A man tells the world who he is four ways: His house, his wife, his car, and his shoes.

- Warren Adler, War of the Roses

I agree with you unreservedly: the Postwar Economic Expansion was an anomaly, not the fundamental basis for economic theory. "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." (Ken Boulding) But the Greatest Generation fought for it, the Silent Generation came of age in it, the Baby Boomers grew up entitled to it and it wasn't until Generation X came along that maybe, just maybe, we'd hit peak oil. Maybe, just maybe, the climate wouldn't hold. Maybe, just maybe, we'd run out of stuff. And then the Millennials came along and their parents want to know why the fuck they're so shiftless, lazy and fond of avocado toast.

You've found your private Idaho. Good on ya. I myself work 4 months a year and recognize that Adler's saying is deliberately materialist and superficial. But fuckin' hell man it's true. We've got these social markers and just because we opt out doesn't mean the world opts us out in return. Your parents' friends judge you. Your neighbors judge you. Everyone at the grocery store judges you. And they judge you because our sense of well-being is relative. And that judgement affects everyone within the relative sphere, which is everyone who reads the Wall Street Journal, or knows someone who has read the Wall Street Journal, or has heard of the Wall Street Journal, or speaks the same language as the Wall Street Journal.

What you're missing is that the article isn't about people going broke seeking success or happiness or Pokemons or a brighter shade of pale. It's about people going broke seeking status. And the difficulty we have, as a society, is that it isn't our quest for status that drives the engine of creation. It's everyone else's quest for status.

There was a time when sensible people could have said "look, y'all, it's been fun but there's no way in fukkn hell we can afford to fly to London at Mach 2.5. Every kid you squeeze out is generating a semi-trailer full of non-biodegradable disposable diapers. Just getting you to work every morning is burning more energy than a team of oxen use to plow a 40-acre spread. We can slow this gradually or we can come to a crashing halt, which is it going to be?" but no one would have listened to them. There's nobody in a position to say that. They did what they were told, they were promised moonwalks.

Here's a fast plane.

Little boys love that plane. Big boys love that plane. That plane is a paean to American ingenuity and know-how. It has two engines and each one of them produces as much power as every engine on this boat.

But we don't think about that. You've never heard it before. The idea that something that flings two spies across the sky uses twice as much power as something that hauled 3,000 people on twelve decks. It's a fact so removed from the normal experience of everyday humans as to cause cognitive dissonance.

What they know is that they were promised a house, a wife, a car and some shoes in exchange for giving up their dreams and what they have is a third of a million in debt.

So I can pillory them for buying the house when they're already in a mountain of debt but I mean fuck, would I? $26k a year is not fun. Give me another four or five years and who knows.

In Los Angeles I spend two hours riding my bike instead of $20 riding Lyft. I eat frozen burritos and the cheapest peanuts I can find. My coffee costs $4 a pound. My daughter goes to private school and sucks down about $500 a quarter in afterschool activities. You'll suffer through a bunch of bullshit. I sure do. But the minute your kids have to suffer through a bunch of bullshit you will take to the fucking streets.