Diary of a future rentier (45)

It's been several years since I've had almost no raises. The few extra bits I've gotten during that time haven't even been enough to cover the cost of living increase.

At the time, I would have been offended. I would have complained to my superior. I could even have left my job. Today I take this with great amusement. I listen to the justifications, which have not changed for a good twenty years (listening to them, you would think that we have been living through an economic crisis since the 90s). And the situation was similar for all the employers I have encountered.

So now, it amuses me. I even laugh. After all, a pay raise also means responsibilities and additional stress. So, if there aren't any, there's no reason to want to kill yourself working. More income also means more taxes. And if I look at the periods when I actually earned more, I wasn't happier either... quite the contrary.

Beyond all that, there is above all my passive income which allows me to put this stagnation of my salary into perspective. It has been a long time since I understood that I will never become rich by working. The real estate rents, and the increasing income from my dividends bring me this today financial security that I don't have with my salary alone.

When you think that my dividends are growing by 10% per year and that I haven't had a real salary increase for a very long time, it really makes you think about the meaning of work... Companies reward their shareholders (and in principle also their managers) each year with an additional income of 10%, and this since almost the dawn of time, while at the same time they justify the absence of salary increases for their employees, due to economic difficulties.

Capital is therefore better rewarded than work. Even very clearly. It is even in many respects less taxed. It is certainly scandalous and there is reason to be offended by it, even to take to the streets. But so far, the various movements such as the Indignados, Occupy Wall Street or Nuit Debout, have not changed anything in the system, despite its bankruptcy with the financial crisis of 2007. The recent Panama Papers scandal is the greatest proof of this.

The only truly effective way is therefore to use the weapons of the capitalist system to free itself from its constraints. This is the side schizophrenic on the path to financial independence: we take the revolution each in his own wayIn doing so, capital is used to free oneself from the harmful aspects of consumerist society and to escape from the Rat Race.