Just know how bad money can be

[oursin]

I don't know where this originated but I've been seeing various posts across my reading list alluding to someone apparently going on about The Poor spending money on stuff that's not totally necessary - rather than putting anything left over from the necessities into a savings account, presumably.

This makes me somewhat incoherently raging WTF.

Okay, I get a very strong impression that it is a general thing among people to criticise the spending habits and financial management of others, or at least indicate that one would not do things that way oneself. And of course whatever you do with your money there are lots of class and status markers involved - the C18th-C19th code of an officer and gentlemen that meant you were supposed to pay up your gambling debts on the nail, but could let your tailors' bills run on until the tailors were come to ruin. There was a discussion some while ago on the trennels in which many people were quite bewildered about the social and financial status of the Marlow family, on the one hand clad in handmedowns and far from well-off, yet going to a private school and suddenly buying horses on a whim.

But, still there is that specific longstanding thing about if you're poor you're not supposed to have any fun.

Goodness knows I do not have a lot of time for Dickens, but in one of his books - here it is, in Little Dorrit - through the mouth of one of the characters he has this to say:

[T]hat man (Mr Plornish gave it as his decided belief) know'd well that he was poor somehow or another, and you couldn't talk it out of him, no more than you could talk Beef into him. Then you see, some people as was better off said, and a good many such people lived pretty close up to the mark themselves if not beyond it so he'd heerd, that they was 'improvident' (that was the favourite word) down the Yard. For instance, if they see a man with his wife and children going to Hampton Court in a Wan, perhaps once in a year, they says, 'Hallo! I thought you was poor, my improvident friend!' Why, Lord, how hard it was upon a man! What was a man to do? He couldn't go mollancholy mad, and even if he did, you wouldn't be the better for it. In Mr Plornish's judgment you would be the worse for it. Yet you seemed to want to make a man mollancholy mad. You was always at it—if not with your right hand, with your left. What was they a doing in the Yard? Why, take a look at 'em and see. There was the girls and their mothers a working at their sewing, or their shoe-binding, or their trimming, or their waistcoat making, day and night and night and day, and not more than able to keep body and soul together after all—often not so much.

I would also like to invoke (yet again) the following conversation attributed to Dr Johnson and another:

What signifies," said someone, "giving a half pence to common beggars? They only lay it out on gin and tabacco".
[He responded]
"And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence?"

If The Poor (whoever they are, because I very much doubt they are a monolithic entity) happen to have a little spare cash or come into a small windfall, is it going to be of any particular long-term benefit to them not to enjoy it while they can? And if your uncle dies and leaves you his little donkey-shay, I suppose you are supposed to sell it and use the money in some serious and unfun way, rather than knockin' em in the Old Kent Road when you drive along it.

It all seems to come back to the unhelpful deserving/undeserving thing that I did a rant about in the context of healthcare reform, where some people seemed to be arguing that if people couldn't afford health insurance and hadn't managed to get a job with benefits they somehow were undeserving of healthcare.

And somehow, to need something is to be undeserving of it.

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

When last year I joined the ranks of The Poor for a considerable time, I did occasionally have an unjustifiable splurge on something with money that belonged to the credit card company or the bank, or given to me by the Government. People seem to think that the unemployed don't need a holiday, a statement which I think is false.

I tended to see it more in the discourse about unemployed people, because that's an ongoing problem over here. Some of the talk was quite admonitory and with definite undertones of "get the lazy bastards back to work" or "they're not looking hard enough". There's an assumption of fault that's infuriating. And if I as an unemployed person have the cheek to express doubts about the fairness of doing my previous work on dole pay, on the grounds that I don't fancy providing cheap indentured labour thanks very much, I'm looked on as a malingerer.

Also you get used as a political football by people who really don't give a f*** about you and who want to present their own agenda. In the beginning of the recession I felt really used and resentful when I heard some of those chancers ranting on my supposed behalf. I finally nearly lost it when I watched one TV show where some community worker shouted down a more right-wing economist with "if you were brought up covered by EXCREMENT and URINE as a child" I personally found that quite insulting, that he was conflating poverty with squalor, filth and beastliness; if anything poor people are more meticulous about personal hygiene than their wealthier colleagues because they know it's a harsh world out there and they have their pride.

Oooo, sorry that got me started. I'll calm down now...

