okay, I grant that. I'm just saying that in a piece where you are harping on how hard-off you are and how much you're struggling, maybe you shouldn't mention that you shop at whole foods, take trips to india and smoke cigarettes!
"america should allocate more money to assistance programs as a way of promoting economic growth and of reaching the same standards set by other first world countries" is a perfectly valid and legitimate argument that can be made without resorting at all to how much poor people need the money.
― dayo, Sunday, 29 January 2012 23:54 (twelve years ago) link
what do you think 'deserve' means? xp
― iatee, Sunday, 29 January 2012 23:54 (twelve years ago) link
haha yeah that's the question! welcome to political philosophy.
― Euler, Sunday, 29 January 2012 23:56 (twelve years ago) link
the underlying theme of the dude's piece was the *guilt* factor not 'how hard-off he was'. xp
― iatee, Sunday, 29 January 2012 23:56 (twelve years ago) link
paragraphs like
Savings, I tell him. It’s true: For the past few years, as a semi-accomplished, mid-career journalist and writer, I’ve been scuffling in the always difficult, but now beastly hard choppy waters of freelancing, supplementing my obscenely low (often under $15,000) income with some money my grandmother left me years ago. Combined, in the city of San Francisco, I live on something around $20,000. Every year, even as I work my butt off scrambling for assignments and clients, that little nest egg shrivels frightfully smaller. Now it’s almost gone, and though I’ve had some good little runs here and there with work, I’m hurtling precipitously toward poverty.
don't really help his case!
― dayo, Monday, 30 January 2012 00:04 (twelve years ago) link
he doesn't need a case
― iatee, Monday, 30 January 2012 00:04 (twelve years ago) link
or rather, here is his case "I live on something around $20,000"
fin
― iatee, Monday, 30 January 2012 00:05 (twelve years ago) link
can someone hook this guy up with the moneybags in two lights? between all of them they should be able to write the world's best article.
― La Lechera, Monday, 30 January 2012 00:06 (twelve years ago) link
OTOH, if he's putting a story about food stamps on the Internet, where it can get picked up by anyone who wants to attack social welfare/point to those wacky lib'ruls/etc., he kind of does. Or if not a case, then not mentioning things that many Americans do find objectionable (such as people on food stamps buying smokes at $7/pack - and maybe more since the last time I was in SF).
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Monday, 30 January 2012 00:12 (twelve years ago) link
I guess I accept that logic, tho again, his article is about the guilt factor and getting over it. if it makes a poor person in a similar situation feel more comfortable about going to the food stamp office tomorrow, then it's served its purpose. if a right-wing blogger wants to find an article about waste and gov't welfare they can do a lot better than that.
― iatee, Monday, 30 January 2012 00:18 (twelve years ago) link
hey guys did you know that the successful quit rate for smoking w/o medical assistance is 1-2%?
and that when you chastise someone for wasting their money on a drug that's more addictive than heroin instead of other stuff you sound like assholes?
― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Monday, 30 January 2012 00:24 (twelve years ago) link
i have no idea what the circumstances of this dude's indian jaunt were so i can't judge but i did laugh when he's like "hope he notices!" about the indian food-stamp-office guy who looks at his passport, because like yeah, when you're trying to get a guy to approve food stamps for you what you really want is for him to notice your recent trip to india.
― the "intenterface" (difficult listening hour), Monday, 30 January 2012 00:34 (twelve years ago) link
as a freelancer myself though i hope they fucking shower him in food stamps.
and I was an asshole there but: its a shame that the fact that someone buys cigarettes when on food stamps scans as "irresponsible" and not as "dang why can't that person get access to a cessation program via his PCP"
― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Monday, 30 January 2012 00:37 (twelve years ago) link
i read posts too fast and i thought that one was recommending spending your money on PCP
― kim tim jim investor (harbl), Monday, 30 January 2012 00:43 (twelve years ago) link
honestly if what you're looking for is stability and guaranteed food and housing, PCP might be your best bet, pound for pound
― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Monday, 30 January 2012 00:47 (twelve years ago) link
ashes to ashes, dust to dust
― The term “hipster racism” from Carmen Van Kerckhove at Racialicious (nakhchivan), Monday, 30 January 2012 00:48 (twelve years ago) link
If only there had been some kind of public information out there in the last five decades about the addictiveness of tobacco, think what might have been avoided!!
