and I can’t imagine wishing folks like them anything but the greatest success.
Yes. Immigration should be legal. We should take a lot of the money we are spending in border agents, ICE, a wall, detention centers, etc., and instead build processing centers like Ellis Island and hire data entry clerks so people who want to move here can do so legally and smoothly.
So true . My bff’s husband started with nothing and has a million dollar HVAC company he worked his ass off to build . He can’t find techs who want to work and move up. No ambition. However he is getting taxed heavily by NY .
I have seen some of the same problems with trying to hire people who will stick with a job. As maddening it is to have to constantly look for someone who will come to work and do a good job I keep thinking of why they seem incapable of sustaining a job/career. As I get to know the younger generations, it’s apparent to me that the odds are stacked against them in ways that I would never have foreseen.
So some of the things that I think have to do with this
1- hopelessness. In the context of current society they understand better than I ever did, that the odds of them getting ahead economically are astronomical. They look around and see how hard their parents struggle just to put basic food/shelter in place. They see 2parent households working 2 full time jobs can’t provide.
2-social media/video games/similar services. These now occupy a large part of people’s everyday time. They provide a constant convenient source of dopamine. These things are designed to keep you addicted and consciously plugged in.
3-society that is addicted to “too MUCH “. Too many TV channels. Too many phones. Too many toys. Too many choices. Our society culture is one of excess. Psychology shows that too many choices results in inability to actually choose. Decision paralysis.
4–inability to predict future outcomes. They inhabit the digital worlds where outcomes frequently are predicted. These outcomes are tangible & immediate. The real world is completely different. Learning a skill takes a very long time in comparison to a digital skill. After you have mastered that skill you may not achieve any benefit. The real world time frame in general is a long game of months/years. They don’t see any benefits.
So from my armchair I see both sides. I do know that current American society is in bad shape. I do know that the youth are suffering needlessly. I do know that systems need to change. We need to reimagine our culture to the ideals of justice, freedom for all. We need to claw back from the 1% our money and our basic rights. How? That’s the rub.
Hopelessness comes from being taught that you are powerless to impact your own life. We older adults were not taught that. But we overprotected our children and they became both scared of their own shadow as well as dependent, lazy and entitled. They don’t understand the satisfaction of being self sufficient and responsible for their own lives. This codependent mindset has been heavily pushed in public schools and colleges.
I suspect the key to your comment is, "they've been here 20 years." Where I live the current predicament of immigrants and poor people is at one end of my street: Dilapidated mobile homes full of very poor people. At the other end of my street, barely a mile away, is a country club I will never be able to afford to belong to even though I hold a professional degree. Twenty years ago when your people you think are "working hard enough" got here a decent home, food, the basics of life all cost a lot less. I'd like to see anybody live anywhere but their car and get anywhere just cutting hair now.
I'll be honest, I have zero expectation that we will ever have a free market economy. In theory, I'm a Libertarian, but in reality, I have decided to learn how to play the game AND teach others how to do it. So my current goal is to learn how the rich get rich, which you are correct, involves a broken system of corporate welfare and tax cuts for businesses. Therefore, people should learn how to take advantage of the tax system. Then, once you have the means, you can fight for justice and share your wealth however you want.
I know plenty of people who are investing in real estate , opening businesses, and investing in the stock market and they’re regular people, not rich people. The current system punishes those people and gives their wealth to those who don’t even try to improve their lives.
Who needs to be rich? There's wayyyyy too much emphasis in America on Becoming Rich. All you NEED are the basics. Past a certain amount of money it does not make you happier.
It never works that way.Once you learn to "play the game" your money corrupts you absolutely and anyone not driving a Ferrari and wearing an oyster date Rolex becomes scum.
I’ll be happy to just afford groceries and health insurance in my old age. Since I started being more intentional about saving and investing after starting a new career at age 58, we actually have money in the bank and our debt is cut in half. My point is that we used to have a poor mindset and it kept us poor. Even poor people waste money. We spent every paycheck plus some . Now I think differently about money . I’ll never be rich but I’m not going to be homeless if I can help it .
Screw the fucking "free market." What that allows is the monopolies we have now that funnel money upstairs to the owner class and shrink wages for everyone else while raising prices. Once upon a time we had antitrust laws. Now no one believes in that anymore.
Wages are set by the free market in labor, with obvious mitigating factors being that a company must be competitive (against other domestic and foreign companies), make a profit, examine alternatives to employees whose wages and labor burdens cost more than the market value of their labor output (the alternatives include robotics, process efficiency improvements, AI, etc). Higher labor costs and other costs of production must be paid for by consumers. If they won’t pay, the company and its employees will be gone.
This is Economics 101. No need to get tempermental about or deny the reality of people who come as refugees and thrive here.
If employees have had the opportunity to take advantage of American education, as provided by wonderful unionized public school teachers, and still cannot do anything more than repetitive motion labor, which can easily be done by robotics, their prospects are horrendous. And in a modern manufacturing facility, the person who can program, maintain and operate a robotic manufacturing device will be 50 times better off than someone who simply turns a wrench in a clockwise direction all day.
No matter one’s “station” all people deserve affordable access to all resources needed for meeting basic needs, including healthcare, food, shelter, clothing, education, socialization, personal development and actualization.
I assume by 'deserve' you mean that you want "the government" to provide those things by taking money from one person and giving it to another? Or maybe you mean that in a "perfect world' everyone would have those things?
Interesting assumption. It is quite revealing of your perceptions and values. What I want is to reallocate the 100 billion dollars in government subsidies that corporations and billionaires receive. I want it to be illegal for billionaires and corporations to exploit our labor, profiting at a sickening rate at the expense of the well-being of our communities across the nation, while we are forced to compensate for inhumane and unlivable wages (looking at you, Walmart).
I would agree with eliminating corporate grants and tax breaks . But no one is exploiting you. You’re a free citizen, for now. Under Mao it wouldn’t be like that. You’d be sent to work the farms. As for Walmart, they provide wages at a rate that matches the skill level required. If you can improve your skills , you’ll make more money. If you can’t , you’re probably getting paid better at Walmart than most retail stores. My nephew makes $14 as a cart attendant, plus benefits. He didn’t finish high school and has no motivation to work. America offers more opportunities to improve your life than any country.
This is why the talk about oligarchs is resonating with more and more voters. The tax code is insanely unfair and housing, education and healthcare are skyrocketing. I don’t think you have to tell us how he voted 😝😳
The simple fact is that Jonas is an arrogant elitist asshole, and his ilk are what’s driving the “educated” youth to communism. Little do those youth know that “the evil billionaires” will simply be replaced by the politburo under the new system, and their classless utopia will never materialize, because…human nature.
The elephant in the room is DEBT, both for individuals and for government. While some debt is obviously necessary (mortgages, for individuals; infrastructure for government), too much debt is a deep hole few can escape.
Imagine if tuition was affordable (up to $5k/year), and students got part time and summer jobs to defray living expenses. [This was actually my case, albeit not in the US.] Most would graduate with very little debt, and an $85-100k salary would, with judicious management, be sufficient to pay for a nice, middle class lifestyle, especially if there were two earners in the household.
The solution was never to “forgive“ student loans, it was always to restructure the university system. And for the naysayers, it works in other countries, so why not in the US?
Spot on about debt being the root of our problems!! When will we start talking more about this?
"The simple fact is that Jonas is an arrogant elitist asshole, and his ilk are what’s driving the “educated” youth to communism."
This never occurred to me, but I think you're onto something. Whenever I hear people like Mamdani rail against capitalism, I want to grab them and scream: "But this isn't capitalism! This is a franken-hybrid of capitalism, corporate socialism, and God knows what else!"
Capitalism was never intended to be warm and fuzzy, but it wasn't intended to grind people into dust, either. Now we reap what we sow.
The Frankenstein hybrid capitalism you speak of, is just real world capitalism. There is no other kind. The rich will create big government if it doesn’t exist, in order to prevent competition via regulation and surveillance everyone else so they cannot organize . There is no realistic world in which capitalists “play by the rules” and efforts to force them to are always subverted. There simply is no such thing as a “free market” there is only violence, power, winners and losers.
Love your article. Made me sad. But it’s a growing reality that has severe impacts on billions of humans around the world.
I also want to share that the root of our problems is not debt, not any other policy or practice. It’s empathy. The root lies in our hearts. Because that’s what drives policy decisions. We have to find a way to foster empathy… because if that’s there… everything else shifts. You said yourself… Jonas has empathy for people he knows… it’s when empathy disappears that the problems start.
this, like almost all our other problems, is actually rooted in overpopulation. when in a group of a reasonable amount of people (not sure the number but maybe 100-250) it is much easier to empathize than if you are in a group of too many (500? 1000?). instead of feeling and forming individual connections it becomes triage and self defense (emotional and perhaps physical, esp for women).
They were educated at fraudulently inflated prices to compete in a world that no longer exists. That's fraud. Of course student loans should be forgiven. Education is a public good that should never have a cost to the individual anyway.
The current housing crisis is a bubble created by REITs(Real-Estate Investment Trusts) publicly trading their stocks on the Exchange. To solve the problem regulators need to order the REITs to go private.
- They do not have to pass new laws, the regulators simply need to do their job.
When the REITs can no longer trade stocks, they will start to sell the houses they own, since they do not generate enough income from renting the properties. They make their money from the stock price.
- The value of houses will drop with increased supply.
All over town there are signs, "We pay cash for your house". I get postcards in the mail all the time with the same message.
The REITs buy up all available houses, but let some stay on the market to create a "demand" and jackup the prices. They can then charge rent based on the "perceived" value of the market, a value that they inflated.
- They gouge the market to keep the stock price high.
The solution is simple, yet no one will want to do it because the value of their own house will drop, and many people will suddenly be underwater with their mortgage.
As an aside:
When people demand that more houses be built to "solve" the problem, REITs will simply buy up all the new houses to maintain their scam.
The 2008 housing crisis freed up a huge number of houses that were dumped on the market from underwater mortgages. The REITS bought them up and inflated the prices.
Before the crash there was a housing construction boom as people built houses to rent out. Remember, "You can be a millionaire with no money down". Those houses are still out there, so we do not need new construction.
BTW, If regulators actually do this and houses appear on the market, greedy idiots(sorry) will start buying up the houses to try and rent them at the current inflated values.
The housing prices will keep falling and they will find themselves underwater, forcing them to sell, further dropping the prices.
If they don't make money from the properties they own, who's fool enough to buy their stock? Seems like a market ripe for correction, with our without regulation.
I agree that the problem with fixing housing issues is often that the existing traditional homeowners (that live in their own home, with a mortgage) suffer when they have overpaid, which happens frequently, because housing markets seem prone to frothiness. Because of the number of voters involved, and owning your own home being such a key part of the American dream, politicians and regulators are loathe to take action that will correct markets, and improve supply, for fear of popping bubbles.
I think new home building is likely too constrained by regulation, driving supply down, and production costs up. Nimbyism is a major part of the problem.
It shouldn't be allowed. Housing is for people to live in, not for rent seekers to become billionaires while working people live in their cars homeless.
If politicians and regulators want to be hated they should do things to cause the value of all houses in the US to drop in value. Nothing resonates with young voters more than the prospect of being upside down on their house, meaning they owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth and are, in most cases, essentially bankrupt.
Back in 2008, Robert Frank, a WSJ reporter whose beat was the lifestyles of the 1% wrote a book called “Richistan” based on his interviews and knowledge from his reporting. One fact from that book stood out. There was a survey done of the very wealthy that had basically three questions: How much $$ do you have? Do you feel like you have enough $$? How much $$ would you need to have to feel like it was enough? The results were shockingly consistent. Very few of these guys felt like they had enough, but all of them consistently reported that having about double their current net worth would be enough. I.e. someone with $600 million needed 1.2 billion. Someone with 2 billion needed 4. Studies also show a strong correlation between increase in net worth and loss of empathy. When your sense of your own value is compromised, when you and what you have is not (and will likely never be) enough, it only seems natural that those who have even less must be somehow worse. It would be tragic if it wasn’t so dangerous. Because people who can never be satisfied will ultimately lay waste to everything and anything if they think doing so might fill the hole in their soul that says nothing is enough. I’m so sorry about your friend.
That is a classic joke that I use with my friend Shirley, and she still doesn't get it. HA!
Young people can't buy a house because they are overinflated. Average age is 38 before somebody can buy a house.
When Tucker had Charlie Kirk on last time, he mentioned the need to build more housing, and prevent private equity from buying them, so this is not just my opinion.
"[01:40:19] We need to build 10 million new homes and make sure private equity cannot buy them."
The interview had a good discussion of the problems that young people are facing today.
Stop the REITs from trading on the Exchange and the prices will come down as the supply returns to normal.
Plus:
Your comment to James Roberts above literally misses the fact that the REITs will simply buy up any new houses to keep the scam going.
BTW, I bought my house in 1991, at $100 a square foot. That was during a bubble here in Santa Fe that caused housing prices to triple in just five years. I was only able to buy my house with the help of a State program even though I had a BS in Civil Engineering. I was 27.
The house beside mine just sold for $400 a square foot, which is a shockingly overvalued price for a fix-up house that needed a ton of work. It was built after my house and was originally overpriced at $100 a square foot.
Many of the houses in my subdivision were abandoned during the 2008 crash when they became underwater. We gated the community to slow down vandalism. The houses finally sold after years. Most to people moving from California where the prices were even higher.
I can't remember the podcast where they discussed "private equity" buying up successful hospitals, then asset stripping them, then selling the stripped husks of a once vibrant system. The hospitals would then go bankrupt soon after the sale because the new owner had too much to rebuild.
In your comment above:
"Housing is for people to live in"
...is absolutely right. REITs have existed for a long time, but it is only since the 2008 crash that they have been traded on the Stock Exchange.
"REITs have been criticised as enabling speculation on housing, and reducing housing affordability, without increasing finance for building."
Read the paragraphs on the Wiki page under "Evolution" to see more.
I remember when NBR(Nightly Business Report) announced the offerings and saying that this would come back to bite us.
It was soon after that Malls started failing. When you read the Wiki page you see that the rentals have to increase every year, regardless of the local economy, or the stock price flounders. So this kills small business that needs "foot traffic" to survive.
The Malls were the first indicators of problems, then the hospitals, then housing. I remember that there were whole subdivisions that were bought up by the REITs during the 2008 crash.
Regulators could have prevented all of this, since REITs need permission from regulators on every major purchase, so regulators can order REITs to go private and sell off their properties.
BTW, People don't want to look at this because it will ultimately effect the overinflated value of their house.
When I bought my house in 1991 at $100 a square foot, I knew that it would only be worth $50 dollars a square foot when it finally sells, not the current overinflated $400 a square foot today.
"Shirley there is only so much housing REITs can buy before their bubble pops."
HA! Classic.
"Not that a bubble popping is likely to be good for anyone."
Exactly. Which is why the bubble needs to be deflated slowly. The REITs will have to go private, which means buying back stock and selling off houses in a public way so that no one does something stupid during the transition.
BTW, It's what they should have done during the 2008 housing crash. Instead of bailing out the banks, the banks should have reversed the process of growing and started spinning off regional banks that were clean of toxic debt.
The profits made from the sale of regional banks would have been used to cancel the toxic debt. The process would continue until the main bank was free of the toxic debt. Doing it publicly would have increased the value of the main bank's stock and increased confidence in banks overall.
- No more "Too big to fail."
This is no different from when someone has to sell off property to pay down debts.
But no one was listening to me in 2008, so I digress.
Could he be the exception and not the norm for people in his income bracket? His views are so extreme. I don't think most upper-middle class people who "made it" think this way. (I hope not.) At least not people I know.
The Bezos and Gates though, they're on a different planet. I suspect the rest of the little people don't even register enough for them to have an opinion why they're where they are.
It’s hard to know, but I highly doubt he would make these comments to most people or in mixed company. We’ve known each other for decades, and that breeds a sense of familiarity. Based on our “pedigree,” he also assumes that even if I am not at his level financially, I am still a “hard worker” who has amassed sufficient wealth to warrant being treated like a human being.
I can’t help wonder whether other members of his class feel the same way but would not dare mention it to those they don’t trust. It’s telling that he was shrewd enough to note that he believes elected officials share his perspective but would never be negligent enough to admit it.
I think most rich people (and that is who this guy is, not upper middle class) do think that way but they're usually nicer about it. They just focus on how smart and deserving they are of all the material resources they've amassed with the implication left unsaid that those who don't have it don't deserve it. I'm from a genuinely middle class background and went to college with a lot of rich elites, wow what a shocker to come across people who thought they were so smart but didn't seem smart in a conversation--and still believe everything the mainstream media reports.
I've met some rather dumb multi-millionaires who got rich selling a lot of something stupid to other stupid people. One of them built a chain of jet-ski shops near lakes in rural/suburban areas and sold a ton of $8,000 jet skis at 25% interest financing.
He was fun at parties, but he had zero intellectual curiosity and his business philosophy was to hire absolutely ruthless predatory salesmen to manage and staff his locations. You know, people who reminded him of himself.
