I was talking to some friends the other day when one asked me if I’d ever been to Las Vegas. I told them no, that it wasn’t really my kind of place. They were amazed; how could anyone not love Vegas? It’s not just for gambling - it has fabulous restaurants and amazing hotels, too!

“Which I’ve never been in a position to afford, quite frankly,” I replied. “If I had thousands to spend on a few days of my life I’ll never get back, I might feel differently, but that’s never been the case.”

I’m lucky to have friends who take a comment like that in stride without feeling attacked or like they need to make me feel better. They understood it was just a statement of fact: to enjoy a place, I need enough money to see it in style. Otherwise I’ll just feel I’ve wasted my money. And to me, that’s not just an irritating feeling: it’s one that, until recently, often made me feel physically ill with remorse.

This got me thinking: all the places I’ve lived in or visited that I didn’t enjoy, I was seeing from a perspective of little or no financial security. Situations vary greatly depending on your vantage point, so who knows what I’d think of the places I’ve lived and been if I had the money to enjoy them more. Certain things don’t change - like air quality - but such simple things as having free hours during the “working day” to run errands can make a small but significant impact on your quality of life. For example, I liked L.A. better when I was in college, had a more flexible schedule and felt somewhat financially secure because I (naively) believed me college loans would pay themselves off with a good salary. For another example, L.A. is very difficult to navigate without a car because they have something against providing public transportation (read: it’s an oil town); if I had to do without a car, as many Los Angeloonies do, I’d hate it even more.

But the other thing is, the middle class or financially secure people who have surrounded me all my life tend to think I’m impossibly dull because I can’t rattle off a list of things I like to do (that all cost money). Everything I wanted to do as a child cost too much money. If I wanted music or dance lessons, I could feel the tension as my mom tried not to make the “Oh my god how much will that cost” face, and eventually I just started denying I wanted lessons. Ditto on band instruments. Ditto on all sorts of things. We took four vacations during my childhood. By the time we had a little money in my latter teens, I was so used to this way of thinking I couldn’t change. Instead of wanting something and hunting for the funds, I’d just convince myself it wasn’t worth the price.

Just as well: once I got out on my own, much frugality was called for. Frugality that causes most of my middle class friends to gasp and wonder how I could live without that. For fuck’s sake, people: you do what you have to do. It is a luxury to imagine you couldn’t cope with a situation millions of people clearly cope with every day.

I don’t resent the middle class for having more. I do sometimes resent those of them who judge me by their own standards because they actually imagine themselves the least fortunate person they know (I actually find upper class people are much more likely to be understanding - they know a lot of people don’t have what they have). And sometimes I resent the world because, really, anyone who works as hard as I do and spends as frugally should be able to buy a house and have some job mobility. There’s no excuse in a country as fortunate as the US for full-time jobs not paying enough for you to buy your way out of the indentured servitude of rent and save your way into some financial security.

But you know what? I do have passions. I won’t know if I enjoy travel until I’m able to try it in style without feeling nauseated by finance-panic (you either know what I mean by that phrase, or you don’t). My passions are that I want to become truly financially independent of the world, as much as possible - that’ll make me feel secure. I want to run my own business, grow my own food, live off the grid. The amount of money this will take won’t sound high class to anybody, but it will be living richly to me. I will feel secure and like I have a plenty of options, and that is what being “wealthy” really is.

But I want to make more money than that, too. Because I’d like to change the world at least a little, and no one ever did that without either money or violence. I’m going to guess you’d prefer I go the money route, right?

The new cable channel PlanetGreen keeps reminding me I’m not a person. It goes like this: an expert on one of their shows says, “If everyone in America would do this, we’d save eleventy billion tons of resources/pollution” and then they do something that only one who owns her dwelling is empowered to do. Those who can’t do it - renters, most of whom would prefer to be owners but can’t afford it - are not part of “everyone.” We are “no one.” We aren’t people.

This is not hyperbole. I live in a country that can’t stop slapping itself on the back for a document that declared “all men are created equal” but quickly followed that up with documents explaining that when they said “men”, what they really had in mind was “white male property owners over 21.” We already know people of color didn’t count (well… ugh) and women didn’t count. Now I’m taking a fresh look at my country, this supposed revolutionary style of governing in which (now that we’ve ironed out that pesky 1700s thinking) everyone is free and equal, and realizing that people who don’t own anything are simply not valuable.

Even though we pay the mortgages of our landlords.

Even though we pay more in taxes than most homeowners.

Even though we work and struggle through school and support ourselves, just like those of you who can afford to own a home.

I think we should redefine “middle class” as not just an income level, but also as having sufficient income to own a modest home within 45 minutes of where you work (if you live further from work or rent by choice, that’s okay - you just have to be able to buy a home within 45 minutes of your job). If you don’t meet that criteria, you would be considered working class rather than middle class.

Overnight, the “working class” of the US would expand tremendously and the middle class would shrink.

