in which this was gonna to be a twitter thread but it got too long

remembering how broke i was my whole adult life (basically until entering middle age), and how i accumulated debt just being alive because it cost more to live than i ever earned, and how jobs have steadily degraded since i started working, i cannot even fathom how fucked it must be to be 20-something now

jobs REALLY suck now, and there’s no memory of prosperity or meaningful growth, just the mindless, cancerous greed of mega-corps

there are two reasons and two reasons ONLY that i’m doing okay now, and they’re entirely good luck:

– i spent my 40’s living with a relative for free, so i paid off my debt instead of paying rent and utilities
– i lucked into a partner who has more earning power than i ever did

i can now buy groceries without first checking my balance, i can buy clothes i don’t strictly need, and i can even take modest vacations

i have no wealth and no equity (i’ll die if i get truly sick), but i have more than $400 in savings

i consider myself rich because i can donate

i was born into the upper middle class on one side, and lower middle class on the other, but my parents slipped some, briefly, when them not being poor too would have helped me A LOT (college years, mostly) probably due primarily to divorce, and i slipped even further into, at one point, homelessness

because i never had any savings until about five years ago, and i’m 53 now

they keep talking about nobody wanting to work, but places like mcdonald’s and walmart literally have departments that teach their underpaid, no-benefits-having employees to apply for services like ebt and state health insurance

once you discover the hard way that getting a pittance of a raise kicks you off state insurance, why work at all? if you’re really poor, you can get things you can’t get working full-time in a lot of jobs: food stamps and basic health care

if you’ve worked any modern corporate job (walmart, home depot, mcdonald’s) with low pay, a toxic environment full of constant reminders that you’re replaceable, meaningless weaponized metrics, no bennies, random scheduling so you can’t do anything else (like go to school, raise your kids, or attend a funeral), time off requests routinely denied, you know it’s better to just not fucking work

you’re already poor even while working full-time or more (far too many americans have multiple jobs in an attempt to stay above water), might as well get rid of the stress of a shitty, abusive job, right? at least you can continue your ramen diet while reading, painting, or doing something that makes you mildly happy

i don’t blame anybody, especially in food or customer service, who have worked throughout the pandemic and now know that society considers them BOTH “essential” and disposable, who isn’t fucking working, fuck those jobs, fuck corporate america, fuck billionaires