Moving really is just the objectively correct answer. People can't always live in the big city, there are a number of places where you can very comfortably live for not much at all.
Moving is also both financially and socially disruptive, which is why "just move" is more often than not the precise opposite of the objectively correct answer for people who are already financially stressed and therefore likely dependent on their social connections to minimize various living expenses (e.g. moving in with friends/family, and/or having friends/family watch your kids while you're at work).
Yes, plenty of people do end up moving, but almost always as a last resort, and almost always with a preference toward places where they already know people. I ended up moving cities after high school because nobody in my hometown was willing to hire me (this being the years immediately after the '08 recession; even McDonald's was flooded with college-graduate applicants). That was only possible because I already had a job lined up in a town close enough to where my grandparents lived that I could live with them until I had my own apartment. Not everyone is as fortunate as I am.
Or, as I just explained above, your economic situation is so bad that you outright can't afford it unless you're desperate enough to walk however many hundreds of miles required.
I could be a million dollars in debt, disabled, with kids, and still find a way to move. Sorry but I don't buy it that you're ever too poor to move. I think people just don't want to make the sacrifices necessary for it.
Can be tough if parenting is shared. You'll probably have to see a judge and if the other parent won't agree they'll just award them custody and now there is a warrant for your arrest because you missed payments while hitchhiking to some far away place with jobs.
Otherwise yeah easy problem to solve, there is always a train or car you can ride on.
Yeah, if you're gonna lead with that sort of blatant victim-blaming, then I'd expect a coherent explanation of one's reasoning in the very first paragraph.
It ain't progressives who are gouging renters. It ain't progressives who are jacking up food prices. It ain't progressives who are buying up entire neighborhoods as investments. It ain't progressives who are jacking up medical costs, and it ain't progressives who are denying insurance coverage for said costs.
I felt that the headline was poorly chosen. He’s digging much further back—to the second half of the 19th century, when apparently 30% of Americans would move house in any given year. The “progressives” in this equation were those of decades ago—although he does trace a line through to the modern state of affairs—but the headline feels like a poor editorial choice. It’s a serious and considered piece of research, opinionated but not as combustible as the headline suggests.
I count my lucky stars that I'm fortunate enough to not have to make such a choice. But you're suggesting this person move away from their friends and family (not to mention taking a spouse and kids) to an inhospitable place to work on an oil rig? You know, to do a (famously) astronomically taxing job (when you'd most need that love, comradery, and support)...alone?
I've got those city-slicker wanderlust glasses on, and could, for a time, probably enjoy working on an oil rig. But alone? I'd honestly rather live in my parent's/friend's basement and be a walmart greeter.
There's so much focus on trying to increase income and not so much on trying to reduce expenses. Both sides of the equation work, but not equally.
I find reducing expenses is much easier. I manage to live on about 20% of my net income, and I could make more than two of me live while earning minimum wage. Since the amount of savings needed for retirement is directly related to your expenses, by reducing them you need to save even less.
Make a budget, see where you can save the most. Move to a low cost-of-living area, get rid of your car, learn to cook, and in general learn to be content on less.
Sure, we can't dream for the standard of living our parents and grandparents had anymore. But this standard was in no way realistic. It was fueled by an era of cheap energy and a booming, young population. It was never environmentally sustainable. Nor would it be even with renewable energy. We have to adjust our standards.
The tragedy for me is not on an economic level, it's on a social level. The fragmentation of ideologies, the loss of community, the loneliness, the atrophy of real life interactions. Not that I have known much of what it was like before. Yet this is also a choice we make collectively. Rebuilding community takes time but it's definitely doable. And from my experience it starts by moving aside from technology.
Tough question and no easy answer. From your comment I would guess you are around 25, give or take a decade.
Look at history and read about the union fights around 1900, to me that is the place were young people are now. You will need to fight and more fight for your life.