― You got to ro-o-oll me and call me the tumblr whites (Phil D.), Monday, 30 January 2012 02:21 (twelve years ago) link
I mean maybe then dude could have made a more informed decision and never even started!
― You got to ro-o-oll me and call me the tumblr whites (Phil D.), Monday, 30 January 2012 02:22 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuLnOncrvY4
― buzza, Monday, 30 January 2012 02:45 (twelve years ago) link
Irrespective of the health issues, it’s difficult to see how anyone could not understand that a relatively affordable pleasure (smoking) that can be spread out throughout the day, helps deal with the stress of bad jobs or unemployment and forms part of a communal activity isn’t going to be attractive to a lot of people who are poor.
It’s also difficult to quit without assistance. There may be health warnings on TV but there can also be enormous social and corporate pressure to start. The expectation that, at some point in their life, people aren’t going to make a bad decision is unreasonable.
The whole discussion cedes ground to the right. Rather than focusing on the pittance people are given in basic support, or why there are so many people in that situation in the first place, the focus is on whether that pittance is being used responsibly. It’s such an easy, lazy argument for not doing more to bring people out of poverty – ‘don’t give them more money, they’ll only waste it, the poor are feckless and morally suspect, you can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves, etc’.
― Mohombi Khush Hua (ShariVari), Monday, 30 January 2012 03:46 (twelve years ago) link
funny thing about the cigarettes is that while i do get worrying that the writer's (sort of lovable tbh) obliviousness to the fair-or-not implications of some of the cultural signifiers he's dropping is gonna make him vulnerable, tsk-tsking over his cigarette bill seems to me to be a "liberal" thing; i'm pretty sure middle america understands the need for cigarettes.
― the "intenterface" (difficult listening hour), Monday, 30 January 2012 04:15 (twelve years ago) link
Shari obv otm
― iatee, Monday, 30 January 2012 04:56 (twelve years ago) link
Hey, I don't care about the dude's food stamps or need or any of that - if he's getting it, he's getting it, whatever. Maybe it means the military will build one less Osprey or kill one fewer Afghani. (Let's hope!) I just find "Do you know how hard it is to quit smoking?" one of the most face-punchable phrases around. It's real easy if you never start; and yes, having grown up, in the 70s and 80s, around the military, with two parents and two grandparents who smoked, and a sister who started at 14, and going to a rural high school with lots of kids who smoked, and living around people who gauge inflation not by the cost of a gallon of milk but the price of a carton of cigarettes at the gas station, etc., I know about the pressures and cultural expectations.
― You got to ro-o-oll me and call me the tumblr whites (Phil D.), Monday, 30 January 2012 11:27 (twelve years ago) link
You know what, actually, this is my own personal hangup that I'm dragging in here, forget it.
― You got to ro-o-oll me and call me the tumblr whites (Phil D.), Monday, 30 January 2012 13:39 (twelve years ago) link
this is really hilarious and pitiful http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/realestate/so-youre-priced-out-now-what.html
― lag∞n, Monday, 30 January 2012 13:55 (twelve years ago) link
i know it's probably just me and phil d and maybe beachville on this one but 'corporate pressure' rly? where are yr fkn mammies like
― teaky frigger (darraghmac), Monday, 30 January 2012 13:58 (twelve years ago) link
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EconomistsView/~3/2wmw7LV3pvg/who-cares-how-deserving-the-poor-are.html
― iatee, Monday, 30 January 2012 14:15 (twelve years ago) link
do assholes deserve to be poor is more the question we should be asking ourselves
― lag∞n, Monday, 30 January 2012 14:17 (twelve years ago) link
― lag∞n, Monday, 30 January 2012 13:55 (1 hour ago) Permalink
Haha, yes. Saw this in the print edition and it was even more ridic as a giant RE section cover spread. "Can't afford to live in a neighborhood? Consider living in a different neighborhood! But you may want to look at neighborhoods other than the ones that abut your current neighborhood."
