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

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!

he doesn't need a case

or rather, here is his case "I live on something around $20,000"

fin

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.

he doesn't need a case

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).

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.

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 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.

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 read posts too fast and i thought that one was recommending spending your money on PCP

honestly if what you're looking for is stability and guaranteed food and housing, PCP might be your best bet, pound for pound

ashes to ashes, dust to dust

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!!

I mean maybe then dude could have made a more informed decision and never even started!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuLnOncrvY4

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’.

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.

Shari obv otm

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 know what, actually, this is my own personal hangup that I'm dragging in here, forget it.

this is really hilarious and pitiful http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/realestate/so-youre-priced-out-now-what.html

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

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EconomistsView/~3/2wmw7LV3pvg/who-cares-how-deserving-the-poor-are.html

do assholes deserve to be poor is more the question we should be asking ourselves

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 (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."

the whole tine of the thing was just really idk weird and sad, also its not like people dont know these 'other neighborhoods' exist

Bargains of the Times, always seven figures

Those "The Hunt" features are often quiddity-worthy except they're usually kinda too boring.

is 'ladies mile' really a thing

where the fuck is that? i couldn't be bothered to read more after I saw that G'point is the backup East Village.

Wait, since when is Yorkville not the Upper East Side?

"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

Priced out of New York? Try East New York, just east of New York.

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.

h8 the poor soooo much i'm glad they are so gullible wrt corporate pressures

lol @ Ladies Mile. might as well go back to Nieuw-Amsterdam while you're at it

new amsterdam is such a dope name, i had a dream one that new york was named st charles

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.

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

york is def kinda its own thing, its known for that, narcissism of small diff and all naturally but still

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

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'

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

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

this building round there is inneresting too:
http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/an-1826-hotel-resort-still-standing-on-61st-street/

As I mentioned to Chakim, perhaps to curry sympathy

: |

lol yeah that line

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

this is a hilariously tone-deaf juxtaposition

I'm a smoker and don't have a lot of sympathy for my fellow addicts, tbh.