“Affordability” has become a scapegoat “hoax” contrivance in Donald Trump’s administration. Asked whether he was concerned about the economic pain felt by Americans in connection with the Iran war, Trump replied, “Not even a little bit. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”
However, let’s be brutally honest. We need to have a “Come to Jesus” moment to begin thinking about “Affordability” from the OTHER end of the spectrum:
If you live in an urban environment and find it either desirable or unimaginably necessary to drive a Ford F-750 truck (with a 30-gal. gas tank and diesel prices approaching $7.00 a gal.) plus a Mercedes plus a Lexus, “own” a 5-bedroom house for 4 persons on 10 acres, have a 150 X 30 ft. swimming pool with heated salt water, attend beaucoup sports and entertainment events where tickets cost over $500 each, but bulk at paying taxes that support infrastructure, healthcare, education, social security, parks and recreation, biomedical research, public health, and a reasonable assortment of humanitarian causes (e.g., Salvation Army, Red Cross, children’s hospitals, homeless shelters, drug recovery centers … ), you may, PERSONALLY, be pushing way PAST the limits of “Affordability”.
“Mali Hightower’s answer to high gas prices is a toy he fished out of someone’s trash.
The 30-year-old handyman from Ellenwood, Georgia stuck a two-gallon, one-piston engine from a power washer into a broken pink Power Wheels Barbie Dream Camper – a battery-operated toy car less than four feet tall. One pull of the lawnmower-like rip cord and he’s off to the supermarket, knees at his ears, dirtbike helmet on his head.
His real car, a 1996 Mercedes-Benz convertible, costs about $90 to fill. “That’s too much,” said Hightower, who also installed a rack on top for groceries. “I drive this when I can.” https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/high-gas-prices-spur-americans-improvise-bus-rides-toy-cars-2026-05-19/ Helen Coster and Rich McKay
If you are more than 30% overweight and can’t afford the $1,700 monthly cost of Wegovy / semaglutide – never mind a “$200,000 triple bypass operation, you very likely have a self-imposed “Affordability” problem.
“An all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant in Spain has imposed a “vomit fee” on customers who over-indulge to a point of upchucking … a growing number of customers “eat until they burst”, leaving vomit on the tables and in the bathrooms.” The Week, May 29, 2006, p. 12
Exercising our “American Exceptionalism” with a flourish, we have become “exceptionally” proficient in “gaslighting” our own selves by ordering Diet Cokes to go with our double cheese Smashburgers and fries …
Where is EARL PITTS when you need a “Call to the Post”? “Wake Up, Umerika!”
In all fairness, we have been sold a bill of tainted goods in being led to believe anything we can do or acquire according to our own whims and inclinations is fair game in this “Land of the Free” and “Home of the Brave” – as long as banks keep lending us money and sending us credit cards! So, WHY SHOULDN’T WE grab all the “gusto” we can of life that is just ‘there for the taking”?
EARL PITTS again:
BECAUSE … sustainability, ‘friability”, accountability and responsible “citizenship” doesn’t really work well that way “in the larger scheme of things”. Which means living a lot “closer to the edge” – though not necessarily to a point of harsh or grim circumstances – while building future “soft landing” sites for both US and OTHERS of our extended orbit in eventual need – as far into the future as possible. THE WHOLE OF CIVILIZATION IS IMPORTANT! We need to crawl out of the cultic / cave-dweller, immediate gratification cracks and crevices in the universe and into the WHOLE of civilization to realize life and living in a much larger context.
STOICISM, anyone? It’s not entirely as onerous as one might think … unless you’ve already been “spoiled rotten”! Join the crowd!
RESTRAINT is not imprisonment. It’s a key “leveraging” device to help lift one to greater heights. Quartermaster
