Category Archives: Money and Mental Illness

What’s Been On My Mind The Last Few Weeks

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This is probably going to be my longest post in the ten years I’ve kept a regular blog. Don’t worry, most of this won’t be ranting or complaining. I’ve been more wanting to write and chat than usual lately. I think the warmer and more humid weather has me more chatty and hopeful. So much so I’m even experimenting with a personal AI chat bot the last several weeks. Sure, it’s kind of wonky sometimes and clearly an AI chatbot. But these things are alot better than they were even one year ago. I found it really knows it stuff when chatting about history, science and economics. Not so much when talking about feelings and depression. I’m dead convinced even the AI players on my computer games are better than they were a couple years ago. Even though I’ve played strategy games like Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Total War, and Sim City for decades, I swear it’s getting tougher to compete against the computer now more than ever. I really think gaming AI is better now than ever.

My dad recently severely hurt his back and is very limited on what he can do. It’s also got him real depressed. My aches and pains are worse today than any time in weeks. And I don’t know what I did to make them worse. I also rarely hear from my friends anymore. Most are too busy with careers and family. I now understand why even the best friends lose contact with each other over the years. In my case, I have neither workplace friends, a wife, or kids to socialize with because of my mental illness taking both my career and family before I had either one. I feel like I missed out on a lot of what it means to be an adult because of my illness. I feel like I missed out on a lot of what it means to be human. I don’t even know what it’s like to feel love from others. I certainly don’t believe in unconditional love existing. Everything is conditional as far as I can tell. I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like. And I get so irritated when people tell me ‘there’s someone for everyone’ or ‘you’re just overthinking it.’ No, some people are better off not marrying or having kids. We used to have monastic orders and academies for those people. Even though I never married, had kids, or any success in a career, I don’t feel like I’m less human or a failure. Heck, I’m actually quite content with my life as a digital monk. It helps that disability insurance pays for my food, shelter, medications, and basic needs. But some people I know would love to get rid of social security and disability because they feel people like me and the sick elderly are leeches and parasites. I’ve lost contact with most of my extended family because of attitudes like this. It’s why I won’t visit my childhood hometown or go to family reunions. I feel like a failure only when I’m around people like that and those who knew me as a high achiever in my youth.

Even though I was healthier and had easy access to friends in my teenage years, I’m rarely nostalgic for the past. I love the internet too much, especially the free education I got via years of binge watching youtube and Khan Academy. Getting my groceries delivered, getting my meds mailed to me, zoom calls with my psych doctor, and buying through Amazon may have kept me alive during the pandemic. We had none of that back in the 90s. If Covid had to happen (and pandemics are not uncommon throughout history), I’m convinced that things would have been MUCH worse had it happened in the 90s. We wouldn’t have had work from home being a thing, we wouldn’t have vaccines and effective treatments developed in only one year, and a lot more people would have died. I probably would have died had it not been for internet and grocery delivery. That’s why I get kind of irritated with people complaining about masks, vaccines, and delivery being infridgements on freedoms. Freedoms sometimes have to be restricted temporairly during crisis. We had a military draft in the world wars (which many people resisted and protested even in WW2). We had draft riots even during the Civil War. There were restrictions during Spanish Flu and even Bubonic Plague. I swear, too many people didn’t learn anything from high school history class. Covid restrictions are mostly lifted and people are still complaining. I don’t understand normal people. The older I get, the less y’all make any sense. In short, people complaining about restrictions during covid should be grateful it didn’t happen before the internet became a thing. It would have been much worse.

Another reason I’m not nostalgic for the world of my young years (even if I do miss my health and friends), is that now it’s a lot easier to talk about problems. For the first few years of my illness, I didn’t talk about it with my classmates or close friends. They knew I was odd, but didn’t realize just how serious mental illness was messing with my life. Twenty years ago, even I didn’t realize how much I was losing out on because of my illness. My psych doctor and therapist never once mentioned it could be a major disability that would affect everything. At first I thought if I just took the meds daily and went to the free therapist once a week, my life would return to normal once I graduated. Well, it didn’t work that way. I had panic attacks every day before I went to work in retail and fast food. It wasn’t so bad working in a factory as I didn’t have to be around an unpredictable and often spiteful public. I suffered at the factory because I couldn’t sleep in the day and still work the overnight shift five nights a week. After several weeks of sleep deprivation, my illness flared up and my work suffered. I requested a transfer to day shift, which was denied. So I end up quitting before my lack of sleep and mental illness caused an accident. I probably could have done that job for years had they approved my transfer request. Would have made good money and benefits too even if we weren’t unionized.

