financial freedom is a myth peddled by billionaires
I mean, it’s not a myth, billionaires literally have enough financial freedom to live large for 100 lifetimes.
The myth is that they’re willing to share their
rigged casino gambling“speculative investment” derived wealth/winnings, because reminder: nobody can come remotely close to earning a billion dollars through honest labor.You need state support to get that rich.
"It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it!" -George Carlin
Depends on what you mean by state support.
Cause a theoretical ancap hellscape would still have billionaires despite being stateless by definition.
You need power and control to get that rich. The only way that happens today is by the state, but that doesn’t preclude other forms of violence and power.
You aint wrong but modern system of “capitalism” relies on state violence and money transfers from taxpayers to our “dear job creators”
100% totally in agreement
Your previous statement was just more broadly applied than our existing capitalist system and I find the distinctions interesting to discuss, as it helps identify the root.
Walmart couldn’t exist without exploiting the poor. Even though they could pay their workers enough to live, the majority of them are on food stamps: which is just the govt subsidizing exploitation.
You don’t need billions for most definitions of financial freedom. Unless your definition is spend whatever you want, never worry about running out of money, and not have a job, you really don’t need billions.
Capitalism requires most people to be dependent on selling their labor to capitalists at a rate less than it’s worth. No meaningful definition of financial freedom can exist for a majority of the population in a system that creates and supports billionaires.
We could, it’s kind of the the Gene Roddenberry vision, use our burgeoning automation/robotics/AI to do the labor so that Humankind could pursue our passions for everyone’s benefit, but of course those technologies will be patented and used for the exclusive further profit of the non-laboring owner’s club at everyone else’s further expense, exploding our population of homeless peasants with nothing, and “our” government will continue to defend their ability to get away with it at gun point.
It’s like so many things. Human kind should have been united in celebration when we split the atom and harnessed it’s awesome energy generation, a warm light for all mankind, instead our first monkey ass impulse was to use it to incinerate a rival monkey tribe.
Humanity: Juuuust smart enough to be a belligerent threat to ourselves and others, yet too impulsive, short sighted, selfish, and stupid as a species to be anything more.
In the mid to late 1960s economists were predicting 20 hour work weeks and month-long vacations. So it was perfectly reasonable for Gene to imagine a future where nobody had to work.
It wasn’t a falsehood. It was stolen by Reagan and the owner class. Reagan gave away the store and shifted all societal power to the oligarchs, while corporate America, led by GE, shifted from the correct “customers first, employees (who were valued!) second, investors third” model to the “investors first, second, and only” rigged market profiteering dystopia we all suffer today.
The citizen’s of happiest developed nations of the world, not our gold plated cesspool to be clear, as a rule get months off a year, in addition to innumerable social supports. It’s a proven lie that this is how it has to be. This is just how the greediest/most sociopathic people want it to be, and since those traits are what our society rewards, and punishes their opposites, they have all the power.
stolen by Reagan and the owner class. Reagan gave away the store and shifted all societal power to the oligarc
I hate to shoot this down, as I live the feeling. If one USA President enough to steal it for 40+ years, then we never really had it.
I think it happened well before Reagan. The gap between productivity and earnings starts around 1971.
So what do we do about it? What’s the answer?
Month long vacations? That’ll never work. Can you imagine if a developed country took several weeks off in the summer? No one could do that!
It’s amazing how popular Star Trek was since it’s basically a communist utopia
Having magic machines that can make anything is the only way a communist utopia ever happens, so it’s not that amazing.
You know what the sad part is? When you tell people that’s exactly what we should be doing, exploring space, etc, they get mad at you and demand you tell them how pursuing anything more meaningful than throwing shit at their enemies benefits them. How it pays their bills. How it pays their rent.
That’s why we can never truly go anywhere.
Starting early, investing consistently, and living modestly can land a good number of people with normal incomes there. They won’t be retiring at 30 while driving exotic cars, but they can retire comfortably without having to worry about going back to work as a Walmart greeter when their 85.
It’s no secret that a very large percent of people live well beyond their means when a modest lifestyle with retirement funds is obtainable for the vast majority of the population. One doesn’t need a new car every few years, the newest gadget, eating out constantly, and an apartment in a high cost of living area. It’s certainly not morally wrong to buy what you want, but just know that not investing in your own future is making life harder for you in the medium and long term.
If you drop the spending whatever you want, a few million should be sufficient. If you get a 5% annual return that’s $50,000 a year per million invested. $150-200k a year if you own your house is more than enough to not worry about having enough money. Plus there’s millions in the bank for any truly major expense.
150-200k/year
So the top 10% of income earners?
The threshold is significantly lower since the vast majority of Americans do, in fact, retire.