He absolutely was not elite human capital. But his bank account and net worth put him in the 1%.
How did he get that start up capital? Was he born rich? Did he have an MBA in finance?
How did he acquire knowledge of jet skis? He certainly wasn’t born with it. Did, perhaps, he had a job at a young age where he repaired mechanical things, including, specifically, jet skis? Would you want to guess that he was getting job experience when he was 16 years old, and maybe in the military?
Was he born with sales acumen? Did his wealthy parents give that to him? Maybe he has an IQ of 150 but the original comment didn’t indicate that.
Or, maybe he just has a combination of a willingness to work very hard and financial discipline?
I'm done talking to you. Except to say that not everyone is from a healthy family with healthy parents. Many people grow up without the kind of guidance and health in their family that sets them up to have any clue how to do any of this.
People are not born knowing how to navigate this complex world. When they do so successfully, it shows that someone cared about them enough to take the time to teach them, and that they came from an environment where someone else knew what to teach them. Kids aren't born "special," they have to be RAISED, and many, many people come from disadvantaged or abusive backgrounds. Then people like you call them "stupid."
Let me explain it this way. On YouTube I see videos by this one lovely, successful young content creator going through life, and the depth of guidance and help she got from her parents really makes me sad when I look back and my life and see all the help and support I needed that I didn't get. She actually had a father who taught her how to shop for a car. I never had that. She actually had her dad sit her down and explain to her how buying is more financially advantageous than renting. She had parents who were happy to have her live at home while she paid off her student loans so she could get a solid start in life. What happens to a kid who doesn't have that kind of advice and guidance from a parent?
Clearly, it's their fault, and you look fo blame THEM.
Let me tell you something. I spend six months at home after I graduated, and I promised myself I would never, EVER go home to my family for any kind of help ever, ever again, not even if I were homeless. That's the kind of family I grew up in.
When you see people in difficult circumstances, they didn't just come from nowhere, or the fact that people are just stupid.
Grow up. Quit judging. Acquire some compassion and a more encompassing and realistic outlook on life and people. I will never begrudge my tax dollars going to help out someone less fortunate, nor will I ever judge someone for needing help, because I have some faint clue what some of these folks have been through, and I actually give a shit.
He’s not the exception. Too many comfortable people have contempt for the struggling middle class who have to live the circumstances of the policies they promote…higher electricity and gas costs because of boutique green energy policies…higher local taxes to cover migrant housing in hotels… less state funds going to middle class communities for schools at the expense of cities who require additional services. All at the expense of the people who pay the bulk of the taxes…not just federal and state taxes but local property taxes as well. We are being bled dry by the politicians and experts who have nothing but contempt for and look down on us as useless rubes and an inconvenience. Something has to change. A Postal worker should be able to live a life of dignity for the service he provides. It has value…it makes our community better. The same thing can be said for grocery workers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, garbage haulers, fast food workers, landscapers, house cleaners, restaurant workers…the list goes on and on. They should expect a decent life too. After all, that asshole who is described in the article depends on them even though he’s too arrogant to realize it.
I wonder if the post war period was really a bubble. Or, in fact, America has been a bubble. First driven by "free" land, allowing immigrants to come and work cheap, but have hopes of starting their own business, or moving West. Then whatever worked in the post war period, after it became harder to run a small business, and you couldn't get free land anymore ... I'm not sure.
But free trade has meant those with capital get rich, while formerly decent paying jobs (which may in themselves have been a temporary anomaly) are offshored to places that don't have unions and safety and environmental regulations. The short term tradeoff is that working and middle class people get lots of cheap stuff, which makes free trade seem like a win-win, or at least a win-not lose. But you end up with an economy where only the service jobs are left ... this can't be traded to pay for all the stuff we import, and many people don't want to work service jobs because they see that as going backwards ....
My grandparents from England were essentially serfs/servants 100 years ago; maybe this is the norm for human society, and we are just reverting to it?
I am at about the 80th percentile in income, maybe a bit less in terms of net worth. I have a master's in a STEM field. I'm very good at what I do, and I've made/saved millions of dollars for companies and governments - probably several times my accumulated salary. I'm lucky enough to have been mortgage free for several years, and I live quite frugally - e.g. I eat out with family maybe once as month; I have taken exactly 3 week long vacations that involve travel and paid accommodation in the last 15 years. And I struggle to pay bills, and increase my savings. I couldn't do it if I still had a mortgage.
This feels like a lot less than the American dream of 60, 40, even 20 years ago. Heck, I know it's less than I had 20 years ago. How people in lesser circumstances can hope for more, or even just to manage, I don't know.
Working full time may not inherently deserve more than 15-20 bucks an hour, but it certainly deserves respect.
Our household income is $135,000 with two kids in a suburb, and I have nothing but sympathy for those making less than us, because at this income level it's still a struggle.
I know how people on middle-class and working-class incomes get by: no new cars, kids are very limited in their extracurricular activities, family vacations limited in scope, distance, and duration, and rarely eating out at a sitdown restaurant that serves anything higher class than microwave/deepfried slop.
Working-class is what I grew up in the 80s and my teenage years of the 90s. My mom never took us anywhere. I didn't participate in sports or afterschool clubs that required sign up fees or my parents driving me to and from anywhere.
I got new clothes before school and on my birthday, and that was paid for my grandparents. Only got new shoes when mine were falling apart or I could prove to my mom that my toes were hitting the front.
People can work their fingers to the bone and still be pretty financially unsuccessful simply due to how expensive life is. They deserve respect.
Yep, we're about the same. Cars are a big area where expenses can be curtailed. My budget involves supporting two college age kids trying to find their way, we have three vehicles from 2013 and one (mine) is a 2007. Maintenance can hit hard occasionally (we've replaced two engines in the last two years, cheaper than buying a new used car with unknown issues), and insurance sucks, but I'm able to save enough to usually have the money when I need it. At 10k each for the engine replacements, I'm lucky I am able to save enough to do this, not sure how someone on less income with a mortgage ever does this. I guess they go get a lease vehicle that costs them 4k a year or so, and never end up being payment free.
I'm right there with you. My father taught me to never pay a lot for a car because they depreciate the moment they leave the lot. So we generally don't buy them new, and when we do we hold onto them for dear life. We have three cars: 2006, 2011 and 2017. The 2017 needs a new engine (17.5K) and the 006 (which our son drives) just conked out this week. We're crossing our fingers and bracing that the repair bill won't break us, but we really can't afford a new car now, given how expensive they've gotten. And the poor quality also makes us lean heavily to going used...
This is why our next vehicles will be used Toyotas. The transmissions and engines last forever, and those are the two most expensive things that break.
The finance trap is real. Very few of my friends with lower household income buy major purchases with savings. They always end up financing. Hell, most of my friends with much higher household income still finance everything because they spend every dime they have.
We got hit with a bunch of involuntary home improvement expenses this summer that wiped savings and forced us to finance a new HVAC system that we're prioritizing the payments on.
Sort of similar to you on cars. We have a 2022 that was the first and only new car we've ever bought that we're still paying on, but my wife drives a 2015 that we bought cash with savings in 2017. Both are Mazdas that should have a relatively long life since we keep up with the routine maintenance. We have no plans to buy another car any time in the next few years, and my wife barely drives hers anyways.
Lol we just got hit with a 17k roof replacement. Two years ago we replaced the garage floor (cement floor cracked and unstable). It's one thing after another.
Bill Clinton and the NAFTA trade agreement had a lot to do with where we are now. We don't even produce most of the prescription drugs our population needs. We are dangerously dependent on other countries for vital products.
More so deals with China than NAFTA, I suspect. Though free trade with Mexico was always going to turn out the way Ross Perot said.
By free trade, I mean, unrestricted trade.
I'm in favor of trading with few restrictions, with nations whose practices (regulations and economic policies) are broadly similar to ours, i.e. do not favor them at our expense.
There's a "Love, Death, and Robots" episode where they explore an off-shore community full of skeletons. They comment that it was populated by rich tech entrepreneurs who didn't know how to fix anything or grow anything, and eventually starved or got killed off when the robots got tired of them.
I think about that a lot when I see wealthy people condescending to the people who prop up their fragile lifestyle.
It's like in the disaster movies when the rich family is trying to pretend they still have power and influence and discover that some electrician with a rifle is a lot more valuable than they are all of a sudden.
Season 3, episode 1. Title is "Three Robots: Exit Strategies". It’s a really good show, although fair warning that many episodes have very dark subject matter, tragedy, and violence.
It's not taxes that are bleeding us dry, babe. It's the cost of housing (driven by rent-seekers buying up tracts of housing and landlords who are greedy) ... the cost of education (driven by the fact that we don't want tax dollars going to Pell grants and public colleges anymore) ... the cost of health care (driven by the profit motive and the fact that we are allergic as a society to the very idea of Medicare for All.) The cost of day care ... the cost of gas ... the cost of food ... the cost of cars and insurance. I look at all these costs vs. the cost of my tax bill and MY TAX BILL ACTUALLY SEEMS QUITE REASONABLE. Yet people continue to blame "Taxes!" for everything while letting the private sector and inflated private sector prices (and low private sector salaries) rape us all up the ass.
Andy, your heart is in the right place but you seem to be unaware that "boutique green energy policies" mean cleaner air and lower energy bills for everyone. Also, can you spell out where city schools require additional services compared to what exactly, perhaps rural schools that have frequent snow day closures, and maintain their own bus fleets and energy plants? As far as "migrant hotels" that cost is the price of empathy, the alternative being far more expensive ICE camps or encampments, and unless we are going to all pick and process our own vegetables and meat, immigrant labor is actually a net positive for this country.
He's not upper middle class. He's upper upper class, just not uber -upper class. (Unless you hold that upper class begins at top 1% instead of top 10 or 15%
Jonas has similar thoughts about food. Completely out of touch. I told him the only way $300/month for groceries would work is if one relied solely on unhealthy, processed, boxed or packaged food. No fresh food. He adamantly disagreed and insisted that cheaper food is “healthier” and expensive food is more fattening.
It was incredible. He’s living in a different reality.
I mean, if you eat rice or potatoes with every meal, and your protein consists of 1-2 eggs per day, with maybe some chicken you bought because it was about to expire....it's possible you could feed a family of four for $500 per month. But no one will be happy with it, and that diet won't include fresh fruit or many fresh veggies.
Asking people to live on medieval peasant gruel isn't the winning strategy the elites think it is.
We know what happened to Marie-Antoinette after she made her infamous comment about a cake. I agree that uber-rich have no idea how most people live. Yet, I still want to make a point that Americans lost one of the major traits that they used to have: frugality. I have a dear friend whose daughter is 40. In her early 20es she produced two kids from different fathers, both guys fit a stereotype of trailer trash, so she dumped them. By age of 35 she finally got her master's in social work. She is always asking her 75-year old father for money, to buy kids clothes for school or pay for summer camp. Yet, she has enough money for a new tattoo every year, fancy hairdo worth at least $100, vacations in Mexico (she views it as a sign of frugality) and she loves throwing barbecue parties for the neighbors, buying expensive meats and drinks. I watch it in horror.
I completely understand where you’re coming from, and I see it, too. Frugality is something most Americans have indeed lost — and for good reason: over the past five decades, our government and big business have moved heaven and earth to turn the U.S. economy into a consumer economy. If memory serves, I think consumer spending accounts for nearly 2/3rd of GDP? Very difficult to remain frugal when you’re pummeled non-stop by commercials and ads, and phones with apps that track your purchases and constantly prod you to buy. Heck, you don’t even “exist” financially today without a credit score — which requires a credit card. That was never the case for the Silent Generation. But that all began to change with Boomers.
So while I wholeheartedly agree that many of us are no longer frugal, I think the blame needs to be shared here.
I also think the definition of “frugal” has changed. It’s easy to be frugal when you make 12K/year, milk cost $.27 and a house costs $35K. It’s a lot harder to be frugal when you make $50K/yr, milk costs $3, and a starter home in a city costs $600K.
I lived overseas for seven years, working for foreign companies that weren't reporting any official income to the U.S.
While I reported income to the IRS, it wasn't a lot.
When I returned to the U.S. with my wife and child, we struggled to buy a house despite having a $90,000 downpayment for a $180,000 house because we didn't have much of a credit history.
It says a lot about the rigged system when someone can have $90,000 saved up and the financial system says "We're not sure if we can trust your financial responsibility because you haven't financed your entire lifestyle since you moved out of your parent's house 20 years ago."
Wow, interesting. I would like to hear more about this. In which state were you trying to buy? Were you ultimately successful?
Your difficulty purchasing without credit goes to the debt trap I mentioned in another comment. The system has morphed into one that punishes people who tries to live within their means by only paying for what they can afford.Today, you pretty much don't exist and certainly can't buy a home without a high credit score -- which requires acquiring credit cards -- not TOO many that puts Big Finance at risk, but just enough to please them and prove you're a reliable subscription-slave.
Big Finance knows human nature all too well, especially in an inflationary economy driven by consumer spending. They know most people will be tempted to eventually use the credit cards sitting in their wallet...
O, the judgment! Ever stop to think that people are using those credit cards for necessities??
When the car breaks down and you don't have $800 to fix and you need to get to work, what do you use?? Your credit card. When you need a heart scan and you have no health insurance and the facility is offering it to you at half off if you can pay cash, what do you use?? Your credit card. (TRUE STORY.) When the condo above you has a water leak that ruins your apartment and THEY didn't purchase homeowner's insurance and you have thousands of dollars worth of damage to repair and no savings, what do you use?? Credit cards.
People just assume that because credit cards exist, they are being abused for fripperies and play pretties. NO, they are being used in place of the SAVINGS that people no longer HAVE.
Then what happens? Another emergency occurs before you can pay off the first one, because credit cards as we all know charge unreasonable interest. THIS is how people get stuck in credit card debt.
Carrying 3-4 credit cards and buying everything on credit card but paying the balance in full fixes your credit history in 4-6 months. Then you still remain frugal while giving the system points it needs. I understand the lender's position, too. They don't know where your $90k came from. Even though you are a decent, honest guy, how do they know if you lived abroad? It could be a gift from your daddy or, much worse, cash from dealing drugs - after 2008 crash they assume the worst. I had a perfect credit score well over 800, had about 40% loan repaid ahead of schedule but my refinance application was denied because my condo association had more than 20% rentals in the aftermath of 2008.
Um, student loans and hospital bills?? I have never had a vacation. I go to the hair salon twice a year. You can judge me on everything I have spent money on all you want. It does not come anywhere close to my student loan and hospital bill payoff, and I deeply resent the idea that human beings must keep that nose to the grindstone, work and work and work and work, and have nothing to offset the drudgery of life. "Well, if they just hadn't bought that (proverbial) large screen TV!!" What's a large screen TV when your student loans cost thousands and thousands of dollars ... for a public college? Can't people come home from their two jobs and at least watch a TV show? I am not going to judge someone for throwing a party. At least she's social and has friendships to throw a party FOR. These things make life worth living ... not grinding and grinding and grinding away at ceaseless toil.
Having credit cards is fine but if you are carrying debt on those cards from month to month at 30% interest while going to destination weddings and bachelor parties, buying new cars, eating out two or more times a month or accumulating more than five outfits to wear to work I’m afraid you don’t qualify for economic security in American society. Blaming online advertising and social media or begging the bank of Mom and Dad for help after the age of 25 doesn’t cut it.
Ever think that some people are using credit cards in place of the rainy day savings most people don't have anymore? When the car breaks down and you don't have $800 to fix it, what are you going to do? Lose your job, or use your credit card? Everybody wants to think that those with credit cards are abusing them to give themselves luxuries. What most people are really doing is paying for emergencies they don't have the money to cover.
You seem to have missed the phrase, “while going to destination weddings and bachelor parties, buying new cars, eating out two or more times a month or accumulating more than five outfits to wear to work”….
In other word the people also likely to have $200,000 or more in student loan debt.
Mmmkay. So one is never supposed to buy a tattoo, never supposed to do their hair, never ever supposed to have a vacation, never supposed to throw a party.
Tell you what, I haven't indulged in many luxuries in my life at all, and if you added them all together it still wouldn't have come anywhere near my student loan payoff. I have never taken a vacation, never bought a tattoo, never thrown a party. I go to the hair salon twice a year. I am still drowning in student loans and hospital bills and have no retirement.
You can judge other people for what they spend money on all you want. It still doesn't add up to meaningful payoff on the debt most people have to incur just to start a life in this country.
WOW!!! Thanks so much for all the judgment and blame!!