― frogBaSeball (Hurting 2), Monday, 30 January 2012 15:48 (twelve years ago) link
the whole tine of the thing was just really idk weird and sad, also its not like people dont know these 'other neighborhoods' exist
― lag∞n, Monday, 30 January 2012 15:51 (twelve years ago) link
Bargains of the Times, always seven figures
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, 30 January 2012 15:55 (twelve years ago) link
Those "The Hunt" features are often quiddity-worthy except they're usually kinda too boring.
― frogBaSeball (Hurting 2), Monday, 30 January 2012 15:57 (twelve years ago) link
is 'ladies mile' really a thing
― iatee, Monday, 30 January 2012 15:59 (twelve years ago) link
where the fuck is that? i couldn't be bothered to read more after I saw that G'point is the backup East Village.
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, 30 January 2012 16:05 (twelve years ago) link
Wait, since when is Yorkville not the Upper East Side?
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 30 January 2012 16:07 (twelve years ago) link
"Roughly framed by the Avenue of the Americas and Broadway from 17th to 24th"
I think they should rename it 'the area near the chelsea trader joe's' xp
― iatee, Monday, 30 January 2012 16:09 (twelve years ago) link
Priced out of New York? Try East New York, just east of New York.
― frogBaSeball (Hurting 2), Monday, 30 January 2012 16:09 (twelve years ago) link
yorkville is geographically 'the upper east side' but it's pretty different...that prob won't be the case after the 2nd avenue subway opens up.
― iatee, Monday, 30 January 2012 16:11 (twelve years ago) link
h8 the poor soooo much i'm glad they are so gullible wrt corporate pressures
― teaky frigger (darraghmac), Monday, 30 January 2012 16:37 (twelve years ago) link
lol @ Ladies Mile. might as well go back to Nieuw-Amsterdam while you're at it
― buzza, Monday, 30 January 2012 16:40 (twelve years ago) link
new amsterdam is such a dope name, i had a dream one that new york was named st charles
― lag∞n, Monday, 30 January 2012 16:51 (twelve years ago) link
yorkville is geographically 'the upper east side' but it's pretty different...
Wait, so which is the upper 70s and York Avenue, where my grandma lived? I (and she) always thought of that neighborhood as both definitively Yorkville and definitively Upper East Side.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 30 January 2012 17:56 (twelve years ago) link
well there are still some v rich people there but the overall york/1st/2nd/3rd and 5th/lex/mad/park are fairly distinct. I mean there is a lot of hair splitting in ny but I think when people say 'the upper east side' the implication is group 2
― iatee, Monday, 30 January 2012 18:06 (twelve years ago) link
york is def kinda its own thing, its known for that, narcissism of small diff and all naturally but still
― lag∞n, Monday, 30 January 2012 18:10 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah when I think UES I think rich and when I think Yorkville I think of people who would probably live in Brooklyn except they don't care about all that Brooklyn stuff
― frogBaSeball (Hurting 2), Monday, 30 January 2012 18:17 (twelve years ago) link
I think as far as hair splitting goes this is a hair worth splitting cause it's the difference between 'where the richest people on earth live' and 'the cheapest neighborhood to live in south of harlem'
― iatee, Monday, 30 January 2012 18:20 (twelve years ago) link
u know what's kinda an interesting lil anomaly is sutton place, it's the same st as york but for like 5 blocks its all exclusive and fancy
― lag∞n, Monday, 30 January 2012 18:23 (twelve years ago) link
the actual amont of space the richest people in the world take up of the ues expressed as a percentage is def like less than half
― lag∞n, Monday, 30 January 2012 18:25 (twelve years ago) link
this building round there is inneresting too: http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/an-1826-hotel-resort-still-standing-on-61st-street/
― iatee, Monday, 30 January 2012 18:28 (twelve years ago) link