It’s not that I want to deny people the right to feel good about themselves over a label - I’m not ashamed by whatever class someone wants to put me in. I just think as long as life forces us to look at things from a classist perspective, we should drop in on reality for a howdy-doo and admit the middle class has become insanely hard to break into in this country. It used to be easy - for white men and their families, at least -  to be middle class and wanting to get rich; now, if you’re not born into the middle class or higher, it’s damned hard for an honest person to “break into” the middle class.

And the vast majority of middle classers are only there because of two incomes, where it used to take only one. When I was a kid in the 80s, middle class white wives didn’t need jobs to feed the kids or even put the kids into college. That’s why there were debates about whether it was “selfish” for them to get jobs for personal fulfillment instead of tending the kids for personal fulfillment. It wasn’t always about money.

Of course, even then we were all sliding collectively and individually into unsustainable debt.

In fact, we should return to the 1950s picture of “middle class” so we’re comparing apples to apples:

• Owned a home and a car…
• On what one breadwinner brought home…
• To take care of at least four people and a pet…
• And vacation at least once a year…
• With no debt aside from a modest mortgage and maybe car payments.

How many of you fall out of the middle class when we go back to that definition of it?

When they talk about the possibility that the 60 year economic boom the US has enjoyed since WWII is over, consider that it’s been disintegrating for a long time, and only debt has enabled us to keep the delusion that it was still here.

Sadly, there’s no reason it has to be this way. There were tons of ways we could have prevented all this, but we preferred to keep our heads in the sand and imagine everything was fine.

This is why it’s important - both as a country and as an individual - to live sustainably. I’m not talking about going green - putting in fluorescents instead of incandescents. I’m saying it doesn’t take a degree in economics to realize that when lots of cities in your country have reached the point where very few people can afford to live less than 45 minutes from their job - when the salaries are that out of whack with the nearby housing market - something is off-kilter. When salaries stay flat for 30 years, during which the cost of housing skyrockets, something’s wrong. When college degrees become a requirement instead of an advantage during a time when the cost for college is rapidly increasing ten-fold, you’ve missed something somewhere.

Grow up, America. Dump your illusions and realize: your system can be gamed like any other. That is every government’s vulnerability. And those of you who let this go unchecked for decades because you didn’t care about how hard your kids or grandkids will work to clean up the mess as long as you got yours, you don’t deserve a rescue from anybody. Whether you’re a business that’s gone belly-up and you’re whining to Congress to save you or an aging Baby Boomer who proudly engaged in “spending my kids’ inheritance” who now needs your already-struggling kids to pay for your nursing home: starve.

You could’ve been just a little less greedy and still had tons of wealth and freedom and stuff. But the problem is, it wasn’t the wealth and freedom and stuff you wanted, was it? You wanted to waste the world, you wanted to explore greed as its own reward, you wanted to satisfy your ego’s insatiable urge not only to have everything it wants but to deprive people of others so what you have looks even more amazing. Excess wasn’t the means to the end - it wasn’t the journey: it was the destination for you.

For that, yeah - you should starve. And good riddance.

I just got notice that my landlord is raising my rent by $500 (after a $130 increase just this February, and an increase every year since my lease expired and he refused to renew it). Interestingly, this is above market value for what the building offers. This is an increase well in excess of 25%. There is no logical way to justify the price, and it’s called “rent gouging.”

It is also 100% legal in California, given the building was built later than 1978 (otherwise rent control limits increases to 4-5% per annum). Now I finally understand why dozens of older buildings in my neighborhood have been demolished in the past few years, only to have new apartment buildings constructed in their place: you make up the enormous cost of construction pretty quickly by skirting laws that regulate what you can charge for rent.

“Oh,” you say, “but the free market balances. Supply and demand! It’s only fair!”

Not so much when the item being sold is a life necessity. If I feel a Wii system is overpriced, I can shop for a bargain, buy it used, or not buy it at all, and I’ll live. With housing, frugalities eventually become dangerous as you chase affordable living into dangerous areas and dilapidated buildings that qualify as “slums.” And even in those conditions, you remain at the mercy of a landlord who legally has the right to charge you anything he wants.

I mentioned that this increase puts my building above its market value. By that I mean: for what he intends to charge, I could get any of a dozen nearby buildings that have far better amenities. He’s totally outclassed in this new price range. While lots of apartments in L.A. are suddenly raising rents by $100, he’s going for this insane amount, and why? Obviously, I don’t know, but I’m guessing he’s gambling that other owners will look at his prices and bump theirs up accordingly. After all, that’s what they normally do.

Because the suppliers only look at each other for their cues. The demanders don’t even enter the equation. And that’s how you get an entire housing market that is “overvalued”. Suppliers looking at their costs, and passing on the costs of fixing their stupid mistakes (ARM mortgages, anyone?) onto the demand side rather than having to sell or let the bank foreclose. If they built Playstations that weren’t worth what they charge, people would stop buying. But with an essential like housing, there’s infinite room for “whoops” on the supply side - it can always be passed onto the demand side.