That’s not gonna be true for much longer. Watch the Republicans plunder Social Security and Medicaid like they’ve been hankering after for decades.
Ideally I’ll watch them be voted out of power instead.
If you mean that they eventually got placed on Social Security disability then yes the majority do retire. You should see what the nursing homes for people in the government system are like.
That’s why I said 100 lifetimes charitably. That’s 10 million from 1 billion, and even less than half of that is enough for a lifetime of responsible financial freedom.
Most wealth doesn’t survive 3 generations, so it’s way less than 100 lifetimes.
Billionaires have poured billions into life extension ventures, many of them believe they’ll be around to spend it themselves forever.
My definition of financial freedom is not being dependent on an employer. It’s being wealthy enough to be able to walk away from crappy jobs however long it takes to find a better one.
financial freedom is a myth peddled by
billionairesbanks and investment brokersNot true, it seems that way but it is a thing that non-billionaires have. It’s just that those who have such freedom choose to live and often work out of view of everyone else, so you never see them. It plays heavily into confirmation bias. That isn’t to say that the wealth distribution is off, everyone should be in their class including billionaires. They do exist.
This guy gets it.
I finally got a job that broke six figures.
Housing boom made houses twice as expensive in five years. Monthly grocery bill doubled. Renting doubled. Cost of cars doubled. Every day expenses doubled.
Now consider the majority of people who do not have 6 figure incomes.
It’s basically a similar experience except you live in harsher conditions.
I don’t see a considerable difference between poverty line me and six figures me. I have a slightly nicer place (but in debt to the bank instead of renting) and I can buy games on Steam rather than waiting for a sale.
This is so infuriatingly disingenuous that I’m having trouble putting into words an intelligent response.
I would need to triple my income to approach 6 figures. Making that much money may not fundamentally change the way I live my life but it would almost entirely remove my primary stressors. I could afford actual healthcare, I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not my landlord is going to raise my rent to a point where I can no longer afford my home. I could actually save money so that if/when something happens to me I’m not completely fucked over night
I get it because I’ve been there too. Recently, actually.
When your financial needs are not being met it feels like you’re drowning and the stress of that can be debilitating. When you’re not sure whether you’ll survive another month it can feel like everything is about to fall apart.
What I’m talking about is the difference between once you reach that stage of no longer feeling desperate (let’s say, the low-income cutoff) and reaching higher salaries ($60k, 70k, 80k, etc).
In my personal experience, once I reached a state of of no longer being desperate about money $60k, the income increases I’ve made since then have not in any way significantly changed my life or my happiness or my sense of financial freedom. I still feel tied to a desk, enslaved to my debt repayments, obliged to continue working 5 days a week, every week, until I die.
Is it nice to no longer live in a state of stress and poverty? Of course. Is it vastly different from how I’m living now? Not really. I could lose my job and be back there in a few months. I could become disabled and be back there. So I do feel some gratitude that, for now, it’s a bit better than what it could be or has been.
One other important thing to note: I’m not American, so I don’t have stress about health care. If I get sick, everything’s going to be peachy.
I get what you’re saying. The money from $60k to $100k just goes into the things you should be able to afford at $60k.
At $100k you can afford to contribute to your 401k, start a small contribution towards your children’s college fund, pay random bills, afford a Toyota Camry instead of a Corolla, moderate vacations, etc.
I had the same experience and it was humbling. But you also slowly forget exactly how tough it was looking at your bank account and knowing there was a bill not getting paid that month.
You’d only be able to afford it for a little while until literally every industry raised prices overnight, jacking up inflation to the degree that normal people once again would struggle to put food on the table.
We need price control laws and high minimum wage laws to boost up the common man’s buying power so that can’t happen.
I could afford actual healthcare,
Bad news about that, 100k will still not be enough. Maybe 175k.
As someone who had a lot of money, spent time homeless, got fucked by COVID, and am now back in a comfortable place making 6 figures - your comment is way out of touch man.
No it’s not similar in any way, shape or form. Good try tho.
It’s a completely similar experience, mainly because your status as a wage slave basically doesn’t change as your income increases. Your discretionary income changes your purchasing power but you tend to incur more debt and go on more vacations and consume more, but your financial security doesn’t change significantly.
I’ve been at the bottom of the barrel economically, and now somewhere around $140k (before taxes, so really more like $80-90k) and the main differences are negligible. I can be more flexible with my diet, can afford to vacation, I can put some money into savings, and I can outright purchase larger consumer items without saving.
But at the end of the day this financial advantage is only marginal; I’m dependent on my employment continuing. With rising costs for everything, my debt-to-savings ratio is still not where I’d like it to be. I’m nowhere near ready for retirement despite being 49 already. I still feel overall trapped within the system of capitalist wage slavery and do not have the freedom to pursue interests or activities that I would with true “financial freedom.”
