I don’t spend a lot of time on Twitter/X but there are a few investment professionals who publish interesting perspectives and thought leadership that I will check in on from time to time. Recently, one of my follows shared this post written by Cliff Sosin (a value manager) in honor of July 4th. During this (relatively) quiet market week, I wanted to share it below. It’s an interesting perspective on how most Americans (regular folks all the way up to billionaires) truly are.

I wake up each morning on a Costco memory-foam mattress. Nothing fancy, nothing exclusive—just the same mid-tier slab that comes with free two-day shipping to anyone with an address and a debit card. At 6 a.m. my thermostat clicks to 70 °F, a luxury now enjoyed by the nearly nine in ten U.S. households that enjoy air-conditioning. In that first sleepy moment, the accumulated fruits of my investing career are irrelevant. My comfort is identical to that of a single mom earning the minimum wage who sets her window unit to the same number.

I shuffle to the bathroom and twist the handle. Hot water answers. Indoor plumbing is not a perk of privilege; it’s an American birthright secured for about 99.6% of households. My bar of soap is three dollars. My toothbrush came in a six-pack. Our ancestors fought typhus and dysentery; we fight mint-flavored plaque.

Breakfast is democratic fuel. The eggs, bacon, and coffee on my plate flow through the same temperature controlled supply chain that feeds families receiving SNAP. Calories do not discriminate. If I shave truffles over my omelet, it changes nothing about the protein that powers my morning—protein the Census Bureau tells us is affordable enough that chronic calorie deprivation is vanishingly rare in the USA.

After dishes, I reach for the six-inch slab of silicon that collapses the world into my palm. Even among adults earning under $30k, 84% own a smartphone; the national figure is 91%. Access to the Library of Congress, emergency weather alerts, and live Yankees box scores rides in almost every pocket—wealthy or not.

My ride to work is a 2016 Toyota. It blends into traffic governed by the same speed limits and maintained by the same tax dollars that serve school buses and rideshare Priuses. Asphalt egalitarianism: the road does not care who paid more income tax.

Inside the office, I enjoy ergonomic chairs and rock-solid Wi-Fi. Yet so does the barista at the corner café, courtesy of OSHA regulations and a broadband penetration rate that now tops 90 % of US households. If calamity strikes—a ladder slip, a chest pain—911 dispatches EMTs trained to treat need, not net worth.

Lunch? Likely Chipotle. I may order extra guac, but the 700-calorie burrito is built on the same assembly line for every customer, whether they swipe an Amex or an EBT card. Exercise is equally impartial. I sweat at an Equinox scented with eucalyptus; another American sweats at a public park pull-up bar. Muscles and mitochondria respond the same.

Evenings reveal the sweetest equality. I stream the Yankees on a flat-screen indistinguishable from one in a studio apartment subsidized by Section 8. More than nine in ten low-income households own TVs, and the broadcast signal does not means-test its drama. When Aaron Judge hits another monster home run, the cheer in my living room echoes in millions of others.

Yes, money smooths the edges. I can charter a Gulfstream, though I often wedge into seat 12B on JetBlue because it’s nonstop. I can book a villa on Kauai, yet the entry fee for Yellowstone is the same $35 that a college sophomore scrapes together. Nature, our oldest public good, refuses VIP pricing.

So what does my fortune really buy? Convenience, optionality, a wider margin for error, status. But the core blessings—warm showers, climate control, instant information, paved roads, emergency medicine, streaming entertainment—blanket virtually all Americans, including those officially counted as poor. That is the quiet magnificence of our republic: prosperity has spilled so far past the castle moat that a billionaire’s Tuesday looks a lot like Tuesday everywhere else.

Tomorrow, when I rise again on that utterly ordinary mattress, I’ll whisper a thank-you to the engineers, farmers, nurses, coders, and soldiers who turned luxury into baseline. God bless the United States of Standard-Issue Comfort—and the patriotic genius that made equality feel so wonderfully mundane.

Onward we go,