Think about it: how do you get “overvalue” in a free market? How can all housing be getting sold at prices above its value, if the market works like its average proponent claims? Answer: it doesn’t work the way people want to believe. Not on necessities.

“But shoes are necessities,” you muse. “Why are there always cheap, affordable shoes available in Los Angeles, but not cheap, affordable housing?”

Because shoes are portable. I can order them from another country, if no store will sell what I want at a price I find acceptable. Even life-saving medicines can sometimes be bought on the cheap from elsewhere. But housing is part of the landscape. It’s tied to our jobs, which also aren’t portable. It’s tied to our kids’ schools, which represent their chance of future economic success. It’s tied into everything we need to survive, and that makes it infinitely exploitable - but only from the supply side.

My situation is atypical. What we’re seeing right now in L.A. is a lot of buildings raising rents by $1-200/month. Because they’re all doing it at once, of course the market will bear it: the demanders have no cheaper options. But why did they start raising the rents? Did the demand side do something to trigger it? No.

• A lot of landlords have those insane mortgages because they opted to tear down old buildings in the past 5 years and put up new ones to avoid that 1978 cut-off date. While individuals who took out those mortgages are losing their homes, landlords just pass on their huge business mistakes to the demand side. There’s infinite room for stupid on the supply side when it comes to housing.
• Unavoidable costs for things like water and electricity are also going up - there, I don’t have a problem with landlords raising rents, as the retail cost is still based on the wholesale cost. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen rents go down when the cost of water or electricity does, which bears examination.

Regulate the market just a little, and profits can still be thrilling without individuals being at the mercy of a subtle version of price fixing.

If anyone’s concerned about me, I’m lucky. My friends who’ve recently had $100 increases in rent are unable to find cheaper housing anywhere nearby, and either have to start paying more or commuting further (taking more time from families, spending more on gas, releasing more gas waste into the atmosphere, having less time for exercise and healthy cooking). Because my building was already overpriced, this was just the kick I needed to go hunt down something significantly cheaper so I have that much more savings per month to throw into my downpayment fund. I intend to buy a house in a couple of years, when the market is at its bottom and housing is actually something like its real market value.

But for those who got drummed out of the housing industry a long time ago - those homeless people who live on all our streets here - that option isn’t available. While some of them may have made bad choices that caused them to end up homeless, the hard reality is: it could happen to anyone in this town. And once you lose your home - even a rented home that was never really “yours” - you lose that address you need to put on a job application. You lose a place to receive mail and communications. You lose touch with the entire world.

All because in a country that could easily provide modest living arrangements for everyone, it is so much more important to have a race to see just how much profit can possibly be made. Isn’t it ever enough?

You go to a doctor, and she or he treats you like you’re a disgusting waste of time because you should’ve known that rash you have that looks exactly like eczema was actually some obscure parasite from the Bolivian jungle (where you’ve never been). Your car’s broken into, and even though you locked it and parked it in a secured, lit garage, people chastise you for not having an alarm (even though 1987 was the last time anyone actually responded to a car alarm, except perhaps to yell “Shut the fuck up!”). You get dumped and your friends tell you they have no sympathy because if you’d really been serious about keeping him, you’d have lost that last 10 pounds (upon which your entire value as a human apparently rests). You get raped and people ask what you did to make that happen to you. You get tried for a crime you didn’t commit, and the jury assumes if you were really innocent, you wouldn’t be here at all.

It comes in a lot of flavors, but one thing victim blaming relies on is a privilege distinction between the blamer and the victim. As illogical as it is for a doctor to spend six figures on her education and then act like patients who don’t know all she knows are lacking in intelligence, really we’re barely sentient enough to realize how stupid we are, and therefore it’s a very human logic: “I can do this; why can’t you?”

As specious as it is for someone to look at a break-in that happened despite every reasonable precaution and invent a whole new precaution lapse to explain the event away, it’s what humans do: we invent rules by which we imagine ourselves safe. When someone sails a plane into a building anyway, we invent a bunch more rules until eventually we’re all hunkered in cellars wearing gas masks and thinking, “I’m sure we’re safe now. Yep.”

As ignorant as it is to blame crime victims for getting themselves into this position, we do this because it’s convenient. They’re at hand, whereas the perpetrator might not be, and we want to separate ourselves from them (”Oh! So if I never wear a whorish skirt like she did, I’ll never be raped! Yay!”). And even when the perpetrator is at hand, we’re more scared of him or her than we are of the victim. Safer to blame the victim, and after all, it’s all about whatever makes us feel better, right?

As common sense defying as it is to assume no one could be really falsely accused of a crime, we do it because otherwise we’d be able to picture ourselves in the defendant’s position.

The one thing all these examples have in common is a power imbalance between the blamed victim and the blamer. Ironically, the less powerful the victim is, the less likely they are to have had any real influence over their situation, the easier they are to blame. It makes no sense, but it’s not about sense. It’s about comfort. And privilege is a great comfort.