The Joneses
Mon, March 7, 2022 Do you remember the old expression, “Keeping up with the Joneses,” where if your neighbor got a new car, then you had to buy a new car? It would seem kind of douchey in current times to admit to this kind of petty jealousy, and yet I believe it is as rampant today as it ever was.
Today there are millions of Joneses and they are all on social media and the Internet, and everyone is trying to keep up and fit in. Anxiety, depression, suicide is on the increase, along with drug and alcohol use.
Looking back at the changes during my lifetime, as I see it, it all changed after WWII. Before then if you were born working class, you stayed working class, you knew your station in life, and you were for the most part content with your lot.
Men returned after the war, with the attitude, “Hey, I laid my life on the line, I want a piece of the pie.” In Britain a socialist government was voted in with a huge majority. This also happened in other European countries. Much of the world went Communist.
Communism would appear to be fair in theory, sharing the wealth amongst everyone, but it eventually failed because without the incentive to “Get Ahead,” no one wants to work. Those ambitious enough to get ahead in the Government, held that position by force and corruption.
America resisted communism to extremes in the 1950s with McCarthyism, when there was never any danger of communism taking over, because the US had something unique called “The American Dream.” Someone working class could work hard and become wealthy.
In my lifetime it seems we had two glorious decades through the 1950s and 1960s, then went into a drug induced haze through the 1970s and 1980s, to head slowly downhill after that through the 1990s. Accelerating out of control in the last twenty years which coincided with development of the Internet and social media.
Now capitalism has developed into corporate greed, where the working man is paid less and less, and kept even poorer by high rent and constantly being encouraged to buy more and more stuff.
There is no longer the American Dream there once was, and many young people are losing their desire to work. Which only makes a bad situation worse. Hence, sadness, depression, etc., etc.
Something must change; the current system cannot sustain itself. Capitalism requires a working class to not only produce stuff, but to buy it. In the meantime, I am reminded of this:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and Wisdom to know the difference.
It is no use waiting for the world to change, it will probably not happen in my lifetime. Learn to adapt, be content with less, live simply, and spend less. Develop a habit of working hard, make yourself irreplaceable and you will always have a job, and you will probably get paid a little more.
Save money, invest wisely.... Oh and screw the Joneses.
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Reader Comments (3)
A complete side trip from what you wrote is that when I read your opening sentence, I thought you were going to talk bikes. "Keeping up with the Joneses" is what drives the bike business - I have the bikes, but I don't have one with disc brakes/electronic shifting/12 speeds, etc. But I know guys in their 60s who haven't raced in decades running out to drop big money to be current with the technology.
I find myself riding my "vintage" bikes from the 70s and 80s most often. My "new" titanium bike is from 1993. I have no interest in carbon, or bicycles you have to remember to connect to a charger..
Maybe there's the analogy. Things were simpler, and maybe better, then. Maybe better, as you say, because we didn't have needs we now are expected to have. Now we live in a complicated world with complicated bicycles, which bring some advantages and also a lot of unneeded complexity.
It's been a while since my last visit to your thoughts and muses, Dave. I'll go back and see what I have messed, but this was a fine kickstart to the journey.
Unlike the poster above, I have kept up somewhat on bicycle innovation silliness, but never in a timely manor. My go to are top notch small builder offerings on the used market, and the parts tech follows the trends on about a 5-10 year delay.
What you offer in this post rings oh so true. I am 62. My father was a WW2 vet. As a child of the 60's, my fear was nuclear war. Seems we may be revisiting that now. As for the sad state of capitalism, it was always rigged. The wealth divide was baked in, and promotion of fear and hate has only compounded it. The ideal of social capitalism could still find a path, but the divisions in the US make that unlikely.
One can endlessly debate the changes in the US (and world) economy over the last 80 years, but your last paragraph is not. Studies have been done on what would make people happier in terms of economics and the universal answer was, “to make just a bit more money - then I’d be comfortable.” Note that it was universal - across ALL economic levels. Every time someone makes “just a little more,” they spend more and suddenly need “just a little more” to be happy.
What irks me the most is listening to economic forecasters talking about “consumers willing to spend” and how consumption drives our economy. I can start to empathize with the Communists desire to do away with pure capitalism. But greed knows no politics boundaries so it comes back to whether we as humans have the intelligence and desire to “keep the party going.”