I actually had a good college fund ... but the adults in the family spent it all before I turned 18. It was an abusive household with a mentally ill parent, so I HAD to get out of there. Period. I was trying to get into professional school so I attended the schools that would look best on my application. Vet school is VERY competitive. No, I did not want to join the military. It was going to take me at least eight years of school as it was. (Although ... I did end up getting into vet school a year early, so that was good.) I could not forgo having a car in college, because in vet school you are required to do clerkships all over the state. You HAVE to have a car. My car was a used Yugo I got extremely cheaply and used to schlep my belongings all around campus since I had to move every single year. Veterinary medicine didn't pay all that great when I graduated, but now there's a doctor shortage and pay and benefits have finally come up to what they should be. I did have my own business, I did relief work for many years. However, I am too old now to be driving all over the state for work and the hospital I work at now pays 100% of my insurance. Can't beat that. I am being made veterinarina in charge where I work. But I do not own the business, nor do I wish to. I also got hit with a car accident soon after graduation AND two major surgeries before I could afford health insurance (this was back in the day) and that put me wayyyy back, because you know what happens when you have to defer student loans. My late husband also died from brain cancer and that plus having the care of two elderly relatives fall into my lap meant I had to work part time for a while.
Having answered all that, may I ask you WHY other human beings must submit themselves and EVERY FACET OF THEIR LIFE for YOUR approval?? It galls me NO END when people on their righteous high horse ASSUME all kinds of things about other people in financial trouble. Obviously, WE must be stupid and YOU know better than everyone else, therefore you are allowed to sit in judgment and assume people need financial help because they are in some way inferior to you.
Having been through the hardships I have--and I have not been on SNAP or unemployment, but a couple of times in my life I was close--I recognize that other people are doing the best they can with the hand they've been dealt. I do not assume other people are stupid, made bad choices, and thus deserve their suffering. Clearly you do with this obvious prerogative to examine and judge every aspect of someone else's life as if you were Jesus on Judgment Day, and this attitude MAKES ME SICK.
You are not the judge and jury of anyone else's life or anyone else's choices, and you need to replace that UGLY and ENTITLED FUCKWIT third degree with an ounce or two of compassion for other people and some faint trace of faith in your fellow man.
Too many people these days assume that everyone BUT THEM is lazy, stupid, doesn't know how to budget, and on and on. When I see that attitude, I know what kind of person that is, and I don't think much of them.
I think we are all trying to have a learning experience here to find out how as many of us as possible can greatly improve their chances of doing well in America’s capitalist society. The reason I asked the questions is no more and no less than that. Actually, it sounds like you are having a high degree of professional success, and you should be living rather comfortably compared to blue-collar workers as the chief veterinarian at a facility. And that makes me very happy. Way to go.
I wholeheartedly agree that we need to help people as a society who are generally up against it with hard times or who simply don’t have the capacity to compete in our system. But we are under no obligation to bail people out if they accumulate huge amounts of student loan debt so that they can enhance their chances of getting into professional schools. One of my best friends is a very successful veterinarian who came from an underprivileged family, and his undergraduate degree is from Southern Illinois university, not a terribly elite institution. He did end up owning his own hospital and lives very comfortably so there’s that…
Since we are talking about student loans, I also don’t think we should keep paying these exorbitant amounts for Medicare and social security either. The boomers are using up WAY, WAY more than they paid in to the system. It’s unlikely I will get anywhere close to what I’m paying into the system currently so it’s really not fair at all. They should have planned better and saved more money for retirement instead of spending $300 month for cable and all these weird “collections” of junk that they all seem to want someone to “inherit.” The amount of tchotchkes and decorative plates that generation purchased is staggering …
You miss the entire point as you are advocating the same system that the authors antagonist has and it ignores the fundamental principal of a hierarchy.. its hierarchical. Everyone cant move up. People call this capitalism but its really just feudalism, aristocracy, etc. capitalism cannot exist as it quickly degenerates into aristocracy/plutocracy. Markets exist in every system since the beginning of man, hell even chimps trade. Functional markets can only exist within a regulated system which prevents accumulation of wealth and political power by anyone. Our current system is working as designed and producing the wealth gaps it is designed to produce.
This is obvious to anyone who studies any type of system. We qhve the knowledge to build a fair and free system but cant overcome the current system. That said, either we do or we perish as our current system is fantastical as it assumes unlimited growth with finite resources. Fantasyland.
Tell me please which large multiethnic, multiracial, multi religious country has a non-capitalistic system that you would endorse vs what we have in the U.S.
Vs what exists in the US? You do realize the US ranks among the worst in terms of inequality in the developed world? So many.. Japan, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, i dont know others very well. See the Ginn index.
I don’t think a true capitalistic system exists or could exist other tahn for a shortwhile until it degenerated into plutocracy like the US of the 1920’s and now again today. Again, the US is now considered a flawed democracy.
Economies are social creations that distribute resources with, i would hope, the desire to distribute those resources effectively, efficiently, and, i would add, sustainably to where they are needed. Large disparities in wealth are enemies to productive functional flowing markets. Economic fact.
I’ll repeat. Large (150 million plus), ethnically and religiously diverse, etc. None of these apply to Japan (which has been economically stagnant since the 1980s), Germany (which is doing very poorly in terms of economic growth), or Denmark and Sweden (tiny countries, with so little diversity that they equate to extended families of second and third cousins).
Tell me which large diverse countries have systems that you prefer please.
I don't judge her for spending HER money, but she uses money of her 75-year old father who had to delay his retirement by at least 3-4 years because she kept asking for money. And after he retired, she still asks for money. Mind you, she doesn't ask him to pay for her tattoo, she gets one, but then asks him to buy kids clothes. She can have all tattoos in the world (I think her face is the only place that not covered yet) but buying kids clothes should come first. I pay $25-30 for my haircut and don't ask anyone for money. I didn't go on the cruise to Mexico until I could pay for it myself.
Dad is a fully grown adult and he can say no if he wants to … he also apparently didn’t seem to give her any parental guidance to advise her against (presumably an 18year old) taking out predatory loans from the federal government. People make lots of assumptions and judgements about other people to fit their own agendas - maybe she has friends or a BF that does her tattoos for free, maybe she actually does her own hair but it looks like it’s from the salon, maybe there is a host of other family dynamics involved.
> Very difficult to remain frugal when you’re pummeled non-stop by commercials and ads, and phones with apps that track your purchases and constantly prod you to buy.
I have a lot of concern about housing costs and inflation as you mention.
I'm less sympathetic to blaming spending beyond one's means because of "being pummeled with commercials". Relatively frugal people see the same ads as spendthifts, but react differently.
In earlier generations in the US, all TV except PBS fed people an endless stream of unskipable commercials, which one could not remove via subscription like a paid netflix or spotify account. I don't think being "pummelled" by ads has much explanatory weight, and that line of thought serves mainly to provide excuses for lack of impulse control - shedding responsibility and with it agency and internal locus of control.
We need to nuance this; some things like housing prices outstripping wage growth really ARE mostly outside of individual control, and have similar effects on all people in similar economic circumstances; making wise choices doesn't make housing more affordable; it would be unfair to hold individuals responsible for that. But in the case of living within one's means, individuals DO have a lot of choice, and two people in very similar economic conditions can live very differently based on their own choices; the two should not be conflated.
Note that above I am explicitly comparing people in similar economic conditions, not people in very different economic situations. Let's not get sidetracked comparing rich and poor here.
Let's be clear - the point I'm making is not that frugal people are more moral than spendthrifts so we can dismiss them. Not at all. My point is that whether or not to overspend *IS* actually something people have substantial choice about, so encouraging folks to USE their agency more wisely, rather than excusing their choices as "beyond their control due to evil advertisers", is healthier for them as well a society. We need to teach budgeting and an appropriate level of delayed gratification so people have the internal fortitude to resists advertising, as they used to do more often.
To generalize, conservatives tend to see all issues as being about personal choices and underplay outside forces, while progressives tend to see all issues as being about outside forces and underplay individual choices. Wisdom comes from thoughtfully understanding which is which; one size does not fit all.
You make good points, but allow me to push back on the notion of living within one’s means in an inflationary economy.
I won’t excuse people who go thousands of dollars into debt (that they will never repay) to enjoy vacations they can’t afford. I likewise won’t excuse the assistants I worked with who leased BMWs while I (as an executive) drove a Jetta.
But I can’t ignore the fact that my parents and grandparents (and even I, as a young adult) spent 1/4 of our income on rent or mortgage; today, that number is at 1/2 to 3/4 for most young people. Or the fact that the appliances and cars that used to last 10 years or more frequently die thanks to a culture of obsolescence. Or that we must either choose between expensive processed/synthetic food that guarantees chronic illness, or REALLY expensive clean food that our parents and grandparents bought for a fraction of the cost. Or the fact that my parents had no health insurance and received a $300 hospital bill when I was born, while a middle class family today with standard coverage from their employer will pay $10K.
I also can’t ignore the fact that my parents and grandparents didn’t live in a “subscription” economy that reduced their ability to own things they need. Even 15 years ago we could buy MS Word and use it for years; now the same software requires an annual subscription. It’s virtually impossible to move through society today without a smartphone. 20 years ago they cost $300-400; now they’re 2x-3x as much and designed to crap out every 5 years, leading to a never-ending monthly payment.
None of these expenses by themselves will break the bank. But taken together, they are like Chinese water torture and insidiously eat into the pocketbook of the average American in a way our parents and grandparents didn’t experience.
And all the while…wages creep or remain stagnant relative to inflation.
This is the root of the problem, and it’s why most (but certainly not all) Americans struggle.
Living within one’s means — in an economy designed to keep us “subscribing” and paying more for less every year — is an illusion.
You may as well ask a slave to “maximize” their freedom on a plantation.
We are not in disagreement. In many ways, life is more difficult today than at some periods of the past, and that is beyond the control of individuals. Perhaps I did not spend enough words expressing that, because I did not think that a point of disagreement.
I was explicitly trying to confine my point to comparing like with like; not poor vs rich, nor focused on today vs some era of the past. For example, comparing two people living today within similar economic conditions.
Within that focused apples vs apples comparison, being relatively frugal vs being a relative spendthrift comes down to differences in choices, differences in how people react to essentially the same outward conditions through being relatively frugal (compared to their contemporary cohort) or relatively spendy (compared to their contemporary cohort).
And my focus is not on moral judgement, but on encouraging agency and wise choices, by distinguishing the issues which are largely beyond individual choice (inflation, housing prices, etc) from those issues where our own choices have substantial effect on outcomes - and then using our agency effectively in the latter.
Yes, things are hard in some ways today, I fully agree. But that doesn't mean that one has no ability to make wise choices, only that wiser choices have influence but not total control on outcomes.
Thank you for clarifying your comments. And yes, we are not in disagreement.
I think the challenge becomes how people (especially young adults) can effectively exercise agency and make wise choices when the choices within their control are steadily dwindling.
Agency is what the American Dream -- and the country, itself -- was built on. That's the essence of the pioneer spirit. But that's largely been drained out of the population, in some ways voluntarily but in other ways involuntarily.
Think about something as simple as health care, which didn't exist decades ago but it is a necessity now. When I was in my 20s, I could exercise my agency to be frugal: I kept myself in good health, ate organic, exercised, didn't smoke. As a result, I saved money by opting for "catastrophic" health care plans. It was a calculation that made sense based on my lifestyle and afforded my the opportunity to direct this funds to monthly payments on the home I'd just bought. Then along comes Obamacare and robs young people of a choice that could have allowed them to save the money I did.
The rental market is another example. If you're forced to work and live in a large city to pay off student loans, you might be willing to opt for a studio apartment to save money. But what happens when the property owner sells to a PE firm and the rent is hiked 40%? (That's actually happening now). Yes, there is still agency available -- the option to go back and live with parents, but what if they're in another state? Or dysfunctional? Or what if they're facing housing insecurity, themselves? One could say that when you're priced out of a studio, there's always a storage locker. (And yes, I have seen videos of young people living in storage lockers). My point is that while we always have a choice, it's a problem when our options steadily narrow to the point where people find themselves asking: "Should I even be here? Maybe it's time to simply downsize to a coffin?"
I could be wrong, but I think this is a huge factor in the huge increase in antidepressants and opioids. People have simply given up hope because their ability to exercise agency has been so eroded.
So yes, we agree on the importance of exercising agency and distinguishing between issues that are beyond our control and those that aren't within our control. But based on our current trajectory and the accelerating degree of control over our lives by government and corporations, I worry that we are losing our ability to follow your sage guidance.
Obamacare outlawed junk insurance. That's important. And it made sure insurance will pay for the things people are supposed to get every year--mammos, for example. Rather than pay all that out of pocket because it doesn't meet your deductible, than pay again for a policy that didn't do anything for you all year.
I went fifteen years without health insurance because overweight was a "preexisting condition." And before you scream at me, there actually are people who have to restrict calories four times as hard and do four times the exercise to lose 1/4 as much weight. Oh, I took the raw chef classes, spent hours every week making a special raw food diet, went to the gym every other day. My late husband, diabetic and 21 years older, never exercised and ate fries, potato chips, steaks literally the size of dinner plates, hot dogs, you name it. Guess who was still the fat one? ME. Don't even fucking start on how I just didn't work hard enough yet, I don't want to hear it. I spent 1/4 of my waking hours on exercise in college. Try doing that with a full time job you must constantly come early to and stay late for, plus you get older and start getting injured.
I had panic attacks for YEARS thinking I was having a heart attack. Was afraid to go to the hospital because I knew I could not afford the bill. Once I got an affordable Obamacare policy, I could go to the ER and actually get worked up and discovered I actually did have a cardiac arrhythmia that had been scaring me shitless for years on end. I'm now on medication for it and was able to get therapy for the panic attacks.
So don't throw Obamacare under the bus. It needs improvement because it had to be stretched out of shape to pass in a country that hates "socialism" and Republicans have weakened it even further over the years. Since we're allergic to Medicare for All it's the only thing that has a snowball's chance of working in a society dedicated to insurance companies and for-profit hospitals.
Let’s talk about the reality of buying a house in decades past. Our first home purchase was in 1979 with a mortgage interest rate of 18%. These challenges aren’t new. Mom and Dad didn’t help but access to a VA loan gained by service in Vietnam did.
Let's just not forget that frugal people who aren't rich still need credit cards. If your car breaks down and you don't have $800 to get it running are you going to lose your job, or use your credit card? This is a common problem, especially when people don't have the funds to purchase and insure newer cars. The real fun happens when 30% interest ensures you can't pay off the first emergency before the next one happens. Been there done that. Let's stop assuming all credit card debt is for "fun."
First - Frugal people (people with impulse control capabilities) are much more likely have emergency funds set aside.
Second - There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using a card to pay for a genuine emergency such as you describe, or even taking a couple of months to eliminate the balance.
Third - If you’re buying things you genuinely don’t need while carrying a balance at 30% interest you will almost certainly be a loser in our economic system. An understanding of compound interest is a must.
People eaten up with student loans and hospital bills like I was and whose husband dies of brain cancer most generally don't have emergency funds no matter how frugal they are. You don't know what people's stories are so maybe a little less judgment, huh?
I’m not trying to be judgmental. I’m trying to discuss how people can considerably improve their odds of succeeding in our capitalist society. There are certain things that I know young people can do and many of them involve impulse control, sacrifices and sound judgment. Whether or not they elect to do them is of course their own business, and unless they are truly disabled or have a huge run of bad luck, the results are also their business.
Perhaps you missed the fact that I said “if people are buying things they genuinely don’t need while carrying a credit card balance of 30% interest they will almost certainly fail” to succeed.
In this case, none of the people involved have experienced undue hardships, cruel health problems, etc. What they are confronting is a lack of capacity to control their own behaviors and make sacrifices in the short term for long-term benefit.
I very much want all of them to succeed and live good lives. But, none of us are granted police powers to stop them from doing foolish things because of “influencers“, “advertisements“, or invitations to destination weddings.
As such, I certainly would never assume that all credit card debt is for “fun”. Being on the wrong end of credit debt is definitely not enjoyable!
However, one can talk about problems with “the SUBSET of credit card debt” which can be attributed to lack of impulse control or lack of financial literacy.
Discussing that portion does not speak to the “no other good option” subset of credit card debt, nor does bringing the “no other good option” subset advance the discussion of the subset under discussion.
One of the effects of having been financially marginal from early on is that I observed who tended to escape the “escalating debt” trap and who did not, even among people with similar incomes and required expenses.
Getting a better job with higher income could certainly help, but even folks who did that sometimes stayed deeply in debt, while others gradually did better even with the old same jobs.
There are life situations where there is no escape from poverty, I well know that being prudent doesn’t solve everything. But there are many millions more who would benefit from prudence in spending, from delaying gratification, from avoiding costly fads and trends. And that latter group is what I’m talking about. For example, gradually building some funds which can carry one through, say, unexpected car repairs, without going into debt at high interest rates - and rebuilding those funds asap after usage.
Because it’s easy to miss, I will repeat again that I make no claim this is enough to fix all problems for all people, so there’s no need to point out that some people never get ahead by even a few hundred pounds or dollars or Euros. I get that. But sensible financial decisions can improve the lot of many people who have a tendency towards unwise decisions, and blaming advertisers for bad decisions tends to discourage rather than encourage making the wise personal decisions that would benefit one.
No disagreement on housing costs. When house costs 3 annual salaries, it is affordable, but once you get to 7-8 salaries, it is a totally different story.
