@interfluidity This is a very good piece and tracks with something I've come to believe more as I get older: most Americans, and most people in general, are not avaricious or excessively materialistic. They don't want summer houses in the Hamptons or private jets or other trappings of plutocracy. Most people just want a sense of security and stability. But American society is set up so that the only way to insure against ruination is to behave like far more of a greedy SOB than you actually are.

@MadMadMadMadRN yes. exactly.

@interfluidity In my experience, whenever the Power Ball gets really big and friends and co-workers start discussing what they would do if they actually won, most say they probably wouldn't move or change their lives much at all. Most say they would just quit their jobs, travel more, and spend more time with and help out friends and family.

@MadMadMadMadRN Right. The dream is to be able to live without financial worries, travel nicely and more, and help family and friends who also suffer from precarity.

@interfluidity It occurs to me that America's Expensive Desperation also puts us in a doom loop in which our threadbare safety increases our labor and infrastructure costs and these elevated costs are then used as a reason we can't have a better social safety net. How, the argument goes, can we possibly ever have public housing / universal higher ed / universal healthcare etc. when high building and labor costs make the cost of providing such services so financially ruinous to government?