Well, I had a little time to myself tonight. A laptop in the coffee shop.
But I didn't make it to the posts I planned to write. The really good, really brilliant, really deep ones.
I'd really like to write a review of sorts of Sober Living For The Revolution. Because it's a good book, but also because it really got me all aggravated and argumentative at points, and I like that.
And I've been trying to find a way to articulate something that I think I'll call "A Kingdom of Priests." But I've had a hard time getting those thoughts organized, finding the right words, and tonight is just not the night.
And there are those bits and pieces of other things worth saying. Just none of it right now.
But I do want to say this.
If you're writing a thesis paper the premise of which is basically just "people suck," you might want to do a lot of your research in the comments section.
I guess we all already know that, except for the people actually living in the comments section.
And I don't mean the comments section here of course. I don't get enough traffic to draw those people. The people who leave the occasional comments here are actually all pretty awesome. Same goes for most of the blogs I take the time to read.
But the people living in the comments section of every newspaper website?
I'm pretty sure God had them in mind when he sent the flood. I think he just didn't look around enough. He was in one of those God-on-a-lazy-day modes, and instead of really doing his research, he glanced at the comments section. "Fuck," said He. "I really botched this batch." And then he killed everybody but Noah and his family. And a few animals. You know the story.
I get where he was coming from.
There are lots of awesome people out there. I've met some. I like most of the ones I've met. Even the ones I don't particularly like have their really good qualities, are lovable and valuable and good (or at least so-so).
People can be pretty awesome.
But not the people in the comments section. Those fuckers suck. I'm pretty sure their mothers don't love them.
Take this story from the local paper: "Census: U.S. poverty rate swells to nearly 1 in 6."
That's sad. It's worrisome. Put it on my signs that Everything Is Wrong list, if you will. One in six people living in poverty is sad. It's not good. (The sadder fact that one in four children are living in poverty is, well... sadder.)
But on my Everything Is Wrong-er list, put the commentors.
In the comments, you don't get "geez, that's sad, how can we come together to fix this?" or even a less thoughtful and inspiring "dude, that sux, glad I'm no poor."
What you do get is "that's what you get from those ReThugLican scumbags" and "the GOP is just sucking up to the rich" and "Obama and his LibLiars should be tried for treason" and similar reactionary mean-spirited fare. And that's just to warm up. That's the nice stuff. Mindless, stupid, devoid of content, full of empty posturing and worn out finger pointing, but better than what follows.
What follows is a bunch of hateful people vomiting ignorance and contempt for the poor. What follows is "must be nice to have an XBOX and get welfare" and "why do they keep breeding?" and "I think I'll quit my job so I can drink on my porch all day too" and similar blame-those-who-are-suffering bullshit.
It's disappointing.
'Cause, like I said, I usually tend to like the people I actually know.
I don't want to think that those people are slinking off to their basements at night and writing this stuff under their silly screen names, but, well, somebody is. A lot of somebodys.
And because of them, God had to kill all the dinosaurs in the flood. Which is awfully, awfully sad.
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6 comments:
One in six people living in poverty is sad.
Agreed, but the Poverty Rate is not a good indicator of poverty because the way that it is formulated has changed over time.
If we're going to discern an increase or decrease in poverty, then "poverty" must have a constant definition.
May I suggest a few other constants for evaluating wealth in a society? Life span, infant mortality, caloric intake, and square footage of housing. We could also consider car ownership and access to air conditioning as indicators of relative poverty.
I agree and disagree. Poverty is certainly a relative thing... the "poverty" of many Americans would be wealth to much of the world, or even to Americans of 100 years ago.
I've been hearing the whole "how can you call it poverty when you've got air conditioning etc?" buzz, and I don't buy it.
Especially when you consider much of the increase in poverty is due to the recent recession, lay offs, unemployment. So, a family had AC and a car when they had a steady income. Now the job is lost and they are behind on their bills. Are they supposed to sell the air conditioner before they can say they are in poverty? Is the twenty bucks they'd get from the used AC significant to the big picture? Or, even more, are they supposed to ditch the car... and with that, ditch any chance of getting a job that's not on a bus line? Especially when you get into rural communities, losing the car means losing opportunity to climb back out. So... you're not really "poor" if you've still got a vehicle? As a kid who grew up poor, usually with a car or two in the yard (always falling apart, broken down), that sounds pretty absurd to me.
