When I was in high school my brother picked me up and drove me up by some good colleges in or near Chicago- Loyola, DePaul, Northwestern- and I considered these as possibilities for what then was going to be an eventual career in accounting.  There were other schools I considered as well.  I barely missed a partial scholarship to Notre Dame because I didn’t file the paperwork in time.  By then my brother had moved away and I had no one to help me, to guide me in my selection process.  I wound up going to the same school that my sister attended, NIU, and after my second semester I changed majors, switching to electrical engineering.  I don’t regret my decision but do realize that if I had known in time I would have selected a school with a better engineering program.  But if it was out of state or even if it had required more money to attend I would have needed additional financial aid.  We were basically poor and just could not afford certain choices.  I didn’t really care that much as long as I got to go to college.

When I got to college I at first subsisted on a scholarship, financial aid and also some of the social security benefits we received after the death of my mother.  Aid helped to cover my room and board at the dorm but did not cover any personal purchases.  After my first year I found that I almost always had to choose between things like a pair of cheap winter gloves or a six pack of cheap beer, one a necessity and one a luxury.  The necessity always took priority with the luxury having to wait for perhaps another day.  After that year I realized that I had to get a job in order to be able to better afford some of the small items that I needed and maybe afford some additional ones that I simply cared to have.  So I worked.

Since I changed my major after my first year it wound up taking me an extra semester to finish my degree; and that with a full load of all engineering courses my final semesters and also with working as a lab assistant and working in the engineering lab as a tech.  I rented a small, unheated room (well there was a vent hole in the floor of the room so that the heat from the living room below could simply “rise” through the vent and burst with plenty into my room) in the old farmhouse my sister lived in with her boyfriend.  I was always in class, or in a lab, or teaching lab, or working in the lab, or studying, or working on a project, or shivering myself to sleep under six blankets in a small, cold room in a small, old farmhouse, or cobbling together a meal of white bread and peas or maybe some good old Ramen noodles.   It was my ninth semester and I had turned twenty-one so some of my financial aid and also the social security death benefits had run down or run out.  Even with my job I just couldn’t afford to feed myself very well and I couldn’t afford a better place to live.

And while all this was going on I also lost my girlfriend.  I couldn’t afford to take her out much and, the worst part for her as I remember her explaining to me, I just wasn’t spending enough time with her.  I tried to explain that she had almost 100% if my free time, as it was, but she wasn’t very accepting of that argument so we split up.  As finishing school and getting my degree was my top objective I found that I just couldn’t afford what it took to keep a girlfriend at that time.  I cared about her of course but we simply couldn’t stay together any longer.

Then I started at my first engineering job and I soon found that I could afford a nice little apartment.   It was in South Florida so I didn’t need heat but could afford to keep the air turned down to a comfortable level.  The girl I had been dating moved in with me and although she didn’t work for a while we did manage to but some decent low-end furniture and have a nice life together for some time.  We had a car, and then two, both old and used.  We did what we wanted when we could afford it and were afforded the chance to become a bit more carefree.

Later on I could afford a better place to live and then finally my very first house.  I could afford to travel back home at the holidays.  I bought somewhat better furniture over time.  I bought a new car.  I managed to start saving for retirement because I had some left over and could afford it.  And so on.  It was a process and it progressed but only over time and with concerted effort and the appropriate amount of attention and care coming from me.

So all along the way what was affordable changed.  And I’m sure that for others with other needs and priorities what is considered affordable was vastly different, perhaps even driving them into huge or even insurmountable debt along the way.  And for others still who had more and made more some of the things I sweated they did not care much about.  I defined what was affordable for me and it was based on what I had coming in and what was required going out- the leftover was for affording the extra stuff.

Now it seems that the world has changed.  More and more if you cannot afford what others have, even if they have worked for it for years, your benevolent government will work to find a way to get it for you because you just simply deserve it.  And they deserve your fealty then in all matters and, at least for now, they still need your vote.  As long as you still own that they will continue to apparently care.

Where does the money to afford these things come from then?  You don’t need to know really.  It can come from taxes you don’t pay or it can come from borrowed money that you don’t have to worry about paying back but someday someone will have to.  Or maybe, in a sense, it is simply stolen and, again, you don’t care as long as you get what you have been told is rightfully yours.  Having you dependent and beholden to the beast is all it takes.  All else- a sense of responsibility; old-fashioned ethics; self-pride; self-sufficiency; a sense of self-purpose; you getting all the “self” references here?- is secondary and subjugated to the primary objective of owning you.  Not renting, which is expected in a democratic society based on free and regular elections, but owning, free and clear.    And then see how much they care.

And when you own something you get to decide when that asset is no longer needed.  You can simply toss it away without a single care.

Affordable is always subjective.  And care is as well.

So I sincerely and deeply doubt, but in all honesty I just don’t know or can’t prove anyway, if it is affordable or if it is even about a type of care that I care about.

Affordable?  Maybe but probably not very.  Who decides?

Care?  Is it really healthcare; and for whom and by whom?

Act?  Certainly it is just that.  It has always been that.