I didn’t have a blue-collar upbringing (my wife can check that box, though), but I did have a blue-collar income up into my mid-40s, even when I wasn’t in grad school.
20 years ago, as a recent Ph.D. teaching math at the only college that I got a job offer from, I was earning $23K/year. Four years later, at the same college, I was making the princely sum of $26,800. Sometimes I could pick up another $1000 by teaching a summer class.
And I didn’t even get a cushy life out of the deal: I had a really crushing teaching load. My wife was making about the same money, teaching for a local community college, and an equally overwhelming teaching load.
So it was the white-collar equivalent of a blue-collar life. I don’t miss it one bit.
But I still remember what it was like. And it informs my politics to this day. I’m living quite comfortably now, but I’m aware that most people are struggling in ways that I’m not, and it’s not because they’re lazy.
I’ve found that such clarity can be hard to differentiate from, say, nothin’ I can’t see is important. Good to have a few people around - maybe even a whole class - that can see farther than the next holler.
J666, I understand exactly what you are saying, (or at least I think I share a lot of your viewpoint). I too grew up in the blue-collar union labor world and am now in professional/managerial 3%.
While I did not think of my family as poor at the time, because everyone we knew was in the same place it just seemed “normal”. It was only later in life that I came to understand where we had fit in the big picture. Yes, we operated in the world with a keen sensitivity to day-to-day choices based on money availability. And we had a distinct sense of “us” (working class) against “them” (owner class). Now that I am technically in the owner class, it is a club I am not terribly fond of. It’s one thing to sit on the outside thinking they are all full of sht, it’s quite another to be there and understand that yeah, they are kinda full of sht - and in ways you could never imagine. There was a certain innocence to being blue collar and seeing it more simply.
Part of it, of course, for people like you and me is personal identity. We naturally identify with our upbringing (it can’t be helped) and don’t 100% identify with our current situation, no matter how many decades we spend being better off.
When I was young I had very little money. I never considered myself poor, just a little poorer than most. Only a few days of my life were spent hungry from little money for food.
Getting by was challenging, scary, painful but it also had a lot of discovery and excitement. I entertained myself in simpler ways.
At that time the future looked scary but the present was an adventure.
So I can see how the OP might equate his loss of adventure to increased wealth instead of increased age.
*"… So every now and then when I’m in the grocery
I’ll take a little but not much
'cause you never know when those hard times’ll hitcha
And I don’t want to lose my touch…"
*
I enjoyed my salad days, but that was then and at this time in my life i wouldn’t want to go back to them. I wouldn’t be happy about it but I could and would survive, however.
There are a few things that were simpler in life when I had less money. But if I never again have to set foot in a payday loan place, or come home to a three-day notice from the power company hanging on my door knob, I suspect I won’t shed a tear.
You are one of the truly fortunate. You are living in the richest part of the world in the best time to be alive. There are six billion people living in the world right now who would give their right arm to have half of what you have. 99.9% of the people who ever existed lived and died without dreaming of having what you do. You are among the .1% of the luckiest people in the history of the world.
Quit whining, there is nothing ennobling about poverty and nothing wise about wanting to go back to when you knew less about the world.
The only thing I miss is the freedom of having no debt, so I could get up and go or do anything I could afford, without worrying about future bills coming due. When you don’t own much and don’t owe anything, going broke isn’t very scary.
On the other hand, I’ve always felt that I could get employment if I needed it. Going broke without any hope of any income or means of support would be truly scary!
