First of all, I’m pretty sure you’re not wondering. The wording and precedence of its appearance in your commentary makes me think you have a pretty strong preconceived guess about why I supposedly make these assumptions. We’ll leave that aside as part of the conversation it would be useless to pursue.

Secondly, I have an answer for you, if you’re willing to listen: I am not making those assumptions at all (surprise!). What you’re seeing is a non-exhaustive listing of reasons why the part of the population I am most acquainted with — “middle class,” white, suburban, middle america — in other words, my peer group — feels financially unstable. The assumption I am making is that analogous kinds of choices are being made in other parts of this society. For example, someone might have a choice between a fixer-upper house and a very nice apartment — I believe the market and our culture encourages people to choose the latter. This would be analogous to the white, educated, middle-class belief that they should spend on a newly-minted McMansion — in fact, that very belief probably drives many of them to rent rather than own, so that’s a kind of belief which probably transcends my peer group.

Thirdly, you should probably read my post again in case you are feeling like being upset — I’m on your side of this debate, for the most part. I AGREE that income stagnation in this country has had dire consequences for all of us not at the top. As I wrote in the post to which you replied: “… I bring up my story to say this and only this: however unfair the system may be (and certainly it looks pretty gross), simple, unpopular choices can, in some situations, mitigate this problem.” This is me agreeing with you, just without polemics. I’m not saying the problem isn’t there, and I’m not saying my anecdote is proof of a solution or would even apply in all situations. I chose my words carefully; they mean exactly what I meant them to say.

One of my long-standing goals in life is to remove polemic dialogue from important dialectics, no matter whether I agree with the fundamental position of the polemecist(s) in question. In the particular case of this conversation, I want to make sure we keep in mind that some degree of personal responsibility is yet in play, lest we come off as a certain kind of useless opponent to those on the other side of the debate (I also have a secondary, less important goal of spreading information about simple choices that some people may have overlooked). I think we can have more nuanced, useful conversations as a society — we are mature enough, smart enough, and patient enough. I believe the argument which is prepared to make concessions and encompass the reality of a situation will win over more opponents in the long run.