More than half of six-figure earners said they would have to double their income to feel financially secure.
“People used to feel when you got to six figures or above that it was a sign of financial stability,” said Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer and futurist at The Harris Poll.
Mr. Rodney is full of shit, whether he knows it or not. There was a study done on the psychology of earning more money than you need to live. There’s an interesting phenomenon that arises; people always think they need more to feel secure. $100k feels they need $150k, $400k needs $600k, and this pattern continues all the way up to $15m, on average. I wouldn’t be surprised if the peak is even higher nowadays, the study was conducted in the early 2000’s I think. I will come back and edit this with more details of said study so I’m not just talking out my ass.
Bingo. People typically spend more and more as they make more… making themselves financially insecure in perpetuity.
When I was making 30K a year I was spending only about 20K in expenses. Now that I make 150K a year I’m spending more like 120K. According to most of my peers I am ‘struggling’ because I’m not driving a brand new BMW 5 series and living a 2 million dollar house. So much of people’s fiancially problems is just them overspending to impress other people. I drive a 10 year old Honda. It works great. I also chose to get rescue animals rather than designer purebred animals. I shop at a cheap grocery store, not the luxury ones. and I live in a ‘boring’ area where rents/mortgages are cheaper.
I thought that there was a study that showed limited returns on happiness beyond a certain threshold ($75k at the time, which is now surely well out-of-date).
Found it- from 2010. Today that is $111,333 if you believe the bls CPI.
https://time.com/archive/6597645/do-we-need-75000-a-year-to-be-happy/
I think that the idea was that there is a special point where you feel secure and nothing beyond that makes any difference. But that $75k number sounds familiar. It’s probably more like $120k today.
I think 75k was where commute time started mattering more than income
Those could both be true. People feel like they need $125k more to be secure, but when they get it, it doesn’t make them as happy as they thought it would. They need another $25k more to feel that way.
the issue is they get that extra $125K. And then the start spending 95% of it on shit they weren’t buying before. They don’t get the extra 125K and not spend it.
It’s called lifestyle creep.
The ‘poorest’ people I’ve ever met were often part of the 300K+ club. Most of my friends making 100K or under aren’t the ones whining about how poor they are. It’s the people who are buying designer clothes and luxury cars.
so many people I meet are making like 100-150K a year. but they are spending way about their means on luxuries they don’t need but feel are ‘necessary’. like dropping $500 each weekend going out, which is $2000 a the end of the month. gym memberships, travel, luxury apartments, designer clothes, etc.
I mean that really isn’t the issue. If they actually do that they are doing exactly what trickle down economics says.
The issue is that in reality people don’t so that - they save a lot of that extra cash for a cushy retirement, and then work less.
Honestly, I suspect limited returns come as you fill in a checklist.
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Are you and your family clothed, fed and relatively safe?
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Are you working only one job per person?
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Is your family healthy and/or getting adequate healthcare?
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Is your family at least getting an entire high school education under their belt?
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Do you have safe and marginally convenient transportation?
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Do you at least have enough money for occasional entertainment outside the house
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Do you have a second bathroom?
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Do you have at least a small line of credit?
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Do you have a retirement? Will you be able to retire?
You don’t need all that, but once you cross that line, having more money around for things doesn’t make you happier.
for most rich people those aren’t goals. the are forgone assumptions.
rich people care about going to elite expensive institutions, working for elite companies, and having designer level lifestyle in clothes, housing, and consumer goods. they love to go on about how they value ‘experiences’ while they drop 30K on some week long spiritual retreat in Bali, or some $10K weekend spa weekend in Palm springs.
the 100K people who feel poor feel poor because they thought they could afford a designer lifestyle. and all they are getting is a basic middle-class lifestyle
Having more money would let me retire earlier, which would make me happier.
But I’m lucky and already have all my other needs met.
I think I could be creative enough to make myself happier.
Give me a lavish bunker on a small island with a hill looking over the ocean in the edge of the Caribbean latitude, let me take most of the people I care about. Food, gadgets, internet, maybe a helicopter or a small plane to come back to the mainland for concerts. Enough money to pay for protection.
But I don’t think that fits linearly into the scale of money versus happiness.