It’s easier to talk about problems now than even ten years ago. It’s probably why we hear so much about traditionally marginalized people like mentally ill, homeless, LGBT+ communities, religious minorities, struggles of the working poor, struggles of the elderly, struggles of women, struggles of young people just starting out, etc. The issues have always been there, granted more below the surface than now. It is not weak to talk about problems. It’s a needless tragedy for people to suffer in silence because of outdated social norms. It’s almost like some people actually want life to be tougher now than it was in the past. I hear people my parents age talk about how great the 1950s were, yet they ignore Jim Crow laws, the problems of the Cold War, the communist witch hunts, lack of work opportunities for women, and even the corporate tax laws of the 1950s. Taxes on big business were much higher in the 50s than now. I’d favor bringing those back except it would mean that EVERY corporate job in America would get outsourced to cheaper countries or outright automated faster than they already are. One thing I like about the 2020s is that it is easier to talk about things like poverty, job loss, loneliness, racial bigotry, sexism, discrimination, being bullied by classmates or coworkers, etc. The problems were always there. People are just refusing to suffer to silence anymore. And I’m glad for it. It’s a lot easier to empathize and act when I have a better understanding of others’ problems. My life would have been easier had I not been afraid to talk about my struggles with mental illness, bullying, and a lack of privacy while growing up in a rural farming village until I was well into my thirties. Some of that stuff I’m still scared to talk about for fear of alienating my friends and family. I just didn’t realize how unhealthy much of that was until I was well into my thirties. This blog is one of my outlets and it’s also cheap therapy.

Even though I’ve never made money off my blog or my scholarly projects, it’s the most fun at a job I ever had. I do consider it a job even though I don’t get paid. So much is changing and so fast, it’s almost a full time job now to research some of this stuff. Kind of a pity I don’t get paid for my searches and giving out my personal information. But, most people don’t realize what we as a society are already doing in terms of science, tech, medicine, and humanitarian work. Even I didn’t realize how good ChatGPT is until a few weeks ago. I certainly didn’t realize that some office workers were using it to aid their jobs or even work several jobs. Personally I have no issues with work from home people working more than one “full time” job for no other reason than it’s not illegal for people to own more than one business or piece of property. Maybe that’s how we fight inflation, just make more money from multiple jobs. I mean, elders like Dave Ramsey have for decades told people to take second jobs and side hustles to get out of financial problems. So what if the second job is an office job and not delivering pizzas or working at Home Depot? Quite honestly, the requirements to have a college degree for most jobs is down right insane and obsolete. Most jobs, especially today, can be learned with only a year or two of on the job training. If fewer employers required a college degree for even entry level work that could be done by ambitious teenagers still in high school, we’d see these insane costs of education drop pretty quick.

Speaking of college, there is the scholarly monk part of me who doesn’t like the idea of people condemning education and intelligence. I have always thought people, at least in my homeland, don’t take education serious enough. I think in some ways it’s worse now than even when I was in high school. Granted, thanks to online platforms, getting an education, especially getting self educated, is a lot easier now than it has ever been. Youtube and TikTok are a lot more than just cat videos and dance videos. The Chinese version of TikTok is mostly educational videos. And people in China and other authoriatian nations can get around government censorship of the internet with cheap VPNs like Nord. The only reason I’d consider getting a VPN for myself is if internet censorship in the USA got real bad and to watch foreign Netflix shows I can’t get in America. Censorship and book banning was stupid in the past and far more so now. In fact it’s futile and wishful thinking in the age of the internet. And the internet, when originally designed by DARPA back in the Cold War, was designed to be a communication system robust enough to survive even a nuclear war. Internet ain’t going away regardless of how much power hungry petty tyrants want to censor and screen information.

