Help Yourself Already: Part II

Top Reasons You Are Never Going To Get Ahead (And It’s Your Own Damned Fault)

1. After being exposed to an average of 25,611 ads every year between the ages of 2 and 11, you insist on wanting to buy things, even if you can’t afford them.

2. You were born to poor parents who did not teach you how to handle money. Or your parents had money but they also had unwholesome power dynamics around money so you failed to learn any lesson other than whoever has the money has the power.

3. During the lesson in kindergarten about how it is your job to be useful to the economy rather than the other way around, you were trying to get a small ball of Play Doh out of your nose and completely missed it.

4. You want to have the things everyone else has because you are too weak to disregard the fact that everything in our media and popular culture says that if you don’t have those things you are a goddamned loser and will never count for anything and might not get into heaven.

5. Sickened by capitalism and all its works, you have opted out of the rat race. Now you’re one of the premiere dumpster divers/shack dwellers in your area. But are you getting ahead? We think not.

6. You didn’t go to college or university and opted to head straight into the work force after high school. Now your career opportunities are limited to retail, fast food, bust and boom resource extraction/construction and/or selling drugs. None of these is a sure fire means to get ahead except for selling drugs but that will only last until you are twenty. After that you will probably find yourself falling behind in jail or maybe dead.

7. You went to university in order to get a great job and become a more well-rounded person and as a result you accumulated some student loans. When you emerged from university there were no jobs. Now you are being slowly crushed beneath the weight of student debt while working minimum wage retail, fast food and/or selling drugs. But you’re pretty old for a drug dealer and so no one really trusts you.

8. In an effort to be more financially responsible and save for your future, you stopped buying things. The economy crashed. Nicely done, you. I hope you’re pleased with yourself

9. You are not the kind of person the economy needs. Never have been. Never will be. Or you were the kind of person the economy needs but doesn’t any longer. Either way, it’s your own damned fault.

10. Like 100% of other people who do not work at Goldman Sachs, you do not understand financial markets, new financial instruments, or even why your bank makes you pay huge fees to let them use your money.

11. Your parents did not pass away and leave you a lot of money. Neither did any aunts, uncles, grandparents, neighbors. You did not win the lottery and you were not able to steal any large sums when you went door to door selling siding. That, my friend, is on you.