Young people also face an enormous propaganda machine constantly telling them unions are bad, they just take your dues, you'll never make more money negotiating together, rugged individuality is the religion, and Real Men Do Everything On Their Own. So union membership continues to shrink. Most people under 30 are probably not old enough to have ever even seen a powerful union that delivers results for its members, let alone have the chance to join one without being hosed down with anti-union propaganda. Amazon alone "deployed a staggering amount of anti-union propaganda, bombarding workers with flyers, mailers, Instagram ads, Facebook posts, brochures, videos, phone calls, posters, mandatory meetings, a website, text messages, and notifications" on their internal workplace app[1]. While they soak up all the excess value workers produce and hand it over to themselves and shareholders.
The deck is totally stacked against the next generations. I feel pretty grim for my kid's future to be honest.
> Young people also face an enormous propaganda machine constantly telling them
I've had folks in my age group (30s) complain about the travails of our generation over aprés, after a day of skiing, and in advance of their next international travels. Part of the propaganda is the fetishisation of victimhood.
> Most people don’t have enough money for that lifestyle
Agreed. My point is most people in America has a lot to be thankful for, and yet everything in social media seems programmed to drive the opposite. (Being thankful doesn't mean one stops fighting for more.)
> But you don't have to make yourself miserable for not being a billionaire.
I don't think that's what the OP Redditor is complaining about. He's complaining that as a 30+ year old, despite his best efforts, he can't seem to get any kind of footing as a self-sufficient adult, and can't even afford to live on his own. This is a pretty common complaint for young people today, and it's grounded in reality. I don't think this is anything like someone complaining that they're not a billionaire.
Heck, I'm almost 50, and I frequently feel that constant low-burn fear that if it weren't for my fairly decent job, my family and I would be in huge trouble financially, and un-recoverably so. I'm thankful, but also fully aware of how precariously I am walking the tightrope. There's no safety net or grace period in the USA anymore. Once you're down, you're out.
God damn..
I'm near the top 5% of income for my age bracket and I feel the same..
Just... gahh... what is the point of this.. I feel the same way minus roomates... funny enough, I'm actually considering moving back in with housemates because living by myself is so uneventful..
I've been on the dating app hamster wheel for years..
Something is so broken here.. I'm not so sure wealth is even the answer..
Get roommates! I bought a house and almost continuously have friends in the guest suite. It's been great, and I'm honestly living some of the best years of my life.
I don't mean this as a moral judgement, and you should live the way you want. What you're describing sounds like an issue of spending habits, not really an issue of income. Maybe you'd prefer to live a certain lifestyle regardless, and that's your choice IMO, but it does tend to come with little in the way of savings.
The easy availability of credit and focus on consumption has led many people, myself included, into patterns of behavior that are either unsustainable or at the very least excessive/expensive.
It's hard to imagine being in the top 5% of earnings for an age-group, with the ability to afford single-occupancy dwelling, where the problem isn't outflows.
OP doesn't sound like they're describing a lack of money. They're describing depression. Lack of friends, lovers and community. Loads of miserly fucks are lonely as hell despite not spending a modicum of their millions.
I admit that did seem to be the case, but I hesitate to judge when so many people these days are isolated, especially post-Covid. You make a good point though, and if someone is at the point of seeking roommates for company, that's probably the point where they should take the plunge and see if it fills the gap.
Several come to mind off the top of my head just from personal experience:
- Debt
- Medical expenses
- Child care
- The cost of that single-occupancy dwelling
Like yeah, obviously the outflows are the problem, but not all outflows are avoidable, and it's pretty presumptuous to jump to the conclusion that this is some problem that can be fixed by better spending habits. No amount of cutting out avocado toast or whatever is going to make hospital bills go away.
OP seems intelligent and articulate to me. I'm not sure a "non-intelligent" person could even post on reddit. OPs problem is marketable skills if he wants to work for somebody else, or small business entrepreneurship if not.