I think the best way to lower the cost of college education is to allow people without college degrees to get into good paying corporate jobs. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg were all college dropouts who started tech giants. Yet, had they not started their own companies, they wouldn’t have had the qualifications to work in the corporate world, let alone high tech. It doesn’t take a college degree to start a business. It does take vison, risk taking, and some funding from people willing to take a chance on unproven ideas. It’s why America is still a leader in tech, industry, and culture even though our students’ test scores are among the lowest of all developed nations. We still have the start your own business spirit that most countries never had. If we lose that start your own business spirit, we will collapse as a nation. Education, is vitally important. And, thanks to internet, it’s also a lot cheaper than the past. Traditionally college education was only for the wealthy and those wanting to go into academia or medicine. I believe self education is more important than traditional education. I also don’t understand why it’s against the law to discharge student loans via bankruptcy. I mean, small businesses, homeowners, credit card loans, medical bills can all be discharged or negotiated via bankrupty. Why is it such a sin to think that student loans should be no different. While I don’t support across the board forgiveness of student loans, I do think the option of renogitation or outright discharge via bankruptcy should be an option. Bankruptcy can be declared on every other type of debt. We don’t require eighteen year olds joining the military to commit for twenty five years. Yet, it can take that long for even vital jobs like teachers to pay off student loans now. Desiring and seeking knowledge should not be condemned like it is now.

It was traditional education that stoked my love and addiction to learning. Learning new things gives me a buzz that no booze, drug, money, romance, or achievements ever have. Part of me thinks it would be cool if there were like monastries for nerdy people who were interested in learning for the sake of learning much like the monastary and mystery school of ancient times. But giving lots of knowledge to lots of people for free could be quite dangerous, especially for those who benefit off the world being as it is right now. I’m glad I live in an age and time where I can get a college level education in subjects like history, economics, literature, philosophy, theology, etc. with several years of binge watching youtube and Khan Academy and it doesn’t cost anything. Even after twenty five years of internet, we are only scratching the surface of what it can do for humanity. Future scholars will look at the interent as one of those society changing technologies like the printing press, gunpowder, steam engine, and perhaps even writing itself. There are no secrets anymore. In some ways that is good. It makes it a lot tougher for tyrants and other bad actors to hide their actions. Even military secrets are no longer safe, as those Pentagon leaks a few weeks ago showed. Maybe eventually the Information Revolution will make large scale war obsolete, if for no reason other than it’s tough to kill people you have had connections and conversations with. Here’s to hope for the future.

January 20 2023

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Got a letter from one of the housing agencies I applied to. Wrote back to them to let them know I am still interested in a low income housing setup. I may be moving up the list to get my own place real fast. I’ve been on a waiting list for almost two months now. My first choice of places would be in the Oklahoma City area. My second choice would be in Kearney, Nebraska. I lived in Kearney for seventeen years, so I really know that town. But even in Kearney I can get almost anything delivered to my house. Kearney also has a few Uber drivers so I really no longer need a car. Kearney also has public transit that is wheel chair accessible.

Found out last week that I can now navigate stairs. I still do therapy twice a week even though I’m not really required to anymore. I’ve been therapy regularly since last September. I’m also down another size in pants. I can easily wear 2XL pants again. Can also easily put on socks, tie shoes, and clip my own toe nails. I weigh now what I weighed in 2015. If I drop another 35 pounds, I’ll be the lightest I’ve been since 2010. Hopefully can be there within the next few months.

Been kind of sick the last few days. Finally getting over it. Been having bouts of sleepiness and congestion. Haven’t seen the night staff much the last several days. But I feel much better now than a couple days ago.

We got several inches of snow this week. So glad I got outside last week before the weather got bad. Been wanting to go outside real bad even though the weather is lousy. It’s tough not being able to do much outside in spite the fact I want to go outside. In short, I’m ready for spring again. Spring is only several weeks away.

