I’m certain that I’m not alone. I have no retirement plan. There is no windfall waiting for me. No inheritance or IRA sits patiently waiting for my time of need. I have enough debt to keep me awake at night from time to time. No social safety net protects me or my family from a very hard fall – a fall that could be triggered by an accident, an extreme weather event, or sudden political chaos – all of which could be imminent. I am sure that I’m not alone in my social insecurity and the dark pit of hopelessness that looms around each and every corner. This is the unpleasant American Dream realized – constant dread of financial disaster which is coming whether I like it or not.
Is it my own fault? Certainly I have made many of the decisions that have brought me here. I could have stayed in the Marines for twenty years. I could have gone to University right after graduating high school in 1990 instead of going in the Marines and deferring a degree until 2008. I could have stayed in a number of careers that didn’t bring me joy -I could have pursued a management career in hospitality, I could have remained an Air Traffic Controller, I could have stayed a stock broker or an insurance agent, I could have stayed in Hawaii after graduating and taken any job that might have been available at the height of the recession, I could have stayed in radio, I could have persevered in a tech career after the dot-com bust, and so on. I second guess my life decisions all the time. I made them, I live with the consequences – but there is no going back. At the time, I made the best decision that I could and did what I thought was best for my future. Usually, those decisions had very little to do with finance and much more to do with things like ethics, spiritual beliefs, and an awareness that life is transitory and if I didn’t take the time to live while I was young, I would someday be old and regret that I had not. My life is worthy, my experiences a joy and comfort, and my integrity mostly intact.
But this is the United States of America – the country I was raised in was a country formed by revolutionaries and shaped by organized labor. A country with laws to protect workers, the poor, the sick, the elderly, the insane and handicapped. We were supposed to have social security and peace of mind in our old age. I’m not old yet – mid-life at worst – but I don’t see any sort of retirement or ease of living in my American future. I see a nightmare. For two decades now, I’ve seen senior citizens filling the low wage workforce – working in jobs that in my youth belonged to high school students. Senior greeters at Walmart and Senior fry cooks at McDonalds. In the 1970s and 1980s – I remember people having retirement parties when they reached age 65 – When was the last time you heard about someone actually retiring? Yes, it happens in government and maybe in some other isolated fields – but not in my world. I have some friends who will retire – but not many. Most of us will have to scrabble until the day we die for enough to pay our insurance, buy prescriptions, pay heating bills, and buy food. That’s the fate of the majority of us in the United States.
I don’t know why, but I thought we were better than that. We’ve elected billionaires who have put millionaires and billionaires in charge of the public protections and we’ve gotten what we pay for. And when you elect billionaires, one thing you can be sure of is that they want everyone to pay. There is no public safety net. There is no protection for workers. There is no future for this country except for increasing oppression against the working class and the poverty class until the pressure becomes so extreme that it explodes. We are already seeing the vents of steam jetting from the cracks – and there is more of that to come.
At some point, the United States decided that taking care of business was the best way to take care of people. That point happened somewhere between the 1950s and the 1980s – it was a gradual erosion of the New Deal until suddenly, we found ourselves living in a society where there is no longer a deal at all except perhaps for The Art of the Deal – from nurturing to shystering and exploitation.
I find a strange comfort in beating myself up at not having made the right choices – but if I had made different choices, I could easily have found myself in worse conditions than those I live in now. The Marines and ATC could have led to an early death from alcoholism, radio has merged and consolidated until only the most talented are able to achieve careers, I could have been a dot-com has been, or a real estate tycoon who lost everything in the recession, the soul sucking work of selling stock (let’s make money from this war Bob!) could easily have led to suicide, and the list goes on. There’s really no reason or purpose in beating myself up over the past.
The future though – it is that which worries me. I cannot see a future that I want to be a part of in the United States. I cannot see a future that I want my child to be a part of in the United States. When I attempt to see the future here, I see tragedy and hardship. I wanted to come back to my country and succeed. I wanted to come back to my country and find a future I could believe in. I am trying. I am really trying to see past the storm on the horizon. From my perspective though – it just looks like it will get worse and worse and worse with no prospect for a sunny day.