The irony of money in a poor society

 

Hello, guys. So quick thing, I wanted to write this earlier, but it was too early in the morning for me to be typing in some serious writing without sounding like a Rambo on a keyboard. But I'll try my best. Anyway, It's kind of ironic that my current post on my main poetry blog is titled "the purpose within money" when money has been the main issue in my own life.

When I was young, I hardly ever thought about money outside of having five dollar limits for lunch or spending, except on the cases where I would save to buy an expensive videogame. 

But I always knew I was in the lower end of buying new things when my other friends would buy trendy graphic shirts for 20$'s. Back when having graphic tees of a gangster spongebob was in demand.

Yet, as I grew older I still did not hate the thought of money. I personally don't even care about being rich more than I do about having a stable, normal life.

As a kid and teen, I often saw money as a sad topic to think about when some countries have a stable lifestyle and others don't. Such as the difference with the first world to third world living.  In ignorance, I would imagine the problem was due to the development side of things, that better countries just had more infrastructure to work on, with roads and schools and hospitals and such.

Though, I was a blind optimist ignorant to say that poorer countries don't have any of those benefits either. Rather, I eventually realized that poorer countries are poor because of their criminal pandemics mixed in with their corrupt governments. And I don't mean criminal like people stealing food, I mean that hardcore drug and gang butchering type of violence mixed in with governments that just take people's money.

I mean, it's really easy to keep a country poor when bribes, money laundering, and non-existent checks-of-balances aren't keeping politician's hands off the money of it's own people.

Yet, that alone isn't why I don't like money. It's only a disappointment in reality. It's a good vs evil type of problem with the world at large. In fact, just a few weeks ago I was very vocal about this discussion between the purpose within money, why we both need and don't need it.

It's easy to debunk this whole topic by saying that money should not exist, because it's a human-made issue. That other things like love and self sacrifice can triumph over money. And I would have agreed with this up until a few weeks ago.

But the purpose of money isn't just to build a wall between the gross rich that can afford stable living, and the poor without money that can't afford the same, no the purpose within money was to establish the basic foundations of society, for the rich and poor, the one's that have a lot and those that don't, the fair game that money is out there for people, and what people decide to do with money is another topic of it's own.

But that money is a fair game in society, whether you want to be rich and have more, or value your time and live a stable life. The purpose of money is to be able to live in this mutual system where the value of cost is a reality.

Because, like I mentioned in the poem a few weeks back, there is more chaos to live in a world without money, solely due to fact that nothing in life can ever be truly free, even to our core emotional principles. It's money that keeps society working, and without money, who will work for free?

As much as we love, and do things solely for the well being of others, no one can deny that our love in itself isn't a sacrifice. Just like our human time, it costs someone to volunteer a few hours, or to love someone so much as to willingly labor for them without wanting any payment in return. That love, even to the minuet, has something that someone has to give up in order to perform. And if you're not giving up free labor, you're giving up your own time on earth.

So yes, yes, I know it sounds very capitalist to even say that time has a cost, as if a universal freedom like time ever costs a thing, but it's not financial payments that are in play here, it's universal sacrifice measured by our own fleeing time on earth.

So as much as a purist wants to argue that they could love their mom for free forever, such as in cases where the person needs medical attention, there is no hiding the fact that people could sacrifice years of their own time to do so. 

And, these are just basic love examples, a more crude one would be to think about prison. How people that enter prison realize that their time is wasting away while they could be doing something else. That, to give up a part of your life, even without being paid or anything, is still sacrificing your time away, in this case because of your own debatable criminal actions.

So, when my younger self wanted to say that "my love is free and you can't place a value in love," my now more reasonable self would argue back that "nothing in life is free and that's what makes our love valuable."

--OFF GRID VS SOCIETY--

And so, in a world where money HAS to exist, and there is a cost in everything we do, the real problem isn't about money and spending, the hoarders and the broke, it's about creating a world, a country, a city, that provides a way for the average person to HAVE money. 

Because just like my doomsday anarchy philosophy approach, without money, a normal person can not have access to a stable life if it costs money to have food, and have gas, and have clean water, and have electricity, and have a place to live.

And I know, all you nomads are looking at this and thinking, "my off grid set up provides me with all that you big dummy."

And yes, you can have your own generators, toilets and stuff, but that's not the reality we live in as a world. I MEAN I WOULD LOVE IT IF EVERYONE WAS OFF GRID, BUT IF EVERYONE WAS OFF GRID THEN THAT MEANS WE HAVE TO SHARE THE LAND EVENLY RATHER THAN A MORE CONSERVATIVE APPROACH BECAUSE OF OVER-POPULATIONS.

So, all you nomads are able to say such things because you have the freedom of choosing where to live, but the reality is that every land has an owner, if not someone's private property, then the land belongs to the government of the region. And the only true off grid location are places without people backed by militias, like Antarctica (well some parts at least).

So, yes, while I would love that we can all live Off Grid, that simple solution does not apply to society as it does with the lone and few. 