This kind of article rubs me the wrong way for a number of reasons (drawing broad conclusions from a single individual, sharing your friend’s private text messages in the first place). But I’ll settle for pointing out that calculating and interpreting income percentiles is actually very complicated and the number the author pulls for the top 1% appears to come from the first available link in Google’s AI summary, a CNBC article that gives an average of the 1%, not a threshold. Implicitly she seems to be comparing this to a median calculated using a different (and more credible) source which almost certainly uses an entirely different methodology (Smart Asset does not make it easy to evaluate what it is they do or to sanity check against a median number that uses the same method).
Thank you for your thoughts. I don't understand why sharing my friend's text is problematic. I used a pseudonym, and there are literally thousands of TV producers in L.A. Regarding income percentiles, if you can suggest a better metric for identifying the top 1% please share it. Lastly, I think it's important to keep the big picture in mind and the context in which I referenced the top 1%. Regardless of what the threshold actually is, is it your position that an annual income of $176,470 puts a wage earner in the top 1%? If so, then the economic landscape in this country is significantly worse than I portrayed in this essay.
From a golden rule perspective, it seems like something I wouldn’t feel good about doing. And it’s also problematic to use the example of a single person to make very broad inferences, both empirically and ethically (we would immediately recognize the problem with sharing similarly ugly conversations “with my poor friend” or “with my ethnic minority friend”).
The 1% statistic is a really big mistake in my opinion and I’ll explain why. If you average the entire group of 1% individuals together you are including extreme outlier billionaires that pull that number way up such that you dramatically overstate how wealthy the typical one percenter actually is. I don’t know what the exact number is for the 99th percentile, as I said it’s very difficult to measure for a number of reasons economists argue about, but based on what I’ve read and discussed on this topic it is probably much closer to 400-500k. That’s several multiples of the median income less than the number you gave.
Now I don’t expect someone to be an expert in economics obviously, but it is important to accurately communicate what the numbers they cite mean and don’t mean. When I see major errors like this it makes me unable to trust any of the other arguments the writer makes using data throughout the rest of an article.
I really appreciate your reply. I only make these criticisms because I think this topic is really important and it says a lot that you were willing to consider them.
Correct. It’s a big mistake to conflate those who make the minimum amount needed to be in the 1% in terms of annual income, which seems to be about $600,000 ($only $416,000 in WVA), with those in the top .0001 of the top 1% who have net worths in the many billions. My guess is that this Hollywood guy may not even earn enough annually to be in California’s top 1% in terms annual income and I’d bet his net worth is less than $10 million. Comfortable but not terribly wealthy.
Jonah needs to be in a Trading Places scenario where HE has to do all those things and see the reality for everyone else.
I have been on both sides of this, though never as a *rich* person, but as someone from poverty who got a free community college education in a trade and now work almost exclusively for wealthy people. I do well, and don’t work a full year, so plenty of downtime.
I got lucky and had help buying first one tiny, affordable house as those disappeared 15 years ago around boston. And when I sold that I made just enough profit to roll it into a larger fixer upper in a north shore town a mile from beach, against conservation land on a reservoir. Good choice. Still working on it 10 years later, but it is my one investment other than a modest savings account. My mortgage is now about 2/3 of the cost that my friends pay for a crap 1 bedroom apartment.
I am fortunate. It timed out. And yes, I worked hard to get here, but also made careful choices because i had nothing and no one to help.
As a result, I am furious that working class people who carry all the real weight in our society are unable to rent, let alone buy, and this should be subsidized.
I don’t put moral judgement on wealth or poverty. But if I were to do so, the wealthy are the ones on thin ice morally.
And let’s examine their family history while we are at it. Or how they make their money.
All I can say is *fuck them, let them fix that electrical problem, their plumbing issue, or dig that hole in 100 degree heat. Let them pick the food. Let them carry the mail and pick up the trash.*
They would mostly not be able to do any of the things needed to keep things running.
Honestly, not sure why we don’t just rise up and take everything they have and leave them crying into their silky soft hands.
Seriously. If I were the benevolent dictator I’d pass a law that all people (within their ability) would have as part of their education to work in all manner of jobs, all things that society requires, for a period of at least one month.
I feel that once you do a job, you understand much better what it’s value is. And honestly, hedge fund managers are good for exactly nothing in the real world. So, I always think the system is ass backward, and the people who do nothing useful or good or real make all the money.
Working class people just need to charge more if they are independent contractors. When all plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc, cost $500/hr we will see who has the last laugh.
>> If I were the benevolent dictator I’d pass a law that all people (within their ability) would have as part of their education to work in all manner of jobs, all things that society requires, for a period of at least one month.
I feel that once you do a job, you understand much better what it’s value is. And honestly, hedge fund managers are good for exactly nothing in the real world. So, I always think the system is ass backward, and the people who do nothing useful or good or real make all the money.
Such a brilliant idea!! Like community service, but more broad-based. What a way to unite society and breed respect for humans at all levels. I LOVE it!!!!
Oh we love that movie! It’s in our DVD collection: did you know that the director based the two brother Wall Street villains on the Rockefellers, whom he met at a function once?
Monica, I love your posts but I must admit I am confused by this one. Not sure where you are heading or what you are proposing ( if anything). Is Jonas and outlier or typical( is a stereotype)? Are the Jonas's more likely to live on the coasts or are they also in " flyover" country in large numbers? Yes I know guys ( and gals) like Jonas but not that many. I am a retired large firm lawyer and at least in my day while there was a lot of conspicuous consumption i rarely saw many Jonas types ( clients included).
All of the above being said , I agree with what I think is uiur overall point about the cost of living. While I do not have data on hand I often wonder if the urbanization of America is part of the problem. This is a subject that merits more attention.
One last point or two. One commenter blasted REITs ( and presumably other institutional owners of real estate). No data was offered. To my knowledge reits own a small ( but growing percentage) of single family homes ( which they rent as they also rent apts which they also own, likely in larger numbers: this is a topic I know a lot about). So what's the answer being implied: less institutional ownership ( and financing ) of rental real estate. NYC may be showing us soon how that plays out ( again see above re urbanization and its impact on costs).
Last point. Are we moving towards a class war as some have mused about ( see Ben Shapiros latest piece in the free press). Bernie and AOC and Liz and so on are trying their best to do so. Jerks like Jonas make that more likely by the way. But I also point out that in thd Hollywood hills and elsewhere we have loads of virtue signalers who sing the anti oligarch tune but rarely if ever take steps to give up their wealth or status ( if show virtue through sacrifice rather than saying we are all in this together). Many worked to create their wealth while others are nepo kids. Again living high , proclaiming virtue but little if any sacrifice. I have as much or more disdain for the foregoing as I do for Jonas and his ilk.
So again I ask what is the answer. And are we headed to class warfare which increasingly looks like the political weapon one side is all in on promoting? If so violence will be there soon as it always is when the inequality card is played.
Brilliant observation, Ms. Harris: "Perhaps this is how wealth corrupts: not by making people evil, but by creating psychological distance from the lived experiences of others. Wealth allows people to internalize ‘success’ as a reward that affirms their superiority and assuages any lingering guilt." What a terrific article. Thank you.
The psychological distance is actually just insulation from consequence. That's what money gives you. Not recognizing the extraordinary advantage just being able to pay a problem away gives a person is not just a moral failing, it's an intellectual one.
Your friend is not your friend. That is a sycophant of capitalism who will let people suffer and die because they "didn't work hard enough"
No sane society would have a debate over this.
Came to the comments to repeat that same quote. Brilliant indeed!
Not only that but it leads to a media landscape where the ruling paradigm is reinforced leading to a polarization between the lower class of those who internalize the hate ("I work 100 hour weeks, so should everyone") or those who are aware and reflect the hate back upwards
Great comment, Joni. I've always pitied the lifelong wealthy for this reason.
This is the core of Harris' excellent post. I have many friends who grapple with their luck and surprising wealth, mostly unconsciously.
Think about the person in LA who bought a house in 2010 that has doubled in price. Ok factor in inflation, the risk of buying in that market/time - they are relevant. And consider what it took to gather the down payment, figure out insurance, plan for repairs/maintenance. Fine.
Now think about a person trying to do the same today, just 15 years later - daunting to say the least.
So the lucky person from 2010 is saying, yeah I lucked out, or more likely is thinking "I Earned That" equity and therefore thinks they have no connection to the system that helped create the current inequality. No guilt, no responsibility, no sense of commonality in our society. Bodes poorly when $38T federal debt, rigged banking and money system, politicized federal reserve system, etc fall apart (slowly or quickly) - but economic cycles will not be denied forever.
"for the love of money is the root of all evil" - 1 Timothy 6:10
The 9/11 attackers were not being paid. Osama bin Laden lost money leaving the family mafia for the jihad world. The Bondi Beach attackers weren't paid, although they're now celebrated in their home county. In Urdu of course, performative regrets are published in English for the rubes.
Moral superiority is the soap with which they'll wash their hands of us.
agreed.
Wow very astute article and yes the blinders are on folks like your associate Jonas. I worked in an entrepreneurial company as a marketer in 2004, our IT pro was a lovely man from Hyderabad India. We worked closely together on websites, etc. And once our CEO made a passing comment to us about how it wasn’t difficult to travel— you could just do all your work in the back of the limo or fly first class. We just looked at each other with a smirk because no limo picks us up when we schlep ourselves and our baggage from our economy seats at the airport to some hotel. It was one of those funny yet revealing moments that showed us some people never walk a mile in a different pair of shoes! Our CEO was a kind and generous man but he had the blinders as well.
If we're lucky, the things we say out of blindness are capable of simple refutation. Oh, I guess you don't have a limo. Or ad-free Netflix. Or a home.
May each of us make our ignorant, cruel remarks only once.
This is like the loving-kindness meditation--for tact.
Amazing ...
Omg my face and head was going sideways as I read doing your work in the back of a limo. Fly first class? I’m a bit taken aback. What’s interesting is I’ve been among very wealthy, ultra wealthy people. I’ve never heard this disconnect. Maybe these folks know better to keep quiet. I guess my question is how much money do you have to have in order to forget how much life costs? The disconnect about so much is so disturbing.
"The human Rights of Women are among those uncountable and naturally unalienable Rights of the Formation Document of this shared American Republic & Declaratory Charter of Our Natural Rights, which guarantees forever the Equal Station it entitles both Women and Men to."
The below reaffirmation and redeclaration by men that the abovesaid is the Supreme Law of these Lands, which is in Full Force with Legal Effect to this day—For the reunification of our Country as one People against tyranny of all forms:
https://republia.substack.com/p/for-the-preservation-of-freedom-and
Thanks for sharing. Coastal media executives are the most out of touch people on the planet, most of his income probably went towards making propaganda. Does Jonas have any kids? If he did, he might see the struggles young people are going through. Also would bet that he votes Democrat.
That’s a great question. He’s childless, has no spouse or partner, his mother recently died, and his father is in hospice.
So in every respect but money, he’s a remarkably poor individual. I actually feel a little sorry for him, which is why I have managed to show compassion through the years, even as his perspective and empathy for others has narrowed.
Sounds like Jonas' perception of himself and his own self-worth has become entrenched in what he sees as his only personal attribute --
money.
He's comically replaced the human life "landmarks" with net worth. Sounds like his adamant rejection of those without the only thing he personally can boast is a reversal of his own self-rejection, turning the tables on society so he can see himself as worthy by his own metric.
This is how incels are shaped, incidentally. Rejecting those who reject them, with violent judgmentalism.
Jonas is a predictable result of the severe individualism myopia that characterizes American culture. I'm unsurprised that he chooses to make a living selling sensationalized fiction, as he's so skilled at denial of his own reality.
Well said!
Agreed — well-said. I didn’t include this in my piece, but Jonas was a bookish “outsider” in high school, banished to the social fringes. As a black girl in a nearly all-white prep school I was also on the fringes, but I’ve always tried to balance my professional “success” with a sense of empathy — a “There but for the grace of God” mentality that my parents instilled in me.
For whatever reason, Jonas lacks this and seems to resent the socially-rewarding aspects of life — relationships, family — that he lacked in youth and has failed to develop as an adult.
I’m thinking about writing a piece about this, but it strikes me as not coincidental that much of the wealth being amassed now is held by genius-level, borderline autistic men who lack social skills and a deeper connection and understanding of how life and relationships work with “real” people, not screens and machines. I’m broad-stroking, of course, but I think there’s something to this.
Thanks!
And so in closing this sad, sad story what else but pity can we feel?
This, 💯. In spite of everything Jonas said and what he believes, I can’t bring myself to hate him. What I feel most is sadness and pity. He is simply a reflection of how deeply our society has failed us.
I WOULD WANT TO RE-NAME THE WHOLE UNIVERSE TO FEMINISM AMD THAT WOULD BE IT!
So basically he has nothing of real importance. Which is obviously his own fault for being a pathetic individual.
I see what you did there.
That reminds me of 🍊💩 too. His “family” doesn’t count; he acquired them like he does his “trump towers”. What’s more telling is that he would never understand why someone would have a pet. All he has to fill that vacuum is more & more money.
I wish it were possible to arrive at a blanket statement as to what will cause how someone reacts to acquiring wealth.
Look at how “sports stars” who come from poor backgrounds, react. Some try to distance themselves from their past & acquire things, while others try to pay back for their “good luck”.
You literally have no idea what you are talking about here. Maybe listen to one of your "own" like Bill Mahr describe the man- not the character you love to hate.
This man in the essay bears no resemblance to DJT.
😂😂 Go hang out on “truth social”! (By the way, that’s maher, not mahr & he sucks.)
Haha it took me a sec. I thought "peach poop....who is peach poop?"
Wondering if he reads your writing and if he will see himself in it. How devastating to see your evaluation of him as a remarkably poor individual in every respect but money.
People raise whole families on mailman salaries , Your friend is a douche and you should spend your time with better people
Maybe that's why he's so harsh with others, because he's without people to fill his heart. Just a thought.
He desperately needs you.
Um … Why would Jonas ‘vote Democrat’? Policies supported by Democrats have produced the ‘social safety net’.
If Jonas truly believes that people in need are losers who haven’t tried hard enough, then - as President Obama has pointed out - he has the Republican point of view that: ‘You’re on your own!’
According to Jonas, worthy people don’t have disabilities, don’t age, don’t get sick, don’t have children with cancer or any other mysterious condition requiring medical expertise, don’t face unfair headwinds in the job or real estate realm (possibly because of race, religion, national origin, gender, or condition of servitude), never die or develop complications during the ever-present dangers of pregnancy & childbirth, never fall victim to injury resulting from unsafe working conditions or from working too long at physically punishing jobs, don’t experience wage theft or usurious interest rates … & on & on.
So they wouldn’t need Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP or WIC benefits, consumer protection, affordable health insurance, voting rights, or any of the other protections put into place by Democrats & fought tooth and nail by Republicans!
I would almost think ‘Jonas’ was a Straw Man, except that I too have interacted with real people who seemed nice enough but turned out to have a surprisingly backward & mean outlook.
Thanks for helping us understand that there are indeed those who have reaped the benefits of our experiment in constitutional government & some progress in defining, expanding, following, & reassessing the rule of law, only to turn on others who try to live in the same world under the same advantages.
As the child of a “letter carrier”, what they were called back then, who raised his family in the home he owned with his wife, Jonas can go straight to hell. That letter carrier was a union vice-president and was so good at arbitration and negotiation, he was poached to work on the other side in labor relations. He did that with his high school education because he wasn’t afforded a GI bill to attend college and couldn’t afford it. The sweeping generalizations Jonas has are infuriating and disgust me to say the least. The fact the he is, in fact, A MINORITY himself seems to be lost on him. He seems to have the disease I like to call “wanna be white-itis”. Jonas will at some, point if it hasn’t happened already, learn that he is not part of the club either. No amount of money will change that. I have experienced similar attitudes from a former friend who came here from Nicaragua. We were friends for 20yrs but I always knew deep down she wanted to be white adjacent, part of the club her brown skin, and indigenous features, would never allow. I want to thank you for writing this bc this is not an uncommon story. Many will not experience this or understand without your story. IMHO that man is not your friend and never was. There’s a saying about friendship, it’s for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Whatever the reason or season, it is in your best interest to not make this a lifetime.
votes Democrat?
Of course he votes Democrat, underpays his undocumented immigrant “help,” and imagines himself a virtuous person. A model Democrat.
Are you a bot? Hard to believe a human would type your comment. You must be a malicious bot account.
What?
your previous comment was such empty stupid ragebait that it makes you look like a textbook trollbot
Well, it’s only “empty stupid ragebait” to people who’ve emotionally committed to blind partisanship. Your comment is very revealing.
Touched a nerve, eh?
Yes, if you spend any time around these types in LA, they all vote for democracy.
Voting democrat =/= voting for democracy.
Meanings of words change over time. In 2024 Democrats primary platform they ran on was preserving democracy. So, no, you are wrong. Based on how we use the term now, democrats are the democracy party and republicans are not.
lmao yuri i like your commentary generally…but really ‘votes democrat’? what about any of this leads to that conclusion?