The military is great. Most positions are non-combat, and you can get a nice pension and other great benefits like VA loans if you stay in long. Can give you specialized training that leads into other careers too if you hate it. Obviously it's not an easy path, but lots of "non intelligent" people can find success.
But otherwise, if you're poor you should do what other poor people do. Get married(dual income), live with family(more income and economies of scale), accept a long commute, and only shop at Costco. All of these can bring the cost of living down significantly. That's what most poor / lower class people do. Also doing all of this doesn't mean you have to be unhappy.
Red herring. Reality is some people in our society don’t have supersubsistence economic value. Historically, we let them starve. Now we have a chance to do differently.
OP describes unemployment. Not leverage. Not gambling. And not being ripped off on their pay. Just not having a job they can be paid for (where they are).
With fewer than 2% of people employed in agriculture, the US produces more food than needed for ten billion people. Capital distributions are the source of declining wealth for most people.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA
Of course the common course provided food insecurity. See the book why nations fail. -- making markets necessary,
but excessive capital concentration (rent seeking) also reduces the productive capacity of an economy via, restricting capital flows through verticals.
> notion that labor must be sold for basic survival is in and of itself the problem
One, this isn't a thing in the developed world.
Two, why not? Existence isn't free, and denying that reality is bound to lead to problems. Strong communities tend to start with acknowledging the reality that is the cost of existing. From that flows the value of existence, the value of others' existence to one's own, and thus, altruism.
From this we can logically conclude that some people do not have sufficient value to exist. Perhaps there should be special camps for them? Maybe we could deliver them to thise camps in some sort of trains?
Alternatively let us consider that every person may have an intrinsic right to exist, even if they do not fit well within our society. After all, our society made a hunter gatherers lifestyle impossible by introducing land ownership. To those who cannot thrive within the new system don't we at least owe the modern equivalent of a hunter gatherers subsistence lifestyle? I suspect that debt is the price we pay for making the alternative impossible.
If we take it as granted that life has a "cost" (and therefore a value), it is also a given that someone must pay that cost for people to live. Given that some people are born more capable than others of paying the cost (their value) we find ourselves forced to take the monsterous position that some lives have intrinsicly more value than others, and worse that some lives have negative value as they cost more than than the value they provide.
However, it is obviously not true that life itself has a fixed "cost", except within one of the specific systems of government that acknowledge property rights and the concept of cost in general. A lone man born into nature incurs no "cost" by existing, he is a part of the ecosystem that supports him and "costs" it no more than the beasts of the forest "cost" it.
"Cost" as a concept is a fiction that we develop to trade with other humans, not some natural and unavoidable aspect of life granted to us from the gods.
> This is compatible with the statement "existence isn't free."
It is not. Existence is free, and the only cost it incurs is within our imaginations. The obligation to care for those who can't or won't function within the new systems of trade are the debt we owe for taking that freedom away by enforcing property rights through violence. The obligation is real, the cost is a social fiction dreamt up for accounting purposes.
I mean, if you're saying that the US doesn't count as "the developed world" then I'd agree with you, but otherwise I'd encourage you to take a field trip to your local river banks and highway underpasses if you want to see what happens if you fail to sell your labor.
> Existence isn't free
It'd be pretty darn close to it if the means of said existence weren't hoarded and price-gouged for the sake of profiteering and rentseeking. We have enough food in the US to end world hunger. Most cities have more vacant homes than they have homeless persons. Any supposed scarcity of basic essentials is artificial.
> Strong communities tend to start with acknowledging the reality that is the cost of existing.
Strong communities tend to start with acknowledging that their members deserve to have food to eat, clothes on their backs, and rooves over their heads, and are consequently willing to operate on a principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
> take a field trip to your local river banks and highway underpasses if you want to see what happens if you fail to sell your labor
Very few of those folks are there because they're ready and willing to work but just can't find a job. (Those who are, the transitional homeless, tend to find one.)
> We have enough food in the US to end world hunger
We have enough atoms in the universe for anything. Getting them to the right place is the challenge.
