Fixed Income, Fixed Mindset: Between Fodder and Fertilizer for the Great Reset

When you are an obese, chronically ill, broke-ass white person, you have no friends among the Democratic party — the party of globalists, of the coastal elites.

So I have a family member who is increasingly unable to afford her rent.  Because the rent keeps getting raised, and she’s on a fixed income. It’s now at some at absurd ratio: approaching 65% of what she gets each month, or in that neighborhood.

She does NOT have luxury accommodations.  A studio/pseudo one-bedroom in an age 55+ apartment building in a major blue city with some limited amenities.

This problem is hardly unique to her. We can do a quick survey.

• Jaime Dunaway-Seale (16 May 2022), a real estate expert, reported that “from 1985 to 2020, rent prices increased 149%, while income grew just 35%.”

  • So effectively, “rent prices have increased about 4x faster than income during that time period.”

• USA Today (1 July 2022): “Tenants struggle with rising rent as prices hit all-time highs.” 

• NPR (9 June 2022): “Rents across U.S. rise above $2,000 a month [median price] for the first time ever.”

• Daryl Fairweather, chief economist for Redfin (9 June 2022): “Housing is getting less affordable for everyone at every level.”

Etc. Expect this to get worse over the next twenty years. See our earlier (30 May 2022) “Six Notes on Neo-Feudalism.” Graph below courtesy Dunaway-Seale (16 May 2022), based on USA gov data.

Besides the financial crunch, she has health and mobility issues. Largely due to lifestyle and some previous injuries. Obesity is a factor. Her diet is awful: crap carbs. And some ultra-high processed “health foods.” She’s a typical enough American in this regard as well. See our earlier (16 May 2022) “Decolonizing Health to Fight Fatphobia?”

Generic person, generic problems. There are solutions. For the amount of money she does get every month, she could live much better — live safe and well — in say Ecuador, Panama, or even Mexico or Cambodia.  (The Good Citizen for 15 July 2022 discusses options in Eastern Europe).

But not with her mobility issues, which largely stem from a sedentary lifestyle. And not with her mindset. Injuries or not, and I have them (and the surgery as well), if you keep moving you keep the ability to move.

Elsewhere on American Exile we discussed the essential importance of strength training (9 July 2022). Essential it is. But your author despite his one Frankenstein repair has averaged over 10K steps a day since buying a FitBit in July 2016. Nothing remarkable, exceptional, or heroic about this — which is precisely the point. Walking is not exercise. But walking everyday provides the foundation for everything else.

Walking is NOT exercise. But walking everyday provides the foundation for everything else.

So back to my unhappy story. We were in Stockholm (Sweden) for my niece’s wedding. With my beloved relative I had what can only be described as an insane conversation. She has memorized the MSNBC talking points, and felt compelled to share. When she dies which now seems likely in the next eight years, she will go to blue pill heaven.

The insanity is that I am dealing with someone who is younger than me, but who physically could not keep up with my mother, a woman in her early 80s who does stay active but who also had two knee replacements and one hip surgery. In fact, this person cannot walk a ¼ mile without needing to take a prolonged break.

     Stockholm, July 2022. A walkable city, with excellent & safe public transportation.

She is in a fight for survival: financially, physically. And she is losing. She is losing that fight.

But among other things, she treated me to a lecture on what is wrong with racist America. Racist America. She is a huge fan of the sitcom Blackish  — and tried to share with me her enlightenment. My response was unprintable. Let’s review.

So you cannot afford your rent. Nor can you walk four blocks without what seems a minor cardiovascular incident. But you are deeply obsessed with the trials and tribulations of a sitcom character. That fantasy takes priority. Check.

You will soon be living in the boondocks to find affordable housing — or you will be on the street. Or, you will find some emotionally unstable, legal- and recreational- substance abuser to share a miserable place with. This person will bring along all their baggage and associates. Check.

You are losing the ability to take care of yourself in fundamental ways. Walking to the grocery store is not a viable option. Walking around in the grocery store is becoming less of a viable option. Check.

