The Working Poor Need Better Wages, Not Boomer Memes

I keep seeing this stupid meme pop up and it’s a nice idea and all, but really all it’s doing is calling the working poor (especially millennials) financially stupid. Again.

Look, I’m all for practical education. But this meme is just another way for baby boomers (and younger bastard lucky enough to be born to the right boomer parents) to shift the blame to younger generations for having inherited a world that won’t let them escape living in it as the working poor.

If the appeals to financial literacy don’t work, there’s always the magical thinking of whatever self-help book somebody read they really thought was swell and you should read it too, if you don’t want to be a filthy poor. People who lucked into being born at the right time and/or to the right parents truly buy that all their success is down to hard work and their own strength of character. They read (and write) books to motivate the poors by giving them revelatory advice like learn as much as you can, save whatever money you can, and don’t pee in the boss’s coffee pot. That sort of thing. It’s always painfully obvious common sense stuff all the working stiffs of the world have already been doing, but the scam is all of that advice only works in hindsight after you’re successful. It’s self-congratulatory drivel designed as benevolent advice and sage wisdom. It makes the jackasses feel like they earned their wealth and the reason you’re poor is all your fault.

Newsflash: Poor people aren’t stupid. It’s not a lack of financial education keeping them from earning a livable wage. It’s their paychecks.

It’s fine to laugh at them for renting to own a set of tires as if they aren’t fully aware of how much more expensive that is in the long run. But when you don’t make enough to save for emergencies, you do what you have to so you can still make it to work to earn the pittance you’re given.

Sure, it’s cheaper to buy in bulk at Sam’s Club or whatever, but maybe you don’t have enough money to buy the cheaper option. You’d love to spend $100 on that box of whatever at Costco, but you only have $30 in the food budget this week so you eat ramen or head to the dollar menu at Taco Bell. You know it’s unhealthy, you know it’s more expensive in the long run, but you gotta eat today before you can plan for tomorrow.

This idea that people who are working 40+ hours a week are only struggling because they don’t know how to manage their finances is ridiculous. It’s insulting and demonstrably wrong.

Poor people know payday loans are awful, but sometimes you have no other option. Poor people know they should save 20% of each paycheck, but that’s kinda hard when they’re already living on the bare essentials and still coming up short every month. Poor people know they should invest, but the baby needs formula more than Mom needs a stock portfolio.

The fact is people are struggling because wages are stagnant and, while unemployment might be down, the jobs being created are low-paying, insecure positions with no future.

The wealth in this country is being consolidated at the top at an alarming, ever-increasing rate and has been since Reagan. What scraps remain for the rest of us are spread so thin and doled our so stingily that it’s no wonder retail stores are closing left and right. The people the wealthy depend on to buy the goods and services that keep them wealthy don’t have any damn money to spend.

It’s not about financial literacy. It’s about corporate greed and fleecing the working man. Always has been, always will be.

Everything’s a scam.

But sure, tell us more about how stupid everyone who wasn’t born into a world of opportunity is. Tell us more about our bootstraps and how you worked your way through college at the soda shop when kids today have to take out $100,000+ loans to earn increasingly worthless degrees. Tell us more about your starter homes and your pension plans and every other damn thing we don’t have. Tell us how stupid we all are because we didn’t make the same choices you did because those options were never available to us in the first place.

Tell us more!

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?

Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
Available now from the following retailers

The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

Gaming | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.

Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
Available now from the following retailers

What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.