As we grow older to the point of physical in addition to mental withering, we theoretically learn the value of saving our pittance of a check from nebulous labor in order to one day enjoy life after we’ve wasted it. But somehow, after sitting on all the money you’ve been squirreling away for the past year, you find that, with the advent of your W-2, 1099, etc., the amount of cash you’ll somehow owe (especially if you’re a pathetic single statuser with nothing to write off other than your sorry existence) doesn’t quite add up considering the monk-like lifestyle you’ve been living. Even if it means “breaking even”–a cruel definition in terms.
Between buying Popov vodka instead of Grey Goose and shopping at Marshall’s instead of Bergdorf’s, life as an office shill creates nothing more than a wasteland of colorlessness. A non-material world, if you will, in spite of being one of the slaves complicit in sustaining the last gasps of Western capitalism. Sitting on your pathetic pile of savings–which will still never amount to Molly Bloom’s quick cash scheme of running high-stakes poker games (though she, like all “workers” had to endure verbal abuse from rich men in power)–le gouvernement lies in wait to extract what you have like blood from a turnip. But maybe one day, you’ll get wise, stop saving and prove that there really is no blood to be had from the suddenly lavishly dressed turnip that is you.