re: Americans Are Still Spending Like There’s No Tomorrow

These are the actions of people who have realized one of the following:

1. The “old way” doesn’t work anymore. Saving and grinding at a job will never lead to long term prosperity anymore, just a continuous slide into more and more economic desperation. Over the last 5 years, my hours have been stable, I have increased my productivity and output, and my quality of life has plummeted. My wages have not increased anywhere near the cost of living. 5 years ago, my pay afforded me the ability to rent a 2br house by myself and have plenty of money left over to pay all my bills, save a nest egg, and take a modest vacation once a year. Today, that same job, I have to have multiple roommates to help pay rent and afford food, and even a short weekend getaway to a non-touristy city is unaffordable. The cost of food alone is double if not 3 times what it was. Insurance is up 50%. My experience is not atypical of white collar professionals who took the college to grad school to jobs pipeline in the late 2000’s-mid 2010’s

2. There is no future. Inflation is destroying the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar. As a result, those dollars will never be worth more later than they are now. If my dollar can essentially go only 1/2 as far now as it did 5 years ago, what’s the point in saving? Throw in that people are actively assuming societal collapse is inevitable, a nuclear war with Russia is inevitable, that civil war is inevitable, and that some crazy climate change catastrophe is going to kill us all before anyone can retire, so what else would they wait for? Do you not try to go out to eat at your favorite restaurant when you know it’s going to close for good at the end of the month?

3. Covid WILL happen again. The government has already demonstrated that they can lock us all down at any time with zero consequences for them. They’ll find another covid and take all of our freedoms away again, likely permanently. As such, this temporary reprieve should be appreciated before our authoritarian overlords begin culling us again without consequence.

4. Social mobility is very different now. The middle class is dead, and the only way out is to take big chances. Influencers make more money than most professionals. Professionals make less money than tradesmen. Being a college educated professional is just a pipeline to being a miserable unhappy drone who will never be able to afford a home or raise children (assuming you can even find and keep a decent romantic partner in the hell scape the dating industry has become). The only way out is to essentially win the lottery by either starting a business that blows up, invest in an emerging technology that blows up, hit the algorithmic lottery and make bank as an influencer, or win the literal lottery.

The best way to explain this phenomenon is to look at how people play the lottery. People actually behave incredibly rationally when it comes to lottery tickets. Our brains innately operate of the mathematical concept of expected value. Expected value compares the upfront price of an investment with how much it could potentially pay out in the future verses how long it would take to pay out and the odds of it doing so. The powerball has a very cheap entry cost, but very low odds to win. However, people rush to buy a lot more powerball tickets when the prize gets above a certain amount. Why is that? Well, it’s because above a certain prize point, despite the low odds, the expected value from purchasing a ticket becomes worth more than the price of the ticket. Thus, even if the odds of making it on a moonshot are just that, the reward actually outweighs the risk so long as you’re not buying too much upfront just ti play the game.

Hitting it big as an influencer is often about tapping it into the “keeping up with the joneses” mentalities of people, especially women. Hitting it big in business is often wrapped up in networking and successfully building up a facade of success. If hitting it big in these areas requires spending big to play the game, and that’s the only way to have a chance of winning, people will leverage the futures they don’t believe they have to get a chance at the big score. The middle class is dead, so the ability to move out of working class into middle is dead. So, the path out of the middle into the upper classes is similarly dead (because you can’t get to the middle in the first place). So, it now takes a moonshot to catapult out of working class into the elite. Might as well load the trebuchet and give it a shot.

5. Near death experiences. Covid, or the mental illness the isolation from covid lockdowns inevitably caused, nearly killed millions more than the disease ever harmed. These people came out of lockdowns knowing life is short, and they can’t wait another 30-40 years to start checking boxes on a bucket list. They could “die suddenly” tomorrow, so they better start living for the day. Thinking for the future is just anxiety. And anxiety cripples your ability to live in the present even more than depression keeps one stuck living in the past. The only way to fight the demons of anxiety and depression (according to modern pop psychology) is to live entirely in the moment. For people without kids or romantic partners, there’s nothing to fill the void in their present other than addictions, experiences, and consumption.

There’s basically an entire generation of traumatized people running from their past and avoiding their future through consumption just to try to stay in the present and not fall down an emotional spiral back into self-harm.

This is because of the death of community. There’s little involvement in civic organizations, churches, and in-person clubs for these people. Social media is everything, and it doesn’t leave people fulfilled, only wanting more real connections that are illusive.

Denied of a past to help define them, a future worth striving for, or a present of fulfilling relationships with others or purpose found through hobbies, family, and/or career, what is left but spending in the moment to make it all seem just a little less dire.

This is an entire world experiencing a mid-life crisis and trying to come to terms with its mortality.

The America we thought we knew is dead and gone. The world we live in now is dying in real time. What does that leave but trying to enjoy our favorite dishes while we can because the restaurant is about to close?