I can be more flexible with my diet, can afford to vacation, I can put some money into savings, and I can outright purchase larger consumer items without saving.
These things are not negligible. I understand what you’re saying, “more money, more problems”, but being able to put money into a savings account and take a vacation are things that a large portion of people will never be able to do.
Which is why slavery is a spectrum, not a binary condition.
We’re both part of the same struggle but my income allows me to suffer a little bit less than some others.
“suffering a bit less”. Wow. Just unimaginable.
I have worked since I was 12 yrs old, went to both college and university, and have never once made over $100k per year.
Currently I’m on a fixed income, have limited job opportunities and recently had to downsize to a rooming house as I couldn’t afford my bachelor apartment anymore.
Do not equate your hardships with those of us who are facing living on the streets with one missed cheque.
I will equate my hardships with yours because I’ve been there. I know exactly what it’s like. And that’s why I know what it feels like to get a little breathing room from that situation.
But I also can’t pretend that six figures is some kind of luxury experience. It’s still largely hand-to-mouth, you can still live relatively insecure and underhoused (especially with this market), and with the cost of living even a person earning six figures is very vulnerable if you’ve set up a lifestyle that can’t weather unemployment. If my income is $6,000 a month and my outgoing expenses are $5,600 and I lose my job, I’m maybe 3 months from calamity.
Lastly, I’ll say that six figures isn’t what it used to be. It’s a fairly common salary in 2023 to meet the basic needs and costs of the modern world.
You do you I guess.
Do not equate your poor planning to a universal hardship
The sheer audacity of saying you’re a wage slave at 6 figures almost made me upvote because it was so funny.
If you have to work for a living because without that income you’d die, you’re a slave.
If you’re unable to pursue your interests and passions at any moment of the day, you’re a slave.
If others dictate or control your destiny because they have power over your employment and therefore your ability to sustain yourself, you’re a slave.
Just because I make more money than you do doesn’t mean we’re not in the same struggle.
This is class warfare. The billionaires want you to envy me. We’re not at war. We’re at war with the billionaires who pit us against one another.
This isn’t class warfare, this is obscene ignorance about slavery born of your immense wealth and privilege.
Also I make 6 figures.
I knew we were fucked when the same happened to me and I still can’t afford a home.
I have a house that was bought back when I made around 35K in 2006 and they where giving out loans to everyone, so nothing great by any means. Had someone come by and ask to buy it earlier this year now that I’ve gotten to a decent career class job and I had to tell them no. Like, have you looked at the price of things lately? My payment is less than most single bedroom appartments these days, no way I’m giving that up to someone. It’s an ugly mess, but at least it’s my ugly mess.
This is essentially where I’m at, too, except bought in 2013 so probably slightly less good price.
I can’t afford to do the fix up work on it properly, so it’s slowly crumbling, but I can’t really afford to move either because this place was on the low end when I bought it and hasn’t improved 😜. I literally can’t find housing for myself and 3 cats for the $550/mth I pay now. Even with my place being worth 3x what I paid for it, I’d end up in a worse or (at best) equivalent place for the same price. May as well just stick with the skeletons I know.
I tell those companies I’ll accept their offer if I have 3x the home’s value in my pocket at the end of the process.
They don’t call back.
Honestly, you need to make 6 figures to just not be “poor” these days. Very annoying, considering how quickly things changed over the last decade.
Yep, pulling in 110k this year after bonus at my job and I’m having to DoorDash to get just a bit of breathing room.
$3350 mortgage eats more than half my take home. The rest goes to debt (took out a loan to fix a couple things on the house last year, and student loans coming back now), caring for my aging dog, food, bills, maxed 401k that I’m considering dropping for a while, and a little bit for free spending so I can go on a date or two or out with friends. Even with this mortgage payment this would have been easy on just my salary even 3 years ago (it was easy af with dual income at the time). But the way costs have increased are making me feel broke in a way I haven’t felt in a long-ass time. I always thought that if I could make it to six figures I’d be properly wealthy, but I’m not. I’m barely comfortable.
Is it possible to downsize in home? It seems like that’s the biggest opportunity to create margin in the budget, and probably a better long-term move than killing the 401k.
I used to work with a guy who said it’s not about what you make, it’s about what you keep. Lifestyle inflation is a bitch. I’m not immune, but I’ve tried hard to avoid it. I’ve had co-workers tell me I live like a poor person, which I think is a little overstated, but I’m a lot more comfortable as a result. I don’t think I’ll feel wealthy unless I get to a point where my job becomes optional. I think I made too many mistakes early on for that to happen before retirement age, but I’ll still try.
