Somebody decided to post on, what I thought was, a dead thread. It is talking about some of the problems a poor person has to deal with that middle class people just don’t have to deal with, and the moralizing that goes on when poor people get “frivolities”: little things to make their life happier.* The moralizing inevitably had to do with how lazy poor people were and how they just couldn’t manage their money, and why should me, the epitome of pulling myself up by my bootstraps, have to fund their laziness and irresponsibility?
On some level, it’s easy to see where privileged people get this idea. In some ways, it does seem like you’re doing things on your own steam, when you’re in college and your just making ends meet. I work just under the 20 hours a week (Bar rules, no more than 20 a week while in law school) plus law school itself which is a hefty time suck. Hubby works a lot, and is barely home, but is generally not flying when he’s not home, so it means he doesn’t get his full pay-per-hour. We get paid crap: after working for 4 years in the same technician job I make a little over 8 dollars an hour, and after 200,000 dollars of student debt and an aviation degree, he makes a little over 12 dollars an hour. We fall under the poverty line, and we can’t purchase near what we want. He gets packed lunches, and 90 percent of our stuff is donated, dumpster-dived, or purchased second-hand.
But we aren’t poor. No one’s going to complain to me that I don’t deserve to go and eat out, or see a movie ever now and again. (In fact, the only time I get called “irresponsible” is when I donate to charity, funny that). My cat was a welcomed addition to our house, because she makes us calmer. My iPod was stolen out of my car, as was my contracts book. I waited until Black Friday, and purchased the slightly cheaper one: but I still got an iPod. No one said it was a waste of money (particularly considering I refuse to work-out without one, and I’m not immune from “concern” from my friends about my weight). I have enough to get a replacement Contracts book: I’m not going to fail (although the loss of my notes is a hard one). I got sick, and went to the doctor to see why: no charge (insurance through the Hubby’s work). The reason I’m “broke” and not “poor” is because unforeseen expenses don’t cause any life-shifting change.
And this is not because I’m particularly hard-working, nor is it because I’m particularly good with money. I leave my credit card at 500 dollars maximum because I can’t keep track of how much money I spend. I don’t think I’ve paid rent on time once. I have direct deposit on all of my bills that I can so I don’t have to worry about going into arrears. If I were poor, I would be fucked.
But I’m not, and it’s not really because of how hard I’ve worked. I’ve had my parents available for emergency loans or bail-outs. My cast-offs are still in good working conditions because the dumpster I’m diving from is from richer college students. I’m firmly in the middle class, so between fairly good genetics, environment and good nutrition getting good grades in primary school (and then making it into college) was pretty easy for me. My skin color is the “right” color, and even if we don’t live in a post-feminist society, I’ve benefited from the work of my fore-mothers in making it more just. My name is the right kind of name, (not too ethnic sounding) and my clothes are “professional” (another family gift: some professional attire), and my hair is “appropriate” (easy to put into a bun). I have “work” experience because of something that is generally referred to as “nepotism”: my parents hooked me up to a friend who needed an employee. My bank is a local bank, that has a “college student” account: it requires no minimum balance, and no credit check, so all of my money goes to me, instead of the cost of accessing it. I was given a car for graduating high school on the honor role, which was in (and still is in) fairly good condition, and as an Escort, gets pretty good gas millage. I found a guy to marry who gets health insurance. When I’m hungry, I can go and get something to eat. If money is tight, it means a couple nights of rice-a-roni and chicken, not stretching a box of cereal. At my lowest, I had plenty of friends that would take me in for dinner for a little while, until the next pay-check came in, and there is family near by that will gladly feed me. I learned about birth control before I started sex, so I don’t have a kid to feed or take care of,** and if I were to get pregnant now, I probably wouldn’t hesitate to have an abortion.
And that’s just my lifetime. We start going into why my (white, mid-western) parents have jobs as nurses and law-enforcement, and came from places with houses, while people in the same position but happened to be Native American, or black, or Hispanic, and we start going with a longer history of winning the genetic lottery.
My life hasn’t been the easiest thing in the world (uprooting? check, abuse father? check, alcoholism? check, horrible nerd so was bullied? check, female? check) but I am the result of privileges piled onto unseen privileges. My accomplishments are my own: I am proud of graduating college with honors, and getting into law school, I worked to get them. But they don’t exist in a vacuum, and that same level of effort would not have been NEAR enough to accomplish them if circumstances had been different.