Affording your groceries due to Biden-flation also increasingly a problem. Check.

You have no ability to defend yourself, and nothing about your appearance would deter a crime of opportunity. But you live in a blue city which hit a record murder rate last year, and as well witnessed an insane rise in car-jackings, etc. Check. Yes, your city has a Soros DA. Double check. You are not a member of the 2A community, and would not know how to use a firearm — handgun or long gun — if you did own one, which you do not. Triple blue check.

But in your mind, and with no ability whatsoever it seems to focus on your own life and take charge of your problems, you are a true-blue social justice warrior who is morally and intellectually superior to anyone you disagree with. Everyone who is not a member of your social media & MSM tribes. Check.

If you do not understand that your life is being destroyed by the system you support, and that you will be disposed of like garbage by it (your replacement has already illegally crossed the border), then nothing can be done. Either you take responsibility for your own life and take charge, or you do not.

Americans on fixed or limited incomes have opportunities for quality of life: in the USA and abroad. But these opportunities require self-reliance. Basic physical competency. Personal responsibility.

Instead, it’s all about feeling superior to racist rednecks and demanding more from government. Surrendering bodily autonomy to Big Pharma (6 June 2022). Waiting for a miracle pill or cure. At her current rate of decline, she will not make it to age 65.

But she wanted to lecture me about the current state of the USA based on Blackish. Just insane. If your life is a sad fiasco, you have no moral credibility. FYI, I had not quite a year earlier sent her a decent bit of seed money so she could travel to Central and South America to see if relocating there was the right move for her. She still hasn’t taken that exploratory trip, even though it would have cost her nothing out of pocket. Just another round of excuses, and another raise in her rent — the second in less than 12 months. Message from the universe NOT received.

When you are an obese, chronically ill, broke-ass white person, you have no friends among the Democratic party — the party of globalists, of the coastal elites. They despise you. They might appreciate your blind support, but are still committing to replacing you. Your cooperation in the “deaths of despair” likewise appreciated. (This is NOT a claim the Republican party is better. Get beyond parties).

Open your eyes. You are in a fight for survival, and losing. Take back control of your health and your finances. Rely on — trust — the Administrative State as little as possible.

Deal with your real problems. Not the imagined problems of people you do not know. People who will contribute nothing to your survival. People who will have better things to do than attend your funeral. People who will step over your corpse to see your benefits go back into the system so that they can access it. Soylent Green is you.

Your author will NOT be relying on Social Security or any other government transfer payments for retirement. Living internationally, your author will not be relying on Medicare. And your author will most certainly not suffer a natural blue state death of being locked up in an infested nursing home.

On that note, let us hear from Jonathon Sullivan, MD, PhD (2016):

Combined with improvements in public health and nutrition, this awesome medical machinery has contributed to a longer lifespan ... and more obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes than at any other time in human history. We don’t die of syphilis and smallpox anymore. Instead, we die of heart failure, stroke, myocardial infarction, or dementia. A particularly tragic manifestation of modern aging is the 65 year-old nursing home pretzel: diapered, demented, immobile limbs twisted like the branches of a dead tree, sore-ridden, tube-fed, chronically dehydrated, kept alive until the insurance stops paying off, finally allowed to die to open up the bed for a more lucrative replacement.

This obscenity is perpetuated by modern medicine’s ability to keep dead people breathing.

Until your insurance company has had enough. Or, your Blue State Governor —Andrew Cuomo, Gretchen Whitmer, or the like — has had enough. This is what is waiting for my relative if she does not make radical and immediate changes. But at least she will have her TV shows up to near the very end.

Eat clean. Stay active. Strength train. Practice lifestyle medicine. Get control over your finances. Make daily choices which contribute to your health, sanity, and fiscal well-being. Watch less to no TV.

                                                 Stockholm, Sweden. July 2022.

It was a lovely wedding, and Stockholm in the summer is an urban paradise. A delight to walk.

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