{"id":388,"date":"2025-04-14T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/scenes-from-an-empire-in-denial\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T18:30:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T18:30:47","slug":"scenes-from-an-empire-in-denial","status":"publish","type":"essays","link":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/essays\/scenes-from-an-empire-in-denial\/","title":{"rendered":"Scenes From an Empire in Denial"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Every once in a while, a series of mundane events accumulates to produce a moment of out-of-body, blistering clarity. \u201cClarity\u201d is not a mental state I\u2019ve experienced much recently, but on my last day in California, it arrived unannounced while I idled in a Safeway parking lot.<\/p>\n

Earlier that morning, I had been speaking with the moving team\u2019s foreman in our cardboard-filled kitchen. \u201cHow much do you think they\u2019re asking for this house?\u201d he wondered aloud, referring to my out-of-state landlord\u2019s decision to sell. I told him it was a low seven-figure sum that still seemed a little high to me, but what did I know? <\/p>\n

\u201cI went through a nasty divorce 11 years ago,\u201d he volunteered, \u201cand let my wife keep the house.\u201d I nodded silently, unsure where this was headed. \u201cThen I bought a six-bedroom foreclosure from the bank for $187,000. I put $100,000 down. My monthly payment is only $2,300.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite having spent enough time dicking around with mortgage calculators to realize immediately this math was nonsensical (a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage in 2014 averaged about 4%, which would put payments on an $87,000 loan at around $600), I decided against pursuing a new line of questioning. 2014 saw the lowest foreclosure rates<\/span><\/a> since 2006, I learned later, after the Great Financial Crisis had finally finished flushing around 10 million people out of their homes. Without prompting, he added, \u201cI did the eviction myself,\u201d with a note of what sounded like pride.<\/p>\n

A few hours later, the Berkshire Hathaway real estate agent arrived in a silver Maserati for a move-out walkthrough. After I finished showing him where the carpet had worn thin and which drawers in the kitchen frequently jammed, we stood in the driveway talking about a prospective buyer eager to tour the house later that day. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
>
\n \u201c<\/span>If even this wealthy beneficiary of rapid real estate appreciation is defending the hypothetical bad attitudes of the working class, things must really be bleak.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n
\n

As we chatted, a silver-haired man wearing AirPods approached us from behind the mass of boxes. I scanned his face for signs of an impending lecture about the moving truck parked on the street, but it turned out he thought we were moving in. He introduced himself and explained he had recently relocated from Newport Beach, a town where the median home costs around $3.5 million<\/span><\/a>. He said he loved the Sacramento area. \u201cEveryone\u2019s so nice,\u201d he gushed. \u201cEven the kids who work at Chick-fil-A and Starbucks seem happy all the time. Back in Orange County, everyone who works at Starbucks seems angry you\u2019re there.\u201d <\/p>\n

I braced myself for the rich Southern Californian Baby Boomer and Maserati-driving Berkshire Hathaway real estate agent to commiserate with one another over the lackluster work ethic of Kids These Days, but Maserati Man threw a welcome curveball: \u201cIt\u2019s because the cost of living is so high,\u201d he said matter-of-factly. \u201cThey\u2019re probably tired, working multiple jobs, and absolutely miserable trying to make ends meet.\u201d Stunned into silence by this unlikely demonstration of class consciousness, I turned to my old\/new neighbor for his rebuttal. Thoughts<\/em>? I wanted to ask. <\/p>\n

He smiled and shrugged, and shortly thereafter received a call and wandered down the driveway with a wave and little explanation. I turned back to face the agent, titillated by this turn of events. If even this wealthy beneficiary of rapid real estate appreciation is defending the hypothetical bad attitudes of the working class, things must really be bleak<\/em>, I thought. <\/p>\n

I sensed that whatever polite shroud of distanced small talk that separated us before had evaporated; we were no longer method-acting as the Diligent Renter and Knowledgeable Real Estate Professional. Our conversation quickly turned to the economy, how disparities are so apparent now, how he remembered when the $2,500 rents in his neighborhood were $500 in 2005. I detected a weariness in his eyes that I hadn\u2019t noticed previously when we were discussing the particulars of waterfront property values. The mask of normalcy slipped once we recognized in each other the same deep well of unease about the future.<\/p>\n

Lately, things have felt tonally reminiscent of early 2021, when I spent my days making Powerpoint presentations about user experience updates while daily breaking news alerts reported the pandemic\u2019s rising death toll. In Dallas, where I lived at the time, a cold snap that proved too much for the deregulated Texas energy grid plunged large swaths of the state into frozen darkness for days. On the Teams calls we held anyway using hot spots and portable chargers, it often seemed like we were side-eyeing each other nervously, searching for signs of hidden panic as we continued to play our instruments on a ship we feared was sinking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"

The financial mood in the US ever since the phrase \u201cmortgage-backed security\u201d was uttered.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

Back in the driveway, the agent and I briefly discussed our proposed solutions (his: more government subsidies for aspiring homeowners; mine: disconnecting housing from speculative markets) before parting ways. I drove to Safeway.<\/p>\n

An hour later, distracted by a parade of logistics as I climbed back into my car with a bag of sour candies and last-minute gifts for our neighbors, I failed to activate my standard podcast routine. Instead, the default FM country station\u2014one I\u2019d never bothered to change\u2014crackled to life in the middle of a debt consolidation ad.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re drowning in debt!\u201d a self-assured voice boomed merrily as I backed out of my spot, \u201cand we can help!\u201d I reached for the gearshift as he continued making his pitch over upbeat Muzak. \u201cFor a limited time, you could qualify for up to $10,000 in debt relief, with no upfront fees.\u201d At this, my hand froze and I stared blankly out the windshield, trapped in an abrupt trance by the sudden realization that something had gone very wrong\u2014and had been wrong for a long time.<\/p>\n