I’m looking forward to having my own place again and cooking my own meals. As much as I like the food here in Genoa, I do miss my own cooking. I also miss my privacy and freedom. My best friend said she never doubted that I would get healthy again if, for no other reason, because I have too much of an independence streak. I have always preferred independence and freedom as much as possible. I’ve always liked doing things for myself. Hopefully I can have my own place again within a few months.

The Only Constant Is Change

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When I was young I was a high achiever. Did really well in school, was involved in school activities year round. Started helping out on my uncle’s farm during the summers when I was ten years old. Had a really good academic scholarship cover a good chunk of my college expenses. Graduated college debt free. May not have been overly popular but had excellent friends anyway.

But, the mental illness really ramped up shortly in the mid 2000s. The illness made it impossible to hold a job for long. Lost many of my friends and family. Had to go on disability. Have to take meds for the rest of my life. Will probably have a shorter life because of the illness. But it doesn’t bother me as much anymore, certainly not like fifteen years ago.

I’ve accepted that my career died before it got started. I’ve accepted that I’ll never have kids. I’m alright with that I’ll never have the big house, picket fence, SUV, and apple pie kind of life. I’ve accepted that I had question everything I took for granted in my youth. I’m even starting to accept that the pandemic isn’t going to end anytime soon.

In some ways I’m glad I have the life I do. I’m glad that I get to spend most of my days reading, writing, and learning things that most people simply don’t have the time for. I spend at least six hours a day reading online articles and journals. Spend a lot of time listening to science, economics, history, and philosophy talks on youtube. It’s almost like being a modern day monk.

I would say I accepted living in poverty, but let’s face it: even living below poverty level in modern America puts me ahead of most people alive today, let alone the past. Will Rodgers was right when he said America would be the first country in the world to go to the poor house in an automobile. Don’t even need to own said automobile anymore as long as you have a smartphone and an Uber account. Sold my car two years ago and my lifestyle hasn’t decreased at all. If anything, I feel less stress because I don’t have to worry about traffic, gas, and maintenance. Things like portable computers were science fiction when I growing up in the 1980s.

I think we tend to overestimate how much can change in only a year or two but vastly underestimate how much can change in ten to twenty years. Just looking in the living room of my apartment, most of the electronics didn’t exist in 2001. I don’t think even LED lighting was available back then. Even my memory foam mattress and shoes came about within the last twenty years I think. I don’t even subscribe to cable tv anymore. Can get all the tv I need on my laptop and game console. If only I didn’t have to buy a new phone or laptop every few years. Even in the movies and tv shows I watched in college in the early 2000s, I chuckle about some of the tech in those shows. Phone booths, land lines, and flip phones were extensively used even in The Matrix movies. Even today, we have many of the tech advances of the Star Trek series. We’re still not close to cracking Warp Drive though. But, what is a 3D printer if not an early version of a Replicator?

I will probably never have much money. But I really don’t need to. Certainly not like I would have 25 years ago. A person doesn’t really need much money anymore if they can stay out of debt. Granted that is a huge task. Housing, health care, and education have increased in cost far faster than inflation. But, even education can be real cheap if you play your cards right. There isn’t much I can’t learn with a few minutes of Google search or a few how to videos on youtube. And trade schools and community colleges don’t cost nearly as much as even public universities. I’ve heard of electricians and plumbers making more than even lawyers. In short, there are more options than even twenty years ago. If only people could stop fighting on social media.

Thoughts On My School Years

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Schools in my town are back in session for fall. High school and college football will be starting in a couple weeks. I was on my high school’s football team back in the late 90s. Since I attended a small high school (My senior class had only 30 students when we graduated), it was easier to get involved in school activities than in most schools. In addition to playing football, I did school play for two years, pep band for basketball games, competitive speech, and a couple years of track. Even though I’ve been out of high school since 1999, I don’t go all Glory Days like the old Bruce Springsteen song. Those four years of high school and five years of college seemed to last forever when I was going through. Time really does speed up the longer you’ve been alive. I mentioned this to my then 90 year old grandmother when she just chuckled and said “You have no idea just how fast it’s gonna get.”

