A common subject in my household is how much it costs just to be a responsible member of society. Besides food and housing, two things you can’t get around, accountable Americans have to pay for health insurance, auto insurance, carry some amount of life insurance, pay for water, pay for electricity, pay for phone and, these days, internet connectivity. We even pay for cable televisions so we can surf 300 channels to proclaim, “there’s nothing to watch on TV,” and a monthly gym membership so we can go nowhere on a treadmill while watching 300 channels on the attached TV the one time a month when the mood strikes.
It all adds up to sucking away nearly our entire paycheck and squeezes the rhetorical question out of us, “how do people afford to live this way?” The answer may be, they don’t.
The sad fact is America has become a place where it’s better to get by with less than more. A household with a family of four earning $65,000 per year is better off making $45,000 per year and availing itself of public subsidies. Said another way, a person earning less makes the person earning more poorer by having them pay for their food, electricity and anything else that helps politicians bring in votes by giving away things for free. Of course it’s not free, it’s just that there are fewer and fewer votes available from the haves than the have-nots.
2 comments:
That's the overall comment: what you have written about fits perfectly into the philosophy of lean manufacturing method - achieving more by using less. It was invented in Toyota and now is being implemented all over the world into all spheres of life. Using preventative measures instead of getting in trouble is also part of this method! The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
How does this solve the problem of those who work so hard for their funds, and then have it all sucked away because someone saw fit to skip off the top and pass the pain down to those who can lease afford it?
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