When I worked at the grocery store, I routinely had to staff at the deli. Because the US Government likes inconsequential differences more than anybody I know, if you paid with food stamps, you could get cold chicken, but not hot chicken. I had a co-worker who loudly announced this anytime someone tried to buy hot chicken, and after the (generally embarrassed) patron left, would roll her eye and sneer about how “some people”. But the worst time was when someone was there with her little girl. Her little girl was “five” and I know this because she said about a billion times that “it was her birthday, and she was five”. Her mom was getting her one of the small “Happy Birthday” cakes, and went to pay with some food stamps. Because these cakes were old, they qualified for food stamps. Looking at her like she was a bug, my co-worker rang her up. Before the lady and her daughter were out of ear-shot, co-worker sneered loudly “I can’t believe that MY tax dollars are going to pay for things like CAKE”. I was just flabbergasted at how mean she was, and I saw the lady slump her shoulders. Luckily, the person following them at the register “I can’t think of a better use of my taxes than to get a little girl a birthday cake” and promptly grabbed a box of candles and a balloon, chased after the little girl, and said “Happy Birthday”.
This is why I don’t begrudge people soda, or candy, or a movie even if they’re poor. In fact, I encourage it and down-right celebrate it. Every human being deserves to have a little joy in their life; if only a candy-bar worth, and every little five-year-old deserves a cake on their birthday, despite any bad luck of birth. And I think it’s only assholes who can’t see their own privileges, who would think otherwise.
*This gets even harder around the holidays, because it one is supposed to spend gobs of money on gifts and food, and if you don’t you, don’t really love someone, but if you do it’s a waste of money.
**This was more luck than anything: I was a product of abstinence-only as a teenager (and a horny one at that). The only thing keeping me from boinking high school boyfriends was the thought that I probably wasn’t mature enough to deal with the ramifications of sex (emotional or physical). In hindsight, this was a big mistake.
We fight for bread, but also for roses too.
“when poor people get “frivolities””
You made blood squirt out of my eyes. Begrudging a five-year-old a birthday cake is despicable. It would have been one thing if the mom was all demanding, but she was spending food stamps that we all voted to give her in the way they were intended.
These things are NOT friviolities, they are absolute necessities. They are the only thing that makes all the privations survivable, and that is not a metaphor.
There is an old saying “You today and me tomorrow.” I don’t really approve of the term “privelege” because I don’t really think anyone deserves anything or can really earn anything, on the deepest level, so it’s all privelege or grace or whatever, so the term is empty, but that co-worker of yours need(ed) to sleep on the ground a few nights to get her head clear.
A year or so ago, there was a story about a young man from a wealthy family who decided to see what he could do starting as homeless, with nothing. His goal was to have a stable job , a vehicle, and $1000 within a year. He quit early due to a family emergency, but he had met his goals.
The very conservative blogger where I read the story said that proved there was no excuse for not succeeding–The young man didn’t use his degree, or his family money, or any of his advantages. If he could do it under those circumstances, anyone could.
Except he did use his education, if not the paper that proved he had it. He used his upbringing by having proper grammar, which likely gave him an advantage over the other day laborers. He used his background to tell him a boss wasn’t dissing him when giving him instructions on how to do his job, which moved him from day labor to a permanent if entry level job. He knew to show up on time and sober, which kept the job.
…and this is my biggest issue with welfare as we know it. Children grow up without the example of parents who hold a job, who deal with a boss that might not be perfect, who make sacrifices to keep their family fed.
I had a pretty hot discussion with some friends awhile ago on the topic of whether poor people are poor due to their own failings. I started off taking the position that society is meritocracy and poorness results from dumbassness, but realized that explanation is ultimately circular and thus incomplete.
Our conclusion was that it’s their own fault, but it’s not their fault that it’s their fault. For example, the person who buys twice as much house as they can afford because they got suckered into an ARM with a teaser rate isn’t stupid, they’re just ignorant because they were raised by ignorant parents (who weren’t stupid either, just ignorant, and so on) That’s the ‘privilege’ that matters.
We decided the effective solution would be to have mandatory public school classes on personal finance, econ 101, nutrition, and general problem solving in order to break the generational cycle of ignorance about critical life skills.
Sevesteen,
The husband and I discussed that story–there was also the fact that, psychologically, that guy knew he was just doing it for “fun” and he was going to go back to his regular life at the end of it. Genuinely poor people know the exact opposite.
“why should me, the epitome of pulling myself up by my bootstraps, have to fund their laziness and irresponsibility?”
I used to have that conversation with the second husband. Anybody who asks you that question, by default already hasn’t got a clue what he or she’s talking about.
