Addendum.

At the one wedding I was at, I was catching up with the bride’s one (very nice) (white) aunt who’s recently retired from nursing, and when I mentioned how I was in and out of eldercare since I last saw her, she automatically went into that boomer autopilot pontification mode that people of "that age" often go into and she was all like, “Oh, the most essential positions are always the most low-paid and they’ve never been paid enough,” and I had to be like **coughcoughcough** ummm, I don’t think you quite get how bad payscales have gotten, it’s always been relatively low, but any “step up” paybump has now evaporated in many states as far as I can tell, etc. etc. etc.

It really is something how certain people without direct recent experience really do pretend to know-it-all, even if they’re really nice people.

Like, my one (lawyer) friend from (Missouri) was recently telling me that I can sometimes be a bit “dire” – that’s her new word – and I kind of had to bite my tongue, since she’s been ensconced in a state job for years, and I don’t think she quite gets how severely eroded a number of interlinked sectors are.

Like, it’s not just me, I know people who are in different sectors and I talk to them, and I come across articles in magazines all the time on just these same topics. Like, I seek out other perspectives, and I do accept correction when I find it, but a lot of what I’m keyed into really does seem to be true.