I was chatting it up with my UPS driver a few years back.\u00a0 He had a shack like mine, burned wood for heat, lived in a remote spot up in the hills east of Stanwoodopolis.\u00a0 I asked him how he liked driving for a living and he said, well, it\u2019s okay if you don\u2019t mind only making wages.<\/p>\n
I said what does that mean?\u00a0 And he took some precious minutes from his frenetic schedule to explain he delivered to all the dot.com millionaires up the road, boyz who retired at 40, cashed in their stock options and lived like shahs in their palaces on the bluff while he was making mere union wages.\u00a0 You know, with health insurance, vacation and pension.\u00a0 Stuff me and my pals don\u2019t get\u2026.<\/p>\n
Wealth, I guess you already know in the land of the free, is relative.\u00a0 All these folks with early retirements, McMansions, dot.com money, his and her BMW\u2019s — well, it can sure make a decent salary with benefits look like pauper\u2019s wages if you care to do a comparison test.\u00a0 Make you feel positively deprived.\u00a0 Make you think if your time isn\u2019t worth $500 an hour you\u2019re being cheated, sorta like being homeless at Christmas in Beverly Hills.\u00a0 Probably explains why folks play the Lottery.\u00a0 Even up their playing field if they hit big.<\/p>\n
We spend too much time wanting what we don\u2019t have than enjoying what we do — and that maxim that money won\u2019t buy you happiness, well, save that for the simple minded.\u00a0 Money for most of us will BE happiness.<\/p>\n
My UPS driver left awhile back.\u00a0 Maybe a new route.\u00a0 Hopefully one delivering to minimum wage earners.\u00a0 My guess is he\u2019s starting up some new software company, fishing for venture capital, looking for investors.\u00a0 Probably in a couple of years he\u2019ll sell out to IBM or AT&T, retire near me with enough money to buy the bluffs across the street and build a Taj South Hall.\u00a0\u00a0 UPS trucks\u2019ll line up at the coded gate and he\u2019ll regale the drivers with stories of when years ago, in another lifetime, he drove big brown trucks and worked for slave wages.\u00a0 Won\u2019t be long, we won\u2019t have enough folks left to drive delivery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was chatting it up with my UPS driver a few years back.\u00a0 He had a shack like mine, burned wood for heat, lived in a remote spot up in the hills east of Stanwoodopolis.\u00a0 I asked him how he liked driving for a living and he said, well, it\u2019s okay if you don\u2019t mind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[6944,3845,7338],"class_list":["post-19157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-america-the-rich","tag-rich-man-poor-man","tag-yearning-to-breathe-rich"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19158,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19157\/revisions\/19158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}