We Feel Poorer Because We Are Poorer: Here's Proof

Measured by the purchasing power of our wages/work, we're definitively poorer, as it takes far more hours of work now to pay rent.

Let's not over-complicate what's straightforward: we're becoming more prosperous when our wages / labor buy more goods and services, most especially the essentials of life: shelter, food, energy, utilities, transportation, higher education, healthcare and childcare. If the money we have left after paying for essentials buys more discretionary goods and services, we're getting a lagniappe of prosperity.

If the non-discretionary essentials are consuming a greater percentage of our earned income, we're becoming less prosperous, i.e. we're poorer. Those tasked with persuading us that gradual impoverishment is actually soaring prosperity have near-infinite statistical means to obscure this straightforward measure of prosperity: the purchasing power of labor / earnings.

If our hours of work buy less non-discretionary goods and services, we're getting poorer.

That software, TVs and airline fares are cheaper is meaningless because they are occasional discretionary purchases that make up a tiny slice of total cost-of-living expenditures. The status quo cheerleaders in the Ministry of Truth ignore the $5,000 annual cost increases in essentials while trumpeting the $100 decline in occasional discretionary purchases.

Your vacation cost you 100 more hours of work, but you save $50 on airfare, so it all evens out. Um, no. The only metric that is an accurate measure of prosperity and impoverishment is the purchasing power of your labor / earnings. Everything else is noise designed to obscure inconvenient reality.

Not surprisingly, it's difficult to get accurate data on past real-world costs of essentials. What we hope to find is the actual prices paid in previous years and the median wages paid at the same time.

This data gives us an accurate measure of purchasing power: how many hours of work did it take to pay rent, pay healthcare insurance, buy a used car, etc. This is the kind of table we hope to find: rents paid in Hawaii by decade.

Since I lived in Honolulu, the home of the majority of the state's population, and actively sought rental housing in the 1970s, I have knowledge of actual rents, and can attest these numbers are in the ballpark for one-bedroom apartments.



But what we often get is data that's been adjusted and is difficult to align with real-world costs. Here is the Federal Reserve database (FRED) chart of consumer price index for urban rents of primary residences, which includes everything from a shabby studio to a sprawling single-family dwelling. That range makes it less useful than specific numbers for specific classes of rentals.



The data isn't actual rents paid; it's an index that's arbitrarily set to 100 in summer of 1983. So if your rent was $500 a month in 1983, the equivalent rent today is 4X or $2,000. Additionally, data can be scarce, as in this chart of rents in the high-cost San Francisco Bay Area, where I also sought rental housing, so I know actual rent costs from the 1980s on.



Fortunately, there's a simple chart of median weekly earnings for full-time workers from the first quarter of 1979 to the third quarter of 2023. Now we can make very simple calculations of purchasing power: how many hours of median-wage work does it take to pay typical market-rate rent? To keep it simple, let's use total earnings before taxes and deductions.

In 1978, I was earning $300/week as a young construction worker, somewhat above the median wage of $232/week. I rented a small, shabby studio for $135/month, well below the average rent of $250/month for a one-bedroom apartment. The market included a wide range of rental options, a big difference from most markets now, in which there are few low-rent options even in not-so-great parts of town.

It took 18 hours of work to pay my rent for the month-- 2.25 days. If I'd paid the average rent of $250/month, it wuld have taken 33 hours of work, or about 4 days to pay rent. If I'd earned the median wage and paid the average rent, it would have taken 43 hours or about a week's earning to pay the rent.



In 1987 in the high-cost S.F. Bay Area, my wage had dropped to around the median and I was paying $550/month for a one-bedroom apartment, about $100/month below market. It took 55 hours of work to pay the rent, or about 7 days of work.

Let's stop for a moment and ask where in the urban U.S. can a 22-year old worker making a bit more than median wage pay the monthly rent with 2.25 days of work? In today's economy, my wages in 1978 would translate into about $1,400 per week ($35/hour), and so my studio apartment's rent would be 2.25 X my daily wage of $280 or $630/month.

I submit there are few urban areas in the U.S. where young workers with average skills and experience can earn $35/hour and rent a studio apartment for $630/month. What we find instead are rents in places like the S.F. Bay Area that average $2,400/month for one-bedroom apartments, so those earning the median weekly wage of $1,120 must devote 2.15 weeks of their earnings to pay rent--11 days of work, more than half their earnings.

This is almost triple the days of work needed to pay rent with a median wage in the 1970s, and 60% more than the days of work needed to pay rent in the 1980s and 1990s in two of the most expensive urban areas of the nation.