Coastal media executive who went to Harvard. Practically screams contemporary Democratic voter.
…do those types go on long diatribes about hating the working poor?
from what OP wrote they came from the same class background, he didnt inherit or social attitudes which is usually how those types come to their delusional beliefs
"do those types go on long diatribes about hating the working poor?"
Oh you thought only Republicans were cartoonishly diabolical?
not responding to the content of the comment, leaps of assumption based on my presumed beliefs, and not adding to the conversation at all
10/10 look forward to not seeing your username again
Democrats loathe and despise the working poor, not least because they regard the working poor as Trump Supporters and racist.
Hate to say it but I work among many who are. I do not despise my coworkers. OTHER than being Dumpists and not being able to see ANY connection between Dumpism and their own precarious economic situations, they're nice people. (Yet, they're the first people to creep outside with a gun hidden behind their back because there's a poor homeless woman sitting against the building trying to get out of the rain. Not a fan of that, either.)
I am really sorry for these people. I am sorry for the condition some of them are in. Most of them are avid churchgoers and I suspect some of the Dumpism comes from fundamentalist religion.
Thank you for providing a perfect example of exactly what I was talking about.
This encapsulates the problem (the biggest problem in our politics).
I know people just like Jonas
Consider the two perspectives.
If you challenged Jonas, he would strongly argue that he ‘does not hate the working class’. He would talk about all the ‘good charities’ he gives money to etc. He would probably even suggest ‘he tries to give people opportunities, but they have to work for it’
This is the ‘democrat’ voice that enrages progressives.
The problem is a reaction that ‘he hates the working class’ while emotionally satisfying ends any opportunity to move forward.
It puts members of the same party in opposition to each other.
Idk how repeating gop talking points screams “I vote democrat.” Unless your point is that there’s a two-faced wealthy portion of the party that you think he represents based on a “hunch”. Or simply based on him being coastal? Idk, weird comment to end that response on without context.
Republicans, from Reagan to Citizens United, are the ones who destroyed our middle class.
Thanks, guys.
It is disheartening to find out that someone you thought you knew, isn't that person after all. It brings into question whether he's changed, or is more often the case, grown into the person he always was. It's usually the latter when they become comfortable with their circumstances. " I miss the person I thought you were".
Gosh. I’d like to believe the former, but I certainly can’t rule out the latter. Either way, extremely disheartening.
“I miss the person I thought you were.”
That’s a keeper. I think I will be using that often ☺️
I too used to believe the former, but increasingly see the latter and recognize there were indications earlier that got discounted as "that's not them"., but looking back there were signs that were overlooked. I think over time we get revealed.
The quote is from an SF artist acrylic piece. I'll see if I can find it. She does neat stuff.
I was close…… a lot of her work is in acrylic and resin
https://www.arthaus-sf.com/portfolio/lucky-rapp/arthaus-rapp-i-miss-who-i-thought-you-were-black/
I’m surprised that he made it as far as he has because his thinking is alarmingly lacking nuance in a rather low IQ way. I don’t know him, of course, but he seems quite simple minded and I don’t say that because I disagree with him.
I do agree that some people don’t manage their finances well, and some are lazy and entitled. There are people who are poor due to their own failures.
But a working class job should pay enough to purchase a modest home.
Where I grew up, blue collar and white collar were mixed; there was one earner — the dad. The big family in the small house across the street worked in the Sara Lee factory.
He wasn’t lazy. He had a lot of mouths to feed.
That house — 5 grand in 1962 — now sells for almost 400 grand, far exceeding the percentage a house should cost commensurate with many full time jobs.
I’ve never been able to break 6 figures myself. I’m not lazy. I work so hard just to get out of debt and so on there’s no time to “move up.”
He seems a little possessed by certain talking points.
Very common mindset , especially with men. And try to argue rationally and suddenly you’re accused of being a communist or socialist. A former Libertarian, I’ve become a fan of a certain amount of income redistribution through taxation. However I do think this country still offers the best opportunities for improving your station in life, relative to others .
Agree. What allows this country to still offer the best opportunity to improve our lot in life isn't our smoke-and-mirrors economy, but our Constitution -- which theoretically *should* enable us to vote out the people sustaining our broken system so we can pursue more solution-based options. I don't support government-compelled income redistribution, but I think we can accomplish a similar goal by eliminating the corporate stranglehold that has destroyed the free market. The free market works , but only if we allow it to work. The problem is that we haven't had a true free market in more than a century.
This country absolutely offers people from around the world the best opportunity to gain economic freedom via a free market economy, where hard work, common sense, and wisdom pay off more than anywhere else in the world.
Two examples. The barbershop I go to is run by two Jews, who came to this country with nothing from Uzbekistan. All they knew how to do was cut hair and do elementary business financial analysis. I have known them for about 20 years and I was talking to the wife of this pair a couple months ago and when I asked her about how their children are doing, she looked at me and smiled, “four kids, all out of college, no debt!” Admittedly, they have worked extraordinarily hard, but they’ve done this while learning English as a second language and without a college education.
And, my wife patronizes a nail salon that is owned by a Vietnamese refugee woman and where all the workers are refugees from that country. The woman is a ball of fire, but she didn’t come here with any wealth nor does she have a college education. What she has is a relentless work ethic. As I picked my wife up from the salon the other day, I asked the proprietor how things are going for her family and she lit right up. Her oldest, a son, is a Department of Defense computer expert. Her two youngest children, daughters are both medical doctors.
One has to wonder how they accomplished such things?
On the other hand, our HVAC guy is always trying to hire workers who won’t quit. He promises that he’ll teach them all the skills they need and says that if they take 4 courses in accounting and finance, combined with their OJT learning, there is no reason they can’t start their own businesses within 10-15 years. 90% of his employees quit within a year because repairing AC’s in a hot climate is “unpleasant”.
We know that bad things happen to good people, and I think most of us favor a social safety net for people who are floored by external factors such as disease, requirements to care for elderly relatives or disabled children, etc. The question then becomes how much the rest of us should be paying people who simply don’t work that hard, make terrible life choices with predictable bad outcomes and choose short term gratification while ignoring the long-term implications of doing do.
BTW, my grandfather was a mailman as was my next-door neighbor when I was a child. They were both great people and I can’t imagine wishing folks like them anything but the greatest success.
Another example of why we should welcome immigrants. But then, they have already shown remarkable determination just in coming here.
LEGAL immigrants...
Yes. Immigration should be legal. We should take a lot of the money we are spending in border agents, ICE, a wall, detention centers, etc., and instead build processing centers like Ellis Island and hire data entry clerks so people who want to move here can do so legally and smoothly.
Many of us need their example of to remind us of what’s possible.
So true . My bff’s husband started with nothing and has a million dollar HVAC company he worked his ass off to build . He can’t find techs who want to work and move up. No ambition. However he is getting taxed heavily by NY .
I have seen some of the same problems with trying to hire people who will stick with a job. As maddening it is to have to constantly look for someone who will come to work and do a good job I keep thinking of why they seem incapable of sustaining a job/career. As I get to know the younger generations, it’s apparent to me that the odds are stacked against them in ways that I would never have foreseen.
So some of the things that I think have to do with this
1- hopelessness. In the context of current society they understand better than I ever did, that the odds of them getting ahead economically are astronomical. They look around and see how hard their parents struggle just to put basic food/shelter in place. They see 2parent households working 2 full time jobs can’t provide.
2-social media/video games/similar services. These now occupy a large part of people’s everyday time. They provide a constant convenient source of dopamine. These things are designed to keep you addicted and consciously plugged in.
3-society that is addicted to “too MUCH “. Too many TV channels. Too many phones. Too many toys. Too many choices. Our society culture is one of excess. Psychology shows that too many choices results in inability to actually choose. Decision paralysis.
4–inability to predict future outcomes. They inhabit the digital worlds where outcomes frequently are predicted. These outcomes are tangible & immediate. The real world is completely different. Learning a skill takes a very long time in comparison to a digital skill. After you have mastered that skill you may not achieve any benefit. The real world time frame in general is a long game of months/years. They don’t see any benefits.
So from my armchair I see both sides. I do know that current American society is in bad shape. I do know that the youth are suffering needlessly. I do know that systems need to change. We need to reimagine our culture to the ideals of justice, freedom for all. We need to claw back from the 1% our money and our basic rights. How? That’s the rub.
Hopelessness comes from being taught that you are powerless to impact your own life. We older adults were not taught that. But we overprotected our children and they became both scared of their own shadow as well as dependent, lazy and entitled. They don’t understand the satisfaction of being self sufficient and responsible for their own lives. This codependent mindset has been heavily pushed in public schools and colleges.
Really? I don't remember that where I went to school.
I suspect the key to your comment is, "they've been here 20 years." Where I live the current predicament of immigrants and poor people is at one end of my street: Dilapidated mobile homes full of very poor people. At the other end of my street, barely a mile away, is a country club I will never be able to afford to belong to even though I hold a professional degree. Twenty years ago when your people you think are "working hard enough" got here a decent home, food, the basics of life all cost a lot less. I'd like to see anybody live anywhere but their car and get anywhere just cutting hair now.
I'll be honest, I have zero expectation that we will ever have a free market economy. In theory, I'm a Libertarian, but in reality, I have decided to learn how to play the game AND teach others how to do it. So my current goal is to learn how the rich get rich, which you are correct, involves a broken system of corporate welfare and tax cuts for businesses. Therefore, people should learn how to take advantage of the tax system. Then, once you have the means, you can fight for justice and share your wealth however you want.
I'd rather try to dismantle the system and rebuild it, but I understand that's a long shot. Your path is more realistic, especially in the short term.
Screw that. All you do learning to "play" a bad system is make it worse for everyone else.
You can work the system only if you are already rich. One cannot become truly rich by earning a salary.
I know plenty of people who are investing in real estate , opening businesses, and investing in the stock market and they’re regular people, not rich people. The current system punishes those people and gives their wealth to those who don’t even try to improve their lives.
Uh, what?
Who needs to be rich? There's wayyyyy too much emphasis in America on Becoming Rich. All you NEED are the basics. Past a certain amount of money it does not make you happier.
It never works that way.Once you learn to "play the game" your money corrupts you absolutely and anyone not driving a Ferrari and wearing an oyster date Rolex becomes scum.
I’ll be happy to just afford groceries and health insurance in my old age. Since I started being more intentional about saving and investing after starting a new career at age 58, we actually have money in the bank and our debt is cut in half. My point is that we used to have a poor mindset and it kept us poor. Even poor people waste money. We spent every paycheck plus some . Now I think differently about money . I’ll never be rich but I’m not going to be homeless if I can help it .
Working class Americans are one permanent job loss away from being homeless. Even though who think they're doing okay.
That's been the case for about two decades now.
NO, we need to CHANGE THE SYSTEM so it's fair for everyone. All you do by learning to play a bad system is make it worse for others.
Screw the fucking "free market." What that allows is the monopolies we have now that funnel money upstairs to the owner class and shrink wages for everyone else while raising prices. Once upon a time we had antitrust laws. Now no one believes in that anymore.
Please identify specific companies that are monopolies.
What are low wages and tax breaks for very wealthy people? A government redistributing income. UP.
Wages are set by the free market in labor, with obvious mitigating factors being that a company must be competitive (against other domestic and foreign companies), make a profit, examine alternatives to employees whose wages and labor burdens cost more than the market value of their labor output (the alternatives include robotics, process efficiency improvements, AI, etc). Higher labor costs and other costs of production must be paid for by consumers. If they won’t pay, the company and its employees will be gone.
This is Economics 101. No need to get tempermental about or deny the reality of people who come as refugees and thrive here.
If employees have had the opportunity to take advantage of American education, as provided by wonderful unionized public school teachers, and still cannot do anything more than repetitive motion labor, which can easily be done by robotics, their prospects are horrendous. And in a modern manufacturing facility, the person who can program, maintain and operate a robotic manufacturing device will be 50 times better off than someone who simply turns a wrench in a clockwise direction all day.
No matter one’s “station” all people deserve affordable access to all resources needed for meeting basic needs, including healthcare, food, shelter, clothing, education, socialization, personal development and actualization.
I assume by 'deserve' you mean that you want "the government" to provide those things by taking money from one person and giving it to another? Or maybe you mean that in a "perfect world' everyone would have those things?
Interesting assumption. It is quite revealing of your perceptions and values. What I want is to reallocate the 100 billion dollars in government subsidies that corporations and billionaires receive. I want it to be illegal for billionaires and corporations to exploit our labor, profiting at a sickening rate at the expense of the well-being of our communities across the nation, while we are forced to compensate for inhumane and unlivable wages (looking at you, Walmart).
I would agree with eliminating corporate grants and tax breaks . But no one is exploiting you. You’re a free citizen, for now. Under Mao it wouldn’t be like that. You’d be sent to work the farms. As for Walmart, they provide wages at a rate that matches the skill level required. If you can improve your skills , you’ll make more money. If you can’t , you’re probably getting paid better at Walmart than most retail stores. My nephew makes $14 as a cart attendant, plus benefits. He didn’t finish high school and has no motivation to work. America offers more opportunities to improve your life than any country.
Americans are always saying that, but it simply isn’t true.
Respectfully, I don't think you read all the keywords in their comment if that's your assumption
You’re a Trump loving Nazi
This is why the talk about oligarchs is resonating with more and more voters. The tax code is insanely unfair and housing, education and healthcare are skyrocketing. I don’t think you have to tell us how he voted 😝😳
“creating psychological distance from the lived experiences of others"
Brilliant phrase, this is likely the mechanism behind so much of the animus in society today.
The simple fact is that Jonas is an arrogant elitist asshole, and his ilk are what’s driving the “educated” youth to communism. Little do those youth know that “the evil billionaires” will simply be replaced by the politburo under the new system, and their classless utopia will never materialize, because…human nature.
The elephant in the room is DEBT, both for individuals and for government. While some debt is obviously necessary (mortgages, for individuals; infrastructure for government), too much debt is a deep hole few can escape.
Imagine if tuition was affordable (up to $5k/year), and students got part time and summer jobs to defray living expenses. [This was actually my case, albeit not in the US.] Most would graduate with very little debt, and an $85-100k salary would, with judicious management, be sufficient to pay for a nice, middle class lifestyle, especially if there were two earners in the household.
The solution was never to “forgive“ student loans, it was always to restructure the university system. And for the naysayers, it works in other countries, so why not in the US?
Spot on about debt being the root of our problems!! When will we start talking more about this?
"The simple fact is that Jonas is an arrogant elitist asshole, and his ilk are what’s driving the “educated” youth to communism."
This never occurred to me, but I think you're onto something. Whenever I hear people like Mamdani rail against capitalism, I want to grab them and scream: "But this isn't capitalism! This is a franken-hybrid of capitalism, corporate socialism, and God knows what else!"
Capitalism was never intended to be warm and fuzzy, but it wasn't intended to grind people into dust, either. Now we reap what we sow.
The Frankenstein hybrid capitalism you speak of, is just real world capitalism. There is no other kind. The rich will create big government if it doesn’t exist, in order to prevent competition via regulation and surveillance everyone else so they cannot organize . There is no realistic world in which capitalists “play by the rules” and efforts to force them to are always subverted. There simply is no such thing as a “free market” there is only violence, power, winners and losers.
Love your article. Made me sad. But it’s a growing reality that has severe impacts on billions of humans around the world.
I also want to share that the root of our problems is not debt, not any other policy or practice. It’s empathy. The root lies in our hearts. Because that’s what drives policy decisions. We have to find a way to foster empathy… because if that’s there… everything else shifts. You said yourself… Jonas has empathy for people he knows… it’s when empathy disappears that the problems start.
The root is empathy.
this, like almost all our other problems, is actually rooted in overpopulation. when in a group of a reasonable amount of people (not sure the number but maybe 100-250) it is much easier to empathize than if you are in a group of too many (500? 1000?). instead of feeling and forming individual connections it becomes triage and self defense (emotional and perhaps physical, esp for women).
Any system will grind people into dust when you don't tax rich people and they get to buy the system and take over.
The last two paragraphs here! Eye-opening.
They were educated at fraudulently inflated prices to compete in a world that no longer exists. That's fraud. Of course student loans should be forgiven. Education is a public good that should never have a cost to the individual anyway.
What the hell? Oh, yeah, right, the youth of America are all communists. *rolleyes.gif*
The current housing crisis is a bubble created by REITs(Real-Estate Investment Trusts) publicly trading their stocks on the Exchange. To solve the problem regulators need to order the REITs to go private.
- They do not have to pass new laws, the regulators simply need to do their job.
When the REITs can no longer trade stocks, they will start to sell the houses they own, since they do not generate enough income from renting the properties. They make their money from the stock price.
- The value of houses will drop with increased supply.
All over town there are signs, "We pay cash for your house". I get postcards in the mail all the time with the same message.
The REITs buy up all available houses, but let some stay on the market to create a "demand" and jackup the prices. They can then charge rent based on the "perceived" value of the market, a value that they inflated.
