Untouchable artists, tossed aside.
That silver taxi won't take us for a ride.
But we do art just to survive.
You can throw that out, too, when we die.
Untouchable artists, tossed aside.
That silver taxi won't take us for a ride.
But we do art just to survive.
You can throw that out, too, when we die.
A coworker of mine is turning sixty-five and is going to
retire right away. She and her husband have worked all their lives and are
ready to enjoy some free time.
“I’d like to travel,” she says. I nod my head supportively
until she tosses in a grim caveat. “But we have to do it soon.” She sweeps her
hand across her obese body, as if submitting it into evidence, “We don’t have
much time left.”
I utter some encouraging phrases before heading to my own health
wrecking office considering the pervasiveness of this story. It could be dubbed
“the retirement fallacy”: buying into the notion that a life spent working in exchange
for a few blissful decades at the end is a good bet. Not so, if one arrives at
retirement age sick and broken, the money saved for that trip around the world vanishing
into medical bills.
Of course, there is a “choice” component to a healthy
lifestyle, but working full time clearly discourages it. First, deliberate
exercise and healthful meal preparation require time. Once all the average
working person’s hours are truly accounted for, there is very little of
that left. Meanwhile, the chronic stress associated with the often-grueling
activities of working-class jobs leaves a person exhausted at the end of the
day. The activities often used for recovery, like smoking, drinking, or watching
television, further erode the working persons’ health. Many a treadmill bought
and abandoned in the living room, sufficing as an expensive coat rack.
My more conspiratorial self is tempted to call the
retirement fallacy a deliberate arrangement: a scheme that has been inflicted on
the working class since its advent. The concept of retirement is dangled like a
swinging chocolate carrot, enticing the worker to sacrifice her peak years making
other people rich, spoil her health in the process, only to get shipped off to
the packer when she is no longer useful: an entire class of Orwellian Boxers.
It is for this reason that I am not waiting for some
enlightened rich person to normalize the twenty-hour work week; as of several
months ago, I adopted it anyway. I’ll
put it into words the investor class can understand: I am choosing to spread my
retirement out over the remainder of my life instead of taking it as one lump
sum.
The benefits of working part time have been well documented.
It is not just for physical health; it improves mental health, lowers stress,
and increases happiness. I’ve noticed
that there is more time for self-improvement: more time for creative endeavors
and DIY projects. There is less of an impact on the environment. I am driving
less, consuming less, and attempting to raise some of my own food. I am still
“working”, but I can see the direct results.
I realize that most people are not able to do this. A combination of luck, choice, preferences,
and privileges make this plan viable for me. For example, if my mind remains
sharp, I have the type of job I can do well into my old age. I earn enough of an hourly wage so I can still
afford the basics while working fewer hours. The most glaring advantage of all?
I have no kids. Because of these factors and more, I have the option to be
poor.
Naturally, there are risks. The most striking is ageism:
just because I’m able to work doesn’t mean the job market will have me. Also, an unfortunate life event, like a
chronic illness, would indeed spoil my plans. However, even if I unleashed my
full-time earning potential now, a catastrophe would exhaust my meager savings
very quickly. Besides, by investing in my health, I am mitigating much of that
risk.
I’ll admit that for some, mostly the wealthy, the retirement
life-structure works beautifully. For others, retirement may not be the
anticipated reward, but simply icing on the cake. Because of a full-time commitment, a working
person can reap all the benefits of modern society and live comfortably. That
may be enough for some people, but I’m sure there are many who feel shafted, as
I do.
Thwarting my indoctrination is not easy, and I worry about
the barriers that a society hellbent on destroying me will accomplish just
that. However, I refuse to continuously subsidize the rich with my time and
labor at the expense of my health and happiness. I am choosing time over money.
I’m investing in my health instead of my 401K.
I want to be clear: I identify as a political progressive. I
embrace the notion that governments can invest in their citizens and produce
healthier societies. I am not opposed to policies that help people. However, I
have noticed a fatal flaw in the programs that progressives tend
to champion: they are fundamentally unjust, separating people based on who is
“deserving” and who is not.
Income-based assistance for housing, food, healthcare and
the like is a case in point. A safety net is crucial for survival in a society
such as ours, one that simply doesn’t pay most people a living wage. However,
it also creates resentment towards the “poor” by the “working poor”.
A working-class friend of mine once put it this way whilst
explaining his animosity towards “welfare” programs and his support for Donald
Trump, “I’ve worked all my life just to keep my head above water and nobody
helped me.” It wasn’t so much that he felt the poor were “undeserving”, as much
as he wondered why he was not. Further embedded in his comment is the sense
that he was being punished for his hard work.
Student loan forgiveness is another good example. Again,
it’s not that it’s a bad idea, it’s just that some people have made many
serious sacrifices of time and money to pay off their student loans.
Potentially forgiving that debt now feels like a slap in the face. Again,
attempts to justifiably help relieve the financial stress for some feels like an
insult for others.
Parental leave is a third example. It’s undeniably important
for parents to get time off to spend with their children, especially in the
critical early years of development. I like the idea of guaranteeing a
reasonable portion of time for workers to take care of their families. However,
whenever I hear politicians gushing over the value of parents in society, my
blood starts to boil Why? As a childless person, the message I receive from those
advocating for parental leave is this: you have no kids and, therefore, you are
not deserving of paid time off. In addition, if parental leave policies go into
effect, the person who will be left to pick up the slack at work? Again, an attempt to help one group creates
resentment in another.
Family leave might be more inclusive, but many of us do not
even have families. My question is this: why not just mandate paid leave for
all workers regardless of the reason? Just leave it at “leave”. Look, I’ve just
created my slogan!
In the case of income-based programs, the concerns I
outlined above bring me to just one of the reasons I support a Basic Minimum
Income (BMI) as a less exclusionary approach to human investment. In addition
to being flexible and efficient, as well as potentially necessary in a society
that faces increasing automation, a uniformly applied, reasonably determined BMI
could, at least theoretically, replace programs that determine who is
“deserving” and who is not.
For the same reason (and others), I support a taxpayer
funded single-payer health care system that gives everyone access regardless of
income. When I worked full-time, I didn’t receive a health care subsidy because
I made “too much” money, even though I was living paycheck to paycheck and the
$400/month premium was a gigantic burden for me. Now that I’m working
part-time, I pay nothing. My old self is
very angry with my current self. “Why do you get free health care? I worked
myself half to death and nobody helped me! You lazy free loader!”
I am steadily surprised by how a group that claims they are
committed to bringing people together consistently support policies that push
people apart. To get support, progressives need to stop advancing programs that
sound compassionate but are inherently divisive.