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Income Shaming

I debated whether this should be a PanFuture article or a personal blog, but I think it's both. Herein I get my cranky old man on, and also ruminate about the state of our society and future of civilization. There will also be swearing.
I have a special hatred for those articles that you see saying things like "Do these 3 things and retire before age 40" or "These are the simple wealth tricks no one does". They make me want to scream in someone's face. You've seen them, or any of a dozen variations on that theme. Sometimes they are aimed at younger people, sometimes at those more in middle age. But as far as I can tell, they all have one thing in common.
It usually comes early in the article, maybe a paragraph or two after the introduction. Whether it's from the person writing about what they did, or just a generic example, there's a mention of how much money you make. Often delivered as an offhand comment, no big deal. Like "hey, by the way, now that you earn a shit ton of money you could do this and get even more. It's easy and everyone can do it". It's an apparent complete and utter disconnect from how most people actually live
(For reference going forward, the median individual income in 2019 is $40,100, the average is about $58,400. Household incomes are higher, the median being about $63,000.
And here is where the face-palming problem with all these articles lies. From a recent headline: "
6 Things to Do With Your Money Once Your Salary Reaches $70,000", which is mostly just to sell you shit you probably don't need. Or from another recent article titled "I saved $300,000 by 26—and doing these 5 unusual things helped me save like crazy". Two things immediately stand out from this author: "I also worked hard to earn scholarships and chose to go to an in-state school for financial reasons. But that, in addition to the job I took on as a research assistant, didn’t make school that much cheaper. To cover the $21,000 per year tuition, I did have some help from my parents and was able to graduate debt-free, which I consider an enormous privilege." She worked hard, good for her. So did I. She graduated debt free? Yeah, not me. And then this gem: "After college, I landed an internship at a biotech company that paid $32 an hour. Then, I moved on to a junior software engineering role that offered a $65,000 salary, along with a $10,000 signing bonus." She further managed to get by on only $20k per year and saved the rest.
YOU GOT AN INTERNSHIP THAT PAID $32/HR AND A STARTING JOB AT $65K! Normally I don't shout in caps, but it's shit like this that just makes me want to scream out loud and dismiss the rest of the article out of hand. Sure, she lives in Portland and that's pretty pricey, but holy shitballs. I'm 43 and I'll be lucky to crack $38k. I might be able to get by on $20k a year, but it's not like I have a choice. Save $300k? Ain't happening for a schmuck like me. Every last one of these articles never understands that most people don't get that lucky, and they don't understand how much easier the game is when you get a head start.
The more I thought about these articles the more it occurred to me we have a problem with income shaming. On the surface maybe there is good advice here, or maybe sometimes its just a scam to sell you that one weird trick. But more and more it reads like shaming. In the same way, especially here in America, we're told all the time how we're not thin enough, not ripped enough, not pretty enough. All these messages are often delivered in a way that says "if you're not this way, you have no value as a human being". We're often told we're not rich enough if we don't own the right things. And there's interesting wordplay in many of these articles. They always refer to wealth, not being rich. There's something different between those two. Like being rich makes you an asshole, but having wealth is all soft and fuzzy.
Of course the awful catch-22 of the whole thing is that the more money you have, the easier it is to gain more (or conjure out of thin air in the stock market). If you have little or none, it's nearly impossible to gain. This just makes the income inequality problem worse. In truth, most of us die where we were born. America has a Caste system, it's just not so obvious to most.
Most people don't have that kind of luck. Most people don't start ahead of the game. It's time to stop judging our value based on what we own or the size of our portfolios. Wall Street is not Main Street, and I am not just a credit score. What I do in my chosen jobs educated children, entertains people during a night out, preserves memories, and facilitates communication, among other things. Is all of that only worthwhile if it puts a lot of money in my pocket? I don't think so, but that's not how American capitalism is set up. It's time to separate value from money, self-worth from wealth, and vocation from compensation.
(As a related aside, any article that talks about 'side hustles' can fuck right off. I've been partly or fully self employed my entire adult life. It's all side hustle for a freelancer.)
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