[Baltimore Sun] Dean Minnich: Why today’s inflated expectations depress us | COMMENTARY
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Inflation is out of control, according to public opinion polls.
Statistics say otherwise; the facts are that inflation and costs in general are going through the normal adjustments of a fluid economy.
But there is a whining in the land, tales of woe about how prices are too high for essentials like food, rent, gas and a whole list of other things that have come to define the ideal quality of life in America.
We’re our own worst enemies — again.
Many senior citizens are young enough to relate to the struggles of starting life in the adult world — paying bills, incurring debt and managing relationships on a busy schedule. We’re still dealing with those things.
My edge over many of younger generations is the awareness that I know I don’t know everything — and education comes not only with a degree, but with life’s lessons. And I know I’m not entitled to anything unless I accept responsibilities.
Not everyone learns another vital lesson: You have to give some room to others to be wrong. Maybe they’ll learn. That’s the keystone to a democracy, and democracy is the foundation of being part of government instead of a subject of it.
Not that I paid much attention to such things when my paychecks were tokens of riches to poverty in seven days.
Expectations have changed quite a bit since my bride and I took up housekeeping. She had just finished her first year of college and had three more ahead of her. She wanted to teach school. Money was not her main incentive.
I was an office clerk for an airline, which was the lowest-paying job in the company. In a few months, I took a $30 a month cut in pay to take a job as a newspaper reporter. I was the sole wage-earner.
Getting rich was not our plan. The plan was to get continuous education on the job along with enough salary to pay the bills. It meant making sacrifices, putting off big expenses and being happy with a two-room, third-floor walkup apartment, furnished and bearing evidence of memories of earlier renters.
Our black-and-white TV with rabbit ears was a wedding gift.
We were early to explore working at home. While she studied into the evenings, I clattered away at the kitchen table on a manual typewriter cobbling together today’s news stories for the next day’s paper.
She commuted to Towson in an old Valiant that struggled to reach the top of the hill on a valley road, and my used Corvair was in the shop too often. Dining out was having enough change the night before payday to get two burgers, fries and sodas at George’s Twin Kiss.
One vacation in three years included a two-night stay in a hotel two blocks from the beach in Ocean City.
We had enough, and didn’t feel deprived because others had much more, or much better, or just more expensive. Marketing had not created public demand for things like tattoos, piercings, designer shoes, the latest in sportswear and recreational toys for mountain trails and streams. A condo in the Bahamas was a fantasy.
What’s different? It wasn’t as easy to get into debt. We felt pressure to pay our tuitions, but we did not graduate into college debt. We were eight years away from owning our house; we had been home together even when she followed me to a rented house in Japan.
There was less to want so we felt less impoverished.
Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.
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