I’m just breaking even on the house. I bought at peak like a genius.
There’s also no way I could possibly buy again if I let this place go, not to mention it’s a starter home already, there’s nothing in my area that would ne cheaper short of going back to renting. I’d rather feel the squeeze and keep the investment.
Re lifestyle, that’s the number one thing I’ve been working on and have clawed back probably a grand a month there since breaking up with my wife and going down to single income. I drove a 10 year old car that I own outright (managed to get my wife to take the newer car that still had payments which she luckily can afford), shop Winco for nearly everything except a few staples that Costco saves me money on and coupon anywhere else, and have one streaming service.
I still let myself go out to with friends occasionally and engage in my long standing hobby, though to a much lesser degree, but I’m getting better and better at saying no to superfluous stuff. After a decade of being pretty comfortable it’s an adjustment to make that I’m giving myself some grace on, though I recognize that my ability to even do that is privilege. My #1 financial goal right now is to start spending under my budget rather than up to it, and I’ve got some units that are proving hard to break, namely having food in the house that I can make and eat even on those days where my executive dysfunction is making everything impossible.
1,000 square feet is 200 smaller than my 2-bedroom condo so I doubt downsizing on a starter home makes any sense
A house that costs over half a million dollars is not a starter home by any definition.
Actually, such a home where I live would be impossible to purchase at half a million dollars. In Seattle, a half million dollar home is a steal, a bargain, a robbery, a theft.
Where I live, across the border, a half million dollars gets you a one-bedroom condo at about 600-800 square feet. A million gets you a townhouse. $2-3 million gets you a house, in the suburbs.
Everett WA is 40 min from Seattle
https://www.zillow.com/everett-wa/under-250000/
Solved your problem.
“In Seattle” is not 40 minutes from Seattle, is it?
Where the fuck do you live with a $3350 mortgage? I pay 1/3 of that for rent and I think that’s too high.
Puget Sound area, a bit north of Seattle.
For a home purchased in the last 3 years, I got a pretty good deal. The floor on rent for a shitty one bed apartment in my city is $1200/month.
It’s also worth noting that the $3350 is my PITI. My strict mortgage is $2875, the rest is property tax to escrow and mortgage insurance.
Ah got it
I pay less than 1/3 of that for my mortgage on a bigger house with a large yard. But we did close on it at a much better time last decade, and it’s about twice as valuable now. I would never consider something so ridiculously expensive that the mortgage could be 3k/mo.
Fortunately for my wallet, I don’t like big city life and the rural real estate is much cheaper.
He lives in a $600,000 house. Probably more.
Edit: he says it’s a $560k house lol
Jeez. I can’t fathom what kind of home you must be in to be paying $3350 in a mortgage. Genuine question, have you ever been like, actually poor? I do find it hard to believe anyone willing or even able to pay a mortgage like that could possibly live a life anyone would call barely comfortable.
1000 sq ft starter home rambler in the seattle region. It’s nothing special and it was downright cheap at $560k. Was still dual income and mostly comfortable when we bought the house. We broke up and I had the income to keep the house, so I am. The equity isn’t there yet so I’m making a play to keep it for 10-15 years before I sell and we split the sale based on an agreement we signed when we broke up (very amicable breakup).
Yea, I grew up dirt poor with many dinners being noodles with butter, I never once had to pay for lunch at school because assistance programs, I never did extra curriculars because we couldn’t afford the materials, every Christmas was nothing or donations, I lived in houses where I could literally see outside through gaps in the walls, and the only reason I experienced a vacation before I was 30 was because my step-dad was negligently killed by a rich guy and we got a settlement that my mom blew on a 6 week vacation to Orlando when I was 14 and then put some money down on a house when she could have bought it outright instead. But I clawed my way out by going to college and getting pretty lucky along the way. 10 years ago I got my first job out of college making $13.75/hour, and have doubled my income twice since then, largely by the luck of knowing some good people, and my current job by the luck of being found on LinkedIn due to having a weird confluence of experience.
A big part of how I got into the house is that my ex-wife has rich family and they gifted us a pretty big chunk of change that got us to our downpayment. Still had to take $520k out on the mortgage, and another $20k to make some needed repairs once we were in (debt I’m taking on too).
I couldn tighten the belt in a few areas, namely my free spending which I limit to $400/month. But that already goes fast if I want to actually do anything and keep myself from falling into a pit by never leaving the house. I also use that money for helping my partner out. Otherwise I’ve cancelled all my streaming services save for Disney plus which is still a good deal, I’ve dumped my insurance to the lowest I can go, I pay $15/month for my cellphone, I’ve stopped buying name brand for nearly everything, and I’ve had to stop any real charitable giving. There is some saving that goes on in there like putting $50/month aside for my car expenses, so as long as nothing major comes up I’m covered, and $100/month toward ‘medical’ which really just pays for my therapy.