- They gouge the market to keep the stock price high.
The solution is simple, yet no one will want to do it because the value of their own house will drop, and many people will suddenly be underwater with their mortgage.
As an aside:
When people demand that more houses be built to "solve" the problem, REITs will simply buy up all the new houses to maintain their scam.
The 2008 housing crisis freed up a huge number of houses that were dumped on the market from underwater mortgages. The REITS bought them up and inflated the prices.
Before the crash there was a housing construction boom as people built houses to rent out. Remember, "You can be a millionaire with no money down". Those houses are still out there, so we do not need new construction.
BTW, If regulators actually do this and houses appear on the market, greedy idiots(sorry) will start buying up the houses to try and rent them at the current inflated values.
The housing prices will keep falling and they will find themselves underwater, forcing them to sell, further dropping the prices.
People often think short term.
But I digress.
If they don't make money from the properties they own, who's fool enough to buy their stock? Seems like a market ripe for correction, with our without regulation.
I agree that the problem with fixing housing issues is often that the existing traditional homeowners (that live in their own home, with a mortgage) suffer when they have overpaid, which happens frequently, because housing markets seem prone to frothiness. Because of the number of voters involved, and owning your own home being such a key part of the American dream, politicians and regulators are loathe to take action that will correct markets, and improve supply, for fear of popping bubbles.
I think new home building is likely too constrained by regulation, driving supply down, and production costs up. Nimbyism is a major part of the problem.
The key is to increase housing supply, not manipulating market fundamentals. Build more house via much less regulation and NIMBYism.
It shouldn't be allowed. Housing is for people to live in, not for rent seekers to become billionaires while working people live in their cars homeless.
This is the madness that they are considering rather than deal with the real problems I mentioned.
Is Donald Trump proposing a 50-year mortgage? What to know about long-term loans
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/real-estate/2025/11/09/trump-50-year-mortgages-bad-idea/87182819007/
As I said, the problems can be solved by the regulators doing their job, but people are afraid to have the overinflated value of their house go down.
Shirley you jest.
If politicians and regulators want to be hated they should do things to cause the value of all houses in the US to drop in value. Nothing resonates with young voters more than the prospect of being upside down on their house, meaning they owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth and are, in most cases, essentially bankrupt.
Back in 2008, Robert Frank, a WSJ reporter whose beat was the lifestyles of the 1% wrote a book called “Richistan” based on his interviews and knowledge from his reporting. One fact from that book stood out. There was a survey done of the very wealthy that had basically three questions: How much $$ do you have? Do you feel like you have enough $$? How much $$ would you need to have to feel like it was enough? The results were shockingly consistent. Very few of these guys felt like they had enough, but all of them consistently reported that having about double their current net worth would be enough. I.e. someone with $600 million needed 1.2 billion. Someone with 2 billion needed 4. Studies also show a strong correlation between increase in net worth and loss of empathy. When your sense of your own value is compromised, when you and what you have is not (and will likely never be) enough, it only seems natural that those who have even less must be somehow worse. It would be tragic if it wasn’t so dangerous. Because people who can never be satisfied will ultimately lay waste to everything and anything if they think doing so might fill the hole in their soul that says nothing is enough. I’m so sorry about your friend.
"Shirley you jest."
That is a classic joke that I use with my friend Shirley, and she still doesn't get it. HA!
Young people can't buy a house because they are overinflated. Average age is 38 before somebody can buy a house.
When Tucker had Charlie Kirk on last time, he mentioned the need to build more housing, and prevent private equity from buying them, so this is not just my opinion.
https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-charlie-kirk-2025
"[01:40:19] We need to build 10 million new homes and make sure private equity cannot buy them."
The interview had a good discussion of the problems that young people are facing today.
Stop the REITs from trading on the Exchange and the prices will come down as the supply returns to normal.
Plus:
Your comment to James Roberts above literally misses the fact that the REITs will simply buy up any new houses to keep the scam going.
BTW, I bought my house in 1991, at $100 a square foot. That was during a bubble here in Santa Fe that caused housing prices to triple in just five years. I was only able to buy my house with the help of a State program even though I had a BS in Civil Engineering. I was 27.
The house beside mine just sold for $400 a square foot, which is a shockingly overvalued price for a fix-up house that needed a ton of work. It was built after my house and was originally overpriced at $100 a square foot.
Many of the houses in my subdivision were abandoned during the 2008 crash when they became underwater. We gated the community to slow down vandalism. The houses finally sold after years. Most to people moving from California where the prices were even higher.
But I digress.
What we don't need is "private equity." It is ruining housing and health care.
Exactly.
I can't remember the podcast where they discussed "private equity" buying up successful hospitals, then asset stripping them, then selling the stripped husks of a once vibrant system. The hospitals would then go bankrupt soon after the sale because the new owner had too much to rebuild.
In your comment above:
"Housing is for people to live in"
...is absolutely right. REITs have existed for a long time, but it is only since the 2008 crash that they have been traded on the Stock Exchange.
Real estate investment trust
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate_investment_trust
"REITs have been criticised as enabling speculation on housing, and reducing housing affordability, without increasing finance for building."
Read the paragraphs on the Wiki page under "Evolution" to see more.
I remember when NBR(Nightly Business Report) announced the offerings and saying that this would come back to bite us.
It was soon after that Malls started failing. When you read the Wiki page you see that the rentals have to increase every year, regardless of the local economy, or the stock price flounders. So this kills small business that needs "foot traffic" to survive.
The Malls were the first indicators of problems, then the hospitals, then housing. I remember that there were whole subdivisions that were bought up by the REITs during the 2008 crash.
Regulators could have prevented all of this, since REITs need permission from regulators on every major purchase, so regulators can order REITs to go private and sell off their properties.
BTW, People don't want to look at this because it will ultimately effect the overinflated value of their house.
When I bought my house in 1991 at $100 a square foot, I knew that it would only be worth $50 dollars a square foot when it finally sells, not the current overinflated $400 a square foot today.
But I digress.
Shirley there is only so much housing REITs can buy before their bubble pops. Not that a bubble popping is likely to be good for anyone
"Shirley there is only so much housing REITs can buy before their bubble pops."
HA! Classic.
"Not that a bubble popping is likely to be good for anyone."
Exactly. Which is why the bubble needs to be deflated slowly. The REITs will have to go private, which means buying back stock and selling off houses in a public way so that no one does something stupid during the transition.
BTW, It's what they should have done during the 2008 housing crash. Instead of bailing out the banks, the banks should have reversed the process of growing and started spinning off regional banks that were clean of toxic debt.
The profits made from the sale of regional banks would have been used to cancel the toxic debt. The process would continue until the main bank was free of the toxic debt. Doing it publicly would have increased the value of the main bank's stock and increased confidence in banks overall.
- No more "Too big to fail."
This is no different from when someone has to sell off property to pay down debts.
But no one was listening to me in 2008, so I digress.
Dude believing a television producer ads more value to society than a mail man is fucking deranged
Could he be the exception and not the norm for people in his income bracket? His views are so extreme. I don't think most upper-middle class people who "made it" think this way. (I hope not.) At least not people I know.
The Bezos and Gates though, they're on a different planet. I suspect the rest of the little people don't even register enough for them to have an opinion why they're where they are.
It’s hard to know, but I highly doubt he would make these comments to most people or in mixed company. We’ve known each other for decades, and that breeds a sense of familiarity. Based on our “pedigree,” he also assumes that even if I am not at his level financially, I am still a “hard worker” who has amassed sufficient wealth to warrant being treated like a human being.
I can’t help wonder whether other members of his class feel the same way but would not dare mention it to those they don’t trust. It’s telling that he was shrewd enough to note that he believes elected officials share his perspective but would never be negligent enough to admit it.
I think most rich people (and that is who this guy is, not upper middle class) do think that way but they're usually nicer about it. They just focus on how smart and deserving they are of all the material resources they've amassed with the implication left unsaid that those who don't have it don't deserve it. I'm from a genuinely middle class background and went to college with a lot of rich elites, wow what a shocker to come across people who thought they were so smart but didn't seem smart in a conversation--and still believe everything the mainstream media reports.
I've met some rather dumb multi-millionaires who got rich selling a lot of something stupid to other stupid people. One of them built a chain of jet-ski shops near lakes in rural/suburban areas and sold a ton of $8,000 jet skis at 25% interest financing.
He was fun at parties, but he had zero intellectual curiosity and his business philosophy was to hire absolutely ruthless predatory salesmen to manage and staff his locations. You know, people who reminded him of himself.
He absolutely was not elite human capital. But his bank account and net worth put him in the 1%.
So, anyone, even those with mediocre capabilities, can do it. That’s reassuring.
You would actually have to live in the area, possess sales acumen, and know something about jet skis, I imagine. Plus have access to startup capital.
Does that still mean "anyone" can do it??
How did he get that start up capital? Was he born rich? Did he have an MBA in finance?
How did he acquire knowledge of jet skis? He certainly wasn’t born with it. Did, perhaps, he had a job at a young age where he repaired mechanical things, including, specifically, jet skis? Would you want to guess that he was getting job experience when he was 16 years old, and maybe in the military?
Was he born with sales acumen? Did his wealthy parents give that to him? Maybe he has an IQ of 150 but the original comment didn’t indicate that.
Or, maybe he just has a combination of a willingness to work very hard and financial discipline?
I'm done talking to you. Except to say that not everyone is from a healthy family with healthy parents. Many people grow up without the kind of guidance and health in their family that sets them up to have any clue how to do any of this.
People are not born knowing how to navigate this complex world. When they do so successfully, it shows that someone cared about them enough to take the time to teach them, and that they came from an environment where someone else knew what to teach them. Kids aren't born "special," they have to be RAISED, and many, many people come from disadvantaged or abusive backgrounds. Then people like you call them "stupid."
Let me explain it this way. On YouTube I see videos by this one lovely, successful young content creator going through life, and the depth of guidance and help she got from her parents really makes me sad when I look back and my life and see all the help and support I needed that I didn't get. She actually had a father who taught her how to shop for a car. I never had that. She actually had her dad sit her down and explain to her how buying is more financially advantageous than renting. She had parents who were happy to have her live at home while she paid off her student loans so she could get a solid start in life. What happens to a kid who doesn't have that kind of advice and guidance from a parent?
Clearly, it's their fault, and you look fo blame THEM.
Let me tell you something. I spend six months at home after I graduated, and I promised myself I would never, EVER go home to my family for any kind of help ever, ever again, not even if I were homeless. That's the kind of family I grew up in.
When you see people in difficult circumstances, they didn't just come from nowhere, or the fact that people are just stupid.
Grow up. Quit judging. Acquire some compassion and a more encompassing and realistic outlook on life and people. I will never begrudge my tax dollars going to help out someone less fortunate, nor will I ever judge someone for needing help, because I have some faint clue what some of these folks have been through, and I actually give a shit.
Unlike some people.
Sales skills can outperform education quite often as long as the salesperson knows their audience.
He’s not the exception. Too many comfortable people have contempt for the struggling middle class who have to live the circumstances of the policies they promote…higher electricity and gas costs because of boutique green energy policies…higher local taxes to cover migrant housing in hotels… less state funds going to middle class communities for schools at the expense of cities who require additional services. All at the expense of the people who pay the bulk of the taxes…not just federal and state taxes but local property taxes as well. We are being bled dry by the politicians and experts who have nothing but contempt for and look down on us as useless rubes and an inconvenience. Something has to change. A Postal worker should be able to live a life of dignity for the service he provides. It has value…it makes our community better. The same thing can be said for grocery workers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, garbage haulers, fast food workers, landscapers, house cleaners, restaurant workers…the list goes on and on. They should expect a decent life too. After all, that asshole who is described in the article depends on them even though he’s too arrogant to realize it.
I wonder if the post war period was really a bubble. Or, in fact, America has been a bubble. First driven by "free" land, allowing immigrants to come and work cheap, but have hopes of starting their own business, or moving West. Then whatever worked in the post war period, after it became harder to run a small business, and you couldn't get free land anymore ... I'm not sure.
But free trade has meant those with capital get rich, while formerly decent paying jobs (which may in themselves have been a temporary anomaly) are offshored to places that don't have unions and safety and environmental regulations. The short term tradeoff is that working and middle class people get lots of cheap stuff, which makes free trade seem like a win-win, or at least a win-not lose. But you end up with an economy where only the service jobs are left ... this can't be traded to pay for all the stuff we import, and many people don't want to work service jobs because they see that as going backwards ....
My grandparents from England were essentially serfs/servants 100 years ago; maybe this is the norm for human society, and we are just reverting to it?
I am at about the 80th percentile in income, maybe a bit less in terms of net worth. I have a master's in a STEM field. I'm very good at what I do, and I've made/saved millions of dollars for companies and governments - probably several times my accumulated salary. I'm lucky enough to have been mortgage free for several years, and I live quite frugally - e.g. I eat out with family maybe once as month; I have taken exactly 3 week long vacations that involve travel and paid accommodation in the last 15 years. And I struggle to pay bills, and increase my savings. I couldn't do it if I still had a mortgage.
This feels like a lot less than the American dream of 60, 40, even 20 years ago. Heck, I know it's less than I had 20 years ago. How people in lesser circumstances can hope for more, or even just to manage, I don't know.
Working full time may not inherently deserve more than 15-20 bucks an hour, but it certainly deserves respect.
Our household income is $135,000 with two kids in a suburb, and I have nothing but sympathy for those making less than us, because at this income level it's still a struggle.
I know how people on middle-class and working-class incomes get by: no new cars, kids are very limited in their extracurricular activities, family vacations limited in scope, distance, and duration, and rarely eating out at a sitdown restaurant that serves anything higher class than microwave/deepfried slop.
Working-class is what I grew up in the 80s and my teenage years of the 90s. My mom never took us anywhere. I didn't participate in sports or afterschool clubs that required sign up fees or my parents driving me to and from anywhere.
I got new clothes before school and on my birthday, and that was paid for my grandparents. Only got new shoes when mine were falling apart or I could prove to my mom that my toes were hitting the front.
People can work their fingers to the bone and still be pretty financially unsuccessful simply due to how expensive life is. They deserve respect.
Yep, we're about the same. Cars are a big area where expenses can be curtailed. My budget involves supporting two college age kids trying to find their way, we have three vehicles from 2013 and one (mine) is a 2007. Maintenance can hit hard occasionally (we've replaced two engines in the last two years, cheaper than buying a new used car with unknown issues), and insurance sucks, but I'm able to save enough to usually have the money when I need it. At 10k each for the engine replacements, I'm lucky I am able to save enough to do this, not sure how someone on less income with a mortgage ever does this. I guess they go get a lease vehicle that costs them 4k a year or so, and never end up being payment free.
I'm right there with you. My father taught me to never pay a lot for a car because they depreciate the moment they leave the lot. So we generally don't buy them new, and when we do we hold onto them for dear life. We have three cars: 2006, 2011 and 2017. The 2017 needs a new engine (17.5K) and the 006 (which our son drives) just conked out this week. We're crossing our fingers and bracing that the repair bill won't break us, but we really can't afford a new car now, given how expensive they've gotten. And the poor quality also makes us lean heavily to going used...
This is why our next vehicles will be used Toyotas. The transmissions and engines last forever, and those are the two most expensive things that break.
The finance trap is real. Very few of my friends with lower household income buy major purchases with savings. They always end up financing. Hell, most of my friends with much higher household income still finance everything because they spend every dime they have.
We got hit with a bunch of involuntary home improvement expenses this summer that wiped savings and forced us to finance a new HVAC system that we're prioritizing the payments on.
Sort of similar to you on cars. We have a 2022 that was the first and only new car we've ever bought that we're still paying on, but my wife drives a 2015 that we bought cash with savings in 2017. Both are Mazdas that should have a relatively long life since we keep up with the routine maintenance. We have no plans to buy another car any time in the next few years, and my wife barely drives hers anyways.
The finance trap is real and getting worse.
You know people are hard up when they're financing groceries...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/business/buy-now-pay-later-groceries.html
Lol we just got hit with a 17k roof replacement. Two years ago we replaced the garage floor (cement floor cracked and unstable). It's one thing after another.
Bill Clinton and the NAFTA trade agreement had a lot to do with where we are now. We don't even produce most of the prescription drugs our population needs. We are dangerously dependent on other countries for vital products.
More so deals with China than NAFTA, I suspect. Though free trade with Mexico was always going to turn out the way Ross Perot said.
By free trade, I mean, unrestricted trade.
I'm in favor of trading with few restrictions, with nations whose practices (regulations and economic policies) are broadly similar to ours, i.e. do not favor them at our expense.
There's a "Love, Death, and Robots" episode where they explore an off-shore community full of skeletons. They comment that it was populated by rich tech entrepreneurs who didn't know how to fix anything or grow anything, and eventually starved or got killed off when the robots got tired of them.
I think about that a lot when I see wealthy people condescending to the people who prop up their fragile lifestyle.
It's like in the disaster movies when the rich family is trying to pretend they still have power and influence and discover that some electrician with a rifle is a lot more valuable than they are all of a sudden.
