with all due respect this cannot be further from the truth. americans are taught from young age that to make it in life they must increase their earnings. america needs modern day slaves working in cubicles 9-10 hours per day (even if you are at FAANG making high six figures you still a slave…).
but economics which america would not dream teach their young is that you can also cut expenses :) this is the quiet life part that you missed in the post… how much money do you think you need to make to have an insane level-of-comfort life in say Hope, Arkansas…?
I think this is a very entitled approach, I bet you need very little to live in a small rural area, but the crazy thing is that not everyone can do that since by definition if would get more expensive for everyone to do that. We can't all live off the grid away from people, modern infrastructure just cannot support that.
I think if the approach was, be happy with less, then sure we can get on board. There is a massive difference in being able to afford more and choosing less, than being forced to have less.
How many jobs are in Hope, Arkansas? And I mean real jobs, not building React garbage from a coffee shop. How many people are in Hope, Arkansas, especially people you could easily connect with? How much housing is in Hope, Arkansas? How many doctors? Are there specialists? How are the schools?
I'm so sick and tired of the techbro response to a rising cost of living and a lower quality of life is just "lol be poor :)". There's a reason half the country cheered when that CEO got shot. Maybe there just isn't enough Hope in Arkansas.
it is 2025 mate, you do not have to work in Hope to live in Hope… geeeeeez
as far as all the other questions, ask yourself the same for an urban area too :) and yes, there are great schools, great doctors, everything you need is there or a short ride away.
I am not surprised by your reply, expected to see many more, brainwashing is strooooong in the USA and these are very predictable responses
when you have no control over your life, when you can get paged on your honeymoon or your kids birthday, when you need to ask permission to take time off… as society we are past what was slavery back in the day - now we got modern-day slavery, working for THE MAN
I don't remember ever asking permission to take time off.
I just put the days I'm going to be out on the calendar and inform my team/boss/manager after the fact.
And these weren't cushy FAANG jobs either. Just your typical run of the mill IT-adjacent roles.
> when you can get paged on your honeymoon or your kids birthday
Yes, you can be paged, but if you set your boundaries, you don't have to respond to the page. Again, I don't remember ever jumping up and treating something like that as an emergency. Always prioritized my own errands first.
I just put the days I'm going to be out on the calendar and inform my team/boss/manager after the fact.
why do you have to do that? who is this “boss” of yours that needs to know about what you do?
as long as you work for someone you are owned and exploited. if we had a nice chat meeting each other irl and we broached the subject of compesation and you said “I am L76 at Netflix making $965k” I am would be immensely happy for you but would think “this lovely mate is actually worth $1,500,000 and just doesn’t even know it”
>as long as you work for someone you are owned and exploited.
Truly, are you this deluded and bereft of perspective? Making such a claim about the vast majority of modern workers in the developed world is not only completely off the rails but also an insult to the real meaning of slavery and those who suffer it or have.
You've never exchanged money for someone elses labor in your life? Or had someone pay you to deliver your labor? Are you so privileged as to have never done either and thus live in a bubble that allows you to believe such nonsense as the above?
Feudal peasants weren't slaves. Employees aren't slaves. Serving someone makes you a serf in the worst case, not a slave.
If you were a FAANG slave, Google could literally prevent you from marrying, or ship you in a box to a different country without warning, or just kill you if you're no longer passing the bar.
but economics which america would not dream teach their young is that you can also cut expenses :) this is the quiet life part that you missed in the post… how much money do you think you need to make to have an insane level-of-comfort life in say Hope, Arkansas…?