If the starting-from-scratch guy Sevesteen mentions quit before the year was up, he FAILED IN HIS ATTEMPT. Poor people have family emergencies too, and they have to deal with them while keeping their jobs and without using Daddy’s credit card.
“Genuinely poor people know the exact opposite.”
But if they’d think of it the way he did, they’d have a good chance of going ‘back’ to a better life too. The problem for many poor people is that they were raised by and among poor people who also ‘knew’ they had no chance of doing any better. Not their personal fault, but eminently fixable.
There was an experiment done on rats in milky water, as I recall. In this experiment, group A was given a small platform under the water on which to stand during short “conditioning” stays in the water. Group B got no such platform.
After both groups were sufficiently conditioned, the rats were placed in deep water, and timed how long before they “gave up” trying to swim.
Universally, the rats that previously had a “safety net” tread water for longer.
Poverty IS a cycle, no one disputes that. I question the wisdom in “targeted relief”, especially given the low quality of assumptions used to decide who gets the cash, but there is no question that social support networks are necessary.
Maybe because I’ve actually BEEN that broke. Several times. Including right now. And I know how hard it is to get out of this spot. Even being a “privileged white male”.
Poverty is rarely a choice, but even looking at my own behaviour there’s no doubt I could have made better choices (who makes a living as a Photographer anyway?) IF all I was interested in was money. If you’ve got any knowledge of Astrology at all, I’m a Pisces. That should tell you my views on money.
But to suggest that life SHOULD be “sink or swim, law of the Jungle” type of experiences is to be a total asshole. Kinda like the coworker.
And the guy that bought the balloons deserved a pat on the back.
I know you used “privileged white male” in quotes, but there is a real “privilege” of being part of the dominate class (insomuch as you get rights that do not get extended to others). I suppose while I’m at it, I should throw in “reasonably healthy and have no physical conditions that would cause mobility to be difficult”.
But just some privileges doesn’t mean that you can’t be in poverty. We all hit the luck of the draw somewhere.
I’m a Libra, so I don’t really believe in astrology
.
That’s fucking awesome. Wherefrom?
Hah!
Mmm… It seems like saying, “poor people are poor because they don’t know how to manage their money,” is a manifestation of what Antigone is talking about, right? I’m not particularly responsible, monetarily, but I’m not poor, because I make enough that it doesn’t really matter. It’s pretty unfair that I don’t have to worry about things that other people have to worry about a lot, because of accidents of my upbringing that were in no way under my control.
Which isn’t to say I think those classes are a bad idea, necessarily, but prior to that, I think simply having clean, well-funded and well-staffed schools and free, available, comprehensive health care for every child would be spectacularly helpful. (Why health care? It’s really difficult to learn if you’re perpetually sick. Or even if you have a rotten tooth that you can’t get taken care of.) After that, make at the very least four-year community colleges freely available to everyone.
Oh, and spend the $32 billion or so it would take to fucking get rid of lead paint and pipes, already.
I can agree with much of that. Mind if I replace “white male” with “white feminist college educated women” in the dominant class spot though? That’s how it looks from where I sit after all.
Antigone, you don’t have to be part of a victim group to be worthy of concern, or help. And you don’t have to belong to a victim group to genuinely need help either. I guess I just don’t recognize my “inherent advantage” as a white male.
Maybe that’s because I’ve been living on about 800 dollars for the last 6 weeks. That’s why I just hate it when someone arrogantly tells me I have it easy…I just don’t recognize it. Of course, the underlying accusation if I don’t meet with wild success is that I’m a huge “loser” cause I can’t succeed even with all my massive advantages (white skin sure buys a lot of respect I guess).
Far from being the luck of the draw, there are whole sectors of the economy that are essentially out-of-bounds for a guy like me. The fact that I’m not a big dude, or interested in the trades, means I’m also essentially barred from “traditionally male” jobs. Government / public sector is out (uneducated white male). Retail is largely dominated by women (and women’s products). Photography is completely dominated by women in my town (37 studios, 26 of them are married women doing the job as a hobby – killed the market. Damn photo schools).
Personally, I’d like to see things like the Unemployment rate broken down by gender, race, and age.
I think that would be quite instructional.
I don’t really want to make this about male privilege, in particular, because there are plenty of other privileges that exist beyond gender (like I mentioned in the post- I have my own cushions, and that doesn’t include gender). Read through this post and comment thread if you want to hear about how being a woman (particularly, but not exclusively, a mother) fucks up your job stories http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/12/no-life.html).