[badgerbag]

I had an epic flameout-level argument at our coffee hour with someone whose kid went to my kid's school critiquing the people who get free or low cost lunches buying their kids popsicles. Really amazing!

[onyxlynx]

This is probably the article people have been referring to.

And yeah, what you said.

[jonquil]

There was an unpleasant op-ed in the Times recently -- I forget the author, sorry, that listed *microwave ovens* as a luxury that proved the poor were squandering their money. And widescreen TV, of course, always TV in some form, and cellphones. The whole thing made it obvious that the editorialist was living in 1965 or so.

[geeksdoitbetter]

wow

there was a time, about 6 years ago, when my microwave needed to be pitched and i didn't think i could afford to replace it

several years later, after becoming quite happily acquainted with my oven, i saw really rather fancy microwaves available for $30

[liseuse]

I loathe this approach to how The Poor should behave. I've been poor. I remember that brief spending of money on something non-essential as being so wonderful and brilliant and soul lifting. To spend some money on a theatre ticket (because, when my mother and I were Poor that is what we did) and have one evening out, one evening in the company of something lovely was the best medicine for the drudgery of being poor that I can think of.

[tree_and_leaf]

What signifies," said someone, "giving a half pence to common beggars? They only lay it out on gin and tabacco".
[He responded]
"And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence?"

I've heard a variation of that attributed to C.S. Lewis (who may have had Johnson in mind):

"Lewis, you shouldn't have given that man money, he'll only spend it on drink." To which Lewis replied, "Well, so would I have."

Having had a very low income last year, I'm inclined to think that the occasional "frivolous" bit of spending is a necessary part of staying sane.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

It's in _Letters to an American Lady_, p. 108: "Another thing that annoys me is when people say 'Why did you give that man money? He'll probably go and drink it.' My reply is 'But if I'd kept [it] _I_ should probably have drunk it.' "

[ellen_fremedon]

And somehow, to need something is to be undeserving of it.

That's a very clear summation of a horribly pernicious attitude. Thank you for it-- you've clarified a completely different situation for me. A couple of different situations, actually.

[noveldevice]

My least favourite manifestation of that is when people bitch about persons receiving food assistance buying strawberries (or other fresh delicious fruits or veg). I'm sorry, I don't want to live in a world where people don't "deserve" strawberries. I mean, what the fuck.

[kore]

'And somehow, to need something is to be undeserving of it.'

Awesome formulation.

Here in the states, where there's been a 'Great Recession' for what TWO YEARS now, I see shit in the New York Times quite soberly reporting 'if you kick people off long-term benefits they're more likely to find jobs!' And also Newt Gingrich (I think) criticized a former architect for not wanting to take a job that pays LESS than unemployment.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Really interesting article: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/854018--how-panhandlers-use-free-credit-cards?bn=1

[ann1962]

I was just about to link to this.

[perennialanna]

Savings accounts are a positive disadvantage to the poor if they will need to apply for state benefits.

I can see the point of keeping a small reserve, so when the washing machine blows up you don't find yourself wondering if the children's feet can have grown that much really (a debate my mother had quite frequently, and she only got one pair of shoes for herself in ten years), but I wouldn't make it compulsory, and beyond that I do think grown-ups should be treated as such.

I believe in Denmark the unemployed are actually treated as being employed by the State, and are entitled to paid holiday - which probably does wonders for mental health. It's a dispiriting business endlessly making do.

[jonquil]

Banks now explicitly discourage small savings accounts by charging enormous monthly fees, in any case. And people bitch about the poor being improvident and not saving. Banks are, by design, not available to the poor, including for cashing payroll checks.

[geeksdoitbetter]

"Savings accounts are a positive disadvantage to the poor if they will need to apply for state benefits. "

i'm very interested in the practice of making banking accessible

could you expand on this?

[pashazade.livejournal.com]

Excellent post. I remember explaining to a friend who was complaining that people on benefit spend money on cigarettes that when *I* had been on benefits I'd damn well bought cigarettes because there was fuck all else pleasurable going on, and it was not really the time to be battling nicotine addiction.

I realised that for some reason you weren't on my friends list, but now you are.

[oursin]

If you need a DW invite code I have a few spare at the moment.

[ankaret]

I got the Dr Johnson message from my mother when I was about thirteen and was helping her out running an opportunity playgroup: I said that I thought it was weird that so many of the (generally single, and low-income) mothers smoked, when they didn't have much money and cigarettes were expensive, and she said 'They deserve a bit of time that's just for them.'