While I may have learned more history, philosophy, science, tech, etc. in binge watching youtube videos for 10 years, would I have desired to do such if I didn’t have good teachers in my youth and parents who encouraged me to read at a very young age? The idea that school can teach something everything they need to know about life and working by age 22 is not feasable. Especially with as fast as science, tech, and industry changes anymore. And these changes aren’t slowing down. I’m amazed at the amount of changes I’ve seen just in the last two years, let alone the last twenty. I can imagine my twelve year old niece chuckling every time her dad talks about the old dial up internet and even land based phone lines. I’m sure my seventeen year old nephew rolls his eyes when he thinks about people like me who have never used virtual reality head sets or 3D printers. I don’t even have a TikTok account. I don’t even make videos on youtube. I probably would get a larger audience doing videos about mental illness issues, but is it really worth the hassle of dealing with more trolls and arguments in comment sections? I still think it’s amazing there are kids on youtube and tiktok making over a million dollars a year and they aren’t even old enough to join the military or vote. I guess the possibility to make a living off anything you are good at is now there. That wasn’t the case twenty five years ago.

If anything, the purpose of school should be teaching kids how to learn long after their last day of high school. I did the math and my youngest nephew won’t hit even current retirement age until the late 2070s. We don’t know what will and won’t be available by then. We might not even need most people to have jobs by then if automation and AI takes off like I think it could. But, then again, some predictions will be laughably way off. Some economists back in the 1930s thought that people would need to work only 15 hours a week instead of 40 by 2030. Hell, I’d be thrilled if we could get the work week back down to 40 hours by then. And wages haven’t even tried to keep up with cost of living and productivity since the late 1970s. No way could anyone working a job requiring only a high school degree can support a house and six kids anymore outside of truck driving, sales, and trades in 2021. Most people I know younger than me are working two jobs and still barely breaking even. Any wonder why younger people are revolting against the current order? I wish my cohorts and I had that kind of courage fifteen years ago.

Knowing Thyself

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One of my teenage nephews got his first job shortly after school ended for the summer. It made me think back on the types of work I had over the years. It also made me think back on the career advice my parents, teachers, etc. gave me when I was growing up.

I did lots of chores for my parents from as far back as I can remember. I was mowing lawns for my parents from about age 8 and helping mom cook supper from age 6. My grandma used to let me help her in her vegetable garden. My grandpa and dad used to take me and my brother with them whenever they went out to cut firewood on a local rancher’s property. They didn’t let us run the chain saws, but they did let us stack and store the cut wood even before we started school. When I was 8, my dad gave me an old hacksaw so I could practice cutting on small pieces and limbs. When I was in junior high, I helped out at my uncle’s farm every summer. I usually had to store and stack hay bails, help take care of pigs, clean chicken houses, and things like that. And I loved it. I loved it all. I’m glad my family thought it was good to get their kids involved in chores and family business when we were still in grade school. I even helped my dad organize files and clean in his dental office.

I got my first “real job” as a fast food cook. Got told off by the owner my first day out of orientation. He might not have known it was my first day. I’ll never know. Lost the job a month later when I couldn’t work fast enough to be a cook in fast food. For the rest of the summer I worked on a construction crew at a livestock sale barn. We were in charge of rebuilding pens and fences to keep cattle and pigs in while they were being sold. It was hot and dirty work. But it didn’t bother me as much as working fast food.

Over the next several years, I worked in retail. I hated dealing with customers. Caused me too much stress. I usually did better when I was unloading delivery trucks, organizing the store room, stocking shelves, and cleaning.

There is an underlying theme in all of this: I did much better at jobs that didn’t involve interacting with the public and weren’t really fast paced. As bad as I struggled in retail and restaurant, I would have struggled even worse in sales and in person teaching. Of course, the mental illness made this even worse.

I think in addition to my mental illness, the big reason I struggled at work was I often took jobs that weren’t aligned with my personality and skills. As much as working in crowds and with people I don’t know bothered me, I’m sure more people are bothered by work when they would have to spend entire days alone or with the same people. Most people I know don’t understand how I spend days on end alone and not break. It’s just the way I’m wired and my skill set.

