You may feel like a slave, but you can retire after 5 years of working.<p>Even the other 95% of us have almost always have been poorer than we now are.  Here in the suburban northeast a person can work about 40 hours per week at any restaurant or department store or do almost any other kind of normal menial labor to bring home something like $20k per year.<p>On that income, they can live a much better life than almost anyone ever did 50 years ago.  Sure, they&#x27;ll spend half of their income on housing, never be able to afford much time off from work, and may never travel anywhere by air, but people have always lived like that.  Meanwhile they benefit from ever improving medical technology and the boundless educational opportunities afforded by the worldwide web.<p>People may be incapable, for psychological or emotional reasons, of taking proper advantage of the exceptionally good circumstances they find themselves in.  That doesn&#x27;t make them poor in my book.