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I have a very modest setup and as of last year it required eighty something thousand per year to be in the black. Basically 90k if I was to be handle even the slightest of externalities. Im afraid to renew the math for prices this year and don’t even know yet for healthcare which I have to figure out by end of month.
it’s almost as if security is never actually produced by hoarding more and more resources for your personal nuclear family. Odd.
Also, people’s goals change and “secure” means something different.
When I was making half as much as I am now, I felt fairly secure. I could pay my rent, I had no credit card debt, and I had a few months’ worth of savings. Money was not a day-to-day worry. Most of my peers were in debt and/or living paycheck-to-paycheck so I felt like I was living large.
Now I am objectively more secure but I feel less secure because I am thinking about retirement, childcare, college funds, and elder care. I have nowhere near enough savings to retire in the foreseeable future. I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever get there.
Keep your head up bro, you’ll make it. Sounds like you’re already putting in the effort and thinking about the hard stuff and the costs involved, which is more than most ever do. Lotta folks just spend and spend and put their heads in the sand when the future comes up.
Sorry if I don’t commiserate
I wish I was making even $50k. I don’t really think leaders in this country care about the majority of Americans. They see what we make, they KNOW the majority of us are struggling, but they refuse to help anyone but themselves.
Oh no, they discovered right wing politics
Americans with six figure incomes are not the enemy. We need them on our side in the fight against the Americans with eight, nine, and higher figure incomes
I don’t consider them my enemy. I consider them privileged. Am I supposed to weep for them that they can’t buy their kids the top of the line xyz or go on vacation this year? Should I spend emotional labor because they need to move to a smaller house or stop eating out? 6 figure salary isn’t rich these days I grant you but it is a comfortable amount unless they’re trying to live beyond their means.
Six figures could be anything between 100k and 999k. If they are on the lower end, they aren’t really that privileged, especially if they are living in an area that necessitates a pay that high.
Hell, there are some places that 100k would be closer to the regions “poverty line” so to speak.
Yep, CA Dept of Housing considers an individual making less than $109k in San Francisco “low-income” - that’s about what you’d need to qualify for a 1br apartment there.
Id even be content to let the eight figure incomes slide… at least at first. Lets start with the 100-200 dudes that have a ten digit income and work our down… the tens and nines might be enough to fix things and still leave us with plenty of ultra rich to complain about.
Trying to actively seek and categorize enemies is inherently problematic. A good ideology doesn’t seek to eliminate enemies, but to bring about positive results.
A long-lasting ideology recognizes enemies and how to defend against them, and sometimes the best defense is a good offense.
This isn’t a video game. Long lasting ideologies are flexible, practical, unifying, and care deeply about the means of achieving their goals. Short lasting ideologies are rigid, idealist to a fault, seek to divide and exclude, and care more about the ends than the means.
Lower 6 figures today is middle class. Or at least what middle class buying power was 40 years ago.
Low 6 figure is the minimum required to have a middle class lifestyle for one person (not a family) in California. And when I say middle class lifestyle, I mean not having to worry about bills, but still not able to buy a house or a new car without decades of saving or massive debt. Maybe you can afford a vacation once a year if you haven’t had any unexpected medical problems.
Especially when you factor in the cost of living in places where $100k jobs are to be found. “Six figures” may sound like a fortune if you’re sitting in rural Ohio but it’s little more than a decent wage in Seattle.
Yeah. The problem is that the goalposts keep getting pushed away faster than income is keeping up. Someone might have what is considered a good paying job, but the buying power for major purchases like cars and homes keeps taking hits. On top of that the bills get steeper and steeper. Six figures should be a fortune.
You can’t afford to buy a single family home on $100k/yr in my area. So I’m not sure it really meets the classic definition of middle class anymore.
Middle class didn’t mean a big McMansion or desirable area. It meant a modest house in a small lot in a boring suburb of someplace like Detroit where you’d work for Ford or something.
Our ideas of what kind of house we should have is really distorted. It’s like pickup trucks. What was considered an everyday pickup 40 years ago was 1/3rd the size of the behemoths available today, and of course today’s trucks cost $80,000 compared to the $6,500 of something like a ‘85 Toyota Pickup ($20k in today dollars).
Every 1950s 1k square foot track home in my area is 1 million or more no matter how dilapidated within 2hours of the metro
“Desirable area”
It’s where the jobs are
“…high paying jobs are.”
