You know, the whole idea of a "cost of living" is actually pretty damn absurd. I can live on about $40k post-tax, even in the Bay Area, paying $2k/month rent. That's pretty much the most basic version of life I can live that includes being able to sleep inside a home with water, heat, and electricity, while also being able to take care of my dog and go to the park with her a few days a week.
But, if, somehow, I can't come up with $40k, I don't get to live even that basic life. That's cold, hard capitalism for ya. And even in California, there aren't even social programs available that can simultaneously keep someone from starving while also living indoors.
Oh, and the "cost of living" goes up all the time.
Now, I'm not saying I want to be a layabout and just not work, drink Mountain Dew, and eat Cheetos or something. People, including myself, actually love work, if it's work that has meaning to them. Being productive is something people are hardwired to love. What they don't like is being told what being productive is, and they especially don't like toiling away forever while watching other people get the vast majority of the benefit from them doing so.
The worst part about all this is that the rules of economics are just fucking made up, and we could literally change them at any time. Whether you think it was a good idea or not, we actually did that in 2020, when governments worldwide shut down things like bars, restaurants, gyms, travel, &c. We did that! For better or for worse, we did that! The fact that we all, collectively, could do a thing like that means that we can do other things that are just as big and seem just as impossible.
What we need is a reason. And that reason is (or, rather, ought to be) that we now have an economy that simply does not work for most people. Last I checked, around 2/3 of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck. Now, sure, that counts people who are just bad with money. There will always be people like that. Improving financial literacy is definitely something that needs to be done. But, for the most part, what that 2/3 statistic is saying is that we have an economy that normal people can't function in, if by "function," you mean "get through day to day life, while also being able to save back some resources for the future."
The way to fix all this is that we need to realign the economy. We have to make sure that the people who make the economy work (i.e. workers) gain most, or at least more of the benefits of doing so. I realize that's a pretty broad statement, and that a lot of this that I've written here sounds like a left wing populist stump speech, but I'm not running for office. I'm just a simple software engineer; I'm not rich enough to be able to drop everything and run a political campaign instead of working as a cog in the machine.[1]
What I'm saying is that we need to make sure people can afford to live. The median male worker now has to work 53 weeks to afford a year's worth of expenditures on housing, health insurance, transportation, and education.[2] The same source shows that the average female worker needs to work 66 weeks to afford those expenditures. As they so drolly quote the author of the study these figures come from, "This is a problem, as there are only 52 weeks in a year."
We also need to realign how work works. People, especially younger people, have gotten so alienated from the whole concept of work that there's a subreddit with hundreds of thousands of subscribers called "anti-work" that's all about this. And we definitely have to realize as a society and as a species that money is basically made up bullshit. The thing that needs to matter is people, not money.
I'm going to cut this off here, because it's already starting to look like I've written the first page of my manifesto lol.... But, I hope you get the idea. The economy doesn't work. We can change that. We should change that.
That's it for now, at least until the inevitable grilling y'all are gonna give me about exactly how I expect us to actually accomplish that.
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[1]: That's another problem, but I'm going to leave that one alone for now.
[2]: https://www.businessinsider.com/america-middle-class-living-...