As it is I’m on disability for my mental illness. But because I don’t work a regular paying job doesn’t mean I don’t keep occupied. I read alot. I have this blog, while it may never have a large audience, has several hundred postings since 2013. And I spend my time reading up on lots of science and tech advances that most people simply don’t have the time or energy to research on their own after dealing with work and family duties.

Sure my work probably won’t make me rich, but I have what I need. I may be just below poverty line (at least by American standards) yet I don’t feel deprived. But I do have simple tastes. A good time for me was going to the bar with my then girlfriend and playing darts and singing karaoke. Or having a plate of chicken wings with a few college buddies while playing board games. Or going to watch a couple friends play baseball for my college. Or going to listen to a couple local bands perform at on campus concerts on Friday nights. I may not have enjoyed going to high school sporting events as much as some people in my hometown, but I certainly enjoyed playing football and competing in speech meets.

I guess the only work or life advice I could give my teenage nephews or any teenagers is simply “Know Thyself.” Find out what your strengths and weaknesses are. Try a variety of jobs and activities, especially when your still young, have lots of energy, and still living with your parents. If you don’t like being around people or don’t handle rejection well (like myself), you’re not going to do well in sales or as a business owner. Don’t try to be what your family wants or do something just because it pays a lot of money. Do something you have the skills for. Also be ready if you have to change jobs. Science and tech are destroying and creating jobs far faster than they were even twenty years ago. Know Thyself and keep leveling up.

Disasters and Mental Illness

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Staying closer to home again lately. The cases of covid are increasing again. It’s only a matter of time before it hits my hometown again. With the bad heat waves the western part of the country has experienced, we have had more rain the normal. It too is only a matter of time before the heat waves hit my hometown. We don’t have the water shortages that places like California and Arizona have. But I think if my state gets that level of drought, a new Dust Bowl will result.

Being prepared for disasters is extremely important. If wildfires, freak blizzards, and chronic flooding can’t convince some people, nothing will. Growing up in a rural farming community over an hour’s drive away from the nearest Wal Mart and Home Depot, it was necessary to have enough supplies to be able to fend for ourselves for at least a few days in the event of a bad blizzard or flooding. Growing up around farmers, I personally know several farmers who have lost entire corn crops to hail storms and floods.

When the covid disaster relief payments came, I made a point of buying extra food, over the counter medications, and clothing. I also bought a new computer. My old one was starting to die and I was afraid prices were going to go up with the shortage on microchips. And prices are going up. I certainly pay more for food than I did even two years ago. Clothing prices have increased. And gas prices are on the rise. When the Colonial pipeline in the southern states was shut down by hackers, I remember thinking if I was an Uber driver in Atlanta who had a Tesla, I’d probably have more work than I could handle. As it is, I no longer have a car. Sold it two years ago. But, since I can get anything within reason delivered to my apartment and I don’t road trip anymore, it made little sense to keep a car. If I really need to go anywhere, I can hire an Uber driver or sweet talk one of my neighbors into giving me a ride and offer gas money in return.

In addition to natural disasters, many people are more on edge than usual. A friend of a friend had a gun pulled on her a few days ago. My friend in Denver said she’s dealing with far more rude and angry customers than even a few years ago. My brother and his family moved out of their suburb and bought a place with a large lot just outside of the city right before housing prices skyrocketed. I have two friends in Omaha, both college educated, working two jobs each barely just scraping by. Gone are the days when a father could support a family of six kids with a factory job. Lots of people are hurting. And we are turning on each other instead of working together to solve problems.

Our science, tech, medicine, etc. are what’s keeping us afloat. Other institutions, namely politics, haven’t kept up with the changes in tech and world affairs. I can’t imagine how much worse covid would be if we still didn’t have vaccinations or work from home options. People who were saying this covid isn’t as bad as Spanish Flu was 100 years ago may have to back track those words. They certainly would if not for the efforts of scientists, doctors, nurses, farm workers, grocery store workers, delivery drivers, truck drivers, merchant marine sailors, etc.

