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.
(more…)
Recently