None of this is to garner pity, I know I’m in a better position than most people, not to mention much better off than I ever dreamed I could achieve as a kid growing up, and I’m extremely grateful for that. i don’t have any bills I have to choose between, and I never have to wonder if I have food to eat tonight. And I have enough saved (from my bonus) that I’ve got a few months to figure things out if I lost my job today or if a big repair comes up (like my water main breaking back in January), but not enough to replace my fence that fell down last winter. I just always thought that making it to six figures would mean a lot more than it does. I make ends meet and anything extra I make from here is gravy.
(very amicable breakup)
This is huge win
Unbelievably huge win. We’re still close friends and I expect that to stay that way. We didn’t break up due to lack of love, but due to incompatibility after we changed dramatically since marrying. We still love each other, but the Beatles were wrong, it’s not all you need.
It all depends on where you live, but the prices are insane everywhere now. I bought my house 5 years ago and the estimates indicate that is now worth double what I paid for it. DOUBLE. And it’s not because I live in some super hot area, the prices have gone up like that almost everywhere in the entire area in and around the city. I could not have afforded this house If I were buying today, and that is with a significantly higher income than when I bought it.
My mortgage is around that for Austin, TX (barely in the city for a tiny home) and that is when the rates were good. So, they probably just live somewhere that’s a bit popular.
25-90 minutes north of Seattle depending on traffic. So yea, it’s an expensive area to live in.
OH, that COL is wayyyy higher than my area. Hopefully you got a good deal on it then!
Yep. But this area is home, so as long as I can make it work, I will.
Trailers are 300k here in Colorado, at least where I’m at with jobs. If you want an actual house it’s 450-600k
My childhood home with 3 bedrooms and a finished basement was like 130k and that was purchases in the 2000s
@SeducingCamel @A_Toasty_Strudel
In the early 2000’s a mobile home in oil sands territory (Alberta) was $450k.
Canada’s been working a long time on our housing bubble … which is about to crash.
This comment highlights your ignorance not their privilege.
Not really but you do you I guess.
I doubt your maxing your 401k. I assume you mean the amount needed to get maximum match from your employer?
Pre-tax 401k contribution limit is $22,500 in 2023. Plenty of people are able to contribute up to that limit.
Must be nice. I maxed ira in the past but this is beyond me barring winning the lottery. Of course then I would likely not have a 401k.
Same here. Feels like I’m making the same, but my mortgage is huge now. Sucks.
Its nice to see someone else mention the doubling. There are news things about gas being expensive but its cheap relative to everything else. People better be ready for eight bucks a gallone once it rights itself. Inflation would suggest 30% odd increase but for what you have to buy its 100% over 2020 prices.
Don’t worry urban planners are making driving more difficult instead of mass transit easier. That way when gas prices double the entire lowest tier of the workforce won’t be able to afford to work. “No one wants to work anymore”
My partner and I make over $300k, and we’re struggling to buy a 4-bedroom house on the outskirts of Orlando, FL.
As someone who lives in Florida I’ve got to ask, how? When thinking about finances and investments I often feel like I’m in my own bubble and I don’t understand other peoples’ situations, motivations, etc. So I’m genuinely curious. 4-bedroom houses near Orlando can be found in the mid 300s. With your income you should be able to pay in cash after saving for just one or two years (depending on how much savings you’re starting out with). Even if you wanted something more expensive, are mortgages that difficult to get approved even for someone with such a high income?
holy crap. 300k for 4 bedrooms. no wonder people risk the storms.
What does your budget look like, where is the money going? The Orlando market doesn’t look too crazy.
You probably don’t want to buy a house there, anyway, what with all the insurance companies pulling out of the state.
Your rates are going to be sky high, assuming you can even get insured, which isn’t remotely a guarantee anymore.
Sell your house and move slightly further out of Orlando.
Or don’t have a family size of 7+ and try to live in a city while expecting every kid to have their own room.
Financial slavery. Slavery is a spectrum, not a binary condition. We’re slaves and everything we think we own is owned by banks and billionaires. We’re still pawns in a game of Kings.
I also doubt that half of the 50% that say they’re on a path to financial independence are actually on that path. There’s no way that many people have enough cash or assets to retire with the current wealth inequality.
Many people recognise that they’re fucked, many others don’t recognise that they’re fucked.
Financial independence isn’t necessarily never work again. Though some definitions include that.