I started watching that series last year and really enjoyed it. Do you recall which episode it was?
Season 3, episode 1. Title is "Three Robots: Exit Strategies". It’s a really good show, although fair warning that many episodes have very dark subject matter, tragedy, and violence.
Interesting. Though I stopped subscribing to Netflix a few months ago (reducing/rotating subscriptions).
I hear you. We just dropped all but one of our subs last month.
That's what we do as well. Tally up the subscription services and it's more than most people were paying for cable packages.
It's not taxes that are bleeding us dry, babe. It's the cost of housing (driven by rent-seekers buying up tracts of housing and landlords who are greedy) ... the cost of education (driven by the fact that we don't want tax dollars going to Pell grants and public colleges anymore) ... the cost of health care (driven by the profit motive and the fact that we are allergic as a society to the very idea of Medicare for All.) The cost of day care ... the cost of gas ... the cost of food ... the cost of cars and insurance. I look at all these costs vs. the cost of my tax bill and MY TAX BILL ACTUALLY SEEMS QUITE REASONABLE. Yet people continue to blame "Taxes!" for everything while letting the private sector and inflated private sector prices (and low private sector salaries) rape us all up the ass.
Andy, your heart is in the right place but you seem to be unaware that "boutique green energy policies" mean cleaner air and lower energy bills for everyone. Also, can you spell out where city schools require additional services compared to what exactly, perhaps rural schools that have frequent snow day closures, and maintain their own bus fleets and energy plants? As far as "migrant hotels" that cost is the price of empathy, the alternative being far more expensive ICE camps or encampments, and unless we are going to all pick and process our own vegetables and meat, immigrant labor is actually a net positive for this country.
He's not upper middle class. He's upper upper class, just not uber -upper class. (Unless you hold that upper class begins at top 1% instead of top 10 or 15%
Where I live? You would be surprised.
Jonas has similar thoughts about food. Completely out of touch. I told him the only way $300/month for groceries would work is if one relied solely on unhealthy, processed, boxed or packaged food. No fresh food. He adamantly disagreed and insisted that cheaper food is “healthier” and expensive food is more fattening.
It was incredible. He’s living in a different reality.
I mean, if you eat rice or potatoes with every meal, and your protein consists of 1-2 eggs per day, with maybe some chicken you bought because it was about to expire....it's possible you could feed a family of four for $500 per month. But no one will be happy with it, and that diet won't include fresh fruit or many fresh veggies.
Asking people to live on medieval peasant gruel isn't the winning strategy the elites think it is.
We know what happened to Marie-Antoinette after she made her infamous comment about a cake. I agree that uber-rich have no idea how most people live. Yet, I still want to make a point that Americans lost one of the major traits that they used to have: frugality. I have a dear friend whose daughter is 40. In her early 20es she produced two kids from different fathers, both guys fit a stereotype of trailer trash, so she dumped them. By age of 35 she finally got her master's in social work. She is always asking her 75-year old father for money, to buy kids clothes for school or pay for summer camp. Yet, she has enough money for a new tattoo every year, fancy hairdo worth at least $100, vacations in Mexico (she views it as a sign of frugality) and she loves throwing barbecue parties for the neighbors, buying expensive meats and drinks. I watch it in horror.
I completely understand where you’re coming from, and I see it, too. Frugality is something most Americans have indeed lost — and for good reason: over the past five decades, our government and big business have moved heaven and earth to turn the U.S. economy into a consumer economy. If memory serves, I think consumer spending accounts for nearly 2/3rd of GDP? Very difficult to remain frugal when you’re pummeled non-stop by commercials and ads, and phones with apps that track your purchases and constantly prod you to buy. Heck, you don’t even “exist” financially today without a credit score — which requires a credit card. That was never the case for the Silent Generation. But that all began to change with Boomers.
So while I wholeheartedly agree that many of us are no longer frugal, I think the blame needs to be shared here.
I also think the definition of “frugal” has changed. It’s easy to be frugal when you make 12K/year, milk cost $.27 and a house costs $35K. It’s a lot harder to be frugal when you make $50K/yr, milk costs $3, and a starter home in a city costs $600K.
I lived overseas for seven years, working for foreign companies that weren't reporting any official income to the U.S.
While I reported income to the IRS, it wasn't a lot.
When I returned to the U.S. with my wife and child, we struggled to buy a house despite having a $90,000 downpayment for a $180,000 house because we didn't have much of a credit history.
It says a lot about the rigged system when someone can have $90,000 saved up and the financial system says "We're not sure if we can trust your financial responsibility because you haven't financed your entire lifestyle since you moved out of your parent's house 20 years ago."
Wow, interesting. I would like to hear more about this. In which state were you trying to buy? Were you ultimately successful?
Your difficulty purchasing without credit goes to the debt trap I mentioned in another comment. The system has morphed into one that punishes people who tries to live within their means by only paying for what they can afford.Today, you pretty much don't exist and certainly can't buy a home without a high credit score -- which requires acquiring credit cards -- not TOO many that puts Big Finance at risk, but just enough to please them and prove you're a reliable subscription-slave.
Big Finance knows human nature all too well, especially in an inflationary economy driven by consumer spending. They know most people will be tempted to eventually use the credit cards sitting in their wallet...
O, the judgment! Ever stop to think that people are using those credit cards for necessities??
When the car breaks down and you don't have $800 to fix and you need to get to work, what do you use?? Your credit card. When you need a heart scan and you have no health insurance and the facility is offering it to you at half off if you can pay cash, what do you use?? Your credit card. (TRUE STORY.) When the condo above you has a water leak that ruins your apartment and THEY didn't purchase homeowner's insurance and you have thousands of dollars worth of damage to repair and no savings, what do you use?? Credit cards.
People just assume that because credit cards exist, they are being abused for fripperies and play pretties. NO, they are being used in place of the SAVINGS that people no longer HAVE.
Then what happens? Another emergency occurs before you can pay off the first one, because credit cards as we all know charge unreasonable interest. THIS is how people get stuck in credit card debt.
I was renting a house for three times what a mortgage would cost me for three years without issue but my income wasn't apparently sufficient....
Carrying 3-4 credit cards and buying everything on credit card but paying the balance in full fixes your credit history in 4-6 months. Then you still remain frugal while giving the system points it needs. I understand the lender's position, too. They don't know where your $90k came from. Even though you are a decent, honest guy, how do they know if you lived abroad? It could be a gift from your daddy or, much worse, cash from dealing drugs - after 2008 crash they assume the worst. I had a perfect credit score well over 800, had about 40% loan repaid ahead of schedule but my refinance application was denied because my condo association had more than 20% rentals in the aftermath of 2008.
This exact thing happened to us!
Stupid, indeed.
Um, student loans and hospital bills?? I have never had a vacation. I go to the hair salon twice a year. You can judge me on everything I have spent money on all you want. It does not come anywhere close to my student loan and hospital bill payoff, and I deeply resent the idea that human beings must keep that nose to the grindstone, work and work and work and work, and have nothing to offset the drudgery of life. "Well, if they just hadn't bought that (proverbial) large screen TV!!" What's a large screen TV when your student loans cost thousands and thousands of dollars ... for a public college? Can't people come home from their two jobs and at least watch a TV show? I am not going to judge someone for throwing a party. At least she's social and has friendships to throw a party FOR. These things make life worth living ... not grinding and grinding and grinding away at ceaseless toil.
Ha! I tell that to a single parent (ahem me) or an immigrant. Frugality is the only thing keeping us afloat.
Having credit cards is fine but if you are carrying debt on those cards from month to month at 30% interest while going to destination weddings and bachelor parties, buying new cars, eating out two or more times a month or accumulating more than five outfits to wear to work I’m afraid you don’t qualify for economic security in American society. Blaming online advertising and social media or begging the bank of Mom and Dad for help after the age of 25 doesn’t cut it.
Ever think that some people are using credit cards in place of the rainy day savings most people don't have anymore? When the car breaks down and you don't have $800 to fix it, what are you going to do? Lose your job, or use your credit card? Everybody wants to think that those with credit cards are abusing them to give themselves luxuries. What most people are really doing is paying for emergencies they don't have the money to cover.
You seem to have missed the phrase, “while going to destination weddings and bachelor parties, buying new cars, eating out two or more times a month or accumulating more than five outfits to wear to work”….
In other word the people also likely to have $200,000 or more in student loan debt.
Mmmkay. So one is never supposed to buy a tattoo, never supposed to do their hair, never ever supposed to have a vacation, never supposed to throw a party.
Tell you what, I haven't indulged in many luxuries in my life at all, and if you added them all together it still wouldn't have come anywhere near my student loan payoff. I have never taken a vacation, never bought a tattoo, never thrown a party. I go to the hair salon twice a year. I am still drowning in student loans and hospital bills and have no retirement.
You can judge other people for what they spend money on all you want. It still doesn't add up to meaningful payoff on the debt most people have to incur just to start a life in this country.
Could you advise exactly what actions resulted in your student loan debt situation?
Did you contemplate:
Attending community college for 2 years before attending a state university?
Joining the military to gain GI Bill benefits?
Forgoing having a car in college?
Taking a major that maximized your post graduation earning potential? What was your major and which career fields work best with that?
Starting your own business?
Have you received great performance reviews from employers and peers at work? Do they indicate you have real management potential?
Are you totally mobile? You’ll go anywhere in the U.S. to get the best income vs cost of living ratio?
I’d imagine many young people could learn from your example and input.
WOW!!! Thanks so much for all the judgment and blame!!
I actually had a good college fund ... but the adults in the family spent it all before I turned 18. It was an abusive household with a mentally ill parent, so I HAD to get out of there. Period. I was trying to get into professional school so I attended the schools that would look best on my application. Vet school is VERY competitive. No, I did not want to join the military. It was going to take me at least eight years of school as it was. (Although ... I did end up getting into vet school a year early, so that was good.) I could not forgo having a car in college, because in vet school you are required to do clerkships all over the state. You HAVE to have a car. My car was a used Yugo I got extremely cheaply and used to schlep my belongings all around campus since I had to move every single year. Veterinary medicine didn't pay all that great when I graduated, but now there's a doctor shortage and pay and benefits have finally come up to what they should be. I did have my own business, I did relief work for many years. However, I am too old now to be driving all over the state for work and the hospital I work at now pays 100% of my insurance. Can't beat that. I am being made veterinarina in charge where I work. But I do not own the business, nor do I wish to. I also got hit with a car accident soon after graduation AND two major surgeries before I could afford health insurance (this was back in the day) and that put me wayyyy back, because you know what happens when you have to defer student loans. My late husband also died from brain cancer and that plus having the care of two elderly relatives fall into my lap meant I had to work part time for a while.
Having answered all that, may I ask you WHY other human beings must submit themselves and EVERY FACET OF THEIR LIFE for YOUR approval?? It galls me NO END when people on their righteous high horse ASSUME all kinds of things about other people in financial trouble. Obviously, WE must be stupid and YOU know better than everyone else, therefore you are allowed to sit in judgment and assume people need financial help because they are in some way inferior to you.
Having been through the hardships I have--and I have not been on SNAP or unemployment, but a couple of times in my life I was close--I recognize that other people are doing the best they can with the hand they've been dealt. I do not assume other people are stupid, made bad choices, and thus deserve their suffering. Clearly you do with this obvious prerogative to examine and judge every aspect of someone else's life as if you were Jesus on Judgment Day, and this attitude MAKES ME SICK.
You are not the judge and jury of anyone else's life or anyone else's choices, and you need to replace that UGLY and ENTITLED FUCKWIT third degree with an ounce or two of compassion for other people and some faint trace of faith in your fellow man.
Too many people these days assume that everyone BUT THEM is lazy, stupid, doesn't know how to budget, and on and on. When I see that attitude, I know what kind of person that is, and I don't think much of them.
I think we are all trying to have a learning experience here to find out how as many of us as possible can greatly improve their chances of doing well in America’s capitalist society. The reason I asked the questions is no more and no less than that. Actually, it sounds like you are having a high degree of professional success, and you should be living rather comfortably compared to blue-collar workers as the chief veterinarian at a facility. And that makes me very happy. Way to go.
I wholeheartedly agree that we need to help people as a society who are generally up against it with hard times or who simply don’t have the capacity to compete in our system. But we are under no obligation to bail people out if they accumulate huge amounts of student loan debt so that they can enhance their chances of getting into professional schools. One of my best friends is a very successful veterinarian who came from an underprivileged family, and his undergraduate degree is from Southern Illinois university, not a terribly elite institution. He did end up owning his own hospital and lives very comfortably so there’s that…
Since we are talking about student loans, I also don’t think we should keep paying these exorbitant amounts for Medicare and social security either. The boomers are using up WAY, WAY more than they paid in to the system. It’s unlikely I will get anywhere close to what I’m paying into the system currently so it’s really not fair at all. They should have planned better and saved more money for retirement instead of spending $300 month for cable and all these weird “collections” of junk that they all seem to want someone to “inherit.” The amount of tchotchkes and decorative plates that generation purchased is staggering …
Now that you got that off your chest…..back to the real world.
You miss the entire point as you are advocating the same system that the authors antagonist has and it ignores the fundamental principal of a hierarchy.. its hierarchical. Everyone cant move up. People call this capitalism but its really just feudalism, aristocracy, etc. capitalism cannot exist as it quickly degenerates into aristocracy/plutocracy. Markets exist in every system since the beginning of man, hell even chimps trade. Functional markets can only exist within a regulated system which prevents accumulation of wealth and political power by anyone. Our current system is working as designed and producing the wealth gaps it is designed to produce.
This is obvious to anyone who studies any type of system. We qhve the knowledge to build a fair and free system but cant overcome the current system. That said, either we do or we perish as our current system is fantastical as it assumes unlimited growth with finite resources. Fantasyland.
Tell me please which large multiethnic, multiracial, multi religious country has a non-capitalistic system that you would endorse vs what we have in the U.S.
Vs what exists in the US? You do realize the US ranks among the worst in terms of inequality in the developed world? So many.. Japan, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, i dont know others very well. See the Ginn index.
I don’t think a true capitalistic system exists or could exist other tahn for a shortwhile until it degenerated into plutocracy like the US of the 1920’s and now again today. Again, the US is now considered a flawed democracy.
Economies are social creations that distribute resources with, i would hope, the desire to distribute those resources effectively, efficiently, and, i would add, sustainably to where they are needed. Large disparities in wealth are enemies to productive functional flowing markets. Economic fact.
I’ll repeat. Large (150 million plus), ethnically and religiously diverse, etc. None of these apply to Japan (which has been economically stagnant since the 1980s), Germany (which is doing very poorly in terms of economic growth), or Denmark and Sweden (tiny countries, with so little diversity that they equate to extended families of second and third cousins).
Tell me which large diverse countries have systems that you prefer please.
I don't judge her for spending HER money, but she uses money of her 75-year old father who had to delay his retirement by at least 3-4 years because she kept asking for money. And after he retired, she still asks for money. Mind you, she doesn't ask him to pay for her tattoo, she gets one, but then asks him to buy kids clothes. She can have all tattoos in the world (I think her face is the only place that not covered yet) but buying kids clothes should come first. I pay $25-30 for my haircut and don't ask anyone for money. I didn't go on the cruise to Mexico until I could pay for it myself.
Dad is a fully grown adult and he can say no if he wants to … he also apparently didn’t seem to give her any parental guidance to advise her against (presumably an 18year old) taking out predatory loans from the federal government. People make lots of assumptions and judgements about other people to fit their own agendas - maybe she has friends or a BF that does her tattoos for free, maybe she actually does her own hair but it looks like it’s from the salon, maybe there is a host of other family dynamics involved.
> Very difficult to remain frugal when you’re pummeled non-stop by commercials and ads, and phones with apps that track your purchases and constantly prod you to buy.
I have a lot of concern about housing costs and inflation as you mention.
I'm less sympathetic to blaming spending beyond one's means because of "being pummeled with commercials". Relatively frugal people see the same ads as spendthifts, but react differently.
In earlier generations in the US, all TV except PBS fed people an endless stream of unskipable commercials, which one could not remove via subscription like a paid netflix or spotify account. I don't think being "pummelled" by ads has much explanatory weight, and that line of thought serves mainly to provide excuses for lack of impulse control - shedding responsibility and with it agency and internal locus of control.
We need to nuance this; some things like housing prices outstripping wage growth really ARE mostly outside of individual control, and have similar effects on all people in similar economic circumstances; making wise choices doesn't make housing more affordable; it would be unfair to hold individuals responsible for that. But in the case of living within one's means, individuals DO have a lot of choice, and two people in very similar economic conditions can live very differently based on their own choices; the two should not be conflated.
Note that above I am explicitly comparing people in similar economic conditions, not people in very different economic situations. Let's not get sidetracked comparing rich and poor here.