Measured by the purchasing power of our wages/work, we're definitively poorer, as it takes far more hours of work now to pay rent. If you need more evidence, consider the cost of decent (no deductable) healthcare insurance. In 1986, I paid $50/month each for my young, single employees, about 5.5 hours of the median wage.

Now the equivalent insurance costs a minimum of $350/month, or 12.5 hours of median-wage work--more than double the hours needed in the 1980s. I could go on, but isn't rent and healthcare insurance enough to prove that the vast majority of wage earners are far poorer now than they were two generations ago?

Over time, the decline in the purchasing power of our wages has stripped away hundreds of thousands of dollars of value over a lifetime of work. Rents that now require twice as many hours as they did 40 years ago mean we've lost $1,000 a month of purchasing power. Sorry, pundits, saving $20 on a low-quality toy or $100 on a low-quality TV or $100 on airfare doesn't offset $100,000 lost each decade in the purchasing power of work/wages.

Let's not overlook the fact that the median wage is skewed by high-wage workers. Tens of millions of workers earn far less than $1,120/week for full-time work.

Yes, the top 5% (which includes all the economists and pundits claiming we're all doing great) that collects almost 25% of all income are doing just fine, as their incomes have more than kept up with the staggering declines in purchasing power. The next 5% collect 15% of all income, so they're doing fine, too.

The rest of us--not so much. The bottom 80% of us earn less than half of all income. Factor in the dramatic loss of purchasing power, and we're much poorer.

---

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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Never Mind Bogus Measures of Inflation--Purchasing Power Is What Counts, and It's Decaying

If your earnings rose by 34% from January 2020 to October 2023, congratulations, the purchasing power of your labor kept pace with higher costs.

Official measures of inflation are a long-running tragi-comedy: comedic in the transparency of the distortions, and tragic in the consequences: what will you believe is true--the statistics or your lying eyes?

The basic gimmick of distortion is to underweight whatever is eating away at the purchasing power of earnings and highlight the trivial items that are getting cheaper due to declines in quality and globalization. So your rent went up by $200 a month, or $2,400 a year, but since TVs dropped $40 and toys dropped $20, inflation is only 3%. So stop feeling poorer, everything's great! Inflation is dropping!

You see the problem: the scale of spending on essentials such as shelter, healthcare, childcare, etc. is far greater than the trivial "lower in price" items. If 95% of your essential spending is rising in cost, trivial declines in the 5% of discretionary spending do not offset the gargantuan declines in purchasing power.

The chart below reflects this distortion. Essential expenses that cost thousands of dollars annually consume far more of our earnings now, and these vast declines in the purchasing power of earnings are not offset by the occasional purchase of cheaper TVs.

The only accurate measure of increasing or decreasing costs is purchasing power: how many hours of work does it take to pay housing, taxes, college tuition, healthcare, childcare, etc., then and now. The official measures of inflation use gimmicks to distort the staggering drop in purchasing power by claiming the quality of stuff has increased by extraordinary leaps and bounds. So the fact that cars have rear cameras offsets the fact that it takes far more hours of labor to buy a car now than it did a few decades ago.



Measuring purchasing power eliminates these distortions, which is why nobody measures purchasing power: once we calculate costs in terms of hours worked, we recognize that a much larger percentage of our labor / earnings is devoted to paying for essentials. Simply put, we're getting less value for our labor.

Pundits tend to overlook the fundamental sources of declining purchasing power. These include:

1. Decay of gains reaped from globalization. Stripped of corporate PR, globalization is the ruthless exploitation of as-yet unexploited pools of cheap labor and resources. This exploitation yields enormous gains at first and then these gains decay as wages rise and the easy-to-get resources are depleted.

The dependence on foreign sources for essentials has also been revealed as a national security threat, and so the catch-phrase is "de-risking," which means developing multiple sources of essentials.

2. Capital demanding higher returns due to soaring global risks. In the conventional view, the Federal Reserve chair waves a magic wand and lowers interest rates at will. It's not quite that simple. All new debt--for example, Treasury bonds--must be purchased by capital, and if risks are rising, capital demands a risk premium to offset the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns, both of which are proliferating rapidly.

If capital is no longer willing to accept low yields, yields have to rise regardless of central bank policy, and this drags interest rates higher. Yes, central banks can create currency out of thin air and use this free money to buy Treasury bonds, but ballooning the money supply has its own consequences:

3. Increasing the money supply to maintain a sclerotic, unproductive status quo generates a decline in the purchasing power of currency. Throwing trillions of new units of currency around doesn't magically mean production of goods and services increase, or the quality and quantity of items increase. It just diminishes the value of existing units of currency.