And that is the problem.
Capitalism run amok with the increasing need to push the line higher and maximize profits resulting in gluttony eating up all the spare money in a market.
Lots of homes are easily affordable with that income. Buy elsewhere.
Show me the place where you can both earn the $100k AND afford the homes. Places with higher wages also have higher costs. It doesn’t help someone in Seattle to tell them go buy a home in Oklahoma.
There’s quite a few major cities in the US where houses are averaging around 300k which a 100k salary would easily cover the purchase of. Pittsburg, Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, St Louis for examples just off the top of my head. And if you look in rural areas between these major cities you can easily snag a 100k home so if you ever find yourself burnt out from your high paying career there’s that option too
Yes… but you have to choose more slum-y areas. And if you have kids, they’re gonna get buillied so much.
Source, I am that kid. Moved from Brooklyn to Philly, sure, housing was more affordable, but school ratings went from 8/10 to like a 3/10. Such hell.
you have to choose more slum-y areas
Here is a random home I found after only a few seconds of looking. 3 bedroom home in Colorado Springs for $265k. Easily affordable at the stated $100k/yr income.
You can’t afford to buy a single family home on $100k/yr in my area.
you have to choose more slum-y areas
Lots of homes are easily affordable with that income. Buy elsewhere.
The thing is though that unless you have a fully remote job you are probably not going to stay earning 100k in colarado springs
Median household income in Colorado Springs is $83k/yr. Said 3 bedroom home for $265k is quite affordable on $83k/yr.
unless you have a fully remote job
And if this is the case, you are doing even better and have a shitload more options.
There’s the additional cost that my whole family and all my friends live in the “Greater Seattle area” where housing is outrageous and climbing. If I were to move somewhere more affordable it would mean losing my entire social support system.
Cmon, you can’t cherry pick a house and say “just uproot your entire life, there are cheaper houses out there!”
Schools, job market, support system and more all play a huge part. It isn’t as simple as “just move.”
Keep in mind you’re replying to a literal Nazi, they don’t do much arguing in good faith.
Put bluntly, those who live off labour aren’t the enemy. Those who live off property (aka others’ labour) are.
Well said
That’s stupid, under that definition small business owners are the enemy. Not to mention that there’s no genuine argument as to why owning property or living off it is inherently bad in any way.
This is why I keep saying that Marxism has and well truly lived past it’s usefulness. Now it’s just an outdated ideology that people try to slap on to a world it wasn’t made for.
Living off of owning property isn’t inherently bad? Whatttttt
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm
It is. Of course living off of property is bad. Who is doing all the work for those leeches?
If one man gets a dollar they didn’t earn, someone else deserves a dollar they didn’t get
“living off of your property” is shorthand (and so maybe we should be more explicit) for “living off of the production and labor of other people who need access to your property to do that labor”.
So yea, i think it is exploitative to restrict access your property to someone who would use it to reproduce themselves each day (a home) or would use it to produce other valuable goods and services (a job) and to require that person to pay you for access (that home again) or you’ll pay them wages less than what they produce (that job).
And i think exploitative is inherently bad.
There’s quite a few assumptions here that I disagree with:
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Property relations are inherently tied to exploitation - That’s just not true. Voluntary exchange is not exploitative. For example, let’s suppose a musician makes their livelihood by owning a music school where they sell music lessons, and they need more instructors to meet demand so they go out and hire one. The person being hired is someone who sells their skills for a living, and they applied for this position of their own volition and signed a contract for a wage they find satisfactory… how is that exploitative? This is a win-win situation.
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Ownership of property is the same as extraction of surplus value - Again, this is just not true. For example, someone living off their own farm without tenants or employees wouldn’t fit this critique.
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Restricting access to property is inherently bad - First of all, I don’t know what “reproduce themselves each day” is supposed to even mean, that’s just nonsense. Regardless, restricting access to property is literally how societies manage resources. Exclusion is often necessary to prevent overuse and conflict, and when based on fair agreements, it supports both individual rights and social stability. There’s a reason why human civilization evolved throughout history to favor private ownership.