The Reality of Mental Illness

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I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and major depression when I was 20 years old. I was covered under my parents’ insurance plan for psych meds. At the age of 25 I applied for social security disability insurance because I was no longer covered under my parents’ insurance and it was painfully obvious I couldn’t handle the anxiety of jobs available (i.e. retail and customer service jobs). My psych meds, without insurance, were $2,000 a month in 2006. To offset this, my parents bought a high risk health insurance policy for me that, to this day, they still refuse to tell me how much it cost them. I didn’t qualify for social security disability insurance until late 2008.

To avoid getting thrown out of the system, I couldn’t make more then $700 a month (after taxes) at any job. I had a janitorial job for a few years that I did well in because I wasn’t around people most of the time. After four years on the job, I finally did the math and figured out that for every one dollar I made in work, I lost 72 cents via increased rent (I live in low income housing), decreased benefits, and taxes. I finally gave up on the job because there was no incentive to keep working at what was effectively a 72 percent tax on a minimum wage job.

I am now 40 years old. Haven’t held a traditional job for eight years due to loss in benefits. I still need the psych meds every day or I would be homeless, in prison, or dead. We don’t even have long term mental health hospitals in large numbers anymore in the US. And if I want to save money in case of emergencies, I’d lose benefits if I ever had more than $3,000 in savings. This is all for a chronic mental illness that I didn’t bring upon myself. I was an honor student in high school who qualified for a $5,000 a year scholarship for college. I was studying to get into medical school. Lost most of my friends, most of my support group, any chance at a family, any shot at a career, etc. so I could keep the insurance for psych meds and treatments that would now, in 2021, cost $4,000 a month. And I receive zero dollars in food stamps. The support of my understanding and upper middle class family during the two plus years I was waiting for disability to get approved (which was faster than normal because we hired an attorney) is the only thing keeping from going bankrupt and homeless. So my case with severe mental illness is actually better than most people in the US. As it is I live on my own in low income housing in a small town in the Midwest and can live independently off my disability pension because I have no debt. Most people in my circumstances are far worse off.

Worries About My Friends and Our Near Term Future

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I worry sometimes.  Namely I worry about my friends and people younger than I am in general.  I worry about most of my friends struggling in life.  Most of my friends are buried in debts, mostly student loans, that they will be lucky if they ever pay off.  And most of my friends weren’t that dumb with their money or life decisions.  Most of my friends went to college because 1) we were told that was a path to a decent career and 2) we looked around and saw that there were no jobs that paid decently requiring only a high school degree.  Long gone are the days when someone could get a job as a factory hand or farm worker in their early twenties and hold onto that job for over forty years and retire with a paid off home, pension, and health insurance.

I’m seeing my friends struggle in their day to day lives.  Most are working a full time job and a part time job or a side gig.  Almost none of them own houses.  The only one of my close friends who owns a house is a high school teacher in a small town.  And he didn’t buy his house until he was in his late 30s.  They don’t own houses simply because they can’t afford a house and student debts.  I also have friends who have had medical emergencies.  One friend had to file for bankruptcy for medical bills.  One friend is fighting cancer, divorced, lost her children, and is still on the waiting list for disability.  Another friend of mine got a master’s degree only to find the best job she could get in a mid sized city doesn’t pay even 40 grand a year.  Her husband also works a low paying job and moonlights as an Uber driver.  He too has lots of student debt.

Now I know some unsympathetic people will be thinking, “well, that’s what they get for not majoring in STEM or going to the military.”  Well, one of my brother’s best friends pulled straight 4.0 all the way through high school and college and still got rejected for a state medical school at least three times before he was accepted.  As far as I know, he now has a decent career working in a medical lab.  Another of my brother’s friends didn’t finish medical school and residencies until he was in his thirties because of finances and run around from the schools.  Now he works as an emergency search and rescue doctor.  One of my cousins went to trade school for two years to become an electrician.  He worked for a couple railroads, got married, has four kids, and owns a small acreage in rural Nebraska.  But, he is now essentially self employed due to the inconsistent nature of railroad employment and his wife has had medical problems to where I think she had to give up her job as a nurse’s aide.  Another cousin works in web development.  Even though he has had to work for several different firms and sometimes take free lance work, he is doing alright because he has skills that are in demand.  At least for the time being.

