Read The Nation and learn something new and annoying every day. Case in point: “precariat.” It’s a portmanteau word created by combining “precarious” and “proletariat.” It denotes a person whose employment and income are insecure—presumably, a leftist. My legal immigrant grandfather and grandmother who barely eked out a subsistence living during the Depression would never have referred to themselves as precariats even if the term had existed.
I was reading The Nation to learn more about Katie Wilson, the democratic socialist mayor that masochistic Seattleites just elected to further ravage a once-lovely city.
Americans have had their gaze fixed eastward on inexperienced democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, mayor-elect of NYC, to see what he will do now that he snookered foolish New York City voters into electing him. Straight out the gate, Mamdani is not disappointing his leftist base as he calls for a Starbucks boycott in support of a union strike by lazy, unionized baristas who constitute less than 4% of the total Starbucks work force.
But Americans should look westward as well to learn yet more reasons not to elect democratic socialists.
What I’ve learned is that 43-year-old Katie Wilson and her husband Scott Myers, who have been married for 21 years, together can’t afford to raise their one 2-year-old daughter. Wilson and Myers have been renting a tiny one-bedroom apartment since 2018, and yet this privileged white couple, through no fault of their own, apparently can’t make ends meet. Wilson has admitted that her parents—both academics in New York—periodically send them money.
News reports say Myers lost his job during the pandemic. No mention of what that job was. Reports also say he is not currently employed. The only jobs that news sources report Myers ever having had are jobs related to left-wing activism. He does spend a lot of time at home making bagels, so there’s that. Inquiring minds wonder, however, if he’s had any paying job since the pandemic, and if not, why not?
Wilson, who was raised in privilege, dropped out of Oxford University just six weeks before graduation to learn about the world outside academia. She headed out west with Myers where they married in 2004. Her parents paid for her college education, so Wilson had no debt.
It appears Wilson and Myers did not head out west with the spirit that animated our ruggedly individualistic, can-do forbears, because in 21 years—19 of which they were childless—these two smart, healthy adults haven’t been able to save enough money to afford, say, a two-bedroom apartment and one child.
Might Myers’ decision to drop out of high school, busk, and volunteer at an Indian reservation as reported by The Stranger account for their current situation? Might their free choices to pursue left-wing activism full-time for almost their entire adult lives play a role in their financial straits? When housing prices in Seattle started increasing in about 2010, why did Wilson and Myers decide to stay where they couldn’t afford to live rather than move to a more affordable city?
As good leftwing apparatchiks, instead of focusing their creativity and energy on encouraging sound individual decision-making, all their energy is focused on government management and subsidization of everything.
Seattle has been run by Democrat-aligned mayors since 1969. It is now an unaffordable, unlivable mess according to even community organizer Katie Wilson. And yet, Seattleites think a democratic socialist who can’t fix her own finances can fix the mess Democrats created.