Ethical considerations of my FIRE Pathway:

The Death of Personal Responsibility and Accountability

When I was five years old, I started working on our family farm opening gates and locking/unlocking the hubs on the truck to engage the 4×4 system.  From an incredibly young age, I was taught that hard work would always lead to prosperity, and if it didn’t, you simply needed to work harder.  After all, this train of thought had led to the success of my family for the last three generations before I was born.  I believe that this was true for our parents and grandparents, however, this theory no longer applies to our generation due to POS’s.  POS’s have always existed in society, but in the last decade, both the amount, and the value of POS’s has increased to the point it has killed the hard work will always lead to prosperity in the United States.  The ethical considerations in this particular FIRE pathway are an internal battle I have dealt with personally since discovering the pathway 2 years ago and caused me to delay publishing my blog until now.  If it wasn’t for the many lives I see turned upside down and the family struggle with the system in the last few months of many patients lives, I wouldn’t publish this blog.  However, after seeing the campaign slogans such as Medicare for all, Universal Basic Income, and the recent 2 trillion dollar COVID-19 bailout, the time has come to publish, as the ethical considerations of not publishing, now outweigh those of publishing this blog.

The ethical dilemma in this situation is: Is it ethical to intentionally reduce your income to take advantage of programs such as Medicaid, while keeping more money in your pocket since your tax burden is also reduced?  Ten years ago, the answer was no, but currently, and into the future, the answer is yes.  The reason is simple, our government in the process of creating and expanding multiple social programs, while excluding the very working class that supports the programs, in turn forcing them into a life of essentially indentured servitude.  Regardless of race or gender, an entire generation of people from California to Maine was promised success if we only worked hard enough and attended college.  What they forgot to mention to us is the hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt at 7% interest, and the lost revenue from attending college to receive our PHD in humanities. Those who couldn’t finish college, were still saddled with student loan debt at 7% interest, only they didn’t have a higher income to pay back the debt, leading to a vicious cycle where the compounding interest doubled or even tripled their initial principal balance in the matter of a few years.  We were required to study history, calculus, trigonometry, geometry, algebra 1, algebra 2, three years of Spanish, 4 years of English, art, and music class in order to “prepare us for life,” while the same educators eliminated classes such as home economics, shop, and basic finance.  I graduated both high school and college without understanding compound interest, which cost me dearly over my lifetime.  Could our educators really be that ignorant, or could it be that the system was intentionally designed to keep us in the dark about true life skills like investing, bill paying, saving, and the power of compound interest?  After all, Albert Einstein described compound interest in this fashion: “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.  He who understands it earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.”  I remember being required to learn a lot about Mr. Einstein, but for some reason something he described as “the eighth wonder of the world” wasn’t important enough to our educational system to warrant any discussion.

The death of personal responsibility and accountability in the last decade has only created more POS’s and these will continue to expand.  People across our country are beginning to realize the odds of success are significantly stacked against them and giving up.  After all, if the POS’s outweigh the benefits of working for somebody with my gross income, it only makes sense the same applies for everyone with an income below that of your average therapist with a master’s degree and two children.  Ideas like Universal Basic Income, Medicare for all, and a 600 weekly unemployment bonus for sitting at home making more than you were while working, simply poured gasoline on this FIRE, and will result in more Americans than ever before transitioning away from hard work to government support.  So really the question written another way is: Is it ethical for those who work and pay for all of these POS’s be punished by those same POS’s for the duration of their life while giving up time with their family and friends to finance the POS’s?  To me, the answer is absolutely not.  

In conclusion, the death of personal responsibility by a significant proportion of our population when combined with the progression of socialized government programs over the last decade has forced the working class into an unwinnable position.  No longer does a lifetime of hard work guarantee success, it only guarantees exclusion from Medicaid, exclusion from LTC Medicaid, and higher tax brackets for your entire lifetime and even when you die thanks to estate taxes.  Remember, your most valuable asset in the world is time and it is priceless.  Instead of spending your lifetime fighting against the ever progressing and accumulating POS’s, focus on reducing your workload, paying off debt ASAP, enjoying time with family and friends, and living a happier more fulfilling life.  After all, you only get one life here on Earth.  Eventually, you will receive a phone call that your mother, father, brother, sister, or other loved one has passed on from this world and you will instantly wish you had more of the most valuable asset that we all share regardless of income, time.