An editorial on economic survival, human dignity, and the freedom to simply exist.
What if I just wanted to exist?
We are born into a world where the land already exists. The oceans already exist. The trees produce fruit. The sun provides warmth. Nature operates through extraordinarily complex systems without ever issuing an invoice. Yet human existence has become deeply intertwined with earning, purchasing, and producing. When did humanity lose the plot and turn living into surviving? The most obvious answer might seem to be capitalism, but the deeper question concerns our autonomy. Generations before us inherited and maintained economic systems they believed would provide sustainable ways of living. Yet the conditions under which millions of people now struggle to survive raise a question worth examining: Who taught us that simply existing is something we have to earn?
Don’t get me wrong. Life requires labor. Whether through food production, environmental protection, healthcare, or technological advancement, human effort is essential to sustaining civilization. I’m not arguing that labor is unnecessary, that resources should be unlimited, or that society could function without economic organization. I’m questioning whether an economy designed to sustain human civilization has instead made economic productivity one of the dominant measures of human worth.
The Economics of Survival
While major corporations generate enormous revenues and executive compensation continues to climb, millions of working Americans struggle to afford basic necessities. According to the Economic Policy Institute, inflation-adjusted compensation for CEOs at the largest U.S. firms increased approximately 1,316% between 1978 and 2025, compared with just 28% for typical workers (Gould & Bivens, 2026). Meanwhile, the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that a full-time worker must earn $29.19 per hour to afford a modest one-bedroom rental at the national fair-market rent without spending more than 30% of their income on housing. The average renter earns just $24.84 per hour (National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2026). These figures reveal a troubling contradiction between the wealth generated within our economy and the financial security available to many of the people sustaining it.
Housing is only one part of the equation. Food, transportation, healthcare, and childcare all compete for household income. For working parents, childcare can become an expense comparable to housing itself. The Federal Reserve reported that most families paying for both childcare and housing in 2025 spent at least half as much on childcare as they did on housing (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 2026). Meanwhile, healthcare costs have become so burdensome that even some medical professionals are reconsidering their own insurance coverage. In September 2026, KFF Health News reported on a physician and pharmacist who opted to forgo health insurance for their family after their monthly premiums approached $1,600 (Norimine, 2026). Although most medical professionals remain insured, the fact that a family providing healthcare professionally could find coverage financially unreasonable illustrates how deeply affordability concerns extend into American society.
These are not extravagant purchases or unnecessary luxuries. They are fundamental components of maintaining a household and participating in society. Yet for many Americans, affording them leaves little room for savings, recreation, or long-term planning. We’ve created an economic environment in which obtaining the necessities of life can consume so much of our income that enjoying the life we’re working to maintain becomes a secondary consideration.
For decades, Americans have been encouraged to believe that hard work, education, financial discipline, and professional advancement provide a dependable path toward success. Yet pursuing that path can also mean accumulating student debt, financing increasingly expensive vehicles, and paying rent while struggling to save enough to purchase a home. Education can improve earning potential, but it does not guarantee financial independence. Employment can provide stability, but it does not guarantee security. The traditional formula for success has become considerably more complicated than simply working hard and making responsible decisions.
Consider someone working two jobs to maintain a household. Losing either source of income could threaten the stability that person spent years building. According to the Federal Reserve’s 2025 household survey, 16% of American adults reported not paying all their bills in full during the previous month (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 2026). This isn’t merely a hypothetical concern about how people might respond to an unexpected emergency. For millions of Americans, financial instability is already part of their monthly reality. That vulnerability raises a question: Why does maintaining stability require nearly as much effort as achieving it?
Food production, infrastructure, healthcare, and essential services will always require human labor and investment. But human ingenuity has also produced extraordinary advancements in automation, communication, and efficiency. If technological progress allows society to accomplish more with fewer resources, why hasn’t that progress consistently translated into greater freedom for the people doing the work?
