Everything Costs Money

Recently, this author has seen more and more online posts by Millennials and Gen Z folks, lamenting the fact that it "costs so much to just live." Other similar statements might include "everything costs money." The implication is clear - it is resentment that things cost money, and that money is hard to come by. It is a mindset that things should be free. At its root, this is a socialist mindset. The schools have done their jobs. 

So, let's go back to a time when there was not much formal society: in order to obtain the necessities in life back then, one had to work to acquire them. 

Food?

Had to hunt it or grow and harvest it. Also had to process it from beginning to end. Every part of it. Certainly not labor free. 

Clothing?

Had to grow and process the cotton. Had to kill the animal and tan the hide. Had to shear other animals and process the wool. Very labor intensive. 

Shelter?

Had to gather the things - wood and stone - used to build your shelter. Had to manufacture the joining devices. Had to build it all from the ground up. Lots of labor. 

Water?

You had to fashion and create containers to hold the water. Had to go to a source of water and retrieve it. Had to do this daily. 

These are just the basics. There was a LOT of work involved in procuring these things. And the funny thing is: there is nothing stopping anybody from going back to this way of life, if they want to. 

The other method is money. Money is an object that society agrees upon to have value for the purpose of trade for goods and services. One generally performs some sort of work to acquire money - the sale of a good or a service at its core. In the US, we use a unit called a "dollar." The average income in the US at the time of this article is $59,430 per year. For the sake of simplicity, lets call this $60,000. 

The work week in the US is 40 hours. Yes, many people work more, and many people work less. That's why the average income was used in the preceding paragraph - to account for these variances. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, and 40 working hours in a week, it is simple to calculate that there are 2080 working hours in a year. Another simple calculation tells us that the average income is $28.85 per hour. 

So, for the sake of illustration, let's take something from the essentials above, and compare it to the money, so we can get an idea of how hard it is to come by the means to buy something. Let's also see if it is easier to buy, than to create by hand oneself. 

For this article, we will use a piece of clothing as an example. Wrangler jeans from Wal Mart (this author's favorite pants) cost $20 - $25 plus tax. That is approximately an hour's worth of work from the average income earner. Even a master of all the things needed to create clothing would find it hard to grow cotton, process it, and construct a pair of pants in an hour. We definitely have things easier now, and a big part of it is because we use money. 

Complete the same exercise with food, shelter, water, and any other service or good you wish, and the same story will ring true: we have it easier than at any time in history. 

And these nutjobs have found a way to complain about that.