eatprayvalkyrie:kaijuvsgiantrobotsvsme:ripplesfromawaterlily:fuck-me-barnes:tessalynn:A snippet from
eatprayvalkyrie:kaijuvsgiantrobotsvsme:ripplesfromawaterlily:fuck-me-barnes:tessalynn:A snippet from an article on Huffington Post about what it means to be working poor.Pretty spot on…I got into an argument today with someone who is a landlord, and they were outraged, outraged, to find that their evicted tenants owned an Xbox 360. Never mind that the console was ten years old and worth perhaps $50 on Craigslist, they were outraged that their evicted tenants did not sell it, along with the very clothes on their back, to pay their back rent. I tried to explain to him that when you are $1800 in back rent, $50 isn’t even a dent in that debt. Why bother? Why bother selling that $50 item if it isn’t going to get you any less evicted? If it’s not going to save you, you’ll hold on to it. Money becomes meaningless when you’ll never have enough to hold onto. You just let it flow like water through your hands. It’s all gone anyways, no matter what you do. It was gone before it ever touched you.The other day I got very mad at someone because their justification of why a family didn’t deserve their council house was because they had decorated the front of their house with xmas lights. DO YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO LIVE WITH NO SMALL PLEASURES AT ALL?!?!? DO YOU REALLY?!?!This is one of the great end results of capitalism: we treat people as if the only thing they should care about are their mechanical needs but without things to nourish the soul or the capacity to talk about same, we fall apart.We aren’t meant to be things which sit in blank boxes waiting to be used by our employers. Nothing in nature acts that way. Nothing’s meant to.The source article: ”This Is Why Poor People’s Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense”#um this topic makes me fucking furious#i will do a murder immediately#don’t#not only are small pleasures necessary to keep from SPIRALING INTO DEPRESSION WHEN YOU ARE POOR but they are STATUS MARKERS#you NEED a fucking phone to get a job#you need a fucking SMARTPHONE to be accepted as a normal person#you need nice clothes to be treated like you’re worth something#especially if you’re a poor poc#everyone sit down#think about this if you haven’t before#smashes a vase#fuck capitalismI have literally had people bitch and moan at me for daring to have things like a reasonably powerful computer or a handheld gaming console while at the same time having to ask for help because my benefits weren’t enough to cover my basic rent, bills and groceries. If you were here around this time a couple of years ago, in fact, you will have seen it: people demanding that I sell the things that I bought while I had money or demanding that I justify whatever small things I was proud to still be able to have under the threat of their slandering me and trying to ruin my fundraising campaign with smears against me. The idea that poor people aren’t worthy of help, support or compassion if they don’t “look poor enough” by your arbitrary standards is disgusting. If they have some nice things sometimes, they don’t look poor enough. If they’re reasonably well dressed, they don’t look poor enough. If they look fit and healthy and take care of themselves, they don’t look poor enough. Gosh, it’s almost like you’ll only tolerate poor people if they’re disheveled, starving and miserable and have literally nothing, and even then you’ll still shit on them and say their sorry state is all their own fault so that you’ll have an excuse to withhold your support. Fuck you. I’ve been poor ever since I moved out at 18 and only now, nearly 12 years later, am I starting to get some taste of what having enough money to cover my basic needs while still having a little left to save for things I might want at the end of the month is like. For the first time in several years, my needs are being met without my having to drive myself into debt in order to do it.Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. -- source link