Talk politics.

The author responds to a comment on her blogpost Why I Make Terrible Decisions:

I would like to understand what you are really angry about. Is it that I am poor and insufficiently servile about it? Is it that you legitimately think that you are somehow morally superior? Is it that I dared to write my thoughts down and someone forced you to read them? Is it that you never spend fifty dollars a month on something that could be used elsewhere, and you are extra judgey about it because it is the thing you have to be judgey about? Is it that you are an antismoking warrior and doing the world A Service by wishing ill on random Internet bloggers? Is it that you are uncomfortable with the idea that even if I have no money I am allowed to sometimes complain about life? How rich do I have to be before I am allowed to have objections to the current class system? What amount of money do you think gives me the right to be human?

More and more, offline and on, I’ve been seeing the “a feature, not a bug” argument about the increasing income disparity between the very rich and the rest of us. It’s an argument best summarized as, “Forget the poor. They’re losers.” Salon has an acid piece up about Tyler Cowen and the upcoming “hyper-meritocracy,” which includes some of the euphemisms people like Cowen love to use about the fate of the non-wealthy in the brave new world he’s so excited about. “Tough trade-offs,” and “common sense” for the rationale (which I’ve encountered here) that since we can’t help every single poor person, we shouldn’t help any of them.

Along with this blithe rejection of an increasingly large portion of the human race is a tendency to vilify the poor. After all, if one is going to relegate all these people to a life of hunger, illness, and exhaustion, it’s important to convince oneself that they deserve it.



A piece by a blogger called killermartinis is a welcome antidote to the Friedmans and the Cowens of this world. Yes, the author says, poor people often make bad decisions. Here’s why. Here’s what it’s like to be poor.

I know how to cook. I had to take Home Ec to graduate high school. Most people on my level didn't. Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick. We have learned not to try too hard to be middle-class. It never works out well and always makes you feel worse for having tried and failed yet again. Better not to try. It makes more sense to get food that you know will be palatable and cheap and that keeps well. Junk food is a pleasure that we are allowed to have; why would we give that up? We have very few of them.


And her reaction, posted at the beginning of this OP, to the inevitable hostile commenter reacting to the fact that she (horrors!) smokes cigarettes, is as worthwhile a read as the article.

What she (and, inadvertently, the commenter) highlights is the assumption that a poor person who complains about being poor is speaking out of turn. A poor person should be ashamed of being poor, to the point of giving up even those small pleasures they can afford, and should not talk back to his or her literal wealthy “superiors” – who, if the poor person is really, really good, might toss a few nice leftovers into a donation box. The word “uppity” is rarely used, but it’s pretty similar to the affluent white attitude towards blacks that I remember from the American south of my childhood, which often involved a definition of “good” that required a staggering level of self-abnegation. A passage from Sinclair Lewis’ satiric novel about a fascist takeover in the US, It Can’t Happen Here, sums it up:

“In order…to give the most sympathetic aid possible to all Negroes who comprehend their proper and valuable place in society, all such colored persons, male or female, as can prove that they have devoted not less than forty-five years to such suitable tasks as domestic service, agricultural labor, and common labor in industries, shall at the age of sixty-five be permitted to appear before a special Board, composed entirely of white persons, and upon proof that while employed they have never been idle except through sickness, they shall be recommended for pensions…”

The awful part is that this seems generous compared to the current right wing libertarian attitude towards the poor.

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