4. Global scarcities crimp supply, pushing up costs. Humans have a very high opinion of themselves, but fundamentally we're like rabbits (or rats, if you prefer) let loose on an island without predators. Like rabbits, we proliferate and consume more per rabbit until the resources have been consumed. Then we wonder why scarcities arise. But AI, blah-blah-blah. AI can't restore depleted soil or reverse droughts.

5. Soaring entitlements must be paid for with higher taxes. Promises made decades ago in different conditions require ever greater resources must be skimmed by governments. Creating money out of thin air isn't a solution (see #3 above) and so the government must collect a greater share of income and wealth. The more taxes we pay, the less we have left to spend on essentials and discretionary purchases.

This is a global dynamic. Global entitlements and debt are both soaring.



If your earnings rose by 34% from January 2020 to October 2023, congratulations, the purchasing power of your labor kept pace with higher costs. All of us who aren't earning 34% more since January 2020 have lost ground, i.e. purchasing power: it now takes more hours of work to buy groceries and everything else we need.



The official measure of inflation since January 2020 is up 19%. Whether that actually maps the decline in our purchasing power can be massaged--stop believing your lying eyes!--but what can't be massaged away is the reality that costs are rising for structural reasons that aren't going away.

---

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

Read excerpts of all three chapters

Podcast with Richard Bonugli: Self Reliance in the 21st Century (43 min)


My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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What Happens When Millions of Renters Can No Longer Afford High Rents and Move Back Home?

What's no longer affordable is eventually jettisoned, including high-rent homes and apartments.

Recency bias can stretch back 40 years. It's been over 40 years since the U.S. experienced a deep recession (what I call a "real recession") which is characterized by elevated inflation, interest rates, yields, unemployment, defaults and bankruptcies, none of which can be reversed with air-drops of "free money" because higher inflation, rates and yields all limit central bank money-printing and fiscal "free money" via deficit spending.

Without air-drops of trillions of dollars in "free money", the accumulated excesses of the economy have to sort themselves out the hard way via defaults, bankruptcies, insolvencies, layoffs, tightening credit and reduced spending / consumption.

The last time this burn-off of excesses could no longer be pushed forward occurred in 1980-82, the deepest downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Few remember the 1980-82 recession and even fewer think a recurrence is even possible. The dead-wood of excesses never get burned off, they just pile higher with each central bank-fiscal bailout / "free money" air-drop.

Recessions which burn off excesses act as catalysts for profound social, financial and economic shifts. Up until the recession, everyone assumes the current situation is permanent and forever. This is the equivalent of assuming a forest piled high with deadwood will never catch fire.

By way of example, consider that the relatively mild dot-com implosion recession of 2000-02 led to 100,000 residents of the San Francisco Bay Area moving away to lower-cost climes because once the layoffs swept through the dot-com bloat, people could not longer afford the high rents and cost of living.

The situation now is far more precarious due to the spread of high rents from a few urban areas to virtually the entire nation. As a percentage of net income, the cost of living is far higher than it was in 2000. Given the nonsensical manner that official inflation is calculated (owners equivalent rent, etc.), statistics are untrustworthy measures. An apples-to-apples comparison of purchasing power of wages (i.e. what percentage of wages are required to pay rent, taxes, insurance, transportation, childcare, food, etc.) is the only accurate measure of the true impact of the soaring cost of living.

The consensus holds that soaring rents are the result of housing shortages. In other words, the demand for housing is so strong that landlords can charge a premium.

So what happens to the strong demand for rentals and the resulting high rents if millions of renters vacate their apartments and move in with other single households? This is precisely what happens in a recession in which millions lose their jobs (or have to take lower income work) and can no longer afford stratospheric rents.

The facts suggest that instead of a housing shortage, we have an enormous quantity of housing that is currently occupied by a single person--housing that could easily accommodate more occupants per unit.

To sketch out how this scenario could play out, let's start with some basic facts about America's housing stock, the age of the occupants and the number of single-person households. As shown on this chart courtesy of the Federal Reserve, there are 145 million housing units in the U.S.--85 million owner-occupied homes and condos, 44 million rented houses and apartments, and 16 million unoccupied dwellings, of which 7+ million are 2nd homes / vacation homes. The remaining 9 million unoccupied homes may be in the process of being sold or held off the market for various reasons, or they're abandoned or no longer livable due to obsolescence / decay.

Some might be in areas with poor employment options and so the demand is so low that vacancies abound.



