Nothing pisses off privileged folks like a poor person spending money on something that makes her happy.
Who am I to judge how a poor family spends their money? Being poor is not a lifestyle, it’s hard work.
It costs to be broke. Many people go to the bank to cash their checks. You put some money in savings, you open that account, and you cash your check for free. If you’re really lucky, you have direct deposit and don’t have to mess with the bank at all thanks to your debit card, checking account, and internet access.
But let’s take away your car (or just take away your gas money) and have you figure out how to get from your home to wherever you get your check cashed. Your check doesn’t get cashed at the bank, oh no. You probably have bad credit and can’t get a bank account, or you don’t have enough cash money to open up a bank account, so the only way to get your check cashed is to sign it over to somebody who will do it for you at their bank, or you go to a check cashing service. Most check cashing services charge around 4% of the total check to provide you with that service. Assuming you work a minimum wage, full time job, you make about $206 a week before taxes. A year’s income is roughly $10,700 before taxes. If you have to cash your checks at a check cashing service at 4% rather than a bank, you spend over one month’s income every year on simply getting access to your own money that you earned honestly at a full-time job.
We can find strong correllations between the poor and small time petty crime. Imagine you are a forty-year-old single mother and recovered alcoholic who was once arrested for a DUI. The crime happened ten years ago, hell, fifteen years ago. You were broke then and you’re broke now. You had to pay a $250 fine for the legal fees necessary to attend court, and you’ve been trying to pay them over time, but you were unable to pay them all. Over time, this legal fee accrues interest, and many years later you have a $3000 fine hanging over your head and you can’t get your license back until you’ve paid this fine. In the meantime, you’ve been driving to and from work without a license, to and from the grocery store without a license, to and from your kids’ school without a license, to and from social services without a license, because your town doesn’t have a public transit system and your family can’t help you out anymore. Your crime and sentence was a lifetime ago, but when you get pulled over fifteen years later for driving without a license, your car gets impounded, you get slapped with another fine and more legal fees, you’re out a car, and now you have to buy a new one and drive it too without a license because you have to support your family somehow.
The fun conservative game is to pick out people’s poor life decisions and find ways to hold them against the poor and blame them for little more than living in a society in which upward mobility is a fucking joke. Or as Amanda says:
[The myth of upward mobility is] an elaborate justification for the divine right of kings. You can tell who is most deserving by who is most rewarded and you reward the most deserving who you identify by the fact that they are the most rewarded. Simple, circular logic that has the side benefit of making it easy not to think about the state of the world much at all.
Poor single mom? Should have kept your legs closed. No insurance? Should have found a job with benefits. Want to file for bankruptcy? Shouldn’t have had the gumption to try and start your own small business.
Which brings me to my inspiration for writing this long-winded post.
I put myself in check recently when a family I work with bought a German Shepard puppy they planned on training as a working dog. I know perfectly well it won’t get trained, and I’m bothered that it doesn’t have the room to run that is necessary for a dog as big as a German Shepard, but the family loves and dotes on this dog. The dog is happy and cared for.
Several days ago I posted a link to One Good Thing because I laughed my ass off at her latest brilliant story, in which her son decides it’s a fantastic idea to feed a nickel to a kitten. Granted, I don’t know a thing about Flea other than what she writes on her website, but I sympathize. I’m a professional with a title whose job it is to look after the poor and stereotypically downtrodden and I still qualify for food stamps.
But lo, here come the grumps who insist that, because Flea has on more than one occasion blogged about living from paycheck to paycheck and her attempts to feed a family of four while nurturing a struggling business, and how, when that business failed, it has been difficult to get her financial feet back under herself, she shouldn’t have been so selfish to adopt two cats. The grumps insist that they only care for the needs of animals, they are informed, by god, and Flea is a blood-sucking animal hater despite choosing to get that damned nickel surgically removed and forego other financial responsibilities because of her love for her cats. I have no idea about the reality of Flea’s situation, and I’m sure she isn’t as bad off as the families I work with, but I’m positive she’s about like me and mine. Living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck, one or two unexpected bills away from disaster.