Reality has nomads, but whom are homeless. Who don't have their own camper vehicles, huts with a river generator, or the luxury of electricity. Whom, are nomads because they live among the cracks of society where they are able to live among the wild. But, that's not a solution for everyone if we all just started building permanent houses in the side of a highway or in a mountain. 

One nomad cabin is fine, a few is a crowd, but a society is an epidemic. 

This is because to the general reality, people, not a single person, but people depend on how we structure our societies, our regions, our countries. 

This is why it's heart breaking to see poorer countries, not because they are poor, but because their government rulers are corrupt in how they have their own society poor. 

So, it's not always a black and white simple issue about the roles of money (capitalism-society), and democratic societies(socialism-society). It's more an issue about how society manages their value in money. Because even by going on the idea of trade for trade, it's money that is able to document what is valuable more than other things. That is a social issue, not a capitalism issue. If, for example, a government was to say a random sock or shoe had the same value as a gallon of milk or oil. For the most part, things are sensible, but I don't want to go in that deep iceberg of exacts between countries and the world.

Thus, I wanted to make this post, because all that prior explanation sums up why I have been very depressed lately. Because I am un-employeed, and it's fair to have money, but it isn't fair in how society runs these days, I don't believe. Where the core issues have been more and more obvious such as when capitalism begins to be more like a monopoly and the lower and middle class become more and more poor by the lack of jobs or the few that are available in order to have a stable lifestyle. Not to mention, this is a time where it cost an arm and a leg to even afford saving an arm and leg in medical expenses and the rising cost of standard living like in the monopoly business of private renting and housing.

No, that's not even the issue today. The real problem is our access to even have jobs to afford such living choices as whether to rent, buy a house, or be able to purchase food and our basic monthly expenses. 

Everyday, every person alive has to eat, has to use the bathroom, and has to sleep. 

What we eat, doesn't have to be expensive, where we go to the bathroom doesn't have to look like a hotel, and where we sleep doesn't have to be a home, but the systems in place have to be there. Our ability to have money to purchase food, and our developments to have bathrooms in the first place and the options for people to all have a place to sleep. Not that a home is for everyone, but everyone deserves to have the option to have a four wall shelter of privacy from the natural elements and the watery cold mists of the night.

 

 --COLLEGE VS WORKFORCE--

Anyways, this has all been a very long and winded way for me to tell you guys I am unhappy because I don't have a job, and the jobs I could do right now are like fast food, retail, or amazon warehouse-like places, that aren't even reliable for a long term family life, and are laughable to also expect to make enough to cover for renting / housing. Plus, having more "trade skills" is not good enough to land a job in a place where either the jobs hardly exist anymore or better employments are either needed with a degree or an expensive niche trade skill. Like, where are the normal jobs for computer savy people, that aren't blocked by a college prerequisite? College is for the rich when a single 3 credit community college class cost me personally 170$ online, and without a single textbook needed, otherwise, with current textbook scams, the total would easily be another 50-100 more. So then, how much does a single year of college (spring, summer, fall) cost across nationally? College use to be for those that were preparing, not to apply for the entry workforce, but to secure higher end jobs. Yet, college has become a cozy business and the new standard to push teens into. 

If our goal was to forward as many students as we could into higher education through testing and S.A.Ts, then we have succeed to only saturate our colleges with teens, and yet, what then? 

When we observe how money becomes involved, we notice that the entire higher education of college systems is not designed to provide students with real working credentials, rather our college systems are designed to prolong more students in school for a bigger profit return. 

Just think about it, what is more profitable for colleges? To charge a student for a two year education, or to keep them for the full 4 year, not counting those that will increase their costs with tuition. 

As a college student myself, I know first hand how most college systems are designed to be split between the first mandatory 2 years of "general education" and the actual 2 years involved in a specific degree of choice. So,why can't students just begin right away on their 2 year credentials where people are able to decide for themselves their choice of where they are investing their higher education such as to learn more about the technology field or in business or science, or in mathematics that correlate to their degree?

Like I mentioned earlier, the longer a student invests into their own education, the less they are able to invest into the actual workforce and receive work experience and internships. 

If our education systems were really noble about our children's future, then our colleges would actually reflect a place where students are able to receive proper work credentials, quicker advance training programs, and 2 year degrees that actually mean something important. Instead, we have what we see today, a wait list of over crowded classrooms, college students unsure about what is best for them in reality by taking courses they don't even need or are actually relevant to the modern workforce more than they are involved in too many crash courses on general fields like Intro to Geology, Intro to Psychology, Intro to Sociology, Literature from Ancient to the 1800s, you know, stuff that is more relevant to people that are actually leaning towards those subjects in their degree. Not to say, that is making courses like Theater or the Humanities and Arts as useless, more that they are being required even for people that aren't majoring in that field. Thus, we all know our 4 year degree is really only the vital last 2 years of our college life. But that doesn't matter to our society when the 4 year education is seen as so important, even though it has been a scam since the start to push teenagers into the 4 year college debt than it has been about securing students with jobs, job paths, and 2 year Job training specializations.