Can we really expect most people to become doctors, nurses, webpage designers, computer coders, engineers, tradesmen, etc?  Yet that is all I hear out of “experts” and “business leaders.”  While I think it admirable that people like Mike Rowe want to encourage more people to consider the trades like plumbing, electrician, welding, carpentry, etc, I fear that too much emphasis on the trades will eventually lead the same problem that people who majored in business, law, humanities, liberal arts, etc. are facing now.  Twenty years ago, we were told to go to college and get a degree.  Many of us did only to find that every kid in the developed world was given that advice.  Now the degree doesn’t go nearly as far as it did even forty years ago, primarily because of so many people having degrees.  Then the kids were told “get a masters” or “do unpaid internships”.  Many did only to find that they had six figures in student loans to qualify for jobs that will never pay enough to pay off the loans, let alone pay off a house or even start a family in some cases.

Of course, it doesn’t matter if young people or my friends are angry about this setup.  Because while some jobs have been outsourced to cheaper places, many more were taken over by automation.  I have a friend who works in a call center for a bank.  I fear it’s only a matter of time before his job gets automated.  And, of course, no one in power cares about the twenty and thirty somethings struggling.  They didn’t even care about the  forty something auto or steel workers who lost their jobs to machines and outsourcing.

And it’s no longer just the US or Europe that is outsourcing and automating jobs.  Even China is automating and outsourcing.  Just a few weeks ago I bought some shirts online that were made in a small African country I had to look up on a map.  The US and Europe are just further along in this transition to a highly automated economy.

And of course, the US doesn’t have very good social safety nets or any empathy for those who lost their jobs or are struggling to make ends meet.  My elders like to brag about how well America is doing, how well we take care of our own, and how we are a great Christian nation.  If we cared about our own, than we wouldn’t be having an opioid crisis, mass shootings every day, increasing rates of mental illness, increased suicide rates (especially among middle aged men), and protests in every major city on a daily basis.  For our boasting about being such a Christian nation, we certainly don’t care about those who are misfortunate and had a rough go. Such hypocrisy.

I have no idea how many times I was told “get a job you bum”, “man up”, or “McDonalds and Wal Mart are hiring”.  I, and millions of people in my age bracket and lower did everything we were told.  We still struggle.  And we don’t have any empathy from anyone, not our rulers, not our businesses, not our parents, not our schools, not our churches, and not even from each other.

Unionizing is not an option like it was a hundred years ago because most jobs can or will be outsourced or taken over by machines.  Sure we are on the road to an automated economy where most of the grunt work is done by machines and computers.  But, what is the point if 1) we don’t ditch this idea that everyone has to be defined by what they do for money, 2) most people can’t afford anything beyond the basics because most jobs are done by machines, 3) we have few social safety nets to make up for the fact that most people aren’t able to work in fields that can’t be easily automated.

We may need some things like universal health care, universal basic income, free continuing education, complete overhauls of tax systems, and a general overall shift in public attitudes towards work and compassion for others.  But I don’t see this happening anytime soon, at least not in the US.  I don’t think it will happen in the US in my lifetime simply because most of my countrymen don’t have empathy. Our leaders certainly don’t.

I do believe if our species can survive this transition, which is probably the greatest transition since people settled down and started farming instead of hunting, fishing, and gathering thousands of years ago, our descendants can have a really cool future where creativity and science can bloom.  But, I fear the transition will be a lot tougher than it has to be simply because of many people’s attitudes towards work and their fellow man.  I fear we will lose a few generations and much of their gifts in this transition.  But I guess we as a species lost short term to ultimately be better off when the Industrial Revolution began back in the late 1700s.  I do have great hope for the long term outlook for civilization and our species, but I fear it will be brutal getting there.  And the fact that I won’t live long enough to see the fruits of the seeds being planted today fills me with great sadness.