Even still, the article is talking about financial freedom, which even they recognize as a sliding scale
Half of Americans describe “financial freedom” as being comfortable, but not necessarily rich, and 49.3% say it refers to meeting financial obligations and having some money left over each month. About 54.2% define it as living debt-free, and 46.2% believe it means never having to worry about money.
I would be more in the latter part of saying it’s living mostly debt free. Or more depreciating debt free. Aka not house poor and able to manage finances.
Unfortunately the US (at least, I can’t speak to other parts but it seems Europe can be grouped in here too) has abysmal financial education. So many people by into consumerism at such a deep level that they impoverish themselves in it. I’m not totally free of unnessecary spending, but I don’t buy into so badly it puts me in a bad place or in debt.
We have debt. Mainly in our house but we still live below our means and always have. Places that loan you money aren’t looking out for you. And Society looks down on people that set boundaries or take the time to understand the full scope of a contract (such as a mortgage. I have seen it first hand).
Better education and better cultural norms that didn’t prioritize “things” and consumerism would go a long way. And that starts with parents, not schools or teacher. It’s a parents job. We have a lot of lazy parents and it’s now a generational issue.
Availability of credit wasn’t nearly as widespread in even the 80s but now we have a generation of people living in credit debt that haven’t taken the time to teach their kids either. Heck I’m partially at fault too (though my kids aren’t really of age to understand money quite yet)
Better education and better cultural norms that didn’t prioritize “things” and consumerism would go a long way.
So on the one hand I agree with you. On the other hand, consumer spending is 70% of U.S. GDP. If consumer spending takes a hit, we’re all going to feel it.
If this sounds awful it’s because it is. Our economy is not designed to benefit all, or even most.
Would agree. I think what is more at issue is the level of indebtedness. Like the % of people that can’t afford a 500 dollar emergency.
And this isn’t because of inflation.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-afford-a-500-emergency-expense/
Inflation of course has made it worse. But when covid hit and the government started just handing out money and suspending loan payments it became a real problem. Many of those people with the loans took that money and continued spending and acting like the loans were just going away.
Even if the US just wiped all outstanding consumer debt off the table, it’s not going to fix the issue. Because it’s cultural and behavioral. And frankly it’s worrying in that I don’t really see a fiscal or policy that can make it better. People won’t chnage and it means we are heading for more pain (financially).
Even anecdotally it’s shocking to me when people ask how we paid for xyz emergencies but still get into 1000 dollar a month car loans or buy iPhones on credit.
It seems silly but it’s happened most of my adult life. And it’s never not been shocking.
And even the insured are one inevitable illness away from being copayed into poverty.
slavery is a spectrum
And other white-people takes.
Black people were not the first or the last slaves on Earth.
There are more slaves on the planet right now than ever existed in America.
p.s. I’m not American
Removed by mod
"MrGeekman
Black people also are not totally blameless when it comes to slavery. Liberals don’t like to talk about it, but Africans sold their enemies to white slave traders. Also, literal slavery still exists in Africa. In fact, most of the metal in our phones was mined by slaves. Most of the chocolate we eat was grown and harvested by slaves. Much of the coffee we drink is grown and harvested by slaves. Sugar too."
Censorship is for Reddit.
Frederick Douglass, arguing for unity among black and white laborers in 1883, said that “experience teaches us that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.”
Oh shit well I sure hope people organize in the 19th century and stop the things that were actual oppression.
Douglass was still supporting what I’m saying tho, which is that calling yourself a slave because you have a job is incorrect. Also Douglass would shit his pants if a wealthy white landowner complained about being “in slavery.”
If you don’t think that economic slavery is real and exists in modern society, there’s no point in further conversation.
Totally agreed.
If you’re not a sharecropper than STFU
It must be awful to base your personality on outrage.
I hope it gets better for you.
Edit: , then*
No, awful is when clowns horribly misquote history and fail to realize how stupid they are . . .
It’s…a direct quote. I’m not sure how shittalking me is providing any worth to the conversation. Please make one statement supporting your position with information rather than criticism.
No he has a point. You can argue about word choice and semantics but slavery and freedom are not all or nothing things.
His point is based on a discussion in which a wealthy American calls himself a wage slave.
Glad this shit reaction is getting the appropriate downvotes, another whites bad strawman on display
Lmao imagine thinking that’s what that comment means.
There are many different kinds of slavery, chattel slavery is one of many. Indentured servitude was a much less extreme and dehumanizing form of slavery, serfdom was something in between. Slavery is an incredibly broad term that basically means someone is unable to choose their labor, as it belongs to someone else. That doesn’t necessarily mean the person does, like in chattel slavery, just that their work does.
Well it’s a good thing everyone in the US can choose their labor, and that no one making 6 figures is a slave.
I’m 45 and I’ve more or less accepted that short of an unexpected and massive windfall, I will never be able to retire, much less experience “financial freedom.”
