Today I tried to drive to Fripp Island, just 7 miles down the road. Google said the town had a marina and I needed fishing bait and some groceries. These things appear on Google Maps as though I can go there, but when I drove across the bridge a security booth and a guard with a sidearm greeted me and said, “private island.” Fewer than 900 people live on the 6 square mile island, which seems like a lot of room. So I turned around and went back to the public island, to be with my kind.
The houses on the visible coast of Fripp were huge, but that’s kind of how all the houses are if they’re on the coast, here or anywhere. Hundreds of miles of homes (thousands of miles of homes across the nation), most of them second homes, many costing millions of dollars. There is a lot of money in America, an almost incomprehensible amount, and much of it is old money, passed down from generations. Wealth rarely does anything but grow generationally, unless the person inheriting the money is a complete fool.
As anyone who has been paying attention to the wealth gap in America since the 1960s and longer knows, wealth tends to concentrate at the top, like when you boil macaroni and it bubbles over and you run in from the other room saying, “Shit!” The key, of course, is that money makes money, and when you get to that point, where it sustains itself and you, there’s no losing it. A person who inherits $2 million never has to work a day in their life if they don’t want to. A person with $1 million can easily make 50k or more a year in interest, which itself is more than most people live on. The top 1% in the U.S. owns a third of the country’s entire wealth. The bare minimum to be in that 1% is about $12 million.
Wealth is one of those things like member-only golf courses. The whole point of being a member isn’t necessarily to be “in” the club. The point is to keep people out. After all, if you’re in a club and you aren’t keeping people out, what is there to feel special about? And that’s why we need to build a wall on the southern border lol.
I think the only club I’m a member of is Snap Fitness, but they pretty much let anyone in. It’s really affordable. And it’s open 24 hours. I wear the same pair of shorts there 4 days a week, but I bet that wouldn’t fly on Fripp Island.
I rode my bike on the hard packed beach this morning. I have skinny tires, so I didn’t think it would work, but I flew down the beach like an old lady gunning an electric bike as though it were her last day and Death was cycling behind her. The temp hit 75 degrees and I was in a good mood, smiling my damn face off in the sunshine. I fished and a seagull sat nearby me again. His name is Carl. He left hungry. I have a job, so I went back to my camper and cooked up some salmon that I purchased. If I had to provide my own food, I would have died two weeks ago.
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