Let's be clear - the point I'm making is not that frugal people are more moral than spendthrifts so we can dismiss them. Not at all. My point is that whether or not to overspend *IS* actually something people have substantial choice about, so encouraging folks to USE their agency more wisely, rather than excusing their choices as "beyond their control due to evil advertisers", is healthier for them as well a society. We need to teach budgeting and an appropriate level of delayed gratification so people have the internal fortitude to resists advertising, as they used to do more often.
To generalize, conservatives tend to see all issues as being about personal choices and underplay outside forces, while progressives tend to see all issues as being about outside forces and underplay individual choices. Wisdom comes from thoughtfully understanding which is which; one size does not fit all.
You make good points, but allow me to push back on the notion of living within one’s means in an inflationary economy.
I won’t excuse people who go thousands of dollars into debt (that they will never repay) to enjoy vacations they can’t afford. I likewise won’t excuse the assistants I worked with who leased BMWs while I (as an executive) drove a Jetta.
But I can’t ignore the fact that my parents and grandparents (and even I, as a young adult) spent 1/4 of our income on rent or mortgage; today, that number is at 1/2 to 3/4 for most young people. Or the fact that the appliances and cars that used to last 10 years or more frequently die thanks to a culture of obsolescence. Or that we must either choose between expensive processed/synthetic food that guarantees chronic illness, or REALLY expensive clean food that our parents and grandparents bought for a fraction of the cost. Or the fact that my parents had no health insurance and received a $300 hospital bill when I was born, while a middle class family today with standard coverage from their employer will pay $10K.
I also can’t ignore the fact that my parents and grandparents didn’t live in a “subscription” economy that reduced their ability to own things they need. Even 15 years ago we could buy MS Word and use it for years; now the same software requires an annual subscription. It’s virtually impossible to move through society today without a smartphone. 20 years ago they cost $300-400; now they’re 2x-3x as much and designed to crap out every 5 years, leading to a never-ending monthly payment.
None of these expenses by themselves will break the bank. But taken together, they are like Chinese water torture and insidiously eat into the pocketbook of the average American in a way our parents and grandparents didn’t experience.
And all the while…wages creep or remain stagnant relative to inflation.
This is the root of the problem, and it’s why most (but certainly not all) Americans struggle.
Living within one’s means — in an economy designed to keep us “subscribing” and paying more for less every year — is an illusion.
You may as well ask a slave to “maximize” their freedom on a plantation.
We are not in disagreement. In many ways, life is more difficult today than at some periods of the past, and that is beyond the control of individuals. Perhaps I did not spend enough words expressing that, because I did not think that a point of disagreement.
I was explicitly trying to confine my point to comparing like with like; not poor vs rich, nor focused on today vs some era of the past. For example, comparing two people living today within similar economic conditions.
Within that focused apples vs apples comparison, being relatively frugal vs being a relative spendthrift comes down to differences in choices, differences in how people react to essentially the same outward conditions through being relatively frugal (compared to their contemporary cohort) or relatively spendy (compared to their contemporary cohort).
And my focus is not on moral judgement, but on encouraging agency and wise choices, by distinguishing the issues which are largely beyond individual choice (inflation, housing prices, etc) from those issues where our own choices have substantial effect on outcomes - and then using our agency effectively in the latter.
Yes, things are hard in some ways today, I fully agree. But that doesn't mean that one has no ability to make wise choices, only that wiser choices have influence but not total control on outcomes.
Thank you for clarifying your comments. And yes, we are not in disagreement.
I think the challenge becomes how people (especially young adults) can effectively exercise agency and make wise choices when the choices within their control are steadily dwindling.
Agency is what the American Dream -- and the country, itself -- was built on. That's the essence of the pioneer spirit. But that's largely been drained out of the population, in some ways voluntarily but in other ways involuntarily.
Think about something as simple as health care, which didn't exist decades ago but it is a necessity now. When I was in my 20s, I could exercise my agency to be frugal: I kept myself in good health, ate organic, exercised, didn't smoke. As a result, I saved money by opting for "catastrophic" health care plans. It was a calculation that made sense based on my lifestyle and afforded my the opportunity to direct this funds to monthly payments on the home I'd just bought. Then along comes Obamacare and robs young people of a choice that could have allowed them to save the money I did.
The rental market is another example. If you're forced to work and live in a large city to pay off student loans, you might be willing to opt for a studio apartment to save money. But what happens when the property owner sells to a PE firm and the rent is hiked 40%? (That's actually happening now). Yes, there is still agency available -- the option to go back and live with parents, but what if they're in another state? Or dysfunctional? Or what if they're facing housing insecurity, themselves? One could say that when you're priced out of a studio, there's always a storage locker. (And yes, I have seen videos of young people living in storage lockers). My point is that while we always have a choice, it's a problem when our options steadily narrow to the point where people find themselves asking: "Should I even be here? Maybe it's time to simply downsize to a coffin?"
I could be wrong, but I think this is a huge factor in the huge increase in antidepressants and opioids. People have simply given up hope because their ability to exercise agency has been so eroded.
So yes, we agree on the importance of exercising agency and distinguishing between issues that are beyond our control and those that aren't within our control. But based on our current trajectory and the accelerating degree of control over our lives by government and corporations, I worry that we are losing our ability to follow your sage guidance.
Obamacare outlawed junk insurance. That's important. And it made sure insurance will pay for the things people are supposed to get every year--mammos, for example. Rather than pay all that out of pocket because it doesn't meet your deductible, than pay again for a policy that didn't do anything for you all year.
I went fifteen years without health insurance because overweight was a "preexisting condition." And before you scream at me, there actually are people who have to restrict calories four times as hard and do four times the exercise to lose 1/4 as much weight. Oh, I took the raw chef classes, spent hours every week making a special raw food diet, went to the gym every other day. My late husband, diabetic and 21 years older, never exercised and ate fries, potato chips, steaks literally the size of dinner plates, hot dogs, you name it. Guess who was still the fat one? ME. Don't even fucking start on how I just didn't work hard enough yet, I don't want to hear it. I spent 1/4 of my waking hours on exercise in college. Try doing that with a full time job you must constantly come early to and stay late for, plus you get older and start getting injured.
I had panic attacks for YEARS thinking I was having a heart attack. Was afraid to go to the hospital because I knew I could not afford the bill. Once I got an affordable Obamacare policy, I could go to the ER and actually get worked up and discovered I actually did have a cardiac arrhythmia that had been scaring me shitless for years on end. I'm now on medication for it and was able to get therapy for the panic attacks.
So don't throw Obamacare under the bus. It needs improvement because it had to be stretched out of shape to pass in a country that hates "socialism" and Republicans have weakened it even further over the years. Since we're allergic to Medicare for All it's the only thing that has a snowball's chance of working in a society dedicated to insurance companies and for-profit hospitals.
Let’s talk about the reality of buying a house in decades past. Our first home purchase was in 1979 with a mortgage interest rate of 18%. These challenges aren’t new. Mom and Dad didn’t help but access to a VA loan gained by service in Vietnam did.
Let's just not forget that frugal people who aren't rich still need credit cards. If your car breaks down and you don't have $800 to get it running are you going to lose your job, or use your credit card? This is a common problem, especially when people don't have the funds to purchase and insure newer cars. The real fun happens when 30% interest ensures you can't pay off the first emergency before the next one happens. Been there done that. Let's stop assuming all credit card debt is for "fun."
First - Frugal people (people with impulse control capabilities) are much more likely have emergency funds set aside.
Second - There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using a card to pay for a genuine emergency such as you describe, or even taking a couple of months to eliminate the balance.
Third - If you’re buying things you genuinely don’t need while carrying a balance at 30% interest you will almost certainly be a loser in our economic system. An understanding of compound interest is a must.
People eaten up with student loans and hospital bills like I was and whose husband dies of brain cancer most generally don't have emergency funds no matter how frugal they are. You don't know what people's stories are so maybe a little less judgment, huh?
I’m not trying to be judgmental. I’m trying to discuss how people can considerably improve their odds of succeeding in our capitalist society. There are certain things that I know young people can do and many of them involve impulse control, sacrifices and sound judgment. Whether or not they elect to do them is of course their own business, and unless they are truly disabled or have a huge run of bad luck, the results are also their business.
Perhaps you missed the fact that I said “if people are buying things they genuinely don’t need while carrying a credit card balance of 30% interest they will almost certainly fail” to succeed.
In this case, none of the people involved have experienced undue hardships, cruel health problems, etc. What they are confronting is a lack of capacity to control their own behaviors and make sacrifices in the short term for long-term benefit.
I very much want all of them to succeed and live good lives. But, none of us are granted police powers to stop them from doing foolish things because of “influencers“, “advertisements“, or invitations to destination weddings.
I’ve been there and done that as well.
As such, I certainly would never assume that all credit card debt is for “fun”. Being on the wrong end of credit debt is definitely not enjoyable!
However, one can talk about problems with “the SUBSET of credit card debt” which can be attributed to lack of impulse control or lack of financial literacy.
Discussing that portion does not speak to the “no other good option” subset of credit card debt, nor does bringing the “no other good option” subset advance the discussion of the subset under discussion.
One of the effects of having been financially marginal from early on is that I observed who tended to escape the “escalating debt” trap and who did not, even among people with similar incomes and required expenses.
Getting a better job with higher income could certainly help, but even folks who did that sometimes stayed deeply in debt, while others gradually did better even with the old same jobs.
There are life situations where there is no escape from poverty, I well know that being prudent doesn’t solve everything. But there are many millions more who would benefit from prudence in spending, from delaying gratification, from avoiding costly fads and trends. And that latter group is what I’m talking about. For example, gradually building some funds which can carry one through, say, unexpected car repairs, without going into debt at high interest rates - and rebuilding those funds asap after usage.
Because it’s easy to miss, I will repeat again that I make no claim this is enough to fix all problems for all people, so there’s no need to point out that some people never get ahead by even a few hundred pounds or dollars or Euros. I get that. But sensible financial decisions can improve the lot of many people who have a tendency towards unwise decisions, and blaming advertisers for bad decisions tends to discourage rather than encourage making the wise personal decisions that would benefit one.
No disagreement on housing costs. When house costs 3 annual salaries, it is affordable, but once you get to 7-8 salaries, it is a totally different story.
This kind of article rubs me the wrong way for a number of reasons (drawing broad conclusions from a single individual, sharing your friend’s private text messages in the first place). But I’ll settle for pointing out that calculating and interpreting income percentiles is actually very complicated and the number the author pulls for the top 1% appears to come from the first available link in Google’s AI summary, a CNBC article that gives an average of the 1%, not a threshold. Implicitly she seems to be comparing this to a median calculated using a different (and more credible) source which almost certainly uses an entirely different methodology (Smart Asset does not make it easy to evaluate what it is they do or to sanity check against a median number that uses the same method).
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/30/income-to-be-in-top-1-percent-of-earners-in-every-us-state.html
Thank you for your thoughts. I don't understand why sharing my friend's text is problematic. I used a pseudonym, and there are literally thousands of TV producers in L.A. Regarding income percentiles, if you can suggest a better metric for identifying the top 1% please share it. Lastly, I think it's important to keep the big picture in mind and the context in which I referenced the top 1%. Regardless of what the threshold actually is, is it your position that an annual income of $176,470 puts a wage earner in the top 1%? If so, then the economic landscape in this country is significantly worse than I portrayed in this essay.
From a golden rule perspective, it seems like something I wouldn’t feel good about doing. And it’s also problematic to use the example of a single person to make very broad inferences, both empirically and ethically (we would immediately recognize the problem with sharing similarly ugly conversations “with my poor friend” or “with my ethnic minority friend”).
The 1% statistic is a really big mistake in my opinion and I’ll explain why. If you average the entire group of 1% individuals together you are including extreme outlier billionaires that pull that number way up such that you dramatically overstate how wealthy the typical one percenter actually is. I don’t know what the exact number is for the 99th percentile, as I said it’s very difficult to measure for a number of reasons economists argue about, but based on what I’ve read and discussed on this topic it is probably much closer to 400-500k. That’s several multiples of the median income less than the number you gave.
Now I don’t expect someone to be an expert in economics obviously, but it is important to accurately communicate what the numbers they cite mean and don’t mean. When I see major errors like this it makes me unable to trust any of the other arguments the writer makes using data throughout the rest of an article.
I really appreciate your reply. I only make these criticisms because I think this topic is really important and it says a lot that you were willing to consider them.
Correct. It’s a big mistake to conflate those who make the minimum amount needed to be in the 1% in terms of annual income, which seems to be about $600,000 ($only $416,000 in WVA), with those in the top .0001 of the top 1% who have net worths in the many billions. My guess is that this Hollywood guy may not even earn enough annually to be in California’s top 1% in terms annual income and I’d bet his net worth is less than $10 million. Comfortable but not terribly wealthy.
Jonah needs to be in a Trading Places scenario where HE has to do all those things and see the reality for everyone else.
I have been on both sides of this, though never as a *rich* person, but as someone from poverty who got a free community college education in a trade and now work almost exclusively for wealthy people. I do well, and don’t work a full year, so plenty of downtime.
I got lucky and had help buying first one tiny, affordable house as those disappeared 15 years ago around boston. And when I sold that I made just enough profit to roll it into a larger fixer upper in a north shore town a mile from beach, against conservation land on a reservoir. Good choice. Still working on it 10 years later, but it is my one investment other than a modest savings account. My mortgage is now about 2/3 of the cost that my friends pay for a crap 1 bedroom apartment.
I am fortunate. It timed out. And yes, I worked hard to get here, but also made careful choices because i had nothing and no one to help.
As a result, I am furious that working class people who carry all the real weight in our society are unable to rent, let alone buy, and this should be subsidized.
I don’t put moral judgement on wealth or poverty. But if I were to do so, the wealthy are the ones on thin ice morally.
And let’s examine their family history while we are at it. Or how they make their money.
All I can say is *fuck them, let them fix that electrical problem, their plumbing issue, or dig that hole in 100 degree heat. Let them pick the food. Let them carry the mail and pick up the trash.*
They would mostly not be able to do any of the things needed to keep things running.
Honestly, not sure why we don’t just rise up and take everything they have and leave them crying into their silky soft hands.
VIVA LA LUCHA!
So funny that you mentioned "Trading Places" -- I was tempted several times during our exchange to make the same suggestion.
The phrase "not understanding a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes" comes to mind...
Seriously. If I were the benevolent dictator I’d pass a law that all people (within their ability) would have as part of their education to work in all manner of jobs, all things that society requires, for a period of at least one month.
I feel that once you do a job, you understand much better what it’s value is. And honestly, hedge fund managers are good for exactly nothing in the real world. So, I always think the system is ass backward, and the people who do nothing useful or good or real make all the money.
Working class people just need to charge more if they are independent contractors. When all plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc, cost $500/hr we will see who has the last laugh.
>> If I were the benevolent dictator I’d pass a law that all people (within their ability) would have as part of their education to work in all manner of jobs, all things that society requires, for a period of at least one month.
I feel that once you do a job, you understand much better what it’s value is. And honestly, hedge fund managers are good for exactly nothing in the real world. So, I always think the system is ass backward, and the people who do nothing useful or good or real make all the money.
Such a brilliant idea!! Like community service, but more broad-based. What a way to unite society and breed respect for humans at all levels. I LOVE it!!!!
Oh we love that movie! It’s in our DVD collection: did you know that the director based the two brother Wall Street villains on the Rockefellers, whom he met at a function once?
Monica, I love your posts but I must admit I am confused by this one. Not sure where you are heading or what you are proposing ( if anything). Is Jonas and outlier or typical( is a stereotype)? Are the Jonas's more likely to live on the coasts or are they also in " flyover" country in large numbers? Yes I know guys ( and gals) like Jonas but not that many. I am a retired large firm lawyer and at least in my day while there was a lot of conspicuous consumption i rarely saw many Jonas types ( clients included).
All of the above being said , I agree with what I think is uiur overall point about the cost of living. While I do not have data on hand I often wonder if the urbanization of America is part of the problem. This is a subject that merits more attention.
One last point or two. One commenter blasted REITs ( and presumably other institutional owners of real estate). No data was offered. To my knowledge reits own a small ( but growing percentage) of single family homes ( which they rent as they also rent apts which they also own, likely in larger numbers: this is a topic I know a lot about). So what's the answer being implied: less institutional ownership ( and financing ) of rental real estate. NYC may be showing us soon how that plays out ( again see above re urbanization and its impact on costs).
Last point. Are we moving towards a class war as some have mused about ( see Ben Shapiros latest piece in the free press). Bernie and AOC and Liz and so on are trying their best to do so. Jerks like Jonas make that more likely by the way. But I also point out that in thd Hollywood hills and elsewhere we have loads of virtue signalers who sing the anti oligarch tune but rarely if ever take steps to give up their wealth or status ( if show virtue through sacrifice rather than saying we are all in this together). Many worked to create their wealth while others are nepo kids. Again living high , proclaiming virtue but little if any sacrifice. I have as much or more disdain for the foregoing as I do for Jonas and his ilk.
So again I ask what is the answer. And are we headed to class warfare which increasingly looks like the political weapon one side is all in on promoting? If so violence will be there soon as it always is when the inequality card is played.