Work or Live Under a Bridge, I Don’t Care as Long as My Tax Dollars Don’t Pay for It

There have always been people who just don’t want to work for a living. Some of them moved into crime because they’d rather risk going to jail than do a 9-to-5 job. Others deliberately – and yes, I do mean to say this – CHOOSE to be homeless because they’d rather do that instead of getting the job they’d need to maintain a place to live. Back in the day, there were even hobos and drifters who rode trains from town to town and did occasional work when they couldn’t get enough food via stealing or begging.

Personally, I can at least understand this impulse because I have done a lot of not particularly fun jobs in my life including…

* Burger King employee

* Burger King assistant manager

* Wal-Mart Portrait Studio manager

* Office temp work

* Barnes and Noble employee

* Laser tag employee

* Working at a quasi-governmental agency assigning radio frequencies

* Working in a group home with teenagers

* Assisting rural ISPs

* Tech support

Although they did lay off almost the entire workforce in that last job, I was very good at my job (honestly, I was very good at most of these jobs although I didn’t much like any of them) and so I was one of the few people they offered to let me stay on at a reduced rate, with less vacation time. I declined and finally went full-time into business for myself running a blog. That eventually turned into a successful corporation with 30 or so part-time employees and ironically, I put in a lot more hours every week working for myself than I ever did working for someone else. So, when people tell me they don’t want to work at some lousy job, I really do understand. I spent a long time working at jobs I didn’t particularly like either.

This brings me to a weird multi-day conversation on X that happened while I was on vacation in New York City last week.

People were noting that they didn’t want to work and went on to basically blame conservatives who weren’t even in power at the time because foreigners were getting H1B Visa jobs and competing with them for other jobs. The thought process was very fuzzy, but it seemed to be something like, “We should be able to get amazing jobs that pay staggering amounts of money, and we can’t, so we shouldn’t have to work until this is fixed.”

Here are some of the comments that caught my eye in the back-and-forth on this:

As a starting point, let’s just note that nobody owes you a cool job or a job that pays you a ludicrous amount of money. Do you want to play in the NFL like Patrick Mahomes? Do you want to be a popular influencer like Logan Paul? Do you want to be a movie star like Scarlett Johansson? Do you want to be the Executive Chairman of Amazon like Jeff Bezos? There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s good to have dreams and great to pursue them, but you also have to realize that there are practically a limitless number of talented people who also want those jobs because they’re some of the highest paying, most prestigious jobs in human history and by their very nature, very few people can have them.

You know, one job I did not mention was “stand-up comedian,” although I considered it. I wrote a lot of material, made the cut for a local comedy skit group, and even did an hour-long stand-up show for 30 friends and neighbors in my apartment. Know why I didn’t try to pursue that career? Because I learned enough about it to understand that it meant being on the road constantly. Also, after going to enough comedy shows, I began to realize there were a lot of ludicrously funny people in that field who never had and never will break through to reach the top of the pile. The odds of being Dave Chappelle or Jerry Seinfeld looked way too long for me, so I went in a different direction.

This happens to most of us to one extent or another because not only does no one owe you a cool job or a job that pays a ludicrous amount of money, but as the old saying goes, no one owes you a living either. It’s like dating. You could name a lot of women you’re interested in, but if they’re married, already in a relationship, or aren’t interested, then you need to keep moving on beyond those women to find other interested women. Sorry, but Taylor Swift, Margot Robbie, and Sydney Sweeney don’t want to date you right now, so who else catches your eye?

Jobs are the same way. You take the best job you can get according to your priorities. When you’re starting out, those priorities may be, “I need to live, so I will take anything that pays money.” You might think a job is “beneath you” or a “waste of time,” but it’s not when you’re just entering the workforce.

“Oh yeah? Well, what am I going to learn from making burgers at McDonald’s? Huh? What am I learning there?” You’re learning to show up on time. To take instructions. To work under pressure during that lunch or dinner rush. You’re learning to tolerate doing things you don’t want to do.

If you can do that, you’re ready to step up the ladder at McDonald’s or to move on to a better job elsewhere.

From there, your priorities may be getting paid as much as possible, having great opportunities for advancement, or building valuable skills – and the last one is especially important because if you genuinely have the skills, someone will pay you for them. They don’t necessarily have to be high-tech skills either.

North Myrtle Beach is not exactly a white-hot job market, but could you make six figures a year here if you did a really good job of running your own cleaning, landscaping, handyman, or repair business? Yes – and maybe $100,000 doesn’t feel like a lot of money in San Francisco or Manhattan, but in most of the rest of the country, you will certainly be doing a lot better than the lower middle class making that.

Of course, that takes us back to what is perhaps the most underrated comment above.

The unfortunate reality is that the vast majority of jobs, even jobs that pay fairly well, are not high-prestige jobs. I think that’s really one of the reasons Christopher Rufo’s example of making $100k running a Chipotle drew such a negative reaction. If you spend all day wanting to be Joe Rogan or Mr. Beast, the idea of being a manager at a corporate chain is just “uncool.” It’s one thing to make 100k per year playing Call of Duty on Twitch and another entirely to make 100k managing a mall in Dung Heap, North Dakota.

Again though, we get back to the fact that only a few people can have those “cool kid” jobs. So, what now?

Ultimately, it all comes back to the same thing people have been doing forever. Get the best job you can and pay your bills. Despite what some people think, there is no job that is “beneath” you. On the contrary, there’s no shame in taking any honest job. That doesn’t make you a “serf,” that makes you not a bum. The first duty of a good citizen is not to live off your fellow citizens. On the other hand, if you want to be a bum, live under a bridge, or be a freeloader on your parents’ couch because you’re too lazy to work, it doesn’t matter to most people as long as their tax dollars aren’t being wasted on you. Not only does the world not owe you a living, but the people who do work and pay taxes don’t owe you a living either.

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