Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Bruder

“I never had any experience that a house would drop in value,” Bob said, shaking his head. He compared the “slow-dawning reality” of his new life to waking up in The Matrix: learning that the pleasant, predictable world you used to inhabit was a mirage, a lie built to hide a brutal dystopia. “The security most people take comfort in, I’m not convinced that isn’t an illusion,” he added. “When you find out what you believed to be true isn’t true, it’s disorienting. What you believe to be true is so embedded. It takes a radical pounding to let go.”

“We’re facing the first-ever reversal in retirement security in modern U.S. history,” she explained. “Starting with the younger baby boomers, each successive generation is now doing worse than previous generations in terms of their ability to retire without seeing a drop in living standards.”

A recent poll suggests that Americans now fear outliving their assets more than they fear dying.

Sad state of affairs!