Wanting Pleasure, Living Poor, Spending Anyway
Published by McBoing April 27th, 2006 in Punkass!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.
70 Responses to “Wanting Pleasure, Living Poor, Spending Anyway”
- 1 Pingback on Nov 2nd, 2006 at 10:49 pm
- 2 Pingback on Nov 13th, 2006 at 5:30 am
- 3 Pingback on Nov 17th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Yes! Thank you so much for eloquence I could never muster. I’ll be linking this.
That thread at flea’s just pissed me off. I’ve been told to my face that I’m irresponsible for having cats when I’m poor. I know exactly what flea’s going through.
I need some good come-backs to these kinds of comments. I hear them all the time, not directed at me, but from many co-workers about all the lazy poor.
My worst case: While raising two kids on my own, and still fighting to get money from my ex, I went to a church book sale and bought a few books for 50 cents to a dollar each. My ex came over and said, “You obviously don’t need any money from me if you can afford to buy yourself books.”
GRRRRRR!
Anyway, great post!
i came over via kactus. super kick ass post.
Being quite poor myself - food stamps, medicaid, public housing - this is a subject that hits close to home. I often hear things like this from people, not knowing they’re talking about me. Cable television is a favourite target of most, although I spent eighteen years without it and was in far worse shape then (financially and emotinally) than I am now. I am in so much debt thanks to hospital bills (from before I had medicaid) that an extra $40 a month won’t make any differance anyway. If I told people I was looking to get a computer, that would be seen as frivolous too. Even with financial aid I can’t afford to go to college because public transportation is too expensive and unreliable. So, being screwed for life anyway, why shouldn’t we try to find some joy where we can? Why do peolple think this makes us lazy, bad, stupid? Thanks for the post, I’ve never seen anyone speak up about this before.
I was just talking to my boyfriend about this and I said to him if we didn’t have these little, minor, indulgences that comprise living instead of merely surviving we’d probably put guns into our mouths and blow our brains out. He corrected me and said no, we wouldn’t shoot ourselves, we’d shoot other people.
Anyone who thinks poor people jockying a register aren’t deserving of some *bleep*ing release and a little happiness in life, I hope their stay in hell is an eternity of black Fridays. It’s hard to listen to snotty customers all day, then leave your job and not want to do something, anything, fun. A $3.99 movie rental isn’t going to mean the difference between whether or not we’re financially sound next year, not like oh…doubling our monthly income would. But mention that maybe retail employees deserve to be paid more for the *bleep* that’s shoveled on us by the middle class and you’ll hear the screaming about how if we were better people we could get better jobs.
Yeah, because the middle class people I meet every day, they’re saints.
Thanks for an interesting post. I think a lot about this sort of stuff.
I can’t help but be reminded of a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago. She had chided me rather severely over the years for not saving more money. But she put a lot of her savings into high-risk funds and ended up losing most of it. “You would have been better off spending it all on drugs,” I said, somewhat facetiously. “Then at least you would have the memory of some good times. But what do you have now? Nothing.”
Thank you for this post!
I get fed those BS lines so often, sometimes I swear they’re why I’m not a genuinely starving artist.
I’m so poor, I should get rid of my cats and suggies! (Who are parts of my *family*)
I’m so poor I shouldn’t try subscribing to a MMO or buying a videogame for entertainment (because I guess it’s cheaper than $15 a month or $50 every six months to rent movies or get sattelite TV or go to bars…)
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Though my favorite line of Privelege?
“If you can’t find a job where you live, you should move to a new city!”
I think most poor people are lazy and just complainers. I worked 70 hours a week and went to school full time to get myself a better job. I worked 2 minimum wage jobs busing tables and cleaning toilets to make ends meet. If you are not working at least 2 jobs, you are lazy. Even when I did lose a job a few years back, I did not go for government assistance because Ia m too proud. Stop being so lazy people.
You went to school, and you still managed to be an uneducated idiot? That must take a lot of hard work and talent. Congratulations.
If you are not working at least 2 jobs, you are lazy.
Dude, that’s what they want you to think. A person working their ass off 16 hours a day is a person too fucking tired to wonder why he has to work his ass off 16 hours a day just to pay the rent.
But I suspect shenanigans to this story. There are 168 hours in a week, - 70 gives you 98. Assume you sleep a generous 4 hours a night and we’re down to 70 hours left in your week. A full time course load of 12 credit hours x 3 hours per week per credit brings you down to 34 hours in the week, or less than five hours a day for food, commuting, homework, family obligations, laundry or showering. This is assuming some kind of optimal schedule where your classes are arranged in such a way that you can actually find two crappy jobs near your school and apartment willing to work around your insane schedule - I was only ever able to find one, on campus, where I was restricted to 20 hours a week of work at slightly above minimum wage.
Work harder and you won’t be poor. Go to school and get a degree to get a better job.
Yeah, McBoing. A degree will solve all of your problems. You should totally get one of those.
Why are some people on here poor? Why do poor people have a dog or other things when they can’t afford food and healthcare?
If you can’t afford healthcare then not having a dog is not going to close that gap, unless your dog is made of solid gold with diamond spots and all of your money goes to paying the 24 hour armed bodyguard service.
Some people on this blog are poor because lots of people are poor and some of those people happen to like our blog. Why are some people on here judgemental? Why do judgemental people comment on blogs when they know everything and should be busy ascending directly to heaven?
