Sometimes
it’s helpful to remind myself that my dad, when he was very young, traveled by horse and sleigh to get to school in winter. He still has the fully-enclosed sleigh, and
even hooked it up a few years ago to his team of horses to show us how
it works. In the bitter cold of January we enjoyed this pioneer-like
experience, wood-burning stove and all, for a full 60 minutes.
I
try to think of these things as I travel to work on my heated seats,
complaining to my wife, who’s also on a heated seat (but not in the hot
seat), that I haven't had a cost-of-living increase in three years.
“Inflation is taking a toll,” I bemoan, adjusting the seat warmer so my
posterior doesn’t start to sweat.
While I believe my complaints hold merit, still I wonder: How did I become such an entitled ingrate?
As
a student, I drove a puny Firefly with no air conditioning and barely
enough heat to defrost the windows in winter. We had to shout to hear
ourselves over the road noise whenever we dared venture onto the
highway. Yet nothing beat having my own car, no matter how ugly or
dangerous (as a 19-year-old, risk of death was a non-factor). Now I
drive a car with not only heated seats, but more airbags than I could
ever possibly want to deploy, and an infotainment screen that has everything I could possibly need to distract me from driving. Even a “student car” in this modern age comes fully equipped. It’s sickening.
But getting back to my loss in pay... Like anyone who’s learned to live with less, we’ve made do. And when I say less,
I’m talking about the North American version of less. Unlike the 800
million people in our world who live in abject poverty, this doesn’t
entail going hungry for a day.
This kind of less means cutting your cable and relying on streaming services instead. This kind of less means living with your old iPhone for a year longer than you initially intended. This kind of less means squeezing that last little goop of toothpaste out of the tube without inadvertently hurting yourself.
These
“sacrifices” are laughable to over 90% of the world’s population. If
you make over $42,000 a year, by the way, you’re in the top 1% of the
world’s wealthiest income earners. You are the elite.
Most
Canadians can join this upper echelon if they become educated, or if
they're lucky enough, find work in the oil patch. Socio-economic circumstances
and family upbringing also play a role, but for most of us, it’s
possible. We have opportunities dumped into our laps from birth,
high-tech baby monitor and all. Our birthrights from government are
even more valuable, as much as we take them for granted: free education, universal healthcare and a
Canadian passport.
Yet there's still a concern that the next generation won’t live
as well as the last. One study showed that Millennials only have a 50-50
chance of being wealthier than their parents. I don’t know
why we find that so shocking. Given the work ethic of older generations,
it sounds like our Internet-surfing iPhone generation is making out
pretty good. In fact, I would suggest we have to work far less
for the same amount of wealth. Increased productivity and technology
(like having Facebook at work) have helped out immensely, if nothing
else, to have a more enjoyable work life.
As much as I joke, this isn’t to take away from those who are really
struggling. In areas where jobs are disappearing, it’s no small thing
for families to suddenly see their incomes halved. And as Edward Luce argues in his book, The Retreat of Western Liberalism, the losses felt by the middle class could mean the end of democracy as we know it.
Because
when we start to feel like we're falling behind – think Alberta or the
American Rust Belt – we also tend to lash out. At government. At
immigrants. At the world.
No matter how rich we were, we begin to feel dirt poor when some of it gets taken away. It’s
only then that we look back at the good ol' days and wonder what we
squandered.
It was so easy back then... And we didn’t even ride to school with horses.
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