personal postscript
Maybe I ended up working in a useful career after all. At least hypothetically, LOL. In the right place at the wrong time?
I'd been thinking a lot lately (if you read my LJ you know this too well) about how I'm sort of stuck in this job until I retire, because of the enormous present value of my retirement benefits -- walking away from a lifetime pension plus lifetime health insurance that could both begin at age 60 -- how could a rational person walk away from that pile of money? It's worth over a million USD, more than the value of my home equity plus retirement account. MOST OF MY WEALTH IS THIS PENSION!
If I were retired, maybe I'd pick something entirely different to do with my life, living somewhere entirely different. But I can't walk away from a lifetime annuity that would cost $1,250,000 at today's interest rates. It's basically a guaranteed lottery jackpot if I keep doing this job for another 4 years and 7 months. [Assuming the US doesn't collapse before I die.]
But this morning I wrote that long riff on shared sacrifice, and if there's one-and-only-one type of shared sacrifice I believe in it certainly isn't the military draft. It's paying your taxes. We need taxes to fund a democratic government, and democratic government is how we (would) solve our collective problems (if we wanted to). And we need taxes should we decide to redistribute wealth & income to combat oligarchy and alleviate poverty.
I did end up in a useful place. But y'all aren't using me! Instead you're all living off the sacrifices your parents and grandparents made to build a US Empire, paying your bills by printing trillions of units of fiat currency, fighting proxy wars and imposing economic sanctions, pretending that you're still #1 when you aren't.
I picked a useful career. It's not my fault if our democracy had other plans.
But I do feel a bit better about my career now, suddenly. More like I felt back when I first chose it. It is an honorable way to have spent the past 22 years of my life.
I'd been thinking a lot lately (if you read my LJ you know this too well) about how I'm sort of stuck in this job until I retire, because of the enormous present value of my retirement benefits -- walking away from a lifetime pension plus lifetime health insurance that could both begin at age 60 -- how could a rational person walk away from that pile of money? It's worth over a million USD, more than the value of my home equity plus retirement account. MOST OF MY WEALTH IS THIS PENSION!
If I were retired, maybe I'd pick something entirely different to do with my life, living somewhere entirely different. But I can't walk away from a lifetime annuity that would cost $1,250,000 at today's interest rates. It's basically a guaranteed lottery jackpot if I keep doing this job for another 4 years and 7 months. [Assuming the US doesn't collapse before I die.]
But this morning I wrote that long riff on shared sacrifice, and if there's one-and-only-one type of shared sacrifice I believe in it certainly isn't the military draft. It's paying your taxes. We need taxes to fund a democratic government, and democratic government is how we (would) solve our collective problems (if we wanted to). And we need taxes should we decide to redistribute wealth & income to combat oligarchy and alleviate poverty.
I did end up in a useful place. But y'all aren't using me! Instead you're all living off the sacrifices your parents and grandparents made to build a US Empire, paying your bills by printing trillions of units of fiat currency, fighting proxy wars and imposing economic sanctions, pretending that you're still #1 when you aren't.
I picked a useful career. It's not my fault if our democracy had other plans.
But I do feel a bit better about my career now, suddenly. More like I felt back when I first chose it. It is an honorable way to have spent the past 22 years of my life.