just working over here

“It’s called the ‘Amer­i­can Dream,’ be­cause you have to be asleep to be­lieve it.”
—George Car­lin
 

Grow­ing up, we were what I call “Amer­i­can poor.” We had a warm house, I nev­er went with­out a de­cent meal, I had clothes that fit me, and I got presents on Christ­mas.

But, we were fi­nan­cial­ly in­se­cure, my par­ents fought all the time about mon­ey, and I went with­out a lot and missed out on a lot. It was stress­ful in ways that a child should nev­er have to feel stressed, and even though I was de­ter­mined to get out of that sit­u­a­tion and not have to live like that as an adult, I still most­ly didn’t be­lieve it would ever be much eas­i­er for me than that.

I made a se­ries of choic­es in my life that weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly what I would have cho­sen had I not grown up like that, but that’s what every­one does, for good or for bad. Our ex­pe­ri­ences shape us.

In the last cou­ple of years or so, I’ve slow­ly start­ed to re­al­ize that I’ve ac­tu­al­ly been in a pret­ty com­fort­able po­si­tion for a while now, and I didn’t even know I was there be­cause I was still so fo­cused on be­ing afraid of end­ing up like my par­ents.

Aaron and I both make pret­ty con­sid­er­able salaries. We have health in­sur­ance. We own a home. We have some sav­ings built up and we are putting mon­ey into our re­tire­ment ac­counts. We splurge on din­ing out from time to time, and we like to trav­el when we can. But we aren’t rich, we don’t dri­ve fan­cy cars or wear fan­cy clothes, and we don’t live in a no­table or up­scale neigh­bor­hood. We don’t have kids, which def­i­nite­ly fac­tors into things, but we’re okay.

I’m not talk­ing about any of this to brag. And I un­der­stand that I’m still in a bet­ter po­si­tion than most peo­ple, which makes me sad. That part of me that grew up with­out health in­sur­ance and was told not to get sick and to make sure I brush and floss every day be­cause we couldn’t af­ford a doc­tor or den­tist vis­it still wor­ries that it could all turn back around for me, and I think about the peo­ple whose lives are like that, or worse, and it’s aw­ful and I feel hum­ble and thank­ful for what I have and so fuck­ing lucky that I some­how man­aged to climb out of the hole a bit.

There’s al­ways some­thing that would be nice for Aaron and I to have, re­gard­less of why, but when it re­al­ly comes down to it, we’re just fine with­out pret­ty much every­thing we cur­rent­ly don’t have. I want to be se­cure and be able to take care of my­self, and I also want to have fun and en­joy life, and it takes mon­ey to do that (any­one who tells you dif­fer­ent­ly is naive or is ly­ing). But I don’t need a bet­ter car, I don’t need a bet­ter house, and I don’t need fanci­er clothes. I don’t need a yacht or a pri­vate jet or a vil­la on 50 acres. Late­ly I’ve been look­ing at what we have and think­ing about how we can maybe even work less or work dif­fer­ent­ly, with the ob­jec­tive of keep­ing a bal­ance to just main­tain what we have right now. “More” is less and less im­por­tant as time goes on. There’s only so much that we tru­ly need, and the rest is just ex­cess.

But if you had asked me even just a few years ago if I thought I ever would have felt this way, I would have said no, be­cause I spent such a long time be­ing afraid that I’d nev­er reach a point where I felt se­cure or com­fort­able.

Here’s why I’m talk­ing about this: The oth­er day, a friend of mine made a post ask­ing if one hu­man should have $166.3 bil­lion dol­lars. The re­spons­es were more de­press­ing than a lot of things I’ve read late­ly (yes, de­spite what is cur­rent­ly go­ing on), be­cause they were com­ing from peo­ple who prob­a­bly con­sid­er them­selves to be fair­ly pro­gres­sive. To sum it up, most peo­ple felt like if you earned it, you should have it, and if you work hard, you too can be a bil­lion­aire.

There is no pos­si­ble or even con­ceiv­able way to “earn” $166 bil­lion dol­lars. At a cer­tain point, with even a frac­tion of that wealth, you are do­ing ab­solute­ly noth­ing to con­tin­ue amass­ing it. You would nev­er have to work an­oth­er day in a thou­sand life­times, and nei­ther would any of your fam­i­ly mem­bers for cen­turies of gen­er­a­tions to come. Through in­ter­est alone, you are mak­ing mil­lions of dol­lars per hour sim­ply by let­ting it sit in the right ac­counts. Try­ing to un­der­stand just how much mon­ey that ac­tu­al­ly is and the pow­er it has is like ask­ing some­one to en­ter­tain the idea of dri­ving across the galaxy.

Re­pub­li­cans and con­ser­v­a­tives are in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked with the con­cepts of greed and self­ish­ness, and for good rea­son. But it’s an un­der­state­ment to say that a lot of peo­ple on “the left” have a prob­lem with the way they think about mon­ey. And they do. And that’s be­cause it’s an Amer­i­can prob­lem. This is not to say that peo­ple liv­ing abroad can’t be just as greedy or self­ish as we are, but it seems like Amer­i­cans, as a whole, are in an un­healthy love af­fair with mon­ey where­in they throw all rea­son and sen­si­bil­i­ty right out the win­dow. They could be liv­ing pay­check to pay­check, hav­ing to choose be­tween pay­ing the util­i­ties bill or buy­ing gro­ceries, but if you asked them a ques­tion like this where they were able for even just a sec­ond to imag­ine them­selves as the bil­lion­aire un­der tri­al, they’d give you the same ridicu­lous an­swers.

Every­one in this coun­try wants to be­lieve they can be­come a bil­lion­aire, and they’ve been tricked by peo­ple who want them to be­lieve that. And it to­tal­ly works. Look­ing around at every­thing that is hap­pen­ing right now, no mat­ter what we do, we aren’t go­ing to fix any­thing un­til peo­ple let go of these ideas of “hard work” mak­ing you any more en­ti­tled to things like health care and safe hous­ing, and “earn­ing” hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars. It’s re­al­ly not just peo­ple on “the right” who think this, ei­ther. It’s a very sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of Amer­i­cans, who will only ever get about as close to be­ing a bil­lion­aire as Nep­tune is to the sun.

I’m tru­ly thank­ful for what I have, and as nice or as fun as it would be to maybe have some of those crazy lux­u­ri­ous things, my life isn’t lack­ing with­out them. It’s in­cred­i­bly de­press­ing to see peo­ple with less than me make ex­cus­es for and jus­ti­fy the be­hav­ior of peo­ple who have in­fi­nite­ly more than they ever will, be­cause they fol­low what is ba­si­cal­ly a re­li­gion that tells them if they just keep grind­ing away and be­liev­ing in them­selves and “work­ing hard,” they’ll get there too. They’re more up­set over a hy­po­thet­i­cal sce­nario in which some­one ac­cus­es them of not “earn­ing” their bil­lions than they are over a sys­tem con­trolled by a small num­ber of peo­ple that keeps them from even just hav­ing a few thou­sand in the bank.
 
 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2018 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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