Next, let's look at home ownership and one-person households. According to the Census Bureau, "There were 37.9 million one-person households, 29% of all U.S. households in 2022. In 1960, single-person households represented only 13% of all households." (There are about 132 million households in the U.S.)

The Census Bureau also reported that 46.4% of U.S. adults are single--that's 117.6 million unmarried Americans, "nearly every other adult aged 18 and over. This includes those who are divorced or widowed as well as those who have never married."

About 11% of these one-person households are 65 years of age or older, or about 14.65 million people.



As you might imagine, homeownership is skewed to the older population, as is ownership of homes without mortgages, i.e. homes owned free and clear.

According to How the Demographics Are Shaping the Housing Market, older Americans own almost 90% of all housing: The Silent Generation (78 and older) own 11.3%, Boomers (ages 59 to 77) own 43.5% and Gen X (ages 43 to 58) owns 32.5%. Some break the Boomers into Boomers I (ages 69-77) and Boomers II (ages 59-68).

We can thus project that a substantial percentage of individuals age 65 and older who are living alone own their own homes. It required a much more modest down payment and percentage of net income two or three generations ago to buy a home, and so it's to be expected that home ownership is heavily skewed to older cohorts who were able to buy homes with median incomes--something that is no longer possible for younger generations.

There are also millions of renters who live alone, some percentage of which might be persuaded to accept a roommate if their income/finances deteriorate. Of the 38 million single-person households, how many would welcome another occupant? Retirees with limited income might welcome paying boarders, and single elderly might offer free housing to younger family members in exchange for help around the house.

How many Boomers and Gen X homeowners would accept an adult child or grandchild moving home if financial conditions preclude any other option? Anecdotally, I see grandparents hosting a grandchild and her daughter, and I hear accounts of an elderly parent deeding their home to the adult child who moves back home and cares for the parent.

It is well within the realm of possibility that 10% of the roughly 40 million single-person households could vacate their rentals and move in with another single or into a large empty-nest home owned by parents are grandparents should conditions change and high rents are no longer affordable. That would leave about 10% of the rental housing unoccupied.

Although few believe it is even in the realm of possibility, in an extended downturn, 8 million renters could vacate now-unaffordable rentals for far more affordable living spaces in other dwellings. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, which in the case of unaffordable rents in a recession, we can modify to necessity is the mother of radically downsizing expenses by any means available.

Rents tend to be as stubborn as human nature. Landlords tend to believe the highest rent ever received is the "fair price," and the majority will cling to this fantasy long past the point at which a rational assessment of market conditions would suggest a 25% reduction in asking rent would be the bare minimum to snare a tenant for the vacant flat.

If the 2000-02 recession is any guide, tenants will cling on to their over-priced flats as long as possible, hoping for a job offer that never transpires. The unemployment checks aren't enough, temp gigs dry up, savings run out and the inability to continue paying sky-high rent finally forces a move.

No one remembers what happens in a deep, prolonged recession, and we're long overdue to find out what happens. What's no longer affordable is eventually jettisoned, including high-rent homes and apartments.

---

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

Read excerpts of all three chapters

Podcast with Richard Bonugli: Self Reliance in the 21st Century (43 min)


My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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Black Flag Friday: Could Black Friday Be a Harbinger of a Tapped-Out Consumer?

If Black Friday is a bust, it may be a harbinger of what the mainstream has long considered impossible: the American consumer is well and truly tapped out.

Could Black Friday be a complete bust this year? Let's explore the potential sources of a Black Flag Friday. Black flags are used to denote mourning, as in state funerals, and to warn of danger, for example, black flags posted at beaches mean "don't go in the water."

Drivers in auto races who receive a Black Flag must return to their pit--their race is over.

Exhibit One is the Federal Reserve report which stated the bottom 80% of American households have fewer financial resources than they did pre-pandemic. The authors project that the cash reserves of this vast cohort would be depleted in the third quarter of 2023, i.e. right now.

Exhibit Two is a report that indicates half of employed consumers have side gigs to earn extra money. Side Gigs Help Ease Paycheck-to-Paycheck Consumers' Financial Stress This Holiday:

According to findings detailed in The Supplemental Income Edition of 'New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report' by PYMNTS Intelligence and LendingClub, half of employed consumers now have supplemental income sources in addition to their regular paychecks. This includes side jobs, other types of supplemental income and active side incomes.

This is critical because the holiday season has emerged as the most financially challenging period for a significant number of individuals, according to separate research from PYMNTS Intelligence, with over 20% pointing to vacation costs as a key contributor to their financial stress.

