A very dear and important friend of mine (a real human I've actually seen in real life one time, even though we met initially online, through these blog things back in the mid-aughts) sent me a message (not a text, this was through Facebook Messenger. We like talking to each other, but it's way hotter when we know someone is watching us do it) lamenting that she was paying $4.10/gallon for gas where she lives along the Gulf of Mexico coast. I laughed* and said if gas anywhere out here where I am were $4.10/gallon, you'd all know about it because of the mob of rioting people we'd have murdering one another to get in line. It's a weird concept, people crazed with want but also having the presence of mind to form an orderly queue once the violent jockeying is resolved, but they already do it at the Costco gas station, spending like two to five gallons of gas idling in wait to save about $0.08/gallon as it is. I can only assume the higher the savings, the more intense the queuing.
There's a price to being a Coastal Elite. You get the benefits of course, like access to the best sunrise/sunsets, weather patterns mellowed by the constancy of ocean temperatures, the unique opportunity to spend $3 or more per square foot in rental rates, mostly reliable access to abortion in the short term at the very least... But there are some minuses, mostly in cost of living. I've been lucky in that I got the mortgage I am currently in the midst of paying off starting in 2003, then refinanced in 2010 or so (I'll just say it, divorce can be a real nuisance), so even with the modest living I make not being a famous internet writer, I'm pretty solidly stuck in. I can even afford a little genuine exorbitance from time to time, like new shoes or DoorDash fees. It's a life of real comfort.
Everything is more expensive now, even money. It doesn't feel like I'm spending more overall, but I am finding my credit card bill to be a bit higher than I suspected most months. I haven't started actively bargain shopping or belt-tightening, but it has discouraged me from making some larger purchases I was contemplating. I'd heard some Russian oligarch yachts were going for a relative bargain these days, but it just doesn't feel like the right time to invest in 350-foot pleasure craft to me. It's not just the raw cost, but the ancillary bills for slip fees, fuel, serving staff, cocaine and ethnically-sourced prostitutes... it's the hidden necessities that really get you.
As long as I don't overextend myself, should be OK, but I'm lucky to be of the fortunate lower-middle class. I have a house and one car, so I just clear that bar. But like everything else in this country, every flick to the nutsack by the invisible hand of of the market as well as every deliberately implemented economic policy, the burden is always immediately felt by the people with the least. There's a bleakness to real poverty, a visceral closing of options when things turn sour. I remember this from my youth, when we were foodstamp white trash. Not only do you usually get a double or triple smack from everything you couldn't afford already suddenly costing more or becoming less available, you also get the privilege of hearing a certain percentage of political types** intimating with only slightly varying levels of vociferocity that it's probably mostly your fault. If only you'd try harder, or did a better job not getting pregnant via rape or incest, maybe we wouldn't all be in this situation.
There's a calculus to the kicking of the poor that is unbalanceable. A capitalist system is an unfair system. That's not a moral judgment, that's just the way it works: a certain percentage have to own the means of production*** and a necessary, larger percentage have to be available to churn out the product in exchange for compensation that a) allows them to participate in the consumer economy but b) allows the production-class to continue to make profits. The critique of the poor only makes sense if it were possible to have a modern capitalist economy where literally everyone was rich. An absurdity. But one that we insist on at the warmest, hardest core level of our culture (economic and otherwise). It's the only way Kansas makes any kind of fucking sense. Well, that and racism.
---
*Typed out in Messenger-message form, but it's a pretty basic ask for an emoji
**We have two "pro-business" parties. It's 100%.
***I know how this is sounding, just stick with me, comrades.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment