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Tolerating Toleration
I grew up in Santa Monica, California. When I tell people that, they assume I must have come from a very wealthy family. But the fact is that I grew up poor, and I mean dirt poor. The second floor apartment I lived in was fested with cockroaches that were just always there, no matter what you tried to do to get rid of them. Most of my clothing came from department stores that were just trying to get rid of second-hand items that they realized they’d never be able to sell. And we were part of that class of citizens that were just wealthy enough to not qualify for school meals but not rich enough to actually afford to eat every day at school. I remember one year we were “lucky enough” that my mom’s income dropped low enough that we qualified for lunch meals but only if we paid $0.25 a day for that meal, and we had to figure out if that was something we could sneak into our food budget.
It’s strange talking about Santa Monica as some slum back in the day in comparison to what it looks like today. Having left that neighborhood and becoming a billionaire definitely makes me think a lot about that place when I see what it has become. Even though I have lunch with my fellow billionaires like Trump, Epstein, Musk and Al Yankovic, I suspect that it would still be impossible for me to afford a studio apartment in Santa Monica today.
