You Have Nothing to Lose but Your 401K

 

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.

Divide and Don't Conquer

 

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.

 

The Radical
Is lost.
Maybe she’s in the beehive
Capped like honey.
Or in the egg
Floating inside
Or maybe she’s carefully placed
somewhere in the sky.
Without her this body
Is immobilized. 
Counting the days until she awakens
Or dies.
 

Christmas 2021

Unchosen pumpkins spilling like
Hopeful orphans who haven't been told
That it's November 1st. Don't they know?
Their orange cheeks still glow,
Noses high,
Unblemished rinds like wide, waiting eyes.
But it's time to move on. 
The people walk by 
Legless turkeys can't hold up their heads,
Pressed into boxes on the back of a  bed.
They travel along, cold wind on their flesh.
Suffer in life, suffer in death.
Uneaten turkey, we don't remember.
We've got work to do! 
It's the end of November!
Unchosen tree propped up all alone
In an empty lot as the cars come and go. 
It's December 26th, don't you know?
"Was my foliage too thin? Was I slightly askew?
We're my branches too long? Too many? Too few?
Maybe I was too far back in the queue.
They would rather a fake one, I heard them all grouse. 
They are always perfect
And don't leave brown needles all over the house."
Left over champagne, your bubbles all gone. 
Dumped down the drain. 
Now the year can move on. 

Dear Fellow Progressives

 When I have a job without paid sick leave, I go to work sick. When I have a job with paid sick leave, I do not go to work sick, but I also take a few “mental health days”. I don’t go hunting, but I do go to the beach. Chances are I am not alone.

The answer to the question of whether many people suffer in our economy without government assistance or protection is “yes”. The answer to the question of whether people take advantage of said system is also “yes”. The question society should be asking is: which is worse?

While suspicious activities perpetrated by a rich wall street executive or a hedge fund manager would not escape scrutiny, left leaning politicians appear incapable of even considering the notion that people who benefit from government intervention exploit the system.  The left’s narrative is that poor people are all hardworking, honest, and pure. They will only take paid sick leave if they really must. They will only take food stamps if they desperately need it. They will only buy recreational drugs if they earned the money.  Everyone is just like their unassailable single mom who worked three jobs but still struggled financially.

The right, on the other hand, sees corruption everywhere, except maybe among wall street executives and hedge fund managers. They call it like they see it. It is common sense! Humans, mostly poor ones, are innately shifty. They are selfish, insatiable opportunists. Give them something, and they will just take more, unlike their parents who worked hard to get ahead, never took a government “hand-out” and subsequently deserved their inevitable success.

The truth is that these narratives are both fantasies and until politicians stop embracing this false dichotomy of human nature and experience, we cannot have rational policy discussions.

The reaction to Joe Manchin’s statement regarding people spending monetary benefits on drugs or using sick leave to go hunting is a case in point. The audacity!  The shame! Joe Manchin clearly despises his own constituents. He thinks poor people deserve to be poor. In the meantime, the party of “common sense” rolls its collective eyes.  They cheer Joe Manchin for stating the obvious.

I suggest that if the left wants to persuade skeptical people that a social safety net is necessary in a civil society, they must start by admitting that humans will take advantage of it. They must recognize that the doubters are not just talking about flagrant fraud and corruption schemes, like the ones that make headlines. They are referring to the wide array of minor misappropriation going on under the radar: the guy who is sharing half his food stamps with his neighbor, the parent that bought a pair of earrings with the child tax care credit, and those who could work, but choose not to, because they can get benefits instead.

If they start with that confession, they can then move on to the important questions: what is the cost of not having a social safety net? How do these programs benefit society as a whole? How can the system be made more efficient?

Vulnerable people certainly need to be defended in a society that works against them, but not by turning them into gutless lambs. They should be fully respected as mature adults with agency: agency that will occasionally take them to the beach on a day they should really be working.

The Hypochondriac

When I was about 25 years old, I started to have strange migrating pains in the core of my body. These pains were mostly in my lower back, hips, neck, or shoulder blades and were accompanied by digestive disturbances of various kinds as well as an overall sense of inflammation and discomfort. They would come and go without warning, vary in duration and severity, and did not appear to have any clear connection to my activities. These “flare ups” were frequent enough that they severely diminished my quality of life.

So, I did what most sensible uninsured young adults would do: I ignored it. It was the early 1990s. the vast information highway known as the internet was not yet in full swing. If a person wanted to find something out, she had to go to the library. I figured it would eventually go away on its own.

When about five years had passed without any relief, I decided it was time to enlist the help of a medical professional.  I scrounged up a few bucks and off I went, mentally prepared to accept my diagnosis, no matter how dire. My symptoms were so severe, there was no doubt in my mind that she would find something: a tumor on my spine, a vitamin deficiency, a virus, a hormonal imbalance…

“You’re in perfect health,” she said looking over the results of some blood tests she had ordered, “There is nothing wrong with you.”

“But there is something wrong,” I objected insubordinately, “Can we do more tests?”