College use to be for the future supervisors and CEOS in the workforce, but now it's become so over saturated that the 4 year college degree means more of a checklist on a resume, even less the 2 year education. Plus, the actual notable college resumes have long been the PHDs and Masters. A sort of cruel mirrored irony in how inflation has infected our societal education to absurd standards and years of investment rather than work experience. All in all, a fair example of how the lower and middle class have been pushed to the bottom of society when our normal jobs have been reduced to part time consumerism markets, fast food, shopping distributions, or just plain overworked fields in random companies all competing against each other with an entry worker making more on their paycheck than a 2 year degree worker applying for a job. Source: my last distribution job rep that told us new hires that their company was paying more to keep workers from going somewhere else at a higher starting wage.

That, in a world where we pride so much in capitalism, and the importance of having experience to fill a resume, we do the opposite by launching our youth into wasting more time in school and making profits while college admissions become saturated with useless courses and humanities that companies can give two rats about what course or college was completed more than a simple job qualification like "is able to work in tools" or "can operate this" or "knows how to do that program." I argue, after working so long in actual blue collar jobs, that more employers are looking for useful work criteria as much as a reliable and dependable employee to show up to their job. Who would have thunk?

So, then, why are so many jobs demanding so much for the applicant just to do some basic things that are already covered in the employee training? Why do replaceable entry jobs, without college degrees, follow an economic inflation trend by rising on par with the minimum wage each year? It's almost as if college, and the workforce, are two completely different values when it comes to the real economic markets. Like, just having a degree now, or an expensive trade skill, to me, is a dirty and lazy excuse to ignore the economy as a whole. It's on par with, if you're broke, just apply for the CEO job, all you need is a trade skill.

In my perspective, I think it's better to maintain a stable 2 year or 4 year limit when it comes to college, and save anything more for the 1% in tax brackets who want to be a CEO or similar.

Why? Because money has no loyalty. While some can invest four or five or six years in college to reach the upper level jobs, others simply have the capital to get there or their private connections or just the work experience and seniority. Jobs have never been dependent or awaiting for the college graduate.

The reality, the simple laughable fact, that most college systems right now, rather than provide a 2 year degree, provide instead a 2 year springboard commitment that when done, may continue to finish a complete 4 year degree, thus making those first 2 years of higher education courses meaningless on their own without a completed 4 year process.

No, that's why I have more faith in a 2 year and 4 year system where a higher education actually reflects courses that are useful in an economic fluctuation. I wouldn't call these trade skills, I would just call them what they use to be, a 2 year degree. Because that's what college is for, to develop further your training or specialization in a work field whether it's in business, digital technology, education, health, or just plain advance office work like legalities and documentations. That was what education was about and why a simple high school diploma actually mattered in comparison. College is more about work, and less about developing your hobby through community college. All we've done in these last couple of decades, is elevate the cost of education, saturate our colleges with highschool S.A.T. pipelines, and soften the 4 year degree to nothing more than simple office work like human relations and payroll.

That is why our economy is as inflated as it is today, because a simple 2 year degree holds no workforce merit that can sustain a sporadic and changing economic market where businesses come and go with our societal answer to be "increase the minimum wage." In short, a 2 year college student has nothing to put on their resume that can prepare them for recessions, lay offs, and just plain ole jobs that move their work to oversea slavery profits. If they did, then the average 2 year college student right now would have proper credentials to show like "adapt accounting" or "software specialist," or "data specialist," heck even a basic forklift certification or past experience has more flexibility and chance for a call back than a two year.

I mean, we live in a time where technology work is seen as a simple "is able to work on microsoft excell" and anything more is auto-rejected if it does not have a college mention, right, because a 4 year college education is sooooo vital that it's required to work a normal office job. This is what I mean when I say our middle and lower classes have suffered long enough for stable living; when teens are either pushed into an expensive 4 year salary, or a high school diploma that has nothing except part times and warehouse work to depend on. That, in the view of our current economy, you are either a college graduate without any work experience demanding a huge entry salary, or you are a minimum wage worker at the mercy of our remaining part time business crooks and amazonn warehouse trends. All in all, a clear visual of how our economy is just a survival of the richest by any means possible--the true age-old problem in a capitalism world where the workers are who suffer because of competing businesses; just now, those workers are thinner and more replaceable than ever.

I thankfully, live with other people (my family), so I just sadly realized, like yesterday, how fragile that safety net is and how fortunate I am to the average single person in society. That I have the free time to be so privileged as to write a whole blog post about the Cyberpunk videogame, or even play videogames, while I am also unemployeed because of my family.

Just think, to be born into a home family is one of the most under rated privileges in life, as good as winning the lottery if we're also born healthy.

Just some food for thought. Please someone in power do something about the economy. We can't afford to be the customers we so boast in our capitalist country. We can barely afford our own renting and bills, the jobs just aren't here anymore.