Ending world hunger would require massively decreasing living standards in the rich world. Your aforementioned homeless under a bridge have better access to resources than much of the human population.
> Very few of those folks are there because they're ready and willing to work but just can't find a job. (Those who are, the transitional homeless, tend to find one.)
Most of the chronically homeless started off as transitionally homeless. The longer you're in that hole, the harder it is to climb out - and the greater the psychological toll, and the greater the temptation to turn to drugs/alcohol to numb the psychological and physical suffering resulting from being in that hole.
> Ending world hunger would require massively decreasing living standards in the rich world.
I very much doubt that.
But fine, we can start by ending hunger in the "rich" world.
> Most of the chronically homeless started off as transitionally homeless
Sure. Doesn't change the fact that someone "tak[ing] a field trip to [their] local river banks and highway underpasses" is going to see about 5x more transitionally homeless than chronically homeless [1].
> we can start by ending hunger in the "rich" world
It's a good goal. And we're making progress on it [2]. Starving to death in the rich world is largely a thing of the past; consider the meaning of our shifting our measure of food insecurity from starvation to hunger.
Americans have it pretty easy compared to the rest of the world. You guys have an actual economy versus countries like Canada where our economy has been gutted and our productivity is at record lows.
No. Rich Americans do, while everyone else doesn't because America has one of the high rates of economic inequality in the developed world.[0] Why do you think there are so many homeless people in America? America also lacks universal healthcare, unionization at meaningful rates, worker protections, compels slavery of incarcerated people to work for corporations, and offers poor people an inconsistent usually pittance of help. It's far easier to live in Canada, the UK, or somewhere else because there's a social safety net that America lacks.
The polls show majority doesn't like Trump's idea. Almost half of US understands that. From this side Canada looks like exemplar democracy. No crime, no border, no zillions of migrants/year. Probably we don't know all the details. But if not Canada then what?!
The trades do pay well per hour (or at least all my friends who are in the trades are paid well per hour), but with two important caveats:
1. It's the union jobs that pay well.
2. You might not get a full 40 hours of work per week.
----
In any case, I think the big non-white-collar job category worth investigating is trucking. "But YellowApple!" I can already hear you retort, "self-driving trucks will put truckers out of a job!" Yeah, I'll believe that when robots are able to put chains on tires, deal with asshole cops nitpicking log books, and otherwise reliably handle the bullshit truckers put up with as part of their job descriptions. AI might be able to automate the driving part, but I don't see human operators being absent from the cabs anytime soon.
Before you try trucking, rent a 12 foot trailer or a 26 foot penske diesel box truck, then drive it around the tightest urban commercial roads you find and maybe try a poorly designed lumber yard while you're there. Maybe try some mountainous interstate driving in winter with it too.
Trucking pays well because it's constantly terrifying, horrible hours, and often a recipe for divorce.
Median salary is above the median for all workers, for a job that ain't going anywhere (well, aside from physically, obviously) any time soon. That's the critical part.
That overall median plasters over a bunch of nuances, though, like:
- Whether you're a company driver or an owner-operator; owner-operators earn more, but they need to own/lease and maintain their own trucks.
- Whether you paid out-of-pocket for CDL training or if you did it through an operator like Swift (wherein they put you through their internal trucking school and then require you to work for them at suppressed wages until it's paid off).
- Whether you're working regional or OTR / long-haul jobs; long-haul pays better.
- Whether you've got e.g. hazmat endorsements and other special qualifications beyond a class A driver's license.
This is an answer most should try. My relative is mentally disabled, but functional. With help from his family he got a used truck, and started lawn care and junk removal. Over time he built a business, and was able to afford his own home. The self esteem he earned for himself and for his family is something I greatly respect.
You can also see a lot of individually started businesses go broke.
Most new businesses fail.
Even if you want to start your own business, you almost certainly need to be employed in that field for an extended time first, otherwise, how will you learn the trade?
