“We Did Not Vote For This”: Everything Has Doubled, Rent, Groceries, Car, Insurance…

Commentary YouTuber Jack Morgan reacted to a series of frustrated Americans describing how difficult it has become to cover ordinary expenses, from rent and groceries to insurance, utilities and health care, while arguing that people may have to rethink the way they live rather than waiting for prices to return to what they remember from years ago.

In a video on his Jack Morgan RLP channel, Morgan moved between several TikTok clips showing people who said even steady jobs were no longer enough, including one woman who said she had cashed out life insurance and retirement savings just to keep up, another who compared her rent with what she paid a decade ago, and others who questioned how single-income households are supposed to survive.

Morgan agreed that the financial pressure is real, even while disagreeing with some of the political blame and spending arguments in the clips, and his main conclusion was that sharing expenses, finding additional income and adjusting expectations may have become necessary for people who cannot make the old formula work anymore.

One Woman Says Nothing Has Become More Affordable

The first TikTok creator blamed the current political leadership for failing to deliver the financial relief she expected, arguing that groceries, housing, health care and other essentials had not become cheaper.

She specifically criticized President Donald Trump and accused voters of being “duped,” while also referring to promises involving government payments and other policies she believed had not improved her financial situation.

Morgan immediately pushed back on her tone, joking that he did not appreciate being spoken to that way, before adding that he does not vote and therefore was not personally accepting responsibility for the political choices she was criticizing.

Rather than turning the entire discussion into a partisan argument, however, Morgan quickly moved toward the broader point that people across different households seem to be describing the same problem: the money coming in increasingly fails to match what it costs to maintain an ordinary life.

That became much clearer in the next clip.

A woman said she had already cashed in her life insurance and 401(k), had begun making videos every day to earn additional money, and still found herself looking at things in grocery stores that she simply could not afford.

“My utilities have doubled. My insurance has doubled. My co-pays have tripled,” she said.

She also told viewers that her 84-year-old mother still worked Monday through Friday in a school lunchroom, where the staff had reportedly been reduced and the remaining workers were carrying more of the workload.

Morgan was struck by the idea of an 84-year-old still having to work that hard, noting that younger people at least have more physical ability to work longer hours, relocate or take on additional jobs.

Morgan Says One Income May No Longer Be Enough

Another TikTok creator asked what people were doing simply to survive, saying that she lived in a single-income household and had heard that even couples with two incomes were struggling.

Morgan used that question to introduce his central argument: living alone and trying to carry every expense with one paycheck may now be one of the hardest possible ways to organize a household.

He illustrated the point with a deliberately ridiculous drawing comparing his younger years, when he shared a house with friends, with his present life, where he said both he and his wife contribute financially while he also operates several income streams.

Behind all the jokes about “money trees,” his point was fairly practical.

Three roommates who each earn modest incomes can split rent, utilities and other basic costs, while a person earning the same amount alone has to absorb everything individually. A married couple with two incomes can use the same basic math, even if neither person is especially wealthy.

Morgan said he was not insisting that everyone marry, move in with strangers or adopt his exact lifestyle, but he repeatedly described shared housing as an option that people struggling alone should at least consider.

He later mentioned a friend in Southern California who lives with four other men in their 30s and, according to Morgan, has been able to keep his expenses low enough to fund a Roth IRA and buy a minivan with cash.

For many people, living with several roommates well into adulthood would not be ideal, but Morgan’s argument was that financial independence can sometimes require giving up a different kind of independence temporarily.

Rent Example Shows How Much the Math Has Changed

One of the strongest clips came from a woman in Fayetteville, North Carolina, who compared her current finances with her life about 10 years earlier.

She said that when her take-home pay was $13.44 an hour, she and her son rented a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in a good neighborhood for $645 per month, which allowed her to pay rent from one paycheck and still save money.

A decade later, she said a similar apartment in even an “okay” neighborhood would cost somewhere around $1,200 to $1,300.