[lyorn]

Drifting by via my reading list to say, so much word on that.

Regarding quotes, there's a classic from Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier, on how cheap crap is cheap and well-off people take the fact that poor people have cheap crap to mean that they are living the high life. I can look it up if you want it for your collection.

The more I read about this (when I'm not getting incoherent with rage) the more it seems to me that whoever is saying stupid stuff about "undeserving" poor is working from a romanticized fantasy image poverty that has never ever been true, but is wearing probably 1930s clothes, and provides a morally clean nostalgic anti-consumerist counterpoint to Whatever Is Wrong With The World. You probably recognize the type, with Dad working in industry, construction or the mines, Mom caring for the kids, tending her small kitchen garden and taking in sewing for pennies, Kids happily playing with pebbles and bits of string and eating healthy meals of beets, potatos and mother's love, and everyone is all nice and modest and well-behaved and skinny and grateful for Christmas packages of used clothing. Complete balderash, as if poverty had ever been anything but messy and soul-sucking, but that's where they get that no poor person should have a phone or a microwave or any rights to anything, because those do not go with 1930s clothing. And they'll never forgive anyone for not complying with their fantasy.

[oursin]

I think it might be somewhere in Seth Koven's Slumming or it might be Ellen Ross's work on the late C19th poor, that Victorian/Edwardian working class women who had applied to charitable societies for assistance would keep a clean white apron specially for when they expected to be visited for assessment. To fit in with notions of respectability and deservingness and so on.

Was it Orwell who did the riff on the clueless ideas about how people could live on 6d a week or whatever it was, by eating stuff that might be healthy and nutritious but was totally boring and yucky (not to mention being fairly labour intensive) whereas what they craved was something tasty? See also the Fabian Women's Group, Round About A Pound A Week, before the First World War, deconstructing that myth (the children will not eat lovely healthy porridge without milk and sugar, plus, you need cooking pots and a decent stove to make it in the first place).

[kathmandu]

Partly fantasy, yes, but partly the belief that phone and microwave etc. are optional conveniences. You can still stay in touch by letter ...provided you're only writing optional letters to friends and family. If you're applying for jobs, you need a phone so the employer can call you. Microwaves are a convenience if you have a kitchen, but if you rent a furnished room a microwave is your best chance of having hot food at all. What I'm getting at is the unexamined assumption in some people's minds that 'the poor' nevertheless have a fully equipped household at their disposal.

[fallingtowers]

I was about to quote this very passage from Orwell, so I might as well type it out here:

"But they don't necessarily lower their standards by cutting out luxuries and conentrating on necessities; more often it is the other way about -- the more natural way, if you come to think of it. Hence the fact that in a decade of unparalleled depression, the consumption of all cheap luxuries has increased. (...) For the price of one square meal, you can get two pounds of sweets. You can't get much meat for threepence, but you can get a lot of fish and chips."

And: "A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. (...) When you are unemployed, underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food."

[daedala]

I really hate the people who go on and on about what the poor deserve, in part because it makes it almost impossible to talk about reasonable financial steps, or people who really are acting entitled (not usually the actual poor) and spending their money on everything they want and then asking others to fund it.

Popping in from /network

[jackandahat]

The thing is, I've read stuff about writing a budget that's explicitly said "Factor in some for treats" - because people are far more likely to stick to the budget and not overspend (by overspend I mean spend money they don't have, or buy things they didn't really want, rather than just spend more than other think they should) if they've made provison for buying themselves something. Same as putting little treats in a food diet. Complete denial *doesn't work*. So even outside what people deserve and junk food being cheaper and all that kind of thing, this "The poor should only care about nutrition!"... goes against human psychology. It doesn't work, therefore the people proposing it are idiots.

Re: Popping in from /network

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Oh, exactly. And the psychology of penny-pinching is not at all the same if you *have* to do it. I am actually quite a frugal person in many ways, but I know darned well that's made vastly easier by knowing that I *have the choice* and do not in fact have to worry horribly about how to pay the bills. It must be a whole different feeling walking into Goodwill saying "Oh, they've *got* to have something in my size I can wear to an interview, they've just *got* to, pleasepleaseplease," and saying, "Hm, I wonder if I could manage to score a deal on an interview outfit at Goodwill? Might as well take a look."