Quote:
Originally Posted by Not Bob
Oh, I agree that the working class is becoming the working poor. Marketplace, IIRC, did a great series on this phenomenon. But the gradual disappearance of the working class/lower middle class isn't what I was talking about.
My point was that Sebby is nuts to say that Joe Six-Pack's view of the Typical Lawyer of the Fashion Tips Board as "rich" is wrong, and to (based upon my own working class relatives in the Ancestral Homeland), assure him that (a) they're as overextended as we all are, only our houses, cars, and booze/food is much nicer; and (2) my cousin Mark (whose bungalow and 2004 Jeep Liberty are both paid off) would be delighted to trade it for an underwater McMansion and a leased E-Class if he had the income to (barely) service said expenses.
We all have money stresses - wouldn't you rather be worried about your bills while driving home, listening to the Angry Grrl channel on Sirius sitting on a seat made of fine Corinthian leather, in your leased Benz (as opposed to the Clear Channel commercial-filled AOR FM radio station while stuck in traffic with no A/C in a paid off Dodge Dart from the Bush I administration)?
Yeah. Me too.
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Quoting William Wallace (or Rage Against the Machine), it's all about the "freedom."
A fine Corinthian lined cage where you could have saved and become independent is still a cage. And one of your own making, which makes the effort expended in paying for it all the more pointless.
I like nice stuff. But as I age, I'm beginning to think freedom, and simplicity of existence, are the only true luxuries in life.
Your cousin might be the winner at the table who just doesn't know it... Probably because he's being bombarded with bullshit advertising and the idiot narratives of strivers around him telling him otherwise.
(Then again, if one should so choose, with money or w/o, he can always walk away. He can tell his boss to fuck himself and go tend bar in the Caribbean, or become a ski instructor out west. It can be done. You just have to see through the bullshit around us telling us we must stay on the merry-go-round of working>consuming>working more>consuming more.)