Plus, if the OP were of entrepreneurial nature, they probably wouldn't be asking.
Apropos from yesterday's server status "fortune cookie":
A young man wrote to Mozart and said:
Q: "Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any
suggestions as to how to get started?"
A: "A symphony is a very complex musical form, perhaps you should begin with
some simple lieder and work your way up to a symphony."
Q: "But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old."
The problem they're having is a common problem for people who are intelligent even. There are a few highly intelligent highly exceptional people that are the exception and in our society with the massive amount of instant communication we have makes it seem like they're the norm but they're not. These are just truly exceptional people even if we pointed them like they're blundering idiots.
For smart people, average people, and below average people we often fall into the same problem that they're describing. What do we do? How do we take advantage of opportunities? How do we get ahead? Even to the point of how do you get to a normal middle class lifestyle. I struggled with this for a long time. The first answer is to adjust your expectations and align them more with reality. Learn how to do without, learn how to live at an income level lower than what you have regardless of what that income level is. Then take the blinders off to opportunity. Because you talk about the income in labor fields not being what is advertised. The problem is you're looking at the labor fields in a given area, or with a given set of restrictions. People often look for their opportunities only where they're at and not at the opportunities they have in other places or or other fields. We're often afraid to take risks that allow us to take advantage of those opportunities. Sometimes we have burdens that we have assumed such as a spouse and family that prevent us from taking advantage of opportunities. More often, in my experience, we have burdens that we have placed upon ourself artificially that allow us not to take advantage of the opportunities. Once you can get out of the mindset that you are tied to an area or a location or a field where all of these burdens that trap us the opportunities are there and you're willing to take the risk to take advantage of them.
It took me many years to understand this and realize all of the opportunities of my youth that I didn't take advantage of because I was blind to them at the time. Worse yet I can remember the specific instances where people told me of the opportunities and told me specifically what I needed to do but I made excuses and found reasons why I couldn't do it. Hindsight shows me that was all just an artificial barrier I put in my head. What held me back for a long time was myself. People were there they pointed out what could be done, career paths to opportunities that were available. Oftentimes these were the older people that young people so often dismiss. When you're young it's easy to dismiss saying, you don't understand what it's like today. I can tell you I made that same lame excuse and when I try and help out younger people now I get the same lame excuse from them. It's a total excuse and they are holding themselves back. Then they blame everyone and everything else around them saying they are not able to achieve a modest level of success.
Yes it's incredibly difficult to become the next Jeff bezos or any of these other mega billionaires. It's possible, but it's difficult, it requires something inside of you that most people don't have and it requires some luck. To achieve a middle class lifestyle doesn't require luck doesn't require high level of intelligence or highly skilled things it requires simply not being afraid to take advantage of opportunities. While those opportunities may seem risky in the moment because you've never done them before hindsight says they're not risky at all. The more things you do the more comfortable you get doing things and knowing that you can accomplish those things.
The labor field has amazing income potential, but don't just focus on the most basic form of the labor field. In any industry the most basic beginning levels will always be the lowest pay and the worst work. There are many people who are comfortable framing a house all day and drinking beer all night and complaining that they never get ahead and never change. Labor markets have a whole range of things to do and the more rare something is to do the more money you make. There are a lot of jobs in the labor market that pay incredibly well you just have to be motivated to go and get them because it's difficult to find people to do them. They are either risky jobs or they're very intensive jobs that take you away from everything you know for long periods of time. They mention oil wells Yes absolutely that's one it's not near you, the bus leaves from where you're at to where the jobs are everyday. Get on the bus and go. There is a massive electrical grid in this country you can be an electrician that services homes and small businesses or you can learn to do commercial work or you can learn to work for the power company and string wire and do high voltage systems. Workers that deal with waste treatment systems make a really good living. Become a welder become a fantastically good welder but instead of just staying in the job where you're just welding in the shop all day, become the welder who's willing to travel to different locations to do things on site to do highly specialized work. That's where you get the money. The opportunities are there who just have to not be afraid to let go of what you have to get what you want. There are so many labor jobs that take people of average skill level in their field but those people are willing to go to exotic locations or be gone for weeks at a time and it's those people who really can make bank at labor jobs. Because they're doing the job that nobody else wants to do and while your buddies are punching their clock from 9:00 to 5:00 at the shop complaining that they're not getting ahead you'll be working your ass off but we'll be making bank and properly managed you can retire early.