But the thinly veiled message stays the same. Pleasure is for the financially secure. The same callous shit over and over crowing about the irresponsibility for the poor having the audacity to be poor and seek pleasure.
Today is August Wilson‘s birthday. This late, famous writer of plays like Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom fleshed out slices of the indignities of poor and working-class black folks in racist America. Now, I haven’t read the play in a long time, and I apologize for the butcher job that I’m about to do, but there is one piece of Fences in particular that has stuck with me more than the actual plot line. Troy Wilson, the protagonist, wants something material but he can’t reasonably afford to buy it. There are bills to pay and other financial obligations that prevent him from forking over the money. But he does, justifying his expenditure with the not at all unreasonable knowledge that paying for a small pleasure here and there doesn’t make a difference overall — he’s never going to catch up anyway. And for much of the American poor this isn’t economic nihilism, it’s the truth.
But take a trip to the grumposphere and watch the poor bashing that goes on, especially when a poor or struggling person dares to sacrifice a little money and time for happiness. Watch the grumps rail against the bad choices of the poor, and pretend that all anything requires to succeed is hard work or “real” persistance, whatever that is. Watch them tell the poor that they can’t afford happiness, that they don’t deserve small pleasures, whether that may be a nice dinner, or a good pair of shoes, or an addition to the family — another child, or a darling pair of kittens for your sons on Christmas morning.
And watch their justifications for this belief that the poor are so contemptible that they can’t “properly” love or care for what brings them happiness. “Properly,” of course, being the operative adverb for the preachy and moralizing, ladder-climbing middle class who feel free to hate on the poor because it separates the irresponsible Them from the undamaged Us.
Jeff, I have Outlook open right now and I’m composing a long thoughtful letter to you. Just a few more minutes.
P.S. What kind of unforgivable douchebag, without a shred of irony, likens himself to Superman?
Ask him for pics, McBoing. The man hangs out where people care about style. I’ll bet SuperJeff’s a super-dresser.
What kind of unforgivable douchebag, without a shred of irony, likens himself to Superman?
The kind who’s online without his parents’ permission when he should be doing his homework.
Jeffrey, I have no intention of getting into an email discussion with you, but what’s with your apparent assumption that everyone who needs government help is a shiftless layabout? And why do you begrudge people a little pleasure? I don’t think McBoing is advocating free PS3′s for all, just a distraction from working and waiting for the next bill.
“moral conservatism”
Contradiction in terms?
Hey, if we aren’t conservative with that morality and choose to be immoral assbags all the time, we’ll use it all up too quickly and then we’ll have to be immoral assbags all the time – but we won’t be choosing to be immoral assbags, which is wrong
Calling me names like “douchebag” and “assbag” shows you uneducated you people are. It is no wonder some of you are poor. Don’t worry, I plan to keep working. Millions on assistance are depending on me.
Calling me names like “douchebag” and “assbag” shows you uneducated you people are.
You mean; “…shows how uneducated you people are.”
Goddamn furriners, we speek anglais here, you french commie pervert!
Jeff, I can’t seem to find you on your forum, because it’s, you know, a freakin’ forum. What’s your user name?
mrpologuy on the forum
Millions on assistance are depending on me.
Not on that salary, fry boy.
I get by just fine with my and my GF’s income and we would never take aid at a young age. I hope you all had a very enjoyable Christmas.
No doubt you did.
I hope you all had a very enjoyable Christmas.
And fuck the poor people who didn’t, right?
I get by just fine with my and my GF’s income and we would never take aid at a young age.
Two smugs are better than one.
Jeffy, baby, don’t make us start to make fun of you for real. It was a bad idea to give us that styleforum link and your user name. Quit while you’re still relatively ahead.
You folks have not done anything with the styleforum page.
Besides look at it. I’m not going to post there, having nothing to say about style and not really wanting to troll a site dedicated to vanity. If you want me to troll you, get yourself a blog. You can get a nice blogspot site for free ya know.
