Wealth “Experts”
Need To STFU About Avocado Toast
I have a simple message for those “wealth experts” out there...
Shut the F*** up!
I’m serious.
You know who I’m talking to. All
those financial “experts” who continually criticize the great unwashed –
usually the youngest adult generation – for their spending habits.
This time around it’s the so-called “real estate mogul” Tim Gurner, in
boasting about his wealth to Australia’s version of “60 Minutes”, who
blamed millennials for their lack of wealth on their spending their money on “avocado
toast”.
“When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t
buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each,” he
said.
No, I’m sure you were living your youthful years in the rolled-up
newspaper at the bottom of a late, getting up half-an-hour before you
previously went to bed to lick the lake clean with your tongue, drinking a cup
of cold poison, then work 36-hours a day in a factory and pay the foreman for
the luxury of working before going home and having your father murder you and
dance on your grave, or some other exaggerated claim of extreme poverty
straight out of the “Four
Yorkshiremen” skit from Monty Python.
And if it wasn’t Gurner, then it’s a whole plethora of other so-called “experts”
who continually spread the myth that people are poor because they dare to spend
money on things. Today it’s avocado
toast. Ten years ago, it was Starbucks
coffee.
Here’s the fiction that they like to spread: “I was like you at your age, only I
didn’t spend my money. I worked ten times
as hard as you. I came to work earlier
than anyone and I left work later than anyone. I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t buy anything, I
lived like a hermit, I saved every penny that I got, and now I have more money
than I have good sense.”
That is the fiction, the fantasy, the goddamned fairy tale that they love
to spread... the myth of the “self-made man”.
I have been hearing, seeing it, and reading it for well over twenty
years now.
And it is a bunch of BS! Wholesale,
Grade-A toxic horse crap that can fertilize every garden in the world for ten
generations!
First of all, while there are instances of people who came from poverty into
wealth, they are the rare and extreme exceptions. It is some rare creation or unique business opportunity
that came up that they were allowed to exploit that led them to their wealth. Their “success” came from opportunity and
luck, not from frugality.
Oh, wait, I said that obscene word, didn’t I? “Luck”.
People with money don’t like hearing that word. They want to continue the myth – the goddamned
delusional fantasy – that they somehow earned all their money and that anyone
could do the same.
There are plenty of people who have worked hard all their lives, who tried
to live within their means and tried to put something away for the future, and
yet they would leave no richer than when they first started. In fact, plenty of people lost their homes,
their pensions, and their life savings in the Great Recession through no fault
of their own. So don’t try to claim that
luck doesn’t play a factor in financial wealth.
Reality proves that you are a liar!
But there’s something else that leads to my ire about these so-called “experts”
and their pompous, arrogant, self-righteous, self-serving, elitist criticism of
the rest of us, be it about toast or coffee or anything else. What they are really criticizing everyone else
for is doing exactly what they expect the rest of us to do... and that is to be
consumers.
You see... we didn’t come up with avocado toast or overpriced specialty coffee. I really don’t know anyone outside of a TV
show who consumes either of these things on a daily basis. But I do know people who are going broke
because of parasitic healthcare costs. I
do know people who have put themselves in hock for an education that will never
pay itself off. I do know people who are
willing to go into debt for five years so they can drive a $50,000 pickup
truck. I know people who are obsessed in
getting that latest Apple product and get that new furniture set and go on that
vacation cruise.
And people are doing all of that because that is what they are told they *have*
to do by the friends of those so-called “experts”. They are told they *have* to be consumers! Because that is what keeps the economy going.
Let’s get brutally honest here... these so-called “wealth experts” have absolutely
no goddamned standing whatsoever to complain about the spending habits of the
rest of us when that is the message that we are continually being bombarded
with! We are told that we are consumers
and that we *have* to consume to keep the economy going.
We are the ones that are getting the message to buy that new
vehicle. We are the ones that are told
that we *have* to go on that vacation cruise.
We are the ones that are told that we *have* to buy that new smartphone
or smartwatch or anything that Apple puts on the market. We are the ones that are told that we *have*
to buy that new WiFi security service. We
are the ones that are told that we *have* to buy the latest clothes and the
latest shoes. We are the ones that are
told that we *have* to go to that restaurant and that we *have* eat that trendy
food. We are the ones that are told that
we *have* to get that latest medication to make our lives right again. No money?
Then we are told we *have* to put our lives on credit to buy these
things. We *have* to get that latest
credit card offer that’s on TV so we can continue to buy those things. We *have* to in order to keep the economy
going. So we can keep you and your
friends wealthy.
You want that to change? You want
people to be more frugal with their money and start saving and doing the things
that you claim you did to be wealthy? Great! Here’s what you need to do...
First, get your sorry ass over to Madison Avenue and tell your friends in
the advertising business that they have to stop marketing these things to the rest
of us. Then, get your sorry ass over to
Washington DC and tell your friends in government to change the tax system to
one that rewards savings instead of punishing it. And then call up your millionaire and
billionaire friends and tell them that they have to get their act together and
come up with a business plan that does not involve fleecing the rest of us out
of every penny that we will ever find, earn, or win off a lottery ticket. While you’re at it, tell them that they have
to start spending some of their own money to buy all of those trucks and
cruises and $1000 iPhones and TV drugs and avocado toast and Starbucks coffee from
now on, because you just told the rest of us that we shouldn’t!
Not going to happen? Didn’t think
so.
So shut the F*** up about avocado toast and Starbucks coffee and the rest
of your wealth-elitist bitching! The rest
of us are playing the roles that you and your friends set out for us as consumers. *You are
not entitled to criticize us about it!*
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