Exhibit Three is the "revenge spending splurges" on vacations and other luxuries have already depleted savings and boosted credit card balances. Vacations are prime examples of "greedflation" in action, as resorts, AirBNB hosts, et al. jacked prices to the moon knowing that households desperate for a splurge vacation would pay any price without question.

In street parlance, consumers have already shot their wad. There's not much left to blow on Black Friday.

Exhibit Four is the long-term deterioration of the bottom 80%'s share of financial wealth as indicated by the charts below, courtesy of the Federal Reserve. These charts reflect the reality that the vast majority of financial gains have flowed to the top 20%.

The bottom 50% of America's 132 million households, representing 165.5 million of the nation's 331 million residents, owns a meager 2.3% of the nation's financial assets. There simply isn't much wealth to tap for splurge spending.



The share of total assets owned by the middle class--those between the 50% and 90% percentiles--has been in decline for 30+ years. No wonder half of all employed consumers are working extra hours on side gigs.



Exhibit Five is the devaluation of Black Friday by "front-running" pre-Black Friday sales. Which one offers the best deals--pre-Black Friday sales, pre-pre-Black Friday sales, or post-Black Friday sales?

Like many other aspects of American life, whatever is modestly successful is ground to dust via crapification and "Calculated Misery" in which the consumer experience is intentionally degraded so consumers are forced to pony up for "premium" or "elite" service--that is, the same mediocre service that was once standard but now requires a hefty fee if you wish to avoid immiseration.

The "Crapification" of the U.S. Economy Is Now Complete (February 9, 2022)

Stainless Steal (February 26, 2023)
The decay in quality reveals that the collapse of the neoliberal-hyper-financialization-hyper-globalization model has already occurred.

If Black Friday is a bust, it may be a harbinger of what the mainstream has long considered impossible: the American consumer is well and truly tapped out, eviscerated by inflation and disgusted by rampant greedflation. It may also reflect a growing awareness of some of the populace that splurging with zero savings is not a stress-free strategy, and not worth the financial anxiety.

---

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

Read excerpts of all three chapters

Podcast with Richard Bonugli: Self Reliance in the 21st Century (43 min)


My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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Thanksgiving: When Gratitude Is In Short Supply

There are times when the only triumph within reach is survival.

Public expressions of gratitude are de rigueur in America: "I'm grateful for the opportunity to..." is one of the first lines of any public pronouncement: to serve the public, to play on this professional sports team, and so on.

In other words, giving thanks, as with many other virtues, has been depreciated by media-driven over-exposure and virtue-signaling.

Sincere gratitude is a good thing. Marcus Aurelius devoted the entire first chapter of his Meditations to expressing his heartfelt gratitude to everyone who taught him core values and shared their experiential wisdom with him.

But if you happen to awaken and discover you've been transmogrified into a six-foot cockroach, gratitude doesn't flow very freely. This is the plot of Franz Kafka's famous story The Metamorphosis.

Glamorous Hardship--that experienced by extreme nature photographers, celebrities, etc.--offers opportunities for expressions of gratitude: I want to thank my fans for their support during this time, it was dicey outrunning the avalanche, but I'm grateful I got the images, and so on.

Unglamorous Hardship--the kind most of us experience--is less conducive to gratitude: I'm grateful that my business collapsed, I'm grateful I had to quit my job to take care of aging parents /in-laws, etc.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to be a repulsive, grotesque six-foot cockroach--well, actually, not so much. I'd rather have the run-of-the-mill Unglamorous Hardships of chronic illness, having to drop everything to help an injured loved one, bankruptcy, burnout, and so on.

There are times when the only triumph within reach is survival-- the Triumph of Survival. To have dodged an endless volley of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to have endured an endless full-court press of misfortune and survive--this is a triumph worthy of gratitude.

In my own life, these periods tend to last a biblical seven years each--seven years in which the hits keep coming, respite is brief before yet another life crisis comes ashore and life shrinks down to the day-by-day goal of survival. Everything is a struggle, and virtually every project disappoints or fails. Success boils down to surviving this hit and picking oneself up to absorb the next one.

This is why the Stoics valued gratitude so highly. There are eras of misfortune and failure in which maintaining high expectations only increase our suffering and self-pity. Better to need little and expect the exhaustion of good fortune to continue, and to understand that gratitude is best savored in very small portions.

"Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours." Marcus Aurelius



"The whole universe is change and life itself is but what you deem it - either gratefully better than or bitterly worse than something else that you alone choose." Marcus Aurelius

The best of Thanksgiving wishes to you and your loved ones.

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