Some of the poorest people have the richest souls: Jesus, Mosses, Ghandi, ect… And learned that helping each other is not only a necessity, but also a way to globally link what is truely needed in this society we must live in. All you fancy cars, clothes, houses, and so on is what is destroying this great earth. Yes the meek have inherited the earth, they buy and sell it, with no regards who it effects. Now that our places in society have been unjustly set forth, we as humanity judging where each other belong and what other people must do does not solve anything: it just makes you feel better about yourself, while you pollute and destroy the earth our future generations must live in. Now you want to make ethonal and drive the prices of food up, so you can drive on black roads that heat the earth more. But spending more money on endangered species then true solutions to our great unequaility problems only snowballs our dilemas. Calling the poor lazy or stupid does no help, for the poor family farmers who work hard from sunup to sundown that go bankrupt daily are who feed you quality food only to be left in the dust and spat upon when they can no longer make a living. And what do you want to do, live in a fancy bubble, engineer your food, so you feel better about yourself. Give to charities to feel you made a difference, but how many people have you ‘robbed from’ to collect your masses of money. Understandably, their is no easy solutions to any of our dilimas, but degrading each other only leaves bitter feelings and hungry bellies. Welcome to the belly of the beast, that will chew you up and spit you out. Welcome to the society that we created
Man, you hit that nail on the proverbial head. If you think being poor and single is tough, try being poor, a couple with 2 kids trying to make a living at an arts job, having parents who have disowned you because you married out of their race who are living in a toney neighbourhood (Kitsilano, (Vancouver, BC)) who think that the answer to all problems is get another “service” job.
Wife is working 17 hours maximum per week at a major box retailer at 11.18 an hour. If it wasn’t for my parents who have volunteered to watch our children while we try to make a friggin’ living.
Add to that functional depression and antisocial-personality-disorder and that’s a mix that’s not conducive to me gaining full-time employment anytime soon. Did the service job thing and ended up nearly vacating the brain crevice of some middle-income scumbag who had the audacity to tell me that my poverty was self-induced.
Damn if I had 1 penny for each time I’ve heard shit like that coming out of people’s mouths, I’d be f*ng RICH!
So, I got one thing to say to any middle-income dirtbag who whines about my Nikon D50 DSLR (which I use to try and make a passable living) and supplement my wife’s meager income)…”Complain about my expenditure of money on this camera and you’ll need your head surgically removed from your ass!!!”
Okay, SOME poverty is self induced, but most of it can’t be helped. What happens when your parents don’t have the money or care to help you? What happens if you don’t have a car? Well, you have to get a job near where you live, or at the same place as one of your friends. Then, you have to worry about weather if you walk, and you have to rely on your friend to carry you to and from, and also whether you are scheduled together so it won’t be too much of a hassle. Then, it takes months at least to scrape together enough money after paying rent and utilities, pitching in on gas for your friend, and buying groceries (even if you never eat out, and you shop at a dollar store) to even THINK about buying a RELIABLE vehicle that’s affordable. So, you buy the vehicle, maybe it’s an old ’87 Oldsmobile that burns oil and has bald tires, but you do the best you can. You work 60-80 hours a week trying your BEST to make sure that you put at least something into savings. But for what? You save and save and save, but what’s it going to do unless you get a better job? What are you going to do? Work at a bank? Wait tables? Go work offshore? What if you’re a girl? Girls can’t work offshore. After working three straight weeks with no days off, you finally get a day off, and you want to chillax, and maybe go to the mall and buy a pair of jeans because yours are almost threadbare because of all the walking that you have to do at work. So you buy a pair of jeans, but on your way home your engine locks up because all of a sudden it’s started burning more oil than normal. Or maybe you blow a tire and it bends a rim or bends your axle? What do you do? You tell me Jeff, and people like him. How do you get a degree if you have to work at least 40 hours to make your bills, and you don’t even have anything “frivolous” like cable, God forbid. How do you get a degree while working 40 to make bills? Go part time and just stretch out the long process of paying tuition from 4 yrs to 8? Well bam, you have a $350 lab fee. How about $200 Student Assessed Fees. How about that English class where you have to have four books, and they just updated the edition so you can’t buy used ones! And remember, your car just broke down. No mommy and daddy to help you. What do you do? Tell me so all of us here will know.
[...] Wanting Pleasure, Living Poor, Spending Anyway [...]