She looked at me impatiently, “What do you suggest?”  

“I don’t know,” I stammered, taken aback by her sudden shift in tone, “You’re the doctor.”

“I’m not going to give you anything,” she stated, clearly suspicious of my motives. “Take Tylenol.”

And, with that, she abruptly ended the appointment.

And thus, it commenced: the decade of doctors. Though I was still uninsured and limited financially in my ability to seek quality advice, I went through a lot of diagnoses, none of which stuck. In fact, what I mostly experienced were versions of the exchange above. “You seem to be a very anxious person,” said one. “You probably have some autoimmune condition, but you can’t afford the medicine,” said another. I had my gallbladder removed, got countless scans, spent days on a heparin drip and once wore a heart monitor. Many just did not seem to believe me. They implied, in one way or another, that I was looking for drugs, even though I never asked for any.

Around my early forties I started to wise up.

“I’m a pariah.” I said to a coworker, “Not only are they ill-equipped to help me, they hate me!”

“Well, what are you going to do?” She asked.

 “There is only one course of action. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” I trumpeted. “I’m going to go to nursing school!”

The notion was not that far-fetched. I worked primarily as a waitress at that time, but I had a master’s degree in Entomology and taught basic biology classes at the community college level. I was broadly intellectually curious, read a lot of science books and possessed fundamental knowledge of the structure and function of living things. However, though I could provide a detailed description of the process of photosynthesis, bark beetle anatomy or the lifecycle of Basidiomycetes, I knew practically nothing about the human body.

And so, with my secret mission to solve the mystery of my roaming, unpredictable discomfort firmly hidden beneath a well-honed façade of legitimate desire, I went to nursing school and, about two years later, started my new career. I forged ahead as a nurse for several years and then went crawling back to the relatively less stressful climate of the classroom. However, the short-lived nursing experiment was not in vain. I had gotten what I needed: knowledge.

In the meantime, things were really heating up on the vast information highway known as the internet. Now, there was a plethora of data available to me.  I developed hypotheses, tried what I felt were “evidence based” interventions, and analyzed my results. In addition, I found out that there were many people like me with similar experiences: soundly rejected by medical science and desperately searching for answers. There were discussion pages and blogs. I did not participate but I read them obsessively: combing the text for clues.

As I entered my late forties, I would still go to see doctors, but our goals were at cross purposes. They wanted me to get a pap smear and control my asthma.  I wanted to find the cause of my mysterious condition. However, I was wise enough, now, to realize that I sounded like a lunatic, so I stopped bringing it up.  If I wanted to get some piece of information from them, I would work it casually into the conversation so they would not label me as a “drug seeker” or a “hypochondriac”.  

In my early 50s, my frustration mounted as the condition continued to plague me. All the work I was doing and still no answers. Something would seem to help for a while and then it would not. The difficulty of finding patterns and solutions was compounded by the natural unpredictability of the condition. I would joke that somebody had made a doll of me and was capriciously sticking it with pins. I did not really believe that, but I was beginning to allow some sketchy explanations on to the table.

As an ecosystem of greedy charlatans preying on the bounty of hopelessness bloomed exponentially, it became harder and harder, even for a hardnosed science person like me, to separate fact from fiction. I explored explanations good and bad: leaky gut, vitamin D deficiency, histamine overproduction, dysbiosis, hypersecretion of cortisol, dermoid cysts, parasites, malabsorption, floating kidneys, Lyme disease, sphincter of Oddi dysfunction, food intolerances, toxins, motility disorders, childhood trauma, spondylitis, sphenic flexure syndrome, myofascial pain, fibromyalgia, IBS, GMOs…

And now I am fifty- three. I have strange migrating pains in the core of my body. These pains are mostly in my lower back, hips, neck, or shoulder blades and are accompanied by digestive disturbances of various kinds as well as an overall sense of inflammation and discomfort. They come and go without warning, vary in duration and severity, and do not appear to have any clear connection to my activities. These “flare ups” are frequent enough to severely diminished my quality of life.

Ideas anyone?

The Butterfly Effect

What is happening in this sprawling world
As you flex your crooked sunset wings?
I press them firmly between hot irons
Dry as paper, these delicate things
I admire your starry thorax, the blacks, my favorite part.
He just sighs and rolls his eyes
I call you “sweetheart.”
 
He laughs, “Let nature take its course!”
“Rachel suggests I should keep her alive;
She says she’ll stop eating if she’s ready to die.”
“They don’t have volition,” he snorts,
“I’ll crush her for you if you prefer.”
“An act of chivalry?” I sneer, then whisper,
 “You look straighter.”
Into what I think is your ear.
 
He relates his daring Mexico trip way back in ’82
“Disgusting,” he said, “A hemolymph rain!
Hell, I just plowed right through!”
But he is well traveled, and we are naïve
Single minded captives of asymmetry
Deprived of the trip would make us whole
 
I ask,
“Should I crush her fast or freeze her slow?”