You wake up tired.
You work all day.
You come home exhausted.
You can’t afford to get sick. You can’t afford to take time off. You can’t afford to fix your car. You can’t afford to save for retirement. You can’t afford to have kids. Or you have kids and you can’t afford to give them what they need. You do everything right. You work hard. You follow the rules. And you’re still one emergency away from ruin.
This isn’t bad luck. This isn’t personal failure. This is policy. Your life is expensive by design.
You don’t have affordable healthcare because the government is spending $886 billion a year on the military. The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. Signed by a Democrat. Passed by a Democratic Senate. Passed by a Republican House. The vote wasn’t close. The vote wasn’t contested. The vote was 87-13 in the Senate. Both parties agreed. The money for your healthcare exists. It’s being spent on the F-35 fighter jet. A weapons system that doesn’t work. A weapons system that’s been in development for over 20 years. A weapons system that’s cost $1.7 trillion and counting. A weapons system that the Pentagon didn’t even ask for. But Lockheed Martin needed the contract. And Lockheed Martin donated $4.5 million to politicians in the last election cycle. And those politicians voted for the F-35. And you can’t afford to see a doctor.
You ration your insulin. You skip the doctor. You pray you don’t get sick. You go bankrupt from a hospital visit. You die from a condition that’s treatable in every other developed nation. In Germany, a worker pays nothing for healthcare. Nothing. They walk into a hospital. They walk out. No bill. No co-pay. No deductible. No GoFundMe. You get a GoFundMe. You get a payment plan. You get a collection agency. You get a second job. You get a heart attack from the stress of trying to pay for the heart attack.
And even if you survive the heart attack, you can’t afford to live anywhere. The government gives tax breaks to real estate investors and developers. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Passed by Republicans. Signed by Trump. The law created Opportunity Zones. A tax break for developers who invest in “distressed” areas. The law was sold as a way to help poor communities. The reality: developers got tax breaks for building luxury condos in gentrifying neighborhoods. The people who lived there got evicted. The people who built the condos got nothing. The investors got richer. You got priced out.
You pay half your income in rent. You can’t save for a down payment. You watch neighborhoods gentrify. You watch your landlord raise the rent again. You watch Airbnbs replace apartments. You watch luxury condos sit empty while you sleep in your car. In Vienna, over 60% of residents live in social housing. The city decided housing was a human right. The city built homes people could afford. The city didn’t leave housing to the market. The city didn’t let investors turn homes into assets. You don’t live in Vienna. You live in a country that treats your home as someone else’s investment. And you’re the investment that didn’t pay off.
And even if you could afford the rent, you can’t afford to get ahead. You’re drowning in student debt because the government subsidizes for-profit colleges and bails out banks. $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. 45 million borrowers. The average payment is $300 a month. That’s $300 you don’t have for rent. $300 you don’t have for food. $300 you don’t have for your kids. $300 you don’t have for anything except a debt you can’t discharge in bankruptcy. In Germany, college is free. In France, college is free. In Norway, college is free. Here, college is a revenue extraction machine. The government guarantees the loans. The schools raise the tuition. The banks collect the interest. You collect the bill. And the bill never ends.
And even if the bill ended, you still can’t afford to eat. The government cuts SNAP benefits while increasing defense spending. The 2023 debt ceiling deal. Negotiated by a Democratic White House and a Republican House. The deal expanded work requirements for SNAP. The deal made it harder for adults without children to get food assistance. The deal cut benefits for people who are already starving. The deal was called a “compromise.” A compromise between the people who want to cut food stamps and the people who are able to cut food stamps. You weren’t at the table. You were on the menu.
You work full-time and still need food stamps. Your kids get free lunch at school and that’s the only meal they can count on. You choose between groceries and gas. You choose between feeding your kids and paying the electric bill. In Finland, every student gets a free, nutritious school lunch. Not because they’re poor. Not because they qualify. Because they’re human. Because feeding children is what a society does. Here, we debate whether children deserve to eat. We create lunch debt. We let kids go hungry because their parents can’t pay.