Meanwhile, although she now has what she considers a better job, she said her take-home pay has increased by only a few hundred dollars per paycheck.

Morgan strongly agreed with her broader argument that this cannot simply be dismissed as a budgeting problem.

Another TikTok creator had argued that younger people only feel poorer because they spend too much money on fast food, energy drinks and other conveniences, but Morgan said that explanation went too far.

He agreed that modern life provides endless opportunities to spend money instantly, from delivery apps to convenience purchases, but he said the larger increases in rent, groceries and other essentials could not simply be explained by people buying too many drinks at gas stations.

There is room for both things to be true. Small purchases can damage a tight budget, but cutting out gummy worms and takeout does not erase a rent payment that has increased by hundreds of dollars.

Gig Work Is Not the Easy Backup It Once Seemed

Morgan also discussed people who try to solve the problem through Uber, food delivery and other gig work, arguing that higher operating costs are making those jobs less attractive.

He pointed to a clip showing a driver quickly evaluating ride requests before another driver accepted them, using it as an example of how workers have to calculate whether a trip is even profitable after fuel and vehicle expenses.

Morgan wondered aloud whether the gig economy will look anything like it does now in another decade, particularly as automation develops and the cost of driving remains a major factor.

Still, he returned to the same principle he had discussed with shared housing: people who pool resources can sometimes make low-paying work stretch further than someone attempting to support an entire household alone.

His commentary became deliberately exaggerated at times, but the underlying idea remained that people may need several smaller sources of income instead of depending on one job to provide everything.

Morgan said that is essentially what he has done by building multiple online businesses and income streams over time, though he also acknowledged that creating those “money trees” takes years rather than providing an instant fix.

Some People Are Simply Letting Bills Wait

Not everyone in the clips was still trying to stay perfectly current.

One woman said she had reached the point where, if she could not pay something immediately, she would simply allow the bill to sit until she had the money.

Her frustration was that paying one obligation often seemed to be followed immediately by another.

Morgan laughed at some of her examples but recognized the exhaustion behind the message, particularly her complaint that people seem to be charged for almost every basic part of daily life.

Other speakers questioned the increasingly common suggestion that everyone should simply aim for a six-figure salary.

One woman cited income figures to argue that earning more than $100,000 is far from normal for most workers, especially women, and therefore should not be treated as the minimum required to function.

Morgan again responded with his shared-income argument, saying several people earning ordinary salaries can collectively create the household income that one person may never reach alone.

Morgan Says People Have to Adapt to the New Reality

There were a few small signs of relief in the clips, including one renter who said his lease renewal actually came with a rent reduction.

Morgan said something similar had recently happened to him when his combined housing-related costs declined by about $120, although he noted that they were still hundreds of dollars higher than they had been several years earlier.

He saw those reductions as evidence that landlords and property owners sometimes have to respond when people move out or refuse to accept higher prices, but he did not suggest that the broader affordability problem had disappeared.

Instead, Morgan ended up agreeing most strongly with a creator who said people needed to accept that older economic conditions were not simply coming back.

“The ’80s ain’t coming back,” the TikTok creator said while arguing that people either adapt to current conditions or continue struggling against a reality they cannot individually control.

Morgan said that message matched what he had been trying to explain throughout the video.

His answer was not that rising costs are fair, nor that everyone can simply work their way out of them, but that waiting for rent, groceries, cars and insurance to return to old prices is unlikely to help someone facing bills now.

For Morgan, the more realistic response is to reduce fixed expenses wherever possible, share costs when necessary, develop more than one source of income and recognize that doing everything alone has become increasingly difficult.

The TikTok creators approached the problem from very different political and personal angles, but their common complaint was remarkably consistent: working people feel that much more of their income is disappearing into basic expenses.

Morgan’s response was equally consistent throughout the video; people can argue about who caused it, but households still have to figure out how to live through it.