I’m 43 and literally had this exact conversation today. I work full time for a major financial institution. This shouldn’t be how things work.
Agree yet you work for the enemy.
Because things will certainly change if you keep working without disruption.
If you prefer to ‘bias for action’ there is this: https://youtu.be/TMHCw3RqulY?feature=shared
Lol got em. Yet I live on mostly potatoes and was crippled by a billionaire corporation and haven’t worked or made any income since. Homeless too.
Really? Do they? That’s very interesting. Tell me, is the over half more like 99%?
70% of Americans retire.
I think the stat you’re referencing is for people aged 65-69. That means 30% of those people are still working. That number should be much lower, like 0.
I think you knew exactly what idea they were saying. Agency, the ability to control your own life, varies. Clearly and obviously a regular person in the West has more agency than say a regular person in North Korea. It is not an one-off switch. The ever growing wealth inequality is making the population shift more and more to the slave side of things. That doesn’t mean that you are a slave it means your papa was less of a slave compared to you.
This is why being a lolitarian makes you stupid. It bifurcates slavery and freedom. It defines force to be a specific term, that no one else uses, and declares victory in the game it is playing with itself
It’s really disingenuous to compare US-only data to unrelated generalizations of other countries that function under different cultural and economic systems. But I feel like you already know that.
What is actually the definition of “financial freedom”? Having (earned / gained) enough money, so that a person has no need to go to work anymore? If that’s the case, I would expect that number to be much, much lower than 50%.
EDIT: sorry, I just read it in the article. If “financial freedom” just means to work and live more or less without having to worry about financial obligations and what will happen tomorrow, then less than 50% is a rather shocking figure.
Agree. And anyone could quickly go one from side to the other. In need of a expensive surgery? Might lose your financial freedom. Bought an expensive house and lost your job? Goodbye as well.
That’s what a health insurance would be good for. But for many Americans that would equal communism.
Health insurance sucks. I’m all for universal health coverage with the opportunity to pay more for faster service for those who are well off.
Just think - there are tens of thousands of insurance employees who’s job is to calculate risk and develop pricing algorithms such that the company makes money no matter what. There’s no product or value created for humanity. It’s just ensuring that some people who own significant portions of the business keep getting paid.
They screw doctors and patients. Doctors get reimbursed whatever arbitrary predefined rates that were agreed upon during contract negotiations. That’s if insurance gives the green light for the patient to even get the procedure. Why does a middleman decide who gets medical care and how much the doctors should be paid? How is a patient supposed to choose a surgery team that’s all in network?
I get what you’re saying, but fuck insurance. These companies are a parasite on healthcare, housing, and mobility.
Well, yes and no. It should probably be a state-run system or at least a heavily regulated system where the companies are limited in their profit making. No idea how an ideal system could look like. Here in Germany there is a two-fold system, which a generic public health insurance (with several companies offering those insurance services), where every employee pays a certain percentage of his salaries as insurance fee (actually the total fee is split 50/50 between employer and employee). Service is rather basic, but sufficient.
And then there is the possibility to get a private health insurance contract, if your income is above a certain level, which interestingly is (for the most time) lower than that in the general public insurance, but service is much better (e.g. you usually get doctor appointments much faster if you are a “private patient”). The only downside is that you don’t know how much you will have to pay when you get old, and once you are out of the public insurance you can not go back (only if you income falls below the private insurance entry level, which is rather unlikely).
It’s not ideal but it works for the most part and with some exceptions (like new teeth, where you have to pay a substantial part by yourself) you don’t have to be afraid of any health problems, operations or whatever, because that’s all covered. Those insurance companies are treated like public service companies and prices for medication and medical (doctor) services are subject to agreement between the government and the medical associations representing doctors, hospitals etc., but I guess those companies still make profits and the doctors have good earnings.
I get your point, but even with a certain level of protection you’re probably still better off than with no protection at all. However, the system should also not be based on profits and shareholder value, that’s true.
In other news, water is wet
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.
If, like me, you didn’t have the reference: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2r85h2
I’ve known that from the Tool song Third Eye. Good to know the original sauce. Reference: https://on.soundcloud.com/MLXsj
Thinking about consciousness and stuff is fun. Like what if loneliness is an innate property of a singular unified consciousness and in its searching for another it creates compartmentalized versions of itself until ultimately complex unique lifeforms are formed. What if life is just the complexity of knots tied by consciousness searching for another? What if time is the entropy of those knots becoming untied?
This is why psychology is considered a soft science
Bill Hicks, I reckon?
That’s how society is, brother, literally 1% controls the world in their favor and keeps the wealth, impoverishing the 99%.
