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Oh, Yeah…Freedom Isn’t Free
If you have no money, you have very little freedom in America.
If you listen to conservatives, and even many liberals, they will tell you that America is a free country. We’re free to travel, to change jobs, and change our lives. We can live where we want to live, and we can live the way we want to live. But that’s true only if we have money.
American cheerleaders are sometimes reluctant to remind us that freedom isn’t free.
Not so long ago, I read a few articles about how businesses post fake jobs in the want ads and job boards on the internet. I read how researchers found that many job posts didn’t lead to actual jobs. Then I saw studies that showed how on average, it takes 6 months to find another job for a lateral move, with the same pay and benefits. This is not a free market, and employers who post fake job listings seem oddly lacking in empathy.
For more than a decade, I’ve seen study after study that showed how 40% or 50% of Americans can’t shell out $400 or $1000 for an emergency. It doesn’t matter who’s president, I’ve never seen those numbers change. Most people are cash poor, and some of them are cash poor and asset rich. Most of us do not have the freedom to say, “I think I’ll take a month off and travel Europe.”
