i was the exception to the rule. i should be the ambassador of the american dream. i did it all right.
we were dirt poor. my parents sacrificed a lot so i could be in an area where the schools were exceptional. we all bootstrapped. i paid my own way through college and grad school. i have student debt, but not a lot of it. it took me a long time and a lot of jobs and working and connections and luck and all of it.
now i make good money at a good (remote!) job with pretty good health insurance. I have vision and dental. they even offer pet insurance and 6 free meetings with a therapist. i work with an exceptionally sweet manager, i like my team, and i don't mind the job. i make much more than some of my friends.
so why the fuck can't i afford to eat.
i looked it up. ten years ago, my current salary would amount to 106 thousand american dollars. it was "well over" median wage.
my position's base salary (according to what i could find) has only increased by about 3 thousand dollars. after all, the work has not changed drastically. estimates say that for me to live "comfortably" in this city, i'd need to be making 139,776 dollars a year, before taxes. i am making half of that.
i always bristle when someone on the other side says something about how we just don't want to work, how it's really about me and my failure to succeed. that i need to be pushier, flashier, better; and then capitalism will work out for me.
in the car yesterday, she said that america is probably fucked. that the amount of damage trump is doing to america is largely permanent. i have difficulty arguing with her. prices went up during the pandemic, and then they just - stayed there. i want to believe in the inevitable rise of the human spirit (you know i'm an optimist) but the truth of the matter feels like a smeared handprint - i have no proof it gets easier.
elon musk becomes or unbecomes a trillionaire. we spend billions of dollars in a pointless war. health insurance companies kill people in cold blood. ai "takes over" jobs; assigns you a random number score for your resume so you are automatically rejected by the system. you're fired to make more profit for the shareholders; they rehire someone else for half of your pay. the government spends millions of dollars to destroy national monuments. the white house needs a ballroom. the fbi just posted that they can preemptively arrest someone for domestic terrorism for "extreme" beliefs about america. when i went to go check my facts about that - i found that the this fucking government website has an email sign-up popup that covers the entire page & i literally could not figure out how to close it.
so yeah, the price of eggs is not going to go down. the cost of RAM is not going to go down. why would it. in the free market, without regulation, all the companies really need to worry about is how else they can bleed a stone.
sometimes when people my age make fun of gen z or gen alpha for being unwilling to work; i think about the lie we've been telling them. because i am not an unusual case. so fucking many of us did it "right". so many of us put our heads down and agreed to the terms and conditions. this was how you do it, right.
almost none of my friends own a house. all of us are in our 30s.
it's apocryphal and likely didn't happen as written, but the myth goes that when Marie Antoinette was told that the general population was starving and had no bread to eat; her chipper reply was so let them eat cake.
there's a 250 foot ferris wheel breaking down on the national mall right now. i can't afford gas, but whatever. our nation's birthday is coming.
i am told to keep trying. do the impossible. solve the puzzle, open the portal. coupon your way to success, high yield savings, skip the coffee break. hustle harder, show up early, leave late. the problem is you, right. it's how you're living life. just keep going!
look forward to the cake.
