Mr. Peasant On The Good Old Days

Gibson family in living room of house he (conveyor belt operator) built. Chattanooga, TN,1974 

A conservative is a libertarian who has been mugged.

JOHN STOSSEL

I have been watching John Stossel since the 1980s. I have always liked him especially when I was a libertarian. I am not a libertarian now. I got mugged by reality. I am now a born again conservative. I drifted from conservatism at the same time I drifted away from religion. I came back to religion as a Roman Catholic convert, and I came back to conservatism as a paleoconservative which could be described as a "reality based libertarian." I lost things in my apostasy, but those things were replaced with better things in my repentance.

The problem with libertarians is that they pay no attention to the social and cultural side of the ledger. For them, it is all about free markets even if it leads to things like fentanyl and child pornography. A libertarian can be described as a common sense free conservative. That lack of common sense is what makes folks like me appreciate John Stossel's viewpoints while feeling that he is overlooking colossal things in the process. This is especially true in this Stossel video:

Bigger Homes, Better Cars, Longer Lives: The Truth About Today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KJTWmRrneo

Ecconomists set up models that seem like pure genius in their analysis, yet they smell like so much bullshit. In the case of this video, Stossel makes the claim that we have better lives today because we have bigger and better stuff even if we can't afford that stuff. He makes the claim that we couldn't afford the stuff we had in the eighties or before that. The good old days were not so good. Our dissatisfaction has kept pace with our "prosperity."

I debated where I should publish this post as I like to keep economic and political topics to my personal blog while keeping my posts about voluntary poverty and intentional living for this blog. Ultimately, this is a Peasants post because it addresses the dissatisfaction so many people feel in our prosperous economy.

Here are some recent headlines I pulled from DDG:

I’m 53, Make $500,000 a Year and Live Paycheck to Paycheck. I Want to Retire At 65, But We Only Have $200,000 Saved.

Earn more, save less? How lifestyle creep is quietly destroying your wealth; experts on how to break free

Living Paycheck to Paycheck? You're Not Alone—67% of People Are in 2025

8 Ways To Escape Living Paycheck-to-Paycheck — Without Sacrificing Your Lifestyle

I make $55,000 — but after rent, student loans and a bit of savings, I'm stuck living paycheck to paycheck

I'm a single boomer living paycheck to paycheck. I've been too busy living in the moment to plan for retirement.

27-year-old first-grade teacher lived paycheck to paycheck due to impulsive spending: ‘It became so stressful’

11 Signs You’re Actually Upper Middle Class Even If You Feel Like You’re Struggling All The Time

Those headlines tell the story. The reason people struggle today can be blamed on monetary inflation, out of control government spending, student loan debt, and crazy medical bills. What doesn't get blamed is the lifestyle inflation these people have embraced with each increase of the paycheck and swipe of the credit card. They buy new cars instead of used cars. They eat out instead of eating at home. They pay for Starbucks instead of Maxwell House. They pay for streaming subscriptions they don't have time to actually watch. They buy toys on credit. They upgrade to bigger and bigger McMansions and take out home equity loans to upgrade them even further.

Maxwell House Coffee ad, 1950

What makes all inflation happen is the expansion of credit which comes from the expansion of the money supply. Today, credit card debt stands at $1 trillion. When money is cheap, everything becomes more expensive.

I agree with Stossel that the good old days really weren't so good. When I was a kid in the 1980s, I saw the same lifestyle inflation and living paycheck to paycheck I see today. I knew kids in high school who drove brand new Mustangs and Camaros that they bought with co-signed loans from their parents. Things have always been ridiculous, and I think they will remain this way.

We remember the good old days because of the intangible and immaterial factors that Stossel and his Cato Institute economist do not address in their analysis. The USA is spiritually and culturally bankrupt. We can argue that the movies are better today because of better special effects, but no one wants to watch them because the stories and acting are so awful. The same can be said for the music that is now sonically flawless and utterly unlistenable. Libertarians cannot address this issue at all. The only people who can do this are conservatives.

Gaining the world can never compensate for the loss of our souls. What causes dissatisfaction comes down to happiness. Material prosperity should make us happy. It doesn't. Only the few figure this out.

I figured this out when I was a teenager in the 1980s. I don't know why I got it when others didn't. Clearly, reading the Bible put this into my head. The effect of it was to make me eschew lifestyle inflation which I have done to the present day. I don't care to buy or own much because I know those things don't make you happy.

Sunlight and Shadow. Winslow Homer 1873

As a thought experiment, I like to compare my present life at 50+ to my life at 15. When I was 15, my relaxing activities were reading books, listening to music on the radio or cassette deck, and watching movies and TV shows on cable or videocassettes I got from the rental store. Today, I still read books, listen to music on the radio and the CD player, and watch movies and TV shows on the DVD player or on free streaming. The only fundamental difference between today and yesteryear was that we cancelled cable in favor of the internet. My pleasures remain fundamentally the same except they are more plentiful and cost less today than they did in 1985.

What I have not done is buy expensive toys, new cars, a bass boat, a beach house, and a whole bunch of things I have never cared to own. I have always lived a life that was materially superior to royalty from a century ago. What royalty had was status. I have never had status, and I have never cared about status. This is why people would rather be a king shivering in a castle than a blue collar guy with central heat and air.

There has never been a better time in history to be a nobody than in the USA today. The problem is that everybody wants to be a somebody. If they can't be a somebody, they will settle for more expensive pleasures as a consolation prize. When these things fail to satisfy, they double and triple down on the errors as they run up their credit cards and spend themselves into foreclosure and bankruptcy.

The solution to the problem of lifestyle inflation is to learn contentment. When you are content, you find that you have more than enough for your needs. How do you find this contentment? You won't find it reading an Ayn Rand novel. You find this contentment in religion. God is the only satisfaction for the empty heart. Once you put God on the throne of your heart, everything else in life finds its proper place and becomes more enjoyable.

How America Lives, Ed and Amaline. The Ladies' Home Journal, 1948.  

Once upon a time, I told Mrs. Peasant that I would give her a materially better life than the one she had, but that no one would envy her. I kept that promise, and no one envies us. Her great gift was her ability to enjoy the non-material satisfaction that life brings when you know the Lord. Her capacity for this enjoyment is greater than my own.

The Noble Peasants don't care what is happening with the Jones family. We don't envy them, and we certainly don't compete with them. They think us to be poor, and we are happy that they think this way. It saves us from spending on things to impress them when we don't even like them.

I watch the Jones family struggle with their expenses and lament their inability to escape living paycheck to paycheck. I think it is a sad way to live, but they are not interested in the solution. I have never met anyone interested in the solution. If they were interested, this blog would be more popular than it is now.

I have learned to just be grateful to God. I am grateful for Him supplying our material needs, but I am even more grateful for Him teaching us how to live with contentment in our peasant lifestyle. More money never solves the problem because the lack of money is not the problem. The problem is bankruptcy of the soul. We call them the good old days because people used to know the things that have been forgotten.

Thank you for reading!

Moonlight, Winslow Homer. 1874