I was just thinking of what I have to be thankful for, and I really do have a lot. I mean, living in America we have it pretty good. Even with the people in charge trying to take it away from us, we still have it pretty good. I’m fairly healthy, I have a place to live, my parents are well, my sister seems happy living in Republican California (anything south of San Mateo in my estimation), and most of my friends are doing OK.

But at the same time, it really depends on what scale you measure things on. By American standards, I start describing my life and people start prefacing their comments with, “At least you’re not …”

There seem to be two scales. For example, I have a friend who has been working in jobs where he does no work and gets paid enough money. Well, say “enough” is about $15/hr and that works out to approximately $30,000/yr. My guess is that he gets paid more than twice “enough.” He has a house, two cats, often goes out drinking with women half his age, and complains he has no life. For a guy like him you start counting his blessings by listing what he has. In my life, people start counting my blessings by listing what I don’t have.

Not having any income and not having any savings aren’t uncommon, but most of the things I did shouldn’t have left me out in the cold for the last ten years. Getting a degree at MIT was enlightening as well as educational. But if I knew it would just leave me without a job, I think I would have gotten vocational training of some sort. I even tried to get into medical school to prove my worth. No one cares how smart I am; all that matters in America is how much money you have.

That’s one problem with a classless society, we all get judged on a different superficial criteria than birthright. And here, it seems like it’s material wealth. There’s no respect, no admiration, no appreciation unless you have or can get money. No power, no advantage, not even any attractiveness. So really, in any normal situation, it means until I get a job, I might as well be a hermit.