My Interest in Affordability Isn't Based on Anyone’s Sob Story
It’s good when stuff costs less; spare me the tale of woe
Everyone agrees that the next election will be about affordability. Trump is trying to control the narrative by giving speeches about the economy that are bullshit-packed even for Trump, the alpha and omega of bullshit. The overwrought counter narrative is that the economic End Times have arrived, and Americans’ best option is to start selling their body now so that they have a first-mover advantage in the post-apocalyptic prostitution market.
That counter-narrative is voiced by the subjects of a recent New York Times feature about young adults who make good money but still feel economically pinched. The article — which is, itself, a reaction to the widely mocked essay about how the “real” poverty line is $140,000 — observes that there’s a disconnect between economic statistics and the experience reported by many young, affluent people. And there definitely is a disconnect: Statistic suggest that Gen Z is better off financially than earlier generations, and that real wages — which factor in the cost of living — are rising over time. And yet there are copious young people with good incomes who don’t mind telling the Times or social media or anyone who will listen that no matter how hard they try, they can’t get ahead. Why don’t the numbers and the narrative match up?
I think a partial answer — and I’ll unpack that laden “partial” in a bit — can be found by examining the words of one of the people featured by the Times. Gray Thurston is 27, lives in Philadelphia, and makes $90,000 a year. This is him:
Gray delivers the article’s money quote by opining that “Upward mobility is sort of dead.” He says that he sees older people around him living affluent lives — he reports that the boomers he works with have “big retirement accounts, are taking vacations and own multiple houses,” — and concludes that things are harder for his generation than for earlier generations.
I’d like to reiterate two things: 1) The preponderance of evidence shows that young people are better off financially than earlier generations, 2) Gray Thurston is 27 and makes $90,000 a year. And my theory for some of the disconnect between the empirical data and the “it’s rough out there for a 20-something” narrative is that few people in media or politics react to Thurston’s assessment by saying something like this:
“Shut the fuck up, dude. Yeah, life’s hard; yeah, some shit’s expensive and it’s hard to get everything your heart desires. But get some fucking perspective: You live in the wealthiest country in the world at the most advanced moment humanity has ever experienced, and you — at the obnoxious age of 27 — make more than double the US median income. Upward mobility isn’t “dead” — the simplest explanation for what’s happening is that your perception of how people lived in the past is just way fucking off. And here’s a bit of free advice: When the New York Times comes to your apartment for a photo shoot for an article about how strapped for cash you are, don’t sit amongst your umpteen fucking manga plushies or whatever the fuck those things are. I know they probably don’t cost all that much — they’re not Fabergé eggs or bejeweled imperial snuff boxes — but they make me suspect that maybe you just suck with money. The stereotype of your generation is that you piss away your cash on frivolous bullshit, so maybe keep any item that could be described as ‘the very personification of an unnecessary purchase’ off-camera.”
One could respond to Thurston by saying something like that. I would never, but one could.
And now me talk about what else might be going on.