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Labor is the only source of value in a society - This is false. Things like land (natural resources), technology, knowledge, entrepreneurship, innovation, and capital (tools, infrastructure, machines) also produce value in an economy. Of course labor is important and valuable, but it is not the sole source of value. Holding this assumption as true is just economic illiteracy because you can’t run an economy with just labor alone.
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Inequality is the same as exploitation - Inequality is a difference in outcomes or opportunity while exploitation is unfair advantage. Not all inequality is exploitative, some of it is caused by things like effort, talent, merit, or choice. Exploitation, on the other hand, involves coercion or injustice, which makes it morally distinct. Exploitation can cause inequality, but not all inequality is exploitative. In this sense profit is not inherently exploitation even if it can be if obtained in certain ways.
When you remove these assumptions from the equation, there isn’t really a coherent argument left. Your argument only makes sense if you accept the Marxist framework as true without a second thought, which I don’t. I reject both Marxist analysis and proposals. I’m not entirely dismissive of Marxist critiques, but they have to be framed in a way where they’re able to stand on their own merits for me to consider accepting them. Otherwise, there’s no point because Marxism and its assumptions are simply outdated. It’s an 18th century framework and ideology that was made by men of that time for societies of that time. The world has changed since then and modern economies don’t work the same way anymore.
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Yes, but that definion isn’t that clear cut anymore as it was during the industrial revolution. Common people have pensions, i.e. stocks. Workers ‘invest’ in their home as real estate. Executive managers can be still just workers even if they make a million bucks. The analysis isn’t that cut and dry if lots of people have investments on top of their wage job. Everyone not living hand to mouth is a kind of petit-bourgeoisie. The vast majority are not proletariat anymore.
I don’t want you to think I’m anti-leftist, because I definitely support significant redistribution and an end to capitalism. Just want people to think a bit further than mid-19th century definions and analysis which I think no longer hold. Alternative suggestions are welcome
I think the definition of working class is still pretty simple regardless of modern financial complexities. If you rely on a paycheck to make a living you are proletariat. If you own enough capital that you don’t have to work, congrats, now you are petit bourgeois.
If you can’t quit your job and live off your investments and previous earnings, you are firmly in the proletariat.
Lumping in those who day trade on T212 with those buying into investment schemes at the clubhouse isn’t helpful. “It’s a big fucking club” and it’s pretty obvious whether you’re in it or not.
Just want people to think a bit further than mid-19th century definions and analysis which I think no longer hold.
Yeah, one of the things that really shaped my views on fairness in wealth distribution was studying corporate law (and the legal cases that shaped what Delaware corporate law is today). That history adds a lot of complexity to figuring out who is the “owner” class and who is the “labor” class. Highly compensated executives often have their shareholders over a barrel, and the legal system is designed to protect management from shareholders, so long as the corporation makes some minimal token gestures towards shareholder value. In practice, shareholders have very limited means of controlling a corporation (mainly by electing directors, who tend to be officers/managers of other companies and sympathize with managers and give quite a bit of leeway when only part time supervising the officers they often play golf with).
And we can see this play out in the modern era. We have a bunch of wannabe finance bros, hopeful future millionaires, talking about financial topics and cheerleading their heroes (CEOs and founders), often being willing marks in financial investment scams. They believe that holding capital will help them survive further divergence between the haves and the have nots, but history shows that when push comes to shove, only power matters. No amount of accumulated wealth can protect against power, and those with power can always use that power to enrich themselves.
So I don’t find it particularly useful to draw bright lines on who is or isn’t the enemy based on their financial situation. We should recognize the power structures themselves, and how power is exercised (politically, financially, legally, culturally, and the old standby, violently), and work to influence things through those levers (including the power to change the levers themselves).
Those who live off property (aka others’ labour) are.
This is everyone with a 401(k) for retirement. Ie, what they will be loving off of. Not sure why you are labeling the vast majority of people the enemy…
Hell, since you are including ‘other’s labour’, then this would also include anyone living off Social Security, a pension, disability, etc. All of that money comes from other’s labour.
Your brush is way, way, way too broad. You have marked almost everyone the enemy at some point in their lives.
There’s obviously a difference between people benefitting from social services and people enriching themsleves by hoarding capital.
The person I replied to should not label those people the enemy then. As I said, he is painting with much too wide of a brush.