That is the greatest thing that holds back any of us being afraid to let go of what we have to grab what we want.
I have a good job as a software engineer but I'm in the later stages of my career. If I knew in my youth when I was 20 or 30 what I know now, or if I just actually listen to what people have told me I'd already be retired by now. The problem is we all think the prior generation had it easier than the current generation. The prior generation is trying to help you out and tell you the secrets to success the problem is they can't do it for you. I can't even get my own children to listen to me about the massive opportunities they have in front of them because there's always an excuse why they can't do it.
The only hope, if there is one, is when people will become collectively enraged and dismantle the govt to a large extent (similar to the current attempt in USA) and not rely solely on fiat currency (another way the govt controls the populace).
The crypto scene’s blindness to their oh-so-convenient alignment with the ultra-rich is mind boggling. Particularly given their conspiratorial bent. (I’m wealthy. I’d become much more so with a crypto currency system. I’d also be able to amplify that edge against anyone who depends on their labour to live.)
> when people will become collectively enraged and dismantle the govt to a large extent (similar to the current attempt in USA)
So how do you envision people flourishing in this anarchist/libertarian utopia? Most people at the bottom of the income scale are much more dependent on a functioning government to meet their basic needs. If you want to make their lives better while cutting away the services they depend on for healthcare, education, transportation, food safety, disaster relief and recovery, and on and on -- if you want them to be better off without all that, they need to earn better wages. Well, the DOGE folks -- "the current attempt in USA" --are focusing their attention on destroying the mechanisms that would make this possible.
A problem with an unregulated economy is that your ability to get a good deal depends on your ability to evaluate the deal and walk away from it if it's bad. If you're hanging from a cliff edge by your fingertips, you're not in a good bargaining position relative to the guy standing on solid ground. You'll pawn your future to live another hour. The government is the mechanism we have to prevent this abuse -- minimum wage laws, child labor laws, OSHA. Take all this away and you have more slavery, not less.
Another problem: if you want to start a business or invest or build anything, you depend on predictability. Is the city going to still be here and functioning next year? If yes, open a store front! If not, move on. The government is one of the main sources of this stability. It collects information, makes economic forecasts, manages the interest rates (with its fiat currency), handles disasters, prevents invasions. This allows businesses to flourish, providing jobs for the masses. Without that economic activity dries up. People get poorer. Some starve. Some die due to lawlessness, war, and unrest.
But you don't see it this way. Please explain how destroying the government and relying on gold or bitcoin will bring prosperity to the masses. I really want to understand your perspective.
>So how do you envision people flourishing in this anarchist/libertarian utopia?
Did I use the words anarchist/libertarian/utopia? How do you see people flourishing in the current situation with too much govt? OP was a post by the person facing a real word situation: nothing to hope for. What can you offer him?
>destroying the government and relying on gold or bitcoin will bring prosperity
Again you are putting words in my mouth. did I talk about gold or bitcoin? You do understand what big govt vs small govt is, vs destroying the govt?
Well you talked about ending reliance on fiat currency, and those are the two most common non-fiat currencies (or backings thereof). Not sure what else you could've meant; maybe seashells? Or doing away with money entirely and reverting to bartering and/or gift economies?
