I always thought this at the time the show first ran - he’s a teacher so yeah his pay kind of sucks but one thing he probably does have is decent health insurance that will cover standard treatment, life insurance, and a pension that will pay out to his family when he dies. “American health care is so bad he literally has no choice but to cook meth” never made sense, despite that being how a lot of universal healthcare proponents wanted to read it.
But to the show’s credit, it never says that it does! They leave plenty of clues that Walt isn’t *really* just doing this for the cancer treatment. Heck they lay it right out there when his old now rich college buddy offers to pay the bill. Money solved! But it wounds his pride, so he’d rather sell drugs.
He started cooking about a month before he decided to start cancer treatment. It was initially to leave money for his family after he died, plus him feeling cheated out of greatness with the business
Even if WW needed lots of money from illegal clandestine synthetic chemistry, he would not choose to specialize in meth: its too cheap, and there is too much supply and competition. In 2025 top chemical skills or esoteric knowledge would not be needed to ensure the highest levels of purity, either, so he's too replaceable to extract huge wages from even the meth-mogul superlab scenario. Someone with that amount of talent would focus on chemicals with a much higher profit for time spent making batches, and I'd guess he would go into club-party drugs like MDMA, Mephedrone, 2C-B, GHB, and some of the tryptamines like Moxy. On the other hand, if he had top biochem chops for peptide manufacture, a lot of that stuff sells for well over $1k/gram on the gray market.
Walter White’s motivation for cooking meth was not to raise money to pay for his medical costs — he did have insurance which was covering his treatments. Rather, he wanted to build a sizable “nest egg“ he could leave behind so his family would be financially secure after he was gone. I believe there was a subplot about some experimental treatment his insurance wouldn’t cover, but by then he was already well established as a meth producer.
Love that you wrote this and that it popped up in my feed!
In 2025, White would have done just what he did, while also making Fring-style political donations and investing in transhumanism start-ups. BIL lives, but the D in the DEA is defunded. A plot device other than prison biker meth gangs kills WW - maybe a transhumanist experiment gone wrong?
I always thought this at the time the show first ran - he’s a teacher so yeah his pay kind of sucks but one thing he probably does have is decent health insurance that will cover standard treatment, life insurance, and a pension that will pay out to his family when he dies. “American health care is so bad he literally has no choice but to cook meth” never made sense, despite that being how a lot of universal healthcare proponents wanted to read it.
But to the show’s credit, it never says that it does! They leave plenty of clues that Walt isn’t *really* just doing this for the cancer treatment. Heck they lay it right out there when his old now rich college buddy offers to pay the bill. Money solved! But it wounds his pride, so he’d rather sell drugs.
He started cooking about a month before he decided to start cancer treatment. It was initially to leave money for his family after he died, plus him feeling cheated out of greatness with the business
I never watched the series, but still found this super interesting. Thanks!
truth nuke
Even if WW needed lots of money from illegal clandestine synthetic chemistry, he would not choose to specialize in meth: its too cheap, and there is too much supply and competition. In 2025 top chemical skills or esoteric knowledge would not be needed to ensure the highest levels of purity, either, so he's too replaceable to extract huge wages from even the meth-mogul superlab scenario. Someone with that amount of talent would focus on chemicals with a much higher profit for time spent making batches, and I'd guess he would go into club-party drugs like MDMA, Mephedrone, 2C-B, GHB, and some of the tryptamines like Moxy. On the other hand, if he had top biochem chops for peptide manufacture, a lot of that stuff sells for well over $1k/gram on the gray market.
@Russell Sprout has spawned a new genre of substack post. Congratulations
Walter White’s motivation for cooking meth was not to raise money to pay for his medical costs — he did have insurance which was covering his treatments. Rather, he wanted to build a sizable “nest egg“ he could leave behind so his family would be financially secure after he was gone. I believe there was a subplot about some experimental treatment his insurance wouldn’t cover, but by then he was already well established as a meth producer.
Love that you wrote this and that it popped up in my feed!
In 2025, White would have done just what he did, while also making Fring-style political donations and investing in transhumanism start-ups. BIL lives, but the D in the DEA is defunded. A plot device other than prison biker meth gangs kills WW - maybe a transhumanist experiment gone wrong?