Bootstraps and Broken American Dreams

World-building by jl

There have been a lot of memes in social media lately shoving the faces of the excessively wealthy 1% in America into our “newsfeeds” between our birthday wishes and vacation photos. Honestly, I can’t conceptualize what it means to have a net worth of $100 billion. I can hardly imagine what life would be like with a net worth of $1 million.

I’ve ‘owned’ houses for most of my adult life, by which I mean I’ve paid towards a 30-year mortgage on each house I lived in. As a public school teacher in Oregon, I was relatively comfortable, month to month, making a massive $55,000 per year after 20 years of teaching. (There are no zeroes missing in that number.)

My teacher salary meant that I could pay my mortgage, feed my family, afford health insurance and my co-pays for doctor and dentist visits. (I was lucky: neither I or anyone in my family was suffering from chronic illness or debilitating injury.) We could do fun things like camping. I bought musical instruments and bicycles. I traveled some.

My teacher salary wasn’t enough to save much money, month to month, but it was enough money to live comfortably, even on my own, after divorce, with one kid in high school, and another in college. I went to concerts, played music, rode my bike… Life was good. If I made it to 30 years of public service, I’d be able to retire with half of my public educator salary, $27,500 per year, with over 20 years to go on my mortgage, at the age of 60. (I had capped out the salary scale at the public charter school where I was teaching. There had been no salary increases for me in three years, and no prospect of any.)

I don’t want to dive into the depressing speculation of living on $27,500 per year after being a public middle school teacher for 30 years. The prospect of having to find another job to supplement my income after 30 years of public service is depressing, to say the least.

Teachers don’t do it for the money, right? We’ve all heard that one. (“Suckers!”) It’s true. I made my choice. I loved teaching. I wasn’t thrilled about my financial prospects for life after teaching. I could live comfortably on $55,000 per year. I had a hard time understanding how I was going to live on $27,500 per year.

So, imagine this. If I made $55,000 for 30 years of teaching, that amounts to $1.65 million earned in 30 years. (Of course I had to work my way up to $55k, but let’s assume the best, for fun!) That’s a lot of money, $1.65 million. Sadly, I had to spend it all to live my day to day life.

If I had $100 billion to start with, I’d still have $98.35 billion to live the rest of my days with! Can you imagine? $100 billion would pay for 60.6 billion people to live as I lived that 30 years. If we paid them all $55,000 per year for another 30 years, until they were 90 years old, we’d be supporting 30.3 billion people to live relatively comfortable lives until they were 90 years old!

There are currently 8.2 billion people on the earth today. This got me to thinking, so I ran the numbers, just to see where the United States stands, economically, as a democracy.

According to the United States Government’s Congressional Budget Office, in 2022, there was a total of $199 trillion of wealth in the United States. The top 1% of the US population held 27% of the wealth in the United States. The next 9% shared 33% of the wealth. The middle 40% of the US population shared 34% of the wealth. And, get this, the rest of the population of the United States of America, 50% of 333.3 million American citizens, 166.65 million human beings, shared 6% of what was left.

The Society of ‘Grand’

Let’s set those figures aside for a moment and engage in a fun little thought exercise about Socialism.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s say we have a society of 100 citizens. Let’s say the society has a total wealth of $100,000. If this was a truly socialist society, each of the 100 citizens would equally share the wealth. That’s $1,000 each. Let’s call this society, ‘Grand.’

For the sake of illustration, let’s say that the wealth is distributed monthly. Every month, every citizen in Grand would do their best to make sure their share of the wealth was as close to $1000 as possible.

They would obviously have an economic system and share the responsibilities for the health and safety of their community. Some might raise potatoes, some might produce clothing. Some might raise farm animals, some might build and repair homes. They would certainly need healthcare. You get the idea.

In order for Grand to thrive, the responsibility for the distribution of wealth would depend on each individual and their commitment to the collective well-being of Grand. Some months would be bad for potatoes for example. There might be a boom in apples. At the end of each month, any individual whose wealth exceeded $1000 would help distribute their excess back into the community to make sure everyone’s needs were taken care of.

I know this is oversimplified, but the point is every member of Grand, in an absolutely Socialist society, would be 100% committed to the greater good of Grand, and would strive for equity in all things. They would share the uncomfortable burdens of living, and would share the wealth of their production equally.