And I don’t know anyone who does unemployment statistics as “not working for pay”. Every unemployment statistic I know has to do with “not employed and looking” which conflates a bunch of different things: from stay-at-home parenthood, to independently wealthy, to “lost hope of ever finding a job”.
And I’m going to have to follow Violet here: having classes in personal finance are great, grand and wonderful (and more than a little useful) but, they still don’t address some of ways people get into poverty because they have no safety net. Having universal health care would go a long way, as would much better welfare support. Having a little wiggle room when you make mistakes is quite freeing (and I’m betting most of us who are doing good can remember a time when they made a mistake and had to be bailed out).
The question I’ve found when dealing with conservatives about “deserving” poor and making mistakes that I’ve found most effective is this: “Should being lazy or ignorant or irresponsible be punishable by homelessness, sickness, or hunger?” That generally puts things into context, because it’s basically what they’re saying.
Antigone, I was a Stay at Home Dad for 5 years, I know what it does to your career. As for the Unemployment thing, I was actually referring to the traditional understanding of it, although it may have read like a non-sequitor. If your economy loses primarily blue-collar jobs, for instance, it’s going to vastly affect one gender more than the other…
The Photography thing was simply showing that the Arts are not exactly a place to get rich quick. I mentioned the hobby-job aspect more because there’s a “photography school” in town now, which has cranked out a bunch of people with no need to make money from the profession they pursue. More supply = Less demand per…..not to mention the screwed up pricing.
Antigone, I agree with you about the asininity of our goverment’s arbitrary “cold food v. hot food” dichotomy. I’ve always thought it was also strange that food stamps cannot be tendered for essential non-food items, such as toilet paper. Ass-wiping was a universal human need the last time I checked.
If you look at what you get under food stamps, it’s fairly obvious that it has more to do with who wants a government windfall (and has the power to coerce that) as opposed to what is good and healthy, or necessary.
Antigone: “The question I’ve found when dealing with conservatives about “deserving” poor and making mistakes that I’ve found most effective is this: “Should being lazy or ignorant or irresponsible be punishable by homelessness, sickness, or hunger?” That generally puts things into context, because it’s basically what they’re saying.”
I’m sure there are people who say that (your former coworker, for example) but that’s not what I was saying at all. Well, not entirely. Why should someone else’s laziness or irresponsibility be converted into my problem? Because that’s essentially what you’re saying. Or are you arguing that laziness and irresponsibility are some kind of mental disorder, and thus not the sufferer’s fault?
As for ignorance, my whole point was that people don’t choose to be raised without the “tools for success” and so it’s a valid public policy goal to compensate by teaching them in school (or wherever)
Absolutely. The food stamps program is TOTALLY corporate welfare for specific commodities. It’s a product of our “farm” bill, much like federal school lunches. I used to work at a domestic violence shelter and would often take women or children to the grocery store. We would also get free shipments from the commodities program. Seeing that every Kraft product was paid for by the government, plus the cases of Miracle Whip and Suddenly Salad in the shelter’s basement, told me all I needed to know about where nutrition stands in the hierarchy of the USDA.
violet,
It’s a protest song.
Lyrics here.
“If you look at what you get under food stamps, it’s fairly obvious that it has more to do with who wants a government windfall……”
At times that dynamic is quite obvious in military rations too. At one point the Army had filed rations in which the lasgna was made with powedered eggs instead of cheese – eeeeeeYUCK! Translation: some Arkansas Congressman had more power than the Wisconsin counterpart with whatever agency designed the meals.
“Luckily, the person following them at the register “I can’t think of a better use of my taxes than to get a little girl a birthday cake” and promptly grabbed a box of candles and a balloon, chased after the little girl, and said “Happy Birthday”.”
I would have cheered that person to the rafters.
If there’s one thing that makes my blood boil then it has to be bullying, which is effectively what your co-clerk was up to. I can see the patterns of it developing within my eldest daughter’s classroom already. One girl is “unkind all the time.”
The rub is that although that girl DID have some issues initially (mainly down to the transition into a formal school environment), she’s now effectively ostracised by her peers (or at least is in danger of it) who are bullying her by excluding her from their games etc. She’s 4.
That my daughter is following the herd on this is VERY problematic to my wife and I, and it’s something we’re trying very hard to correct.
Sorry for going off on a tangent, but a lot of the behaviour of the very rich/powerful towards the less well off can be best described as bullying too, and it’s not so very far advanced from the tactics we’re exposed to in the playground.
“Why should someone else’s laziness or irresponsibility be converted into my problem? Because that’s essentially what you’re saying. Or are you arguing that laziness and irresponsibility are some kind of mental disorder, and thus not the sufferer’s fault?”