‘Standing in line marking time–
Waiting for the welfare dime
‘Cause they can’t buy a job
The man in the silk suit hurries by
As he catches the poor old ladies’ eyes
Just for fun he says “Get a job”‘
- Bruce Hornsby
The same assholes that complain about the minimum wage, taxes, welfare, Medicare, Social Security, etc., don’t think twice when mega-billionares Bill & Melinda Gates allow a few million dollars of pocket change to slip out and help some other country, while they continue to collect money hand-over-fist for their shitty products, and while the US government looks the other way regarding their shady business practices…
But you better not have a dog, goddammit, or you’re bad…
Welcome to America 2.0…
Somebody explain to me why you should have a dog if you can’t feed yourself without the help of the government.
Wow, Jeff, you really hit it on the head. The only possible reason people are poor is that they own a dog. That’s like, so insightful!
This sounds like the same Jeff troll who until recently infested another blog I read. Blargh.
Maybe the the Supreme Court can institute a means test for pet ownership. That would solve everything…
Either that or bring back THE POOR HOUSES or DEBTORS PRISON!
Maybe INDENTURED SERVITUDE!
‘Course, there was no homeless/poor problem before the Civil War - BRING BACK SLAVERY!…
But treating people like human beings - OH MY GOD!!! WE CAN’T AFFORD THAT!!!
Because you have a miserable life, your employer treats you like shit at all three of your jobs, your wages are stagnant, and you have to decide whether to feed your kids or take them to the doctor when they get sick, and a dog might help you forget some of that.
Jesus. You conservatives do like to see people suffer. But they’ll never, ever be as miserable and pathetic as you are.
Either that or bring back THE POOR HOUSES or DEBTORS PRISON!
MikeEss just made me notice, it’s a strange coincidence for this thread to reappear now. Are we putting on a play of “A Christmas Carol”?
Maybe Jeff/Jeffry’s last name is Scrooge…
I hope the Ghosts of Christmas Past/Present/Future are getting ready for an intervention…
No, Scrooge had a character arc. Somehow I doubt Jeff will.
Do you people honestly think it is fair for our tax dollars to be going to people who are buying things they don’t need? Please answer the question.
Yes, if you mean that people getting support and medical care will spend money just like “normal people” do…
Please Mike. Poor people aren’t “normal people”! They’re less than us rich folk. In fact, I think we need to have some sort of conference that specifically addresses what is to be done about “the Poor Question.” Maybe Germany will let us hold it somewhere around Wannsee…hmmmm
Perhaps Jeff missed the whole working multiple jobs despite my degree thing. One could presume that Jeff is engaging in a Superiority Drive-By, otherwise known as Shitting On The Poor For Kicks.
Given that the poor folks are feeding us, yes, it is fair.
I am a hardowrking person and don’t like to see my money going to people who are not willing to help themselves. If you need some governement assistance and deseve it, that is fine with me. If you have made choices with drugs, alcohol and an unwanted child then you do not deserve assistance in my mind.
Well I’m a fairly lazy person who has no kids and took out a bunch of loans to put herself through school, but I had some key assistance from the parents every now and then, mostly when the car broke down. I don’t mind paying taxes to help people less fortunate than me, who probably work harder, or are rebounding from mistakes that I never made. Rather pay for that then immoral wars in the Middle East. Where do you blog, Jeff, so I can come and slather some self-righteous smug all over your comments?
I do most of my posting on all sorts of issues at http://www.styleforum.net Kyso Kisaen. Come slander me there if you like.
You’ve got to be kidding.
The nice thing about simple-minded, inarticulate people is that so many of them happen to be politically conservative.
I am a hardowrking person and don’t like to see my money going to people who are not willing to help themselves.
Amen brother, a five finger discount is every american’s entitlement.
Do you people honestly think it is fair for our tax dollars to be going to people who are buying things they don’t need?
Hallelujah! It’s about time someone spoke up about the flagrant shiftless nature of america’s theftphobic PC culture, so afraid of insulting muslims that we end up unable and unwilling to rob the ragheaded bastards at gunpoint just to make ends meet!
I am done posting about this subject. I want America for Americans and want hard working people here. Some people will never get it. I will gladly defend my opinions if you email me at superjeffman@hotmail.com. Have a nice day everyone.
“I want America for Americans” -> All you non-Aryans better GTFO…
“and want hard working people here” -> If I close my eyes, all the non-hard working leeches in American society will just disappear…(maybe I need to wiggle my nose too…)
“Some people will never get it” -> (that Koolaid tasted so good…)
“I will gladly defend my opinions if you email me” -> So if I look bad I can just make it go away…
“Have a nice day everyone” -> (you effing pinko, bleeding-heart, librul idiots!…)
I knew none of you would email me.
Jeff,
let’s face it - We’re just not your kind of people…
sorry to disappoint…
Wow, you’re not a total idiot.
Jeff, that was a generous 2.5 hours you gave us before coming back to sigh.
*sigh*
Kyso, you think Jeff wants to get hold of some email addresses for spam/F*ark/Freeper/Red State purposes?
That was the first thing I thought when I saw his “offer”…
We could put him on the moral conservatism yahoo group that my hotmail account quietly collects. We’d be doing him a favor, he seems kind of lonely.
“moral conservatism”
Contradiction in terms?
Jeff is a level 4 mage in WOW.
Awesome
“Jeff is a level 4 mage in WOW.”
I’m sure his parents are so proud…(as long as he keeps the basement reasonably clean…)
I am not poor and on aid like some of you people. I don’t live with my parents.
Jeff, I thought you were done here. I thought you would wait for us to email you. What gives?
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!!!”