Upper middle class, used to be poor. I’ve been fighting for things my whole life that would disadvantage our current comfort if they were put in place. I also just helped organize a union at work, because most of my coworkers make half what I make (I’m not in management, but with a tech salary). In contract negotiations. We are not all shitty, though many of my neighbors in a nice neighborhood are greedy trumpists, whining about the scary poors, so I could certainly understand some animosity towards people who enjoy comfort in this shitty economy. But I think many people that grow up poor and get money remember what it means to be poor.
100k when you are salaried and working 70 hours while technically is still 100k it’s not really lol.
Average that shit out and stop lying to ourselves. 500k a year? Yeah fuck those people. 100k a year? Join us. Burn it all down.
Also, a quick reminder that it’s not normal to be working 70 hours a week.
$100,000 with a child is nothing. Two or three children? You’re struggling.
In a VHCOL area, $100k with one child is extremely tough/you’re likely dipping into savings. Our daycare alone is over $40k/yr per kid, and only $5k ($7500 next year) is fully tax exempt.
Median 2 bedroom in my area is over $50k/yr.
$100k doesn’t cut it. “Just move to a cheaper area” is IMHO not a proper response to this—anyone who works in my city should be able to afford to raise a family here, with a high quality of life/standard of living, but that’s not really the case.
Ahh, rich people problems. I don’t even know what to spend all my money on and I make £26k. I guess I could just save it and then pay off the mortgage early, then only work 1 day a week?
If you have mortgage, why not pay lump sum regularly instead of saving it first? This way cost of mortgage will come down. Unless you have a fixed rate?
Recently fixed it for 5 years at a lower rate than it was before.
We already cracked. We’re all in the biggest ever bubble pop, we just don’t know it yet.
No, they’re not.
That’s correct. Everyone here making six figures will have some form of asset they could cash in if the chips came down. I sometimes feel underwater, but if I made painful cuts, I could survive. Real Americans are living day to day knowing if things get bad, they might have to sell more blood.
This was some years ago - even before the first Trump presidency - I read a perfectly reasonable sounding piece from someone about how he’s struggling as a dual-income family making $400,000 a year. There’s the mortgage for the house and the summer home and the vacation condo and the kids’ tuitions at prestigious schools and family vacations and the 401ks and the kids’ college tuition funds and how there was NOTHING LEFT after the bare necessities!
Yeah, I live more in the realm of having emptied my 401k twice after leaving different jobs because the only other option was homelessness. Have I made bad decisions in life, never intentionally… but owning a home is being taken off the possibilities for me. At 36 it’ll be years before I ever have 1000s in the bank, let alone the 20% of 400,000 or whatever a small house will cost in future. Shit they turned me down to get a car loan and buy a used Kia which left me with a broken down vehicle and losing my job because I couldn’t transit 104 miles a day to the decent paying job I landed. So now I’m getting paid 1/3 to half of it on a job I found I can work from home. I’ll make rent and food, but retirement is likely out of the picture.
Yeah I’m 42 and my work is well-paid (for me) but not regular. It’s been particularly bad lately. I do not even have health insurance since I got divorced this year. I long ago realized I will have to work until I die, and I think most Americans are in the same situation. This is in a low cost of living area, I travel for work as an independent contractor.
A “six figure income” is such a stupidly relative term. What a useless fucking metric.
First of all, that could literally mean anything from $100,000 to $999,999 a year. Someone making nearly a million dollars a year is not “in survival mode”, even in the highest cost of living areas.
Second, it depends on where you live. If you live in the middle of BFE Arizona or Minnesota, having a ~$100k salary could mean you’re living like a king. Living in San Francisco or New York, you’re probably living in a shoebox apartment.
I’m barely one of these “six figure” people. I make $103k per year. However, I also am the sole income for my family of 5, which means I pay for everybody’s health and dental insurance premiums. These are over $1200 a month. I also live in a moderately high cost of housing city where the cheapest, bombed out, sub-900 sq ft house is going for 1/5th to a quarter of a million $ plus. My neighbor has a 973 sq ft home with non-working plumbing, a roof that has shingles coming off and leaks, single pane windows, and foundation issues. His house has an estimated value of $237k if it sold today.