For the sake of the discussion, let’s say that the minimum wealth requirement for the health, comfort, and safety of each member of society (Grand, or any society) is $500 per month. In Grand, each citizen would have a net wealth of $500 per month to enjoy the luxuries of life, such as travel, or fancy meals.

Since each citizen of Grand is committed to the comfort and health of all its citizens, they could all live very comfortably, even happily together in perpetuity, with time and energy for fun and leisure in equal measure. Even through hard times.

We’re all shaking our heads right now at how preposterous this sounds: “Share everything equally! What about those deadbeats who don’t want to participate, who refuse to contribute! Why should they receive an equal share of the wealth of the community!”

“Preposterous!”

In order to imagine a society where everything is shared equally amongst its citizens, we need to fundamentally rethink how we measure the value of each citizen. In a truly Socialist society, such as Grand, each citizen’s value, their worth as a human being is determined by the mere fact of their existence.

If you are a citizen of Grand, you are an equally valuable and valued member of society, no matter your age, gender, identity, ability, skin color, or anything else that distinguishes you in one way or many ways from the rest of the citizens of Grand.

No discussion necessary. This is simply an accepted fact of your communal existence. We, each of us, is beloved.

The Society of the United States of America circa 2022

Let’s go back to the United States in 2022. Based on the statistics I referenced above from the United States Government’s Congressional Budget Office, let’s explore the same scenario as the society of Grand.

Let’s pretend there are 100 citizens of the United States, and there is $100,000 of collective wealth. Let’s think about this again as a monthly distribution of wealth in order to maintain the social order we’ve chosen to participate in (or, at least, were born into).

In the United States in 2022:
1 person has $27,000.
9 people have $3666.67 each. (They share $33,000.)
40 people have $850 each. (They share $34,000.)
50 people have $120 each. (They share $6000.)

Let’s use the same standard of living as the society of Grand. Each person needs $500 per month in order to be healthy, well-fed, and comfortable. Anything in excess of $500 adds additional comfort, leisure, and luxury to their lives.

Where in Grand, each individual has to self-monitor their wealth in order for each citizen in the society to thrive, in the United States, they have a system of government for that purpose. The citizens of the United States pay a portion of their wealth (as taxes) to pay for governmental services. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume those costs are included in the $500 necessary for a healthy, comfortable life.

The United States holds “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Here is where I find the story of the United States of America to be troubling when I look at the real numbers. The first of the unalienable Right that the Declaration of Independence holds to be self-evident is the Right to Life. Speaking from a strictly economical perspective, Life could be defined as Food, Water, Shelter, and Healthcare.

The fundamental $500 that every citizen needs.

Without Life, without our fundamental needs being met, no citizen has hope of having the Liberty to pursue Happiness. The 50% of United States citizens who have less than 25% of their basic needs met are living very difficult daily lives.

The 40% of United States citizens who are earning $850 per month are living comfortable lives. They have enough excess income, on average, to enjoy the finer things in life, like travel and fancy foods, reliable automobiles and big screen televisions. Most of them are comfortable enough in their living situation, in fact, that they’re willing to overlook the great disparity between their finer things and the opulent luxury enjoyed by the top 10%.

In fact, they are taught from birth, in their families, and throughout their government mandated education to aspire to become one of the top 10%.

We’re taught to look down disparagingly on the 50% of citizens who struggle to survive every single day of their lives, many of them recent immigrants. Even, or especially, if we are among them.

The top 50% of the United States citizens who live beyond their basic needs own 94% of the society’s wealth. I’m among the top 50%. Well, I was, until I quit my teaching job two years ago.

World-Building

There is enough abundance on this planet for no one to be hungry, thirsty, sick, or unhoused. It’s not a matter of resources; it’s a matter of will and goodwill.

It is not naive to strive for a human society that looks more like Grand than it looks like the United States, or colonial Europe. It is hopeful. It is progressive.

It may be our only hope as a species, as a matter of fact.

It’s hard for us to imagine, even the most economically disadvantaged of us, a world unlike the one we were born into. Change seems impossible, entrenched as we are, indoctrinated as we are, disempowered as we are by our current reality.

I’ve decided to start playing with some alternative ways of organizing the way we live together in the world. Rather than doing the imagining in solitude before I write the stories, I thought I might share my thoughts here in case folks want to argue about them and help me come up with better ways to shape our human future.

How fun will it be to imagine days in the life of citizens in Grand? How hopeful could it be to imagine our way there?