Comments on: If Only They Were Perfect (Like Me)

By: Don’t look back in anger… « random babble…

Don’t look back in anger… « random babble… — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:41:53 +0000

[...] 1June, 2009 by Ouyang Dan Via The Red Queen I find this post from Antigone at Punkass Blog. [...]

By: OuyangDan

OuyangDan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:01:13 +0000

Wow you took that down perfectly.

Every example here is like a page from my childhood and early on in my life as a parent.

It’s one thing to look back and see how you lucked out of poverty, and it is another thing altogether to look back smugly and forget just how lucky you got.

By: ferlessleedr

ferlessleedr — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:33:00 +0000

If I had the capital, I’d like to try an experiment and see if I can completely hose all the payday loan places in town (I can think of four off the top of my head, in a town of about 60,000, with many blue-collar factory workers). I’d institute a decently steep Annual Percentage Rate, say about 10% or maybe 15%, but over a four-week period given $100 borrowed that wouldn’t be more than a few dollars, rather than the $20 that the place I have borrowed (out of necessity, purely) from. I’ve always wanted to put a company out of business, after all, and this would let me feel like a good person while denying some poor schmuck’s family income as well, so all’s the better.

TRH

By: Katrina

Katrina — Mon, 25 May 2009 10:03:40 +0000

Thanks for this post, Antigone. The attitude you describe is so common and so frustrating; it’s nice to see you pick it apart.
Thirstygirl, are you thinking of “The road to Wigan Pier”? Jack London also wrote about the scorn poured on the destitute poor in Britain in 1902, in “The people of the abyss”. He points out that the poverty and degradation he wrote about wasn’t the result of recession or hared times, but took place in a very prosperous period.

By: delagar

delagar — Sat, 23 May 2009 22:52:22 +0000

Escaping from poverty can be done — one bit that might help is a country that doesn’t allow obscene predation on the poor, like payday loans and phone companies and credit card companies and cable companies that send out bills due on the last day of the month (counting on poor folk being flat out of money at that point) and then charging (ha-ha-ha) obscene late fees when the poor can’t pay on time.

And oh, yeah — what about a health care system that made sense? Just while we’re on it.

By: thirstygirl

thirstygirl — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:17:07 +0000

This sort of reply has been around since George Orwell was writing Goodbye to Wigan Pier. Seriously, it’s almost identical to the smug self-congratulatory attitude that people took to the working poor in the depression. Orwell points out that actually little luxuries like a lipstick or some hot chips is one of the few joys you have which gets you through the endless grind and the fact that you can see no escape from the poverty trap.

Which resonates with my experience- I’ve been involuntarily poor and I’ve also been earning quite a chunk of money and saving most of it. It feels different- one is imposed and the other you choose. In the first I *did* spent money stupidly by the letter-writer’s standards, and even mine, BUT when you are POOR 1- the options aren’t there and 2- the mental state induced by this realisation is. It’s a different world and people who’ve never been there don’t understand.

By: Antigone

Antigone — Fri, 22 May 2009 04:36:36 +0000

Apparently class outrage just doesn’t cut it against porn and how one washes oneself .

By: Lisa Kansas

Lisa Kansas — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:09:37 +0000

Ooh, nice post. I’m trying not to jump on the bandwagon right next to you but I’m probably going to fail. Expect a rant in the near future.