quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2094921_2094923,00.html

Via Whiney

That's some terrible accounting.

Feel like this might be a *controversial* Q&A post, but:

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/27/joining_the_food_stamp_nation/singleton/#comments

Sorry
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/27/joining_the_food_stamp_nation/singleton/

why does that belong itt? seems like a fine article.

b/c he lives in an expensive city, just traveled to India, smokes, shops at Whole Foods, etc.

and also I don't know how many hours a day he "hustles for stories" or whatever but it seems like he could at least get a part-time job to supplement income.

yeah well I consider home mortgage interest deductions, capital gains tax rates etc. etc. a much more dangerous form of welfare than 'poor journalist gets $200 for food'. you're buying into a right-wing narrative about how people should and shouldn't be allowed to consume. food stamps are a form of government spending w/ an incredibly high keynesian multiplier - the highest iirc - so if anything we should be aiming to get more people on food stamps. even ~people who smoke~ ffs.

I don't really have a problem with this guy getting food stamps so much as I have a problem with him pitying himself as a person who seems more poor by lifestyle choice than by economic reality.

well you're not a millionaire by lifestyle choice, you could have studied harder and become an investment banker

Public assistance has always carried the puritanical stink of stigma and guilt. As Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward explained in their classic book ”Regulating the Poor,” guilt and shame have long been intentional features of public aid — along with various forms of coerced labor and invasive monitoring — dating back to England’s poor laws of the 16th century, through to today’s much demonized welfare capitalism in America, where Republicans goad and bait our nation’s first black chief executive as “the food stamp president.”

this is the paragraph you need to read again and again

jesus was "the bread loaf prophet" and see how far that got us

my only beef w/ him is that he's buying organic chicken and farmer's market vegetables and shopping at whole foods - that stuff is expensive!! but it's his choice

the idea that fresh/organic produce and meat should be a luxury ie only for the middle class and above is absurd.

what's wrong with frozen veggies and no meat?

no need to collapse the distinction between fresh/organic there xp

I call myself frayed white collar — part of the privileged poor. I have a college degree, a career and an array of middle-class, working-class and more economically privileged friends; together we are a fairly good representation of the 97 percent, or maybe the 95 percent. And most of us are hard-pressed; even my teacher friends, making about $60,000 a year, are perpetually flat-lined economically, eking across each month’s finish line thanks to credit cards.

i know this is a weird demographic and not as attractive as the straight-up poor but its explosive growth is why shit is blowing up worldwide right now and the guy touches on some real stuff about debt and guilt as long-term methods of control in religious and secular societies alike and seems self-aware enough even if he needs to find a cheaper place to buy kale. (the guilt thing is unattractive and annoying to read about, i agree, but i guess that's how you know it works.)

look the bigger issue is that there's nothing to be gained from judging poor people based on what you consider to be their poor decisions other than self-satisfaction. you can go to a welfare office and judge all the young women w/ babies for their life decisions or you can look at this from a policy perspective and think 'what's the best way to help raise poor peoples' standard of living and boost economic growth?' a more efficient way would be just giving people cash but that's not gonna happen in a world where everyone assumes poor people will waste it on drugs (or organic foods.)

well if his goal is to engender sympathy and to reverse the narrative of guilt and shame associated with government assistance, without giving his opponents an easy way to lash back, he doesn't have to mention that he shops at whole foods! but I agree about the larger point overall, which is that there should be no shame in taking government assistance.

nobody wants to hear it but 60k a year in new york, even in jersey, does not allow you to raise a family without resorting to credit and will never ever allow you to buy a home. so if the answer there is "well move to another state" or "just eat chef boyardee asshole" something is broken.

I picked out that angle on the story because I have a belief that people should live below their means no matter their class, fwiw

and people should have a right to fresh produce and/or meat! but it doesn't have to come from whole foods

well even going down that path it makes a lot more sense to judge him for smoking than for buying healthy food

yeah I don't know what cigarette taxes are like in san fran. I guess I'd need to know more before I really judge him - like maybe the WF is the closest supermarket to his apartment. so whatever premium he pays is offset by the time/money it takes to get to a cheaper supermarket. *shrug*

xp well it sure as hell ain't coming from pathmark or any of the other ethnographic slow death traps that sell food adjacent to the projects.
i spent five years trying to buy groceries at one of those joints and there are nine rows of canned foods drenched in salt and eight rows of frozen or dried or liquid processed salt/sugar/fat and two rows of shitty and tasteless factory farm veg and fruit and a row of subpar grocery meat/factory meat. "local" butchers/fishmongers in the area do not deal reasonable quality meat and co-ops are a good option but require a large investment and a car. farmers markets are more expensive than whole foods. I rely heavily on freshdirect, which is not totally unreasonably expensive but definitely out of the reach of anyone without a computer/internet connection. trust me when i tell you that my urban area, without a whole foods in walking distance, offers very few options for anyone to buy fresh produce / veg for them and their family without owning a car OR making around 60K.
i have lived in rural areas and am aware that this varies depending on location.
and cigarettes are addictive folks.

i ain't asking argentina to cry for me, but the megamart experience makes it easy for people to subsist and slowly get diabetes/obese/otherwise incapacitated unless you have a lot of time to devote to your menu. There is not a magical local grocer that is accessible for a lot of urban folks; big box food/retail killed A LOT of that shit dead or pushed the price into the stratosphere.

