The temporarily fortuitous indigent

The article Americans Are Not As Poor As They Think They Are by Thomas Wells (3 Quarks Daily) writes,

“The evidence shows that most Americans are richer than ever, and richer than most people in the rich world – that they consume more, live in larger homes, and so on. They are objectively some of the luckiest people in world history. On the one hand all this narcissistic whining about imaginary poverty is mildly annoying for the rest of the world to have to listen to. On the other hand, it reflects shared delusions about individual entitlements and America’s economic decline that are driving a toxic ‘doom politics’ of cynicism and resentment, while also neglecting the needs of actually poor Americans.”

OK, sure. Probably the wrong people are also complaining, but I think the author might be misunderstanding the message. There seem to be two problems for the author. First of all, people who the author thinks have no right to complain about the economy are complaining about the economy. This probably includes the kind of people that the New York Times interviews about how it’s impossible to live in NYC on less than $300k per year.

Second of all, those who would be justified in complaining about the economy are apparently not articulating their feeling of insecurity to the author’s satisfaction. When these people are asked whether the economy is bad, they say “yes”, which is technically wrong, but what they mean is that the system sucks. What they mean is that they might have enough money but they don’t feel secure.

The economy is just one facet of society, which has an obligation to provide some basics to its people. One of those basics is some sort of plan to allow people to relax and breathe a little, knowing that everything they have won’t simply disappear overnight. It’s not just about money. It’s not even mostly about money. It’s about living somewhere nice, near people that you like. It’s about not worrying whether you’ll have that roof over your head or whether you’ll have enough to eat.

We’ve been trained to translate that desire into a desire for money, but that’s not where it comes from. You could say that the system perverts that completely human, understandable, and reasonable desire into a desire for money. Once you desire something fungible instead of concrete things, then you also lose track of how much you actually need. Whereas a desire for a home and security is bounded, a desire for money becomes, for many, pathologically unbounded. They system also promotes it because we’re in an unlimited-growth, highly consumerist economy.

“(Although some, like the extreme cost of health-care compared to other rich countries are attributable to America specific causes, such as peculiarly dysfunctional institutional arrangements.)”

Why does the author not realize that they’ve obviated their own line of reasoning by parenthetically hand-waving away the cost that causes most bankruptcies in the U.S.? Instead of lambasting people for whining, try to figure out if they’re whining about the wrong thing. Maybe, when they complain about poverty, they mean, rather than not having enough money, that they feel a sense of precarity, a lack of security, a foreboding that it could all end on a whim.

They’re not poor now, but maybe they’re expressing the real worry that they might be if they ever. Stop. Hustling. Thirty-year-olds can look forward to having six to ten more jobs for different employers before they can even think of retiring. Each job will be increasingly difficult to get, unless you’re gifted or work at something that can’t be automated away or made obsolete.

An influencer might be technically middle-class right now, but has no future. Work lives are decades long, while jobs and careers are 2-5 years long. Insecurity? Fear? You betcha. People are aware that they will have to do unprincipled, soul-crushing things to retain their position—and even that might not work. They feel temporarily not poor because that’s the best their society is willing to offer.

Whereas Steinbeck’s quote that “[…] the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires” might have once been true, it’s probably more accurate to say now that “the middle-class see themselves not as safe and sound, but as the temporarily fortuitous indigent.”

“Americans live in smaller households in larger homes and drive bigger better cars than they used to. It may be that many Americans can’t afford the lifestyle which they feel they deserve (and maybe they do deserve more!), but the lifestyle they can afford is nevertheless much better than that of previous generations.”

The author is evaluating “better” purely in monetary terms and not in psychic or security terms. That’s all we can say: f&@k you for saying the economy sucks or the system sucks—if you can even express such a thought—you have more stuff than ever! What are you whining about?

“A bigger problem is the division between the majority who enjoy housing wealth and the minority without it (especially younger people).”

Again, the author tosses this in as an aside, when it’s pretty salient. An entire generation has no idea what’s going to happen over the next 50 years, but the current generation has their nut, so they should be happy about it. Can’t you think that the economy sucks even if you personally benefit from it? Are you not allowed to evaluate the economy as “shitty” because it’s not scaleable?

There’s also the laser-like focus on measuring wealth in term of an illiquid asset that is a large proportion of most households’ wealth (their home). You can borrow against it, but that doesn’t feel secure, especially if you’re aware of the regularity of popped bubbles that deflate this fictitious wealth. People don’t believe in the numbers anymore—or in the fairy tale told by their society. They figure it wouldn’t take much to lose all control and end up dependent on help or end up on the street. This feeling is promoted by all levels to keep wages low. The system uses fear to keep the rabble in line, demonizes poverty and welfare, then wonders why people are terrified of poverty.

“(Real research institutions that care about getting their methodology and facts right, like the Fed, come to very different numbers.) Nevertheless, even obvious nonsense will be believed if it is endlessly repeated and left unchallenged.”

Which rumors and numbers, though? There are good economists—like Dean Baker—telling these stories as well, about how something like forty percent (I can’t remember exactly) of American households would not be able to handle a surprise bill of five hundred bucks without borrowing money. Are those economists deluded as well?

Maybe people just don’t buy the bullshit low, low numbers of inflation and unemployment because they’ve been massaged nearly beyond all meaning.