When You're Too Financially Desperate to Even Drink
A reader gives Neal Gabler the props he deserves:
I just want to say that what Mr. Gabler wrote in his article on the 49 percent of Americans who cannot afford a $400 emergency was shocking, enlightening, and extremely brave. I was appalled to read such horrible slams directed at him the comment section and I think they just validate his point that many people are in complete denial that many people are, or could be, at risk for “financial impotence.” Thank you for the insightful article and I will continue to read everything Mr. Gabler writes.
I’m actually in the middle of reading his 500-page tome An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, an award-winning work I can’t recommend enough, as both a cinephile and profound admirer of Jewish immigrants, a handful of whom basically built Hollywood in defiance of the WASP establishment in New York City led by Thomas Edison and his monopolistic pals. In a crazy coincidence, I started reading the book back in February, prompted by all the Oscar buzz and controversy over the Academy’s diversity, before I even heard that Gabler was writing an essay for us—his first, and hopefully not his last, for The Atlantic.
Recommended: The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck
But back to our reader series, the following confessional from Linda Lee is just as brave as Gabler’s. And for fellow journalists, her agonizing story hits really close to home:
No matter how unhappy you are, never quit a job. I did, when I was being paid more than $100,000 a year as a newspaper editor, had a rent stabilized, one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, and owned a small—400-square-foot small—cottage in Columbia County, near Hudson, on two acres of land, nearly paid off.
What was wrong?
Read more from The Atlantic:
This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