Bear in mind that as society has changed, luxuries have turned into necessities for anyone who wants to keep "competing" in the society. Yeah, once upon a time a phone was a luxury, fancy stuff. Now, you can't get a job with one. Same with computer access. Same with a vehicle. Society has built itself up around the expectation that you will have these things, and you gotta get with the times or get left behind as they say.
Bear in mind that as society has changed, luxuries have turned into necessities for anyone who wants to keep "competing" in the society. Yeah, once upon a time a phone was a luxury, fancy stuff. Now, you can't get a job with one. Same with computer access. Same with a vehicle. Society has built itself up around the expectation that you will have these things, and you gotta get with the times or get left behind as they say.
Society has changed, but I think that you're overstating which technological implements are necessary to gain employment. Yes, you need a phone. You can get a basic cell phone for thirty dollars that was unavailable to anyone for billions of dollars twenty years ago.
Perhaps the problem is trying to express the state of change in poverty in a single sentence. It's more nuanced. The wealth of poor people today relative to that of poor people twenty years ago. And the gap between these sets of "poor" and "wealthy" has increased over time, relative to each other. And social expectations for the financial well-being of the poor have increased.
But it would be hard to fit all of that into a (online) newspaper headline.
What bothers me about Poverty Rate news stories is that they're often interpreted as stating that objective poverty has increased -- that more people are actually living shorter lives in smaller spaces and eating less food. Statistics indicating that the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing should not be read this way.
I think we may be closer to agreement than it sounds, and agree that it's difficult to express it. I was thinking about writing another post on poverty, that could go into those thoughts a little more.
The short version-- I don't think I'm overstating the things you need for a job too much, or at all. At least around here. I do the whole job search thing for a living-- the programs I run are "get people to work" programs, and I can tell you that without the phone, without the vehicle, without the access to a computer, it's really, really tough. I mean, we've come to a point where a majority of the jobs that we help people apply for do not have paper applications and do not allow onsite application-- it is expected that you'll have computer access somewhere else or you just can't apply. No phone = no hire because an employer isn't going to wait 5 days to use the mail to arrange your interview or to ask follow up questions, etc.
Agreed, though, there is a difference between a track phone that costs $30 and the $150/month smart phone plans. The first is necessary, the second is a wild luxury and anyone struggling with finances has no excuse for that. Ditto with expensive cable-- though that leads to a whole host of other issues and a longer conversation regarding the break down of community and whatnot. I mean, without a tv, what is one supposed to do all day? (I have neither cable nor a fancy phone, and people are sometimes genuinely perplexed as to how it is that I get by-- talking to other people has become very foreign to too many of us.)
Same issues for cars, for other former "luxuries." I mean electricity was a luxury once upon a time, but lose your power now and you'll have CPS taking your kids, not to mention that there's no know-how for living without it, houses aren't built to be livable without it, so on and on and on.
But like I said, maybe I need another post for this.
And for the record, I'm for pretty much scrapping the majority of that crap. If we did that as a whole society, we'd get back to a more normal definition of poverty. But I don't see this happening soon.
I think John has a point about relative poverty. It's hard to measure something if the measuring stick keeps changing.
In a recent utility bill there was an insert promoting HEAP(heap is a program here in Ohio to help the needy heat their homes). The income for a family of 4 that would get you assistance was over 50,000 dollars a year. I believe this is significantly higher than the poverty level but it shows the difficulty in coming up with a definition of poverty.
I also wonder what percentage of the people living in poverty are just starting out in life. There was a time in my early twenties when we were living in poverty but we were just passing through. It's the decisions we make that determines weather we stay poor or move on to a better life.
Poverty line is roughly $22,000 for a family of four, less for singles or smaller families. It's essentially a formula based on cost of food/shelter, but I can't remember exactly what that formula is.
I agree that it's different when "just starting out in life" and such. At 19, I had my first apartment, a crappy job, only ate 2 or 3 days per week for long stretches, was dead broke almost always.
But that's part of being 19.
The fact that 1 out of 4 children is currently living under the poverty line suggests that it isn't just an increase in people just starting out on their own, and the fact that it's gone way up since the recession hit means it's not people who have just decided to live off the system for life... there's an obvious direct correlation between lay-offs and poverty.
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