I’ve been thinking a lot about money recently. I think it all started when I watched a re-run of 30 Days,
Morgan Spurlock’s documentary TV show that aired on the FX Network. In
the episode that I watched, Spurlock and his wife (I think it’s his
wife) lived on minimum wage for 30 days. Watching the two of them
suffer and work though it was really tough.

In the same week, I read an article on Forbes.com; Most Overpriced Places In The U.S. 2005.
Guess who came in at number 3? If you guessed Portland, Oregon you’d be
right. With a median home price of $243,000 how can a family earning
minimum wage ever afford that? In fact, how can an average family
earning $40,000 a year afford that?

Also, in the same week (coincidence?), I read an interesting comment (one of the few intelligent ones) on Slashdot.org.
Some of the comment is marred by political jabs and propaganda (which I
have omitted for brevity) but the rest is pretty good. It’s a pretty
dismal prediction, but is it true? Read below and be the judge.

…We will become a
nation where 4% of the population lives in gated and guarded communities, and
everyone else will live in an apartment, in places filled with violence, and we
will be called sub-human.

Remember, it was not that long ago when
families only needed one person to work, to pay the bills, to feed the family.
The past 10 years, most families have both parents working. And in the next 10
years, we will see both parents working multiple jobs.

How can any country justify having CEO’s
that make $10,000,000+ a year, and having janitors who make $5.75 an hour? I hope my kids don’t have the future I
think they will. A small studio, with advertising inside the apartment that
can’t be turned off. Working 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, and still not having
enough to eat good food. And having a police that exists not to protect people,
but to keep the poor out of the rich neighborhoods.


The
comment certainly portrays a different America than the one that we are
living in now…or does it? It’s not that far of a stretch to think
that in the near future both parents will be working multiple jobs just
to break even (I’m talking about middle-class parents here).

A
few days ago, I had the misfortune of watching Bill Maher’s new stand
up on HBO. Most of his show was right propaganda and I hate propaganda of all kinds. I hate it when the “right”
spews it and I hate it when the “left” spews it.

During his
“performance”, he started talking about America’s drug of choice; any
form of speed. In his example, he mentioned America’s penchant for
drinking coffee and attributed this to feeding what he calls the Prime
Directive; greed. In other words, we drink coffee so that we can stay
awake and go to work long hours so that we can feed our greed.

That’s
where I had to turn it off. That’s when it struck me, Maher has the
fiscal freedom to stand on a stage (getting paid who knows how much
from ticket sales and HBO) to talk about American greed. However, some
of the working people drink America’s speed to stay awake while working
two jobs just to make ends meet.

I wonder, if he was forced to take a
minimum wage job (or two just to survive) would he still be talking
about how coffee is bad or would he be sucking it down and hoping that
it would keep him awake while he worked a 12 hour shift washing dishes?

This
all leads me to a question that I posed to my friend. I think that what
we all really want it fiscal freedom. Is it possible for regular people
to attain? She says it’s a fallacy. I’m inclined to believe her. There
are exceptions to this rule; the celebrities, the music stars, the
Brins and Gates of the world, but these aren’t the norm. What we strive
for might just always be out of reach.