The Rat Race Disguised as Achievement
We’ve been conditioned to pursue education, employment, promotions, and professional advancement as milestones of success. We accumulate qualifications to access opportunities that may otherwise remain unavailable. As we advance, we’re often expected to accept greater responsibilities in exchange for higher compensation. Yet increased earnings don’t necessarily eliminate financial pressure, particularly when housing costs, debt, and other obligations continue to consume household income. Reaching one milestone frequently introduces another expectation rather than a meaningful opportunity to enjoy what we’ve accomplished.
Somewhere along the way, our sense of value became closely associated with occupation, income, professional status, education, and possessions. We celebrate financial success while frequently treating unemployment, poverty, and economic dependence as reflections of personal inadequacy. But does a person’s humanity become less valuable when they’re unemployed, retired, disabled, providing unpaid care, or choosing a lifestyle that produces less economic output? When did our worth become so closely connected to participation in a financial system that humanity itself predates?
Job insecurity, excessive workloads, underemployment, and poor work-life balance are not merely professional inconveniences. They can affect physical health, emotional well-being, relationships, and the ability to enjoy life outside employment. The World Health Organization and International Labour Organization estimated that working 55 hours or more per week contributed to approximately 745,000 deaths worldwide from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016 (World Health Organization & International Labour Organization, 2021). The pursuit of economic progress becomes difficult to celebrate when the conditions under which that progress is achieved can compromise the well-being of the people responsible for it.
When Pleasure Becomes a Privilege
Even leisure has become deeply intertwined with consumption. Recreation, travel, entertainment, and social experiences are frequently marketed as things we must purchase. Many workers spend much of their waking lives earning money, only to spend portions of that income purchasing temporary experiences of freedom during the limited time they have away from work. Rest becomes something scheduled around productivity rather than an ordinary part of human existence.
I wonder what this constant pressure has done to our collective sense of whimsy. How often do we pursue hobbies without considering whether they could generate revenue? How often do we allow ourselves to read for pleasure, explore nature, create art, fall in love, rest, or satisfy our curiosity without expecting something measurable in return? Even creativity can become entangled with branding, monetization, and marketability. We’re encouraged to turn our personalities into personal brands, our hobbies into side hustles, and our interests into opportunities for financial advancement. But a meaningful life must have room for experiences that are valuable precisely because they don’t need to accomplish anything.
What Would an Economy Designed for Living Look Like?
In an advanced society, labor would still be necessary. However, human dignity would not depend upon a person’s ability to toil. Economic progress should not be evaluated exclusively through production, profitability, and growth. Security, leisure, health, environmental sustainability, and quality of life should also influence how we define success. What good is a thriving economy if the people sustaining it cannot consistently enjoy the benefits of their contributions?
A society that prioritizes human well-being might invest more heavily in affordable housing, accessible healthcare, paid leave, stronger worker protections, and a more equitable distribution of productivity gains. It might also reconsider how businesses measure the success of technological advancement. Rather than evaluating innovation primarily through its potential to reduce payroll expenses, organizations could examine whether technology improves working conditions, strengthens public services, or solves problems that human labor alone has struggled to address.
Artificial intelligence makes this question especially relevant. As businesses explore replacing administrative, customer service, and other routine functions with automated systems, the conversation frequently centers on operational efficiency and reduced labor costs.But efficiency for whom? When a company reduces the number of employees required to complete a task, the resulting savings can benefit shareholders and executives without necessarily improving the lives of displaced workers. Technological progress does not inherently require that outcome. Businesses could use a portion of the gains to retrain employees, shorten working hours, improve wages, or transition workers into responsibilities that require greater human judgment, creativity, and interpersonal understanding.