The pedestrian events of the day\u2014the moving man\u2019s mathematically questionable foreclosure coup, the Berkshire Hathaway agent\u2019s cursory understanding of the plight of the millennial underclass, the oblivious ex-Newport Beach dad who preferred his baristas cheery and nonunionized, the chipper debt consolidation ad\u2014coalesced into a cohesive picture of an empire in decline. I thought of Joe Bauers in Idiocracy<\/em><\/span><\/a>, waking up in the year 2505 and being told repeatedly by the corporate-captured denizens of the United States of America Brought to You by American Express<\/em> that \u201cBrawndo\u2019s got what plants crave!\u201d while harvest after harvest withers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

\n

Like most people who pay attention to the economy and financial trends for a living, I had spent the week spinning my wheels over the distractions du jour\u2014tariffs, historic one-day market losses, divining a strategy from the word \u201cyippy.\u201d But it was as if breaking the fourth wall with the real estate agent\u2014an unexpected, shared acknowledgment of peril\u2014weakened the fa\u00e7ade of normalcy that shields most of my interactions these days. This brief lapse meant the commonplace \u201cdrowning in debt\u201d radio spot\u2014which assumed, rightly<\/span><\/a>, that its median listener was struggling under the weight of thousands, if not tens of thousands, in debt\u2014managed to bypass the part of my brain that had long ago acclimatized to this state of affairs. <\/p>\n

In the last week, it became commonplace to suggest any attempt to make sense of the economic turbulence was about as worthwhile as any other parlor game. To rationalize or infer strategy was, basically, a fool\u2019s errand: The policies weren\u2019t just poorly implemented; they were alternately \u201cmindless<\/span><\/a>,\u201d self-contradictory<\/span><\/a>, or just plain \u201cstupid<\/span><\/a>.\u201d But that assumes we aren\u2019t constantly engaged in this sort of sanity-washing for the status quo. We might be so conditioned to lifestyles that require vast levels of personal indebtedness to sustain that we don\u2019t often notice\u2014the median non-mortgage debt in the US is around $25,000<\/span><\/a>\u2014but every once in a while, the naked absurdity of such an arrangement comes sharply into focus. <\/p>\n

On a recent episode<\/span><\/a> of Scott Galloway\u2019s Prof G Markets<\/em>, Scott and his producer Ed sat down to hash out what might be coming after the latest wild week of announcements. To do this, they invited Gary Stevenson, the former British trader known for his sober, no-bullshit commentary. As Gary tells it<\/span><\/a>, he worked as a trader during the Great Financial Crisis and saw the rebound differently than most of his peers. In the aftermath, he says, the other financiers kept assuming\u2014year after year\u2014that things would turn around soon. When they kept getting it wrong, they were confused: Why weren\u2019t people spending money? Why wasn\u2019t the stimulant stimulating anything?<\/p>\n

Since he came from a working-class background, he decided to ask the friends he grew up with in east London\u2014none of whom became wealthy traders like he did\u2014the question that stumped his colleagues: Why aren\u2019t you spending money?<\/em> He learned the answer was simple: They didn\u2019t really have any extra money to spend. He began aligning trades with his prediction that the events of 2008 were going to set global wealth inequality on a sharply rising path, and that real economic growth would become harder and harder to come by. Today, Gary seems aware of the irony of earning millions each year betting on collapse. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
>
\n \u201c<\/span>He learned the answer was simple: They didn\u2019t really have any extra money to spend.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n
\n

Valiantly searching for an actionable takeaway at the end of the interview, Ed asks Gary what advice he has for young men who feel increasingly disillusioned by their job prospects and earning potential. \u201cFor people who are listening to this and want to protect themselves at the individual level,\u201d he begins, acknowledging that most people still want to become wealthy despite the inconvenient trends Gary just outlined, \u201cwhat\u2019s your advice for dealing with this new world?\u201d Gary laughs and restates the question: \u201cIf the Titanic\u2019s going down, what do you do at an individual level?\u201d <\/p>\n

After he rattled off the standard response (work hard, be clever, invest a lot), he delivered the most honest answer I\u2019ve heard in such a profoundly uncertain moment. The truth is, he says, most people listening to their conversation will probably never \u201cget rich\u201d without systemic reform.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that doesn\u2019t mean your life is over,\u201d he adds pointedly. \u201cThere are important things you can achieve for yourself, your family, and the people you care about.\u201d In other words, you don\u2019t need to be a wealthy person to live with dignity and meaning; you can choose to construct your life around something other than the ruthless pursuit of social mobility. In a global economy where the rules seem to change by the week, this sentiment was like a long exhale after forgetting you\u2019d been holding your breath. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every once in a while, a series of mundane events accumulates to produce a moment of out-of-body, blistering clarity. \u201cClarity\u201d is not a mental state I\u2019ve experienced much recently, but on my last day in California, it arrived unannounced while I idled in a Safeway parking lot. Earlier that morning, I had been speaking with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2495,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-388","essays","type-essays","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","tag-popular"],"yoast_head":"\nScenes From an Empire in Denial - Money with Katie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/essays\/scenes-from-an-empire-in-denial\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Scenes From an Empire in Denial - Money with Katie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Every once in a while, a series of mundane events accumulates to produce a moment of out-of-body, blistering clarity. \u201cClarity\u201d is not a mental state I\u2019ve experienced much recently, but on my last day in California, it arrived unannounced while I idled in a Safeway parking lot. 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