I picked out that angle on the story because I have a belief that people should live below their means no matter their class, fwiw
--dayo

if we all did this the American economy would collapse.

maybe I just have low standards but I've always found big box supermarkets to have adequately fresh produce and/or meat - that includes pathmark, shoprite, save-a-lot, aldi, various chinatown bodegas, wal-mart, acme...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MqIYJf13Hw

This guy was the best at taking apart the Old Gray Lady

heh well no shit! the american economy has been based on living beyond your means on credit for a while now. xp

as my longtime friends have entered their mid-20s i've noticed that some of them have nicer clothes+handbags and go drinking more and at better places than others -- they don't act Rich or anything they just act comfortable and look like the happy people on tv -- and at first i thought oh those are the people who are doing well! but no it turns out most of them are just the people who've started using multiple credit cards. that kinda freaked me out.

then i was like WELL THIS EXPLAINS A LOT

unless you have a lot of time to devote to your menu.

this raises an important point - many people, across all strata of society, don't have time to cook, and eateries in most places in america skew towards being extremely unhealthy and bad for you. for shame, american food culture!

well, there's another option there: you can get healthy and quality groceries prepared at about 75% of the cost of eating out. hence the success of whole foods/trader joe's/fresh direct.

"adequately fresh" to me equals "edible" and i think taking considerable pleasure in the food you eat is not something that should require a shit ton of additives/salt/sugar/fat or be a luxury only of the upper middle class

yeah I was just thinking about how trader joe's prepared foods represents a good middle ground between $10 salads and $2 hungry man dinners. I wish that kind of food culture would spread to more supermarkets.

there's a lot you can do with less-than-optimally fresh vegetables in chinese cooking. but maybe that falls into your adding a 'shit ton of additives.' soy sauce is a great thing, when used sparingly!

xp i don't see any reason why it shouldn't; i've long held that if our local pathmark turned into a trader joes it would make just as much cash. There are reasonable price options in there, just less deathfood. i think some of it has to do with their chosen market image. One of the "luxury" grocers is gonna diversify in the next few years to cover that market, possibly with federal assistance.

i hear ya dayo and my mom raised me by the wok but she was a stay-at-home mom and eventually ended up having to work so me and my sis could keep eating at all and that led to less cooked meals. if time and money are at a premium, convenience becomes prime and convenience in america means food that, over time, will absolutely kill you.

the problem with deathfood is that people keep on buying it, people often prefer deathfood to a more reasonable and healthy alternative at an equivalent price. sugar + salt + fat are powerful substances ;_;

agreed and that dictates the economics of fresh food. decent kale, which really shouldn't cost any more than iceberg lettuce becomes a luxury. and that IS nuts.

and it seems I always circle back to how american food culture is generally a food culture of DEATH *looks at taco bell's frito lays in a burrito for $1*

i'm pretty grateful that my parents always found a way to cook for us as kids cuz i feel like that's something that definitely gets passed down, at least based on the eating habits of friends my age.

xp well it's hard not to. the key reasons I live in/adjacent to NYC are that I don't need a car/great food/a job market that values my skillset/great art and culture/amazing diversity and depth of the citizens... but i spent 25 years living in a world where i ate fast food because it was the best and cheapest alternative and when i visit home, all my friends weigh more than i do.

my friend has a theory (gotten from some food writer, I think) that a lot of great food inventions came during times of hardship. stuff like cured meat and fish, pickled vegetables, brined anything, preserved sauces. those are ways to eat cheaply and tastily.

and yeah big props to my mom and dad for always cooking 7 days a week while at the same time holding down 9-5 jobs.

well most of human history was hardship compared to now xp

yeah but that doesn't make preserved foods less tastier!

a lot of staples of various cuisines more or less started out as poor people food

sure: soul food (from any culture) is basically discards or the cheapest options cooked and spiced well

I guess my point is that eating on a budget doesn't mean peanut butter and jelly every day. at least from what I like to eat, stocking a pantry with soy sauce/vinegar/cooking wine/spicy sauces/fermented beans/tofu/ginger/garlic doesn't cost a lot, and a bottle of soy sauce goes a long way, and costs like $2.