In all honesty, I would dislike this author much less if they received a single one-time lump sum of $500K rather than a lifetime stipend of $28k.
As it stands, this entire piece feels like fingernails dragging down a chalkboard screeching “I’m
So virtuous and privileged but I announce my privilege so that gives me the right to express my opinions and tell you how to run capitalism better!!!”
There is something about the open-ended lifetime of life support that really turns me off. This is a weak person with low personal responsibility, childlike even. I personally would have declined this offer from my parents, I am not a child, I am an adult. It would insult me to be in this arrangement past the age of 20.
I received around $120K from my parents when I was 23. Through investing, I have turned it into $500K and never spent any of it on myself (vacations, food, rent etc). I paid for all my base needs, including my wedding，out of my salary.
From the time I received the money, I taught myself to be a software engineer and worked my way up from $55K to (now) $350K / year. It was very difficult to do that. I even tried to start several startups, which was a brutal amount of work and worked several jobs at once.
I decided I would not spend the money that was left to me, I felt that would represent a weakness in my personal character to do that. I don’t intend to ever spend it, in fact my plan is to triple it in coming years trading stock options into the coming recession.
Seeing this author go off on tangents about universal basic income and providing free money to struggling artists sets me off. This is someone who has no personal accountability to themselves or to society.
I love art, but it isn’t valued in the marketplace. I wanted money so I learned a valuable skill.
Don’t take free money from your parents as a grown adult and turn around and give us all a lecture on how to structure society!
Then the NYT editors choose to award cogent comment status to a list of comments blaming it all on the GOP.
They can’t help themselves.