>Well you talked about ending reliance on fiat currency,
I did not say 'ending reliance'. If the fiat does not inflate, by all means use it. If it does ( and normally does) one has to have the _option_ of opting out. Currently in most places in the world where taxes are imposed that option of opting out is not there. Not using fiat money is either illegal, or if you did transact by other means you will have to pay the government the equivalent of a tax in fiat. The over arching point that I'm trying to make is to ot give govt options to unreasonably controls your life. The government should be there to serve you not the other way around.
What one uses as an alternative to the fiat should be up to you. (which is a whole big topic in itself and _significantly_ larger than a discussion on gold or bitcoin)
> If the fiat does not inflate, by all means use it. If it does ( and normally does) one has to have the _option_ of opting out
That would constitute ending reliance on it.
> What one uses as an alternative to the fiat should be up to you. (which is a whole big topic in itself and _significantly_ larger than a discussion on gold or bitcoin)
In practice, not really. Maybe some quibbling on which specific precious metal or which specific cryptocurrency, but in a non-fiat world your options are going to boil down to one of those two categories of alternatives, with the differences within those categories being implementation details that most people don't care to know.
So ignore my terminology. Put other words in your mouth. What is your vision of how destroying the government a la Musk/Trump is going to make the common folk better off?
I can imagine some answers: There are people who will suffer more or more directly and they don't like those people, so it will be cathartic for them. I witness a lot of people for whom this is clearly a really big benefit. Or maybe they value particular social structures or customs -- strict gender norms, obedience of women to men, children to adults, certain ethnic or racial groups to others -- more than they value material wealth, health, or security, and they believe Musk's gutting of the government will achieve this. Perhaps they are accelerationists who think things need to get really bad before a revolution will bring utopia. Perhaps they are millenarians who believe Musk is accelerating the End Times and the Rapture. Perhaps they wish to accelerate global warming in order to shift climates zones, making Siberia more habitable and depopulating Africa and South Asia so Russians can grow wheat on glacial till and sell it desperate people in the Global South.
These are all non-economic reasons, though, and in the current context it seems unlikely that that was what you had in mind. I'm just curious what you did have in mind.
>So ignore my terminology. Put other words in your mouth. What is your vision of how destroying the government a la Musk/Trump is going to make the common folk better off?
Let me ask you this: What subjective value would you assign as % of the govt that is wasteful/corrupt expenditure? ( a ball park is fine) . And have you listened to Elon/doge side of the story? If so paste the link.
If you and I are not on the same page then it's not worth having a discussion.
>
Why can't you answer my question first? I've already provided vastly more information about my understanding of the world. Why are you so cagey?
Because it would be foolish for me to argue with people, who have little life experience/skills/exposure but have opinionated views. I try and access where people life experience/skills/exposure stand and then decide to engage.
>I've already provided vastly more information about my understanding of the world.
Below is an example of your very incomplete world view:
>Another problem: if you want to start a business or invest or build anything, you depend on predictability. Is the city going to still be here and functioning next year? If yes, open a store front! If not, move on. The government is one of the main sources of this stability. It collects information, makes economic forecasts, manages the interest rates (with its fiat currency), handles disasters, prevents invasions. This allows businesses to flourish, providing jobs for the masses. Without that economic activity dries up. People get poorer. Some starve. Some die due to lawlessness, war, and unrest.
You have not stated how corrupt the govt can be, only stated the good that govt does. And you have not stated anything particularly insightful.
To answer your question:
>What is your vision of how destroying the government a la Musk/Trump is going to make the common folk better off?
Is not cutting expenditure and a lot of associated corruption not good enough? Of course any cutting the expenditure is framed as removing aid from the needy. Does one need to have a vision?
( why the f** are you using words like 'vision', and then 'destruction' etc. ? - arguing in bad faith, and putting more words in my mouth)
Capitalism itself has no function against wealth accumulation besides taxation, although the efficacy is questionable.
So how does non-FIAT and dismantling the government help? Even less taxation... in a currency that can't be controlled - the capitalist dream, I guess?
Move. You’re describing a local disequilibrium.
(We need subsidised economic mobility vouchers for citizens in America.)