Get out of the Rat Race

Things are looking pretty bad for the people who actually do the work in this country. Wages are slowly but surely being driven lower and lower while the cost of living goes higher and higher. Nearly 40 years ago when my father bought his first house, it was surprisingly affordable by today's standards. It was worth three times his yearly wages. He put one third down and got a 30 year mortgage. My mother worked for a year helping to get together the down payment but it was still pretty affordable. I don't know how the average family affords a house these days given what the marketplace is willing to pay in wages, but I'm not surprised that the housing market has crashed. What do you expect with wages being driven so low. My mother chose to work for a couple of years in order to start paying off the house. Women don't have that choice anymore. It's a necessity now just to keep body and soul together. Everyone in the family has to work nowdays. Unfortunately places with jobs also have high standards of living. New York still has some jobs but it's very expensive. The trick would be to live someplace where you have a job and living expenses are below the national average. Young people should think about portable careers like nursing which pays well everywhere. Then look for a place with a lower cost of living index, like Austn, Texas.
For the rest of us it looks like wage slavery is coming. As workers we are becoming more and more dependant on employers. This is not a good thing because dependance leads to compliance. We all need to become independant from the ratrace and be able to say goodbye to our employers periodically. Escape from wage slavery is not easy. But frugality and the skills of the cheapskate, make it possible. Everyone should be expendable even employers. I say let's stop shopping, boycott China and put them out of work. If business doesn't want to create jobs here in the USA, why should we continue to shop?
I always bagged my lunch and lived fugally because I wanted to be independant of my wages. I have an aunt who opted out of the ratrace almost 30 years ago. She bought a really big house. It had six bedrooms, two kitchens and three bathrooms. It was a shell when she bought it. Her husband spent a year fixing it up. She worked to pay the materials and to keep up with the mortgage. But she was getting tired of the daily grind. She figured out that there was a scarcity of affordable apartment rentals in her area. She rented a room to someone who was working and needed a place to live. Then she rented another and another. She didn't charge much but gave good value. Renters had a bathroom and could share a kitchen. In a couple of years she stopped working and was able to pay the mortgage and all her expenses from the room rentals. She even paid into her social security. Now she is getting ready to sell her house and retire. She was lucky but she was also smart and took the opportunity that came her way. Look around and see if you can find a way out of the rat race. Cutting expenses is the first step.