And even if you can feed them, you can’t afford to raise them. The government gives tax cuts to the wealthy instead of funding universal care. The expanded child tax credit reduced child poverty by nearly 30%. Children were lifted out of poverty. Families could afford food. The program worked. Then it was allowed to expire. The Democrats had the presidency, the House, and the Senate. They didn’t extend it. They didn’t fight for it. They let it die. Because the money was needed elsewhere. For the military. For corporate subsidies. For tax cuts for people who will never have to worry about the cost of raising a child.
You pay more for daycare than you earn. You leave your kids with whoever is available. You quit your job because working costs more than staying home. You can’t have another kid because you can barely afford the one you have. In Sweden, parents get 480 days of paid parental leave. Childcare is capped at $150 a month. The government pays for it. Because children are a society’s future. Not a family’s burden. This country calls itself pro-life and then lets children starve. It celebrates motherhood and then makes it impossible to afford.
And even if you can afford the kids, you can’t afford to rest. You go to work sick because the government doesn’t guarantee paid leave. You spread illness. You suffer through it. You risk your health and everyone else’s because you can’t afford not to. You’re one illness away from losing your job. You’re one illness away from losing everything. In every other developed nation, paid sick leave is the law. Not a benefit. Not a perk. Not a favor from your employer. The law. Here, your labor matters more than your life. They’d rather you cough on your coworkers than miss a shift.
And even if you survive the shifts, you can’t afford to stop. The government killed pensions and gave you a 401k that depends on the stock market. You work until you die. You can’t afford to get old. You can’t afford to be sick when you’re old. You’re one market crash away from losing everything you’ve saved. In the Netherlands, the pension system is robust and guaranteed. Retirees don’t worry about market crashes. Retirees don’t work until they die. Retirees don’t choose between food and medicine. You do. Because your retirement was turned into a profit center for Wall Street. And Wall Street doesn’t give a fuck if you eat.
And who suffers most from these choices? The single mom who can’t afford childcare. The Black family that can’t build wealth because redlining and discrimination and predatory lending and mass incarceration destroyed every attempt at accumulation. The trans person who can’t afford healthcare because the government is too busy banning it to provide it. The immigrant who can’t afford to be legal because the system is designed to keep them cheap and afraid. The cost isn’t distributed equally. The pain isn’t shared equally. The design isn’t colorblind.
The design is racist.
The design is sexist.
The design is classist.
The design is everything-ist.
Because the design is to take from the people who have the least and give to the people who have the most. And the people who have the most are the people who designed the system.
Both parties serve the same masters. Both parties take the same money. Both parties vote for the same budgets. The Democrats had the presidency, the House, and the Senate. They didn’t deliver universal healthcare. They didn’t deliver a living wage. They didn’t deliver student loan forgiveness. They delivered more military spending. They delivered more corporate subsidies. They delivered more of the same. The 2024 NDAA was 87-13. The red team and the blue team wear the same jersey. The sponsor is the same. The owner is the same. You’re just the ball. And the game is rigged.
You wake up tired. You work all day. You come home exhausted. You can’t afford to get sick. You can’t afford to take time off. You can’t afford to fix your car. You can’t afford to save for retirement. You can’t afford to have kids. And the money that would make your life livable is being spent on weapons and tax cuts and corporate subsidies and bailouts for people who will never have to worry about any of this.
The money exists. The models exist. The proof exists. Every other developed nation has figured this out.
You don’t have these things because the government chose to give them to someone else. You don’t have these things because the government is doing something else instead. And that something else is making someone else rich. And that someone else isn’t you.
The anxiety is by design. The depression is by design. The suicide rates are by design. The substance abuse is by design. The broken families are by design. The lost potential is by design. You’re not just broke. You’re broken. By design.
They took your life and sold it for a profit.
And the receipt is in your bank account. The receipt is in your empty fridge. The receipt is in the bills you can’t pay. The receipt is in the sleep you can’t get. The receipt is in the kids you can’t afford. The receipt is in the future you can’t reach.
Your life is expensive by design.
And the designers are getting rich.
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