After taxes, nearly half of my salary alone goes to just housing and healthcare and I do not live in a fucking McMansion. My house is around 1000 sq ft. And I still need to keep the lights on, pay for gas, pay the water bill, pay for groceries…Oh and don’t forget about student loan debt to get that income. Have fun paying that at $600-700 a month. If I was renting instead of having a mortgage, I could not afford to live here.
Now I’m not “in survival mode”, as this article would have you believe, but I’m also not exactly “thriving”. If I lost my job, my family would be unable to live beyond…something like 2-3 months. And with the job market cratering in the tech world (which is my career market) right now, it scares the shit out of me. Literally keeps me up at night with anxiety.
What I’m trying to say is that not even us “middle class” folks are doing super great. We’re currently teetering on the edge of a knife and, with continually rising costs, will likely fall into “upper-lower class” territory in the next decade.
I’m in Minnesota, twin cities, sounds like property is comparable. To pay less than $300k you’re probably getting something you couldn’t realistically fit a family of 5 or likely something that needs $100k of work to bring up to code anyway. You could get a dump for $150k and fix it up yourself, but most people are not going to do that. Not the most expensive city, but far from the cheapest.
Yeah the only reason I’m able to afford my house is because I got it 5 years ago for $200k. If I had to buy it today, I’d be fucked.
Verrrry close to my experience as well. I’m holding out hope that in maybe 5 years, when the last of my student debt is gone, we can start really climbing out of our hole, but electricity prices are skyrocketing (Ibpay about $500/mo now), and with the shutdown, our work ontract has not yet been renewed. We’ll be homeless in just a couple months if my income falls apart
Shit that sounds stressful. I hope your contact renews and things go according to plan, homie.
You’ve nailed my family’s experience as well. I’m a sole earner, high COL area, student debt, groceries and other bills going up.
scares the shit out of me
this is by design. by funneling all your moneys further and further up the food chain, they both ensure you’ll never take their place and keep you obedient and compliant. lest “something” happens, and you end up in an even worse situation
you and i don’t exist to “thrive.” we’re here to generate more wealth for our owners, and to be hoodwinked into thinking this is the way it’s supposed to be
Couples say they would need more than 200k household income to feel comfortable having children.
I’ll bet a ways back there was an article about how 5 figure incomes weren’t what they used to be.
True. As money in the system constantly leaks to the wealthiest and they consolidate control over prices and power, a quantity of income will go perpetually down in value; nothing that is measured by buying power or has fiscal value is what it used to be, and will continue on this trend until the ENTIRE system is FUNDAMENTALLY changed.
You ever watch that movie Office Space from like 1999? In the scene in the beginning where he’s explaining to the shrink how “every day is the worst day of his life”, the economy is basically like this for the cast majority of people, and will continue to be for a higher and higher percentage of the population. This is because we live in a system that is built and everybody accepts the functions and goals of consolidation of wealth and power as fundamental to life as we know it.
There are small “woke” movements that are trying to change that in various ways, but not until we have real, open, intelligent and educated discussions that involve EVERYBODY - left, right, liberal, and conservative, will anything change.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: nobody wins until we ALL win.
I disagree about that last part. There clearly are people winning today. They are a small %, but they also have an outsized influence. So they actively work against the change. And it is easier for them to be semi organized because there are many less of them to organize.
I love not having kids. I’m happy I have a small dog.
I also love you not having kids! Small dogs for all! ❤
Pets are ridiculously expensive and definitely a luxury.
What? Compared to having a kid they’re extremely cheap. My small dog costs me at most about $2000 a year.
Tell that to the tremendous number of homeless people in poverty who have pets.
My cat costs 100 bucks a month. And brings me the only source of joy I have.
That’s cheap and I consider not having suicidal thoughts to not be a luxury.
This seems expensive.
How tf does your cat cost $100/month?
Mine lives a life of luxury and it cannot be half of that even when all yearly spending is averaged.
Easily. Combination of pet insurance and normal medical bills plus a canned diet with occasional toys, treats, litter, specialty furniture, and cleaning supplies. You can do with less and gamble with health problems, unexpected emergencies, and boredom-linked destructiveness.
