I'm doing fairly well but its cause me and my wife used some rural development thing to get a house. We now have 3 other people living with us. (They needed a place).

I'm disabled and even when i can get a job it tends to make my issues worse.

This means my wife is the sole money maker. Its a horrible stress for her and I do everything I can (much to her chagrin at times because I can put way to much on me)

All my friends are always struggling. If its not with work then it's with living situation. The only people I know doing well are boomers and maybe elder millennials.

Like, idk while we are doing alright in the grand scheme, our situation still sucks and it bugs the hell out of me. What we have shouldnt be privilege.

[–] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 1 points 3 weeks ago

I have had 2-4 people living with me in my apartment at any given time over the past 2 years, never more than 1 car among us, and though I'm the only one who can consistently make sure the rent gets paid every month, I'm also in the best position. The apartment has seen one person who works fulltime but is always broke (way too loose with money, plus delinquent child support payments amounting to over 10k), one person who works almost fulltime but is always broke (used to be from driving a 10 mpg clunker and alcoholism, now is from ordering $30 of DoorDash per day and alcoholism), one person who worked part-time and drove a modest car, 2-3 unemployed people, and me (I cook chickpeas and ride a bike). Everyone's jobs have all been less than 5 miles away and also close to a bus stop.

We are living out a lie about what is profitable and what is not. In addition to being in ecological overshoot, we are destroying other people's lives and steering the economy into a ruinous position. It does not make sense to build the houses the way we do, to drive the cars the way we do, to use the substances to the degree that we do, to eat the food that we do. If you take into account all the externalities, most economic activity is not actually profitable. This is why death is coming to America, its economic logic requires it to relentlessly prey upon other countries or otherwise eat itself alive.

We need to cut through the economic opacity and alienation, and figure out how to optimize the use value per unit of labor time, whether as a society, as municipalities, or small groups.