Okay, so today there was another story of another town or city that has a “problem” with people living in RV’s.
People are funny, they look at people living in RV’s and get angry and have a number of assumptions, here are a few of them:
• They’re a bum
• They’re drug addicts
• They’re lazy (as in get a job, you bum!)
Also there is a twinge of jealousy mixed in there, I mean the feeling that is along the lines of “Why should they get away without paying rent when I have:
• Rent/Mortgage
• Property Taxes
• Condo Fees
• Power/Utility Bills
• And other “Costs of ownership”
I guess some of those feelings are valid as people, like myself, are living cheaper by not living in a “sticks and bricks” house. As in, living in some sort of fixed address house/apartment/etc.
Yet, you have to ask yourself why are people doing this? Why would someone with options chose to live in an RV?
The answer is varied, as in each person has a different reason for why they are living in their RV, but I will boil it down to a few main categories:
• Financial: They just can’t afford a place to live.
• Freedom: They like the freedom to go where they choose, to travel yet always be at home.
• To Get Ahead: With the lower cost of living by living in an RV, the cash that you were spending on having a fixed address, you can now use to get yourself ahead financially (debt free or build savings).
To me, all of those are beside the point but the fact that the numbers of people living in RV’s is growing, points to a larger problem in our society.
Simply put, the cost of living is creeping to the point of unaffordability. We are already past the point of the cost of living being stupidly high.
Why is this? Well, in my opinion the fault lies at the feet of Government and Business . . . but mainly with Government.
Why? Well, Government likes to pile on the taxes and tries to find new ways to generate new ones or just raise the old ones (all while telling us that it’s fair and to suck it up).
This happens at all three levels of government: Federal, Provincial/State, and County/Town/City.
All three levels of government likes to spend, spend, spend and tax, tax, tax (yes even the conservative ones).
Business is squeezed by their increasing costs of operation as well as the ever increasing taxes that they pay (criminally more than the average person, so it’s no wonder, but not excusable, why some turn to tax evasion schemes.)
Yet wages have remained stagnant during all this time. In fact Business views wages as a charitable contribution (to the poor) that they can’t write off.
They view wages as something that they set and will increase when they feel generous.
The thought of tying wages to inflation is met with a scream and hue and cry the likes of which is only heard when someone is having a limb amputated without anaesthesia.
So the split between wages and the cost of living grows, with the cost of living rising at a rate that steadily outpaces wages.
The difference is made up in the lowering of the standard of living of the average person.
This erosion of your purchasing power continues until you, yes you dear reader, are forced out of the “normal” way of living due to economic forces.
Either that or you just see no other way to get debt free or otherwise get ahead.
Either way, living in an RV, even for a short period of time, can look good.
When you do, when you move into an RV or otherwise out of a fixed address, you then become an Economic Refugee.
I say this to Business and Government, (mainly to Government) “Stop crushing the little guy with taxes and cost increases. That and stop making war with the people you have shoved out of the normal economic model by your actions.”
As always: Keep your head up, your attitude positive, and keep moving forward!
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