(I had a diabetic cat. Between him, a girl that can’t eat dry food or cheap canned without getting bladder stones, and a third cat that eats whatever but isn’t worth the effort of separating at meal times I was spending $400+/month just on food. It’s less now without the diabetes to manage but still not cheap.)
lol, I can assure you that is a very yuppie mindset. Vast majority of people with pets can’t afford much beyond the food.
Pets are the new kids
Goldfish are the new pets
Pet rocks are the new goldfish
Kids are insanely expensive and time consuming. Which normally isn’t a problem in a healthy society with functional communities and affordable goods and services. We aren’t in a healthy society.
FYI private equity has come for veterinarians. It made more sense when we confirmed the vet we took our small dog was one of those once they started recommending a lot more procedures that we knew would be requited for our dog’s condition. Also familiarize yourself with the “emergency pet hospitals” in your area, those are prime locations to extract several thousand dollars on a visit. Avoid them.
Yep, find one you trust and stick to them. We followed our vet when they left a Big Clinic and started their own practice and it’s been completely worth it.
I brought my dog to the emergency vet. She died in the car on the way but I wasn’t ready to accept that and carried her inside. They asked if I wanted her ressicitated, I was like yeah of course I do. They took her and came back a while later. They said we can’t get her breathing, she’s dead. But the drugs did get her heart beating so we have to put her down anyway. They euthanized my dead dog. Total cost? $1500.
Professional services and medication cost money, especially not having to wait as much (the “emergency” part). They’re not a charity.
It absolutely sucks what you had to go through.
Professionals who have professional equipment and expenses themselves should be expensive.
Good choice to not bring kids into this world.
Anyone who doesnt understand this should find some YouTube videos with young people talking about feeling extreamly unhappy in our societies.
They dont want to be here but their parents got them because they wanted more meaning in their own lives.
At the same time… try not to let the fascists win.
If you want to start a family, start a family. People can’t control the conditions or nations they were born in, and they shouldn’t be expected to deprive themselves of the small solace in life that is having a loving family just because it’s the “responsible choice”. That’s eugenics bullshit.
Yeah I see your point of view. But still, bringing kids into this future? Would they be able to be happy even? All signs points to no at this point.
I dont follow politics but I guess “responsible choice” comes from there? I just look at the world and think about any future a kid would have. At least in America, I would really not get a kid.
I’m not as pessimistic as you about the future, and I don’t think of today’s children as people passively experiencing things that happen in the world. They’re participants, and they’ll have a lot more agency about their futures during our lifetimes.
Politically, I still think that fascism is brittle. Competence is actively discouraged (independently competent people are minimized to prevent threats to centralized power), so I think any fascist system is bound to fail when the people actively resist.
Economically, the business cycle ebbs and flows, and whoever’s on top today might not be on top tomorrow. I believe the current economic system is dominated by bubbles that have no future, so we’re gonna see some future chaos where new bases of power will rise. Good guys can win in those scenarios, and those good guys may very well be my own children.
Culturally, nothing is permanent. Trying to predict things is a fool’s errand. Better to just prepare our children for resilience through flexibility and adaptability, and raise them to be kind, well adjusted, socially plugged in.
Living a good life is possible even in a bad world. That’s happened throughout human history. And so if people want to raise children, let them.
I want to be wrong, so thank you for giving a more positive view.
Yea… my country did birth control stuff, One Child Policy, I was the second child. I wasn’t supposed to be born. And even though I did suffer a lot, I’m still glad to exist, to have felt some joy during childhood, even as I lived in an autocracy and in a very impoverished area, and later in a declining democracy, I still have experienced life, and I’m glad that I had the opportunity, to have existed as a living being, as rare as life is, and even rarer, as a human, the ability to just think about things, philosophy, to gaze upon the stars, to have experienced parental love (well… sort of… later on they kinda got a bit more rough), to see cities and the countryside, to see the magnificence of nature, and tall skyscrapers.
Even through poverty, I still feel like this existence is worth it, no matter how this would end. Whether we all die of nuclear apocalypse tomorrow, or whatever. It was a fun ride. And I’m glad my mother gave birth to me, regardless how negative I might feel about them as parents.
Very glad to see a take that isn’t more depressed doomerism, the world needs more of that.
I know. I’m one of them.
We should build more trailer parks to house these clowns once they can’t afford their mcmansions anymore.
