Today... in Book Four: Ichi-no-Tani 2017

Today is…
a fairly pointless day. I’ve scheduled things. Things for tomorrow and things for Friday. Things for next week. But I haven’t done much TODAY. But instead of reading Prosebox (like I would want to)… I’ve been going over all of my files to see what I may have missed if there is important work to be done immediately.

See… this is why I get worried about money. I need money. Money is one of those things that makes the world go ‘round. On the very short list of things I want to do in my life… all of them require money. Climb Mount Kilimanjaro? Build my dream house? Hell… “take my wife on vacation” is on that list and that requires money. And to get needlessly political here… some of this shit I think doesn’t get through to the current GOP and because of that… it makes me worry even more.

You see… when you say “Fuck the poor, the marginalized, the needy… our wealthy friends need tax breaks and less regulations” what I hear from a lot of that is… “We don’t understand. If you are poor or marginalized or needy… stop it. That’s all you have to do. Just stop being that way.” Which proves how foolish and idiotic they are. Because… lets do a fun experiment. Lets look at a Typical 29 Year Old (as cataloged by the Department of Labor). And because we’re talking to the GOP, let’s make sure that it is a White Male. White Male, unmarried, living in an apartment, no Bachelor’s degree, earning $35,000 a year. Now, taking statistics from Business Insider… let’s divide that 35,000. Oh, and we’ll pretend the government isn’t going to take anything out of that. Y’know… no taxes.
$35,000 per year.
Average 1 Bedroom Apartment Cost: $1234.43 (size: 678.32 square feet)
Utilities: $147.06
Now lets multiply those expenses by 12 in order to cover the entire year.
TOTAL: $16,577.88
Plus, the average 1 Bedroom Apartment does not have a washer dryer. So lets assume a full wash cycle at the Pay to Wash would cost $3.00 Lets say you have 3 loads of laundry per month. Laundry costs would be $108 per year.
TOTAL: $16,685.88
Since this man has a job, one assumes he uses a vehicle. We’ll say a full tank of gas is 10 gallons and average the price out to $2.50 per gallon. Thus, every week $25.00 expense. We should also factor in maintenance costs but we can assume he takes excellent car of his vehicle. We’ll call that $30 every three months. Or $30 4 times a year. Car Expenses are $1420.00 per year.
TOTAL: 18,105.88
It would of course be unfair to force this man to eat garbage or bum food off of his friends all the time. So we have to give him a food budget. Lets say he can’t spend any more than $200 per month on food. Or no more than $2400 per year.
TOTAL: 20,505.88

So… not discussing “discretionary income”… not going into Medical Needs or Entertainment or ANY OTHER SPENDING than just… living, sleeping in an apartment, and going to work… we’ve already gone through 59% of his yearly income.

AND THEN… what if it starts to “rain?” By rain I mean… something unexpected happens. He gets fired, he develops a serious medical problem, his car breaks down, he has legal trouble, there is a death in his family.... anything.

THIS is someone who is NOT marginalized, needy, or “poor”… and yet, likely this person has AT MOST $15,000 of discretionary income to use on things like Entertainment, Health Care, Savings, Etc. $15,000 is a lot more than a lot of people have but it still isn’t “Get Rich in America” kind of money. The GOP doesn’t get this. Now throw in a whole bunch of curve balls to the above scenario? Like chronic medical condition? Or throw a few kids into that mix? The money disappears very quickly. It does not seem like the current GOP understands that at all.












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Last updated June 28, 2017