Yeah, and who needs fire departments — why should someone else’s house burning down be converted into my problem?
Someone’s laziness and irresponsibility isn’t your problem. But starving and homeless people already are. In a strict enlightened self-interest stand, you don’t want unhappy people around with nothing to do (riots start like that), or to have the option open if you ever get into dire straits. In a moral sense (in my view, the more important sense) keeping people feed and houses are basic rights, that we should work to protect. And like any other right, you don’t “lose” them for having flaws.
Interesting discussion. I came across it because I was trying to figure out how to find what was once called “the deserving poor.”
I’m pretty poor myself (recently widowed, with a disability from an accident earlier this year), but I’d like to help other people. I know there are people who are poorer than me, and maybe I have some things they could use.
My husband had an elliptical trainer I can’t use myself because of my injury. It wasn’t very expensive, but it was well taken care of, and in excellent condition. I thought maybe someone could use it.
I posted in my local craigslist, and I got so many people with so many stories, it was mind-boggling. I had people who wanted me to take pictures of it, who wanted to know the brand and how old it was, did it have any damage, etc., etc., etc.
One woman who said she was very poor needed it for her health. I told her she’d need someone to help her take it out of the house because it was heavy. She wanted me to deliver it….I explained I couldn’t do that because I’m injured, and btw, it was FREE in case she forgot.
She never showed up.
Another guy called from his cell phone to tell me he really needed it, and he was poor, too. I said okay, gave him directions, cleaned the thing up and moved the furniture away so he could take it.
He never showed up, and didn’t bother answering his cell phone when I called to ask him where he was (I had my brother come here to help him move it.)
Another woman said she was on public assistance and needed an elliptical trainer for her health. I told her again that she’d need to get someone to help her move it. She wanted to know if it would fit in her Jeep. I said I had no idea.
But at least this lady showed up in a brand new Jeep. She had her boyfriend with her. I showed her the trainer, and she gasped, it’s not electric! I said, no, it’s manual. It’s a very basic elliptical trainer.
With that, she turned on her heel to leave, adding in passing that I was stupid for not telling her it didn’t plug in, and it was a piece of crap (it’s not.)
Several other people who claimed poverty said they wanted it to sell it – ummm, I could do THAT. One guy asked me if I had any other things to give him – I guess he runs a flea market.
I guess charity has to be a one-on-one thing. You have to be in the right place to meet the right person who won’t try to use you or take advantage of your good nature, and at least you’ll know what you gave them (goods,money, whatever) was put to a good use.
No one likes to be taken advantage of. My brief excursion in trying to be charitable with a tangible piece of equipment taught me that a lot of people know how to scam the system, or at least individuals with an urge to help others.
Stacy, LadyGrey and Antigone have mostly addressed your question: Even if you think that laziness and irresponsibility are the only reasons for poverty, and even if you think the families of lazy, irresponsible people also deserve to suffer, the poverty that comes from “laziness and irresponsibility” causes the same sorts of social problems that the poverty that comes from bad luck or economic hard times or any other reason.
People lose their homes, and live on the street, causing areas of our cities and towns to be perceived as less safe. Those areas experience more problems on account of fewer people wanting to live, shop, or work there, and businesses there start to fail. This kind of povertification isn’t relegated to poor downtown slums.
Unhappy, disenfranchised people have much less to lose, and tend, therefore, to be more less engaged in society and readier to break rules. There’s a reason that gangs and other criminal subcultures tend to grow in economically depressed, dysfunctional areas. There’s a reason that during the Great Depression, leaders in both the U.S. and Canada spent money to keep the unemployed, homeless young men busy and out of the cities—they didn’t want them being angry, disenfranchised, bored, and hungry where they could cause problems and become Communists. People who aren’t served by society see few reasons to engage with society or to abide by its rules. Cracking down on “crime” doesn’t actually stop people in criminogenic circumstances from becoming criminals, especially if they perceive the risks of being caught as minimal in comparison to what they can gain from engaging in criminal behaviour.
People who are broke-not-poor tend still to be engaged in society, because they see their brokeness as temporary and many of society’s rules and principles as still beneficial for them.
Even if you don’t feel that five-year-olds should have cake every now and again, in addition to growing up knowing that they’re going to have a roof over their heads, and enough food that they won’t be hungry, a society in which most people’s basic needs are met, and in which people can see their way to something approaching happiness tends to produce more cooperation and less crime. I’m all for that. And cake.