It’s a little sad. I’ve always wanted to be, or at least stay in the middle class. Screw the Commies and their lickspittles who sneer at the “bourgeoisie” and their “bourgeois values”; I’m proud to espouse those values, if they mean things like hard work, a modest lifestyle, good education and aspirations to, well, just live comfortably.
But it seems that recently — thank you, Joe fucking Biden and your lickspittles — I’m no longer in that class. Instead, I’m now working class. And the realization thereof came to me as I was reading this article:
If things are hard for you and your family right now, please understand that you are not alone. Most of the country is in the exact same boat.
No kidding. We are managing — but only just — to keep our heads above water; but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do so.
In a desperate attempt to maintain their middle class lifestyles, millions upon millions of Americans have been taking on debt like never before, and as a result we are now facing an unprecedented consumer debt bubble.
We haven’t had to resort to that, with some very small exceptions, simply because we’ve cut back hugely on anything we consider non-essentials. But as costs of everything, especially essentials, have rocketed upwards, what that means is that we can’t pay down our small credit card debt to the extent we want, to where we can pay them off altogether. (The last time we had a zero balance was sometime pre-Covid, pre-flood destruction.)
Hell, I hardly ever go to the range anymore, not because of the range fees (I have a soon-to-expire annual membership, thanks to an extremely generous Reader), but because I can’t afford the ammo anymore — and this despite having shall we say a well-stocked ammo locker. I just want to keep my ammo stocks high, because you never know, right?
…and I can’t just shoot .22 LR forever.
Forget travel — and I mean local, forget international travel completely — not just because of the cost of accommodation on the road, but because I can’t afford a $60 charge at the gas pump every few hours.
Food… well, let’s just say it’s hamburger, rice ‘n beans, and not all at the same time, either.
Don’t get me started on other essential costs like electricity; I’ve already talked about those price increases (around 50%, in case anyone’s forgotten).
In short, my standard of living is around that of a European bank teller, but without the state financial assistance that the Euros can fall back on. Unlike many as discussed in the article, I refuse to “maintain” my middle-class standard of living by using credit cards because I know that at the end of that lies misery and ruin. Been there, done that, won’t go there again.
I’m not telling you all this because I want money from y’all; the annual appeal is only due in May next year.
No, I’m telling you because I am not the only one going through this. I can’t help feeling that there’s an air of desperation in the air, because if I’m feeling it, there are probably thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people in similar circumstances to mine.
And I don’t see an end to it, either. Even a Red Wave [snort] in November 2024 isn’t going to help — hell, a lottery win is more likely than that.
