Dystopia: 03
As I have said in previous posts, it appears that we are living in a Dystopia. I have some more observations on that..
Imagine that you are an unskilled or skilled manual worker.
Your earning ability has not increased since the 1970s. Sure, some things (tvs, computers, food) have become cheaper but others (housing, insurance) have not. Your ability to save money is close to non-existent. While you may be lucky to have a trade or skill that is in demand, that might change very abruptly. How many times can you retrain? How many times can you go back to school? How many more times will you take out a loan to learn a new career? How long before it is outsourced or your job is undercut?
Do your kids have upward mobility through education? Is education worth it? Can you afford to live in a society which cannot exist without active cooperation, but in which a humane existence is elusive? What kind of marriage/ LTR do you have? Are you happy in it, or just dreading the day you will be dragged to the cleaners? Does your woman stand behind you, or spend all her time undermining you?
Ever wondered what will happen once you are too old or can no longer work your manual job. Will Social Security or Medicare be still there? What type of an old age will you have? Alone or with a nagging bitch? Quite the options, huh..
Imagine you are a white collar/ professional worker/ small business owner.
You may have started life in a somewhat better position than the blue collar worker, but does it matter now. The company you work for might outsource your job forcing you to work as a contractor/ take less pay or change careers. Once again.. how often can you change your careers? how often will you move?
Even if you spent 10 years after high school learning a specialized skill (as a student or a low paid flunky), it still does not matter.. Careers that were once secure and well paid are becoming extinct. The worse part is that many lose jobs in their late 40s and onwards, at the same time they would entered their peak earning decades. All their sacrifices are rendered worthless especially since the small businesses, startups and consultancies that kept them going are also rapidly disappearing.
Even if you are financially ok, your SO/ wife could still take you to the cleaners. You might spend a lot of money on the upkeep of kids you rarely see. And what are future prospects for your kids? Would a university education help them? Never mind..
Even a government job is no guarantee of stability, because of a shrinking tax base. They will try to honor their pensions before caring about the younger ones.
Imagine that you are a well paid professional.
Does law, med or business school still offer you a guaranteed path to financial success? Law school is already showing the problems inherent in saturation. Business school might not be a good idea in a world where there is less and less to manage. If you think a medical career will still pay the same in 5-10 years from now, think again! Who will be able to pay that much for medical care? Your customers have poorly paying jobs, no savings, no accumulated wealth.. nothing. Plus there are a lot of aging baby boomers, and the generations after them are too small to pay for them and their kids (if they have any!).
Did I mention the wife, alimony and kids problem? Ya!
So there you have it.. This cannot end well, can it?
Totally agree – your rant was a breath of fresh air, although things don’t smell as fresh as they used to.
Thanks, Randy
If your financial picture is so poor, why do you give much of your money away to prostitutes?
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It is not poor, merely uncertain as it is for everyone else. Most of us are only a few paychecks away from the street.
In any case, Escorts are cheaper than alimony and child support.
I don’t have to imagine it, this is my reality (highly skilled manual labor). I tried doing the retraining thing, until I realized it was all a scam to get me to waste time and money trying to keep up. I eventually figured out that the best tactic was to stick with what I did best, dial down my consumption, and hustle. And when my services are needed (usually because some overseas sweatshop fucks up) I make the client pay through the nose.
Maybe it is time to dial down our dependence on society at large and the economic system at large and cultivate a smaller support group, e.g. Mennonite, Mormon, traditional small town.
Right. In an increasingly knowledge- and skill-driven economy–where knowledge and skills, not hard work, drive production and productivity–where do you find a place for the 50% of people who (by definition) have an IQ below 100?
How can they make any claim to a livable share of that production?
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Yes, and we still require their continued consumption to keep the producers employed. For the first time in human history, extensive and pervasive automation have exceeded our ability to create jobs. Unlike the industrial revolution, we no longer have new factories and continents to dump the displaced into.
The simplest solution = dissociate a middle class living standard from having a job.
Now imagine you’re a woman