I was slumming on the NPR (National Propaganda Radio) site and saw a bunch of “99%” photo-posts. One was humorous, but the rest were pathetic, and not in a sympathetic way. This guy was typical:
Anyone with a family making 80K/year who just can’t make ends meet and has to get help paying his bills deserves to go under for being so stupid as to live beyond his means.
Dumbass. Ooo, poor baby. A “modest home,” used cars and less than “expensive” vacations (by what standard?). Where is his savings? Where in the world did that $80K/year go? Why didn’t he at least buy that frickin’ ugly tie at Goodwill or something?
If this guy were to put that lame crap out in front of me, I’d be tempted to plaster his whiny mug. His parents ought to–at most–have told him, “Leave your children with us, sell that house you can’t afford to pay for–or even just hand it back to the folks who really own it–and go live under a rock. We disown you, you stupid bag of vomit,” instead of enabling his profligate lifestyle.
No, $80K/year isn’t enough to finance a lifestyle that would get Robin Leach interested in profiling you, dumbass. Learn to live within your means.
Further commentary on the so-called “99%” from Matt Welch @Reason:
Adult human beings have agency, the ability (even responsibility!) to run their own cost/benefit analyses and choose accordingly. You could go to a state school (or community college) instead of an over-inflated prestige mill. You could pay for a 10-year-old car in cash, instead of a new one on installments. You could try to make it in Minneapolis before living the dream in Williamsburg. You could stare into the face of a no-money-down, adjustable rate 30-year mortgage at the tail end of a housing-price run-up and conclude “Maybe that one’s not for me.” You could even choose to turn down a bad if high-paying job when you’re living below the poverty line. If we indeed live in a “candid world,” let us state bluntly that offloading 100% of the blame for your own mountain of debt on a group of Greedy McBanksters who “forced” you to “play by the rules” is more than a little pathetic.