Consider what technological innovation could accomplish if improving human life were treated as a primary objective. Autonomous systems could assist with removing pollution from waterways, monitoring environmental hazards, or performing dangerous industrial cleanup. Healthcare technology could help medical professionals detect diseases earlier, reduce administrative burdens, and expand access to services in underserved communities. Automation could reduce repetitive physical labor in occupations where workers face significant injury risks. These applications would still require investment, maintenance, oversight, and skilled workers. The difference would be the priorities guiding their development.
This isn’t an argument against automating administrative work. Repetitive office tasks can be exhausting, and eliminating unnecessary work can be beneficial. The problem arises when society celebrates the reduction of human labor without giving equal consideration to what happens to the humans whose labor is no longer required. If technology allows us to produce more while working less, shouldn’t at least some of that progress be reflected in greater economic security and personal freedom?
Critics might reasonably ask: If people didn’t have to work so hard to survive, who would perform the work society requires? That question deserves serious consideration. Essential services still need workers, businesses need resources, and economic systems must address incentives, funding, labor shortages, and fairness. Reducing financial insecurity would not eliminate these challenges. Nor would every industry be able to shorten working hours or increase compensation without facing difficult trade-offs.
However, the goal isn’t necessarily to eliminate work. It’s to reconsider the conditions under which people work and the extent to which survival should depend on enduring economic insecurity. A society with greater financial stability could still reward skill, effort, innovation, and professional achievement. It could also recognize that unpaid caregiving, community involvement, artistic expression, and other contributions have social value even when they don’t produce conventional wages or corporate profits.
What would business look like if success were measured not only by the accumulation of wealth but also by the needs it fulfilled without unnecessarily exhausting the people involved? Employment could still provide financial incentives, professional development, and personal fulfillment. Businesses could still innovate and compete. But the pursuit of profit would not have to be treated as more important than every other measure of social progress.
Even our relationship with the environment could benefit from reconsidering these priorities. Commuting, resource-intensive production, excessive consumption, and inefficient infrastructure all have environmental consequences. Although reducing working hours or expanding remote work would not automatically eliminate those impacts, economic planning that considers both environmental sustainability and human well-being could create opportunities to reduce unnecessary resource consumption.
The objective would be to create an economy in which human beings have greater opportunities to contribute meaningfully without sacrificing their health, relationships, or sense of self. Work should be one component of a meaningful life, not the condition upon which every other component depends.
The Freedom to Simply Exist
Humanity has achieved extraordinary technological and economic advancement, yet millions of people still experience daily life as a continuous struggle to secure basic necessities. Can a society truly distinguish itself as successful when so many people lack the time, stability, and freedom to enjoy what they work so hard to maintain?
Perhaps the greatest measure of human progress should not be how much we can produce, how quickly we can innovate, or how much wealth we can accumulate. Perhaps it should be how successfully we’ve created a civilization in which people have the security and freedom to experience what it actually means to be alive.
A society should not exist merely to sustain an economy. An economy should exist to sustain society.
We should have the freedom to live, love, explore, create, and simply exist.
References
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (2026). Report on the economic well-being of U.S. households in 2025. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2026-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2025-executive-summary.htm
Gould, E., & Bivens, J. (2026, September 17). CEO pay surged in 2025: CEOs are paid 325 times as much as the typical worker. Economic Policy Institute. https://www.epi.org/blog/ceo-pay-surged-in-2025-ceos-are-paid-325-times-as-much-as-the-typical-worker/
National Low Income Housing Coalition. (2026). Out of reach 2026: The high cost of housing.https://nlihc.org/news/nlihc-releases-out-reach-2026-high-cost-housing
Norimine, H. (2026, September 22). As health insurance costs soar, healthcare workers also feel the pinch. KFF Health News. https://kffhealthnews.org/health-care-costs/uninsured-doctors-obamacare-affordable-care-act-aca-rising-premiums-idaho/
World Health Organization & International Labour Organization. (2021, May 17). Long working hours increasing deaths from heart disease and stroke: WHO, ILO. https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2021-long-working-hours-increasing-deaths-from-heart-disease-and-stroke-who-ilo