It’s been 10,000 plus years. Let’s change it, brother.
i agree, but not by passive aggressively shitting on people’s life choices in a social media comment section.
If they choose to stand in an apple line for 12 hours then I have no apologies to offer. But I get it.
49.3% say it refers to meeting financial obligations and having some money left over each month. About 54.2% define it as living debt-free, and 46.2% believe it means never having to worry about money.
I’m going to ignore that pesky 100% thing for the moment. Apparently we can’t even agree on what “Financial Freedom” means. Defining the metric you’re polling seems pretty critical if you want a consistent or useful answer. “Over half” is still burying the lede, though - less than one in ten fall into their personal version of that 150% noted above. Aside from the “American families are financially fucked” though, I’m not sure there’s any hard data to extract from this.
--
“Peter don’t ya call me cause I just can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store.”
Don’t also forget that we’re talking about what people say about their own financial position - which may be different from what their financial position actually is. Self-reporting is never accurate, because people report what they feel or are aware of, which is different from objective facts, to a greater or lesser degree.
Between letting individuals define the terms of the question they’re going to answer, and then self-reporting, this “study” goes beyond useless and into detrimental.
I agree, the definition is a real problem. While still interesting the survey is pretty screwed.
I thought financial freedom was being independently wealthy. Idle rich. Apparently I was wrong, it means working class but with some “bonus” money. Maybe still struggling but struggling less than most working stiffs.
How free can you be if you still have to work full time?
There is a point in income where you have the choice, the choice to move, the choice to switch jobs, the choice to leave your partner, etc.
That is freedom. A lot of Americans are just stuck exactly where they are.
That’s a good point. I make well into the 6-digits and the one reason I don’t believe that anyone under 7-digits will ever be “financially free” is because of the for-profit healthcare system. One bad accident or cancer and I’m fucked for a long time if not the rest of my life as is anyone that can’t just shrug off 5 to 6-digit bills.
Now if I were somewhere that offered universal health care and I was making what I was, I’d consider myself to be financially free. So I guess I fall into the 46.2% category.
Same. I’m financially stable. Meaning I can hit a few bumps and I’ll be fine. But I don’t think it’s possible to be ’ financially free’ when at any time I could suddenly have hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical debt.
I can roughly estimate potential pit falls with my home. And home insurance is reasonably reliable for catastrophic scenarios. Even if they aren’t, bankruptcy is still feasible. The same cannot be said about healthcare. Insurance plans are extremely opaque and while they claim to have terms such as ‘out of pocket maximum’ that should**** in theory limit your losses, there are endless stories about how little that holds up when put to the test.
Proper healthcare coverage would be the single biggest impact on American stability. Nothing else is even close.
You can add disability to this. If I can’t work I pretty sure im buggered even if for some reason we get universal healthcare (I guess being disabled, if you can navigate to the point of getting it, you would have medicaid but what comes in every month would not be adequate to stay where I live or such)
“This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill, fifteen percent concentrated power of will, five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain, and a hundred percent reason to remember the name.”
It’s 50+49.3+54.2+46.2 = 199.7 if you include the half of Americans that describe financial freedom as “being comfortable, but not necessarily rich”.
Half of Americans describe “financial freedom” as being comfortable, but not necessarily rich, and 49.3% say it refers to meeting financial obligations and having some money left over each month. About 54.2% define it as living debt-free, and 46.2% believe it means never having to worry about money.
I’m always suspicious of journalists publishing numbers removed from context.
“There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
I would also venture to say that applies to 90% of us. “Over half” is a fucking laughable fake figure.
I mean, 90% is over half…
Yeah, but it’s marketing jargon to make it seem like less of a deal. When someone says “over half” do you immediately assume they’re talking in the 90% range, or closer to 60%?
Probably the half that make $31k or less.
Looking for a job is insanely depressing when you get to see just how many jobs-white collar, blue collar, fast food, whatever- all pay absolutely disgusting wages one person can’t live of off…
I’m now in a 2 income household with fewer kids as they grow up, and to us it feels more like we are close always, just no hope of ever actually getting there, if that makes sense. Always almost enough.
Which is better than my previous experience but since it’s happening later in life, still wouldn’t expect to ever stop having to earn money by working. I have never expected to retire though, it would take - as someone else noted - a windfall, luck, not effort. Effort has taken us as far as it can.
Sheeit I’m one step above homelessness living off plasma donations.
I’d go for this except I got a false HIV-positive back in '89 and no matter what I do I can’t get it off my blood donation record. :(
I do ok, but all my debt and bills are telling me I need to get on this gravy train
Clearly the answer is work harder and get a 3rd job. Eventually you’ll be a millionaire!
I’d have thought more. With a big gaping chasm in between.
