By Robert Dean
Carter County Times
Being an adult in 2025 is exhausting. If the car doesn’t need new shocks, the insurance bill looms like a storm cloud over a car note that feels downright perverse.
I know it’s an idealized America at this point, before something went wrong with the agreement made to the American people. Still, there was a time when someone could work at the local plant and, with one paycheck, buy a house, raise a few kids, take some vacations, and retire with a pension. Today, two full-time incomes barely cover groceries and gas.
Every check gets eaten by housing, gas, kids, old doctor bills, groceries – and that’s before the other bills or trying to be a human who wants a Snickers or a night at the movies.
In 1995, the average American worker made about $45,000 a year in today’s dollars and could realistically afford a starter home, reliable healthcare through their employer, and help their kids with college without taking on crushing debt. Wages have barely budged, but housing costs have increased by over 800%, childcare costs have doubled, and even eggs feel like a luxury item.
Somewhere along the line, hard work stopped paying off the way it used to. We now live in a world where our neighbors start GoFundMe pages to help pay medical bills for cancer. Our insurance premiums keep rising, if we’re lucky enough to get coverage at all.
I was nearly killed in a car wreck. Guess who saw their insurance spike, even after being left with just a thousand dollars to replace a totaled car? The wreck wasn’t my fault. I was picking up takeout.
We pay into health insurance through our paychecks, and half the time, we’re still left covering hundreds out of pocket. That leaves us with broken molars we can’t afford to fix or nagging knee pain we can’t afford to get X-rayed.
Perhaps the American Dream didn’t die, but it has definitely become unaffordable. People are working two and three jobs and still struggling with burnout, mental health issues, and a growing distrust of a system broken by bad actors in suits on both sides – laying hands on a Bible while lying through their teeth.
Debt is everywhere, and everyone’s carrying the burden of just trying to keep the lights on while VISA and Mastercard keep getting richer.
What no one talks about is the quiet shame. The way people blame themselves for falling behind, like it’s a moral failure instead of a broken system. Anxiety, depression, burnout – these aren’t personal defects. They’re the natural response to a life spent running on a treadmill someone else controls. Working families suffer, and when that happens, communities begin to fray.
It’s not an unfair idea to question why we work so hard for so little and wonder where all that money goes. When we go to work, we’re selling our labor at a price per hour. But what does that look like for the folks sitting in the corporate suite?
They’ve never had dirt under their nails, but they sure know how to pick a pocket clean.
Tomorrow, I get to decide what bill gets paid and how much I can afford to spend on food – even though I have a full-time job.
Once again, the working man gets the screw job. Been there, done that.
Contact us at news@cartercountytimes.com
