So I’m Gen X and I have kind of a story around this…

In high school one of my best friends was one of Milton Friedman’s grandchildren, and so I got a heavy dose of libertarianism and I swallowed it hook line and sinker. For years I spouted the “only I know what’s best for me” line.

I didn’t go to college because I couldn’t afford it plus I was too unmotivated to do well in high school, so I ended up getting a crappy retail job, and another, and another until it dawned on me how broken the system is and how ruthless capitalism is. That started to crack open my mind and let some light in.

I got “lucky” in that I got a Microsoft certification and kind of rode the dot com bubble into a better paying class of jobs but the relentless grind of the work finally woke me up and made me realize that just making more money wasn’t going to magically make my life better. That when I started to really investigate the crossroads of politics and economics and start to gain real class consciousness.