Day: August 1, 2017

misslucy21:

revolutionarygays:

i hate so much when rich people claim they could live on minimum wage

you can’t. you absolutely fucking can’t.

it’s not just about how literally impossible it can be or how the rich are so accustomed to luxury they wouldn’t be able to stomach being poor – it’s about the fact that any experience rich people have had with poverty was temporary.

“to prove that $8/hr is humane i lived on minimum wage for a month – and it was fine. you just have to spend wisely and be frugal.”

i promise any rich person who’s done (if they even have) something like that was ACHING by the end of that month. that week. they were edging out the end of that month thinking “after this i can go back to my cozy $100k a year, i just have to get this month over with”

it’s livable, right? this guy proved it. one month and he’s sure – it’s totally doable! he ate gross food and kept his lights off and his AC off and scrounged up change for gas for a month and it wasn’t THAT bad!

but man…. imagine if that was your whole life.

i’m sure they felt a little stressed after realizing how tight the budget was at the end of that month… imagine that but for years. years and years with no end in sight. you never have the relief of going back to your $100k salary and flat screen TV. it’s years upon years of pent up stress and anxiety

what if your car breaks down? what if you miss your bus? what if you have an unexpected charge on your card and overdraft? what if the kids want pizza? what if you call out sick from work? what if you can’t afford christmas presents?

and on top of the stress, you’re poor and you don’t have much free time because you take all the hours you can get to make ends meet. instead of cooking you have to eat shitty banquet and michelinas meals because delivery and takeout are too expensive. and the more tired you get, the more exhausted, the more shitty food you consume just to try to keep going.

and you probably don’t have good healthcare!

you’re stressed, you’re eating poorly, your body hurts from all the work and you’re too poor to pay for medical help, things like car repair fall by the wayside in order to provide, you’re sad, you start drinking to cope, etc

this is the cycle poor people are fucking trapped in. this is why the minimum wage is a fucking failure to all impoverished people in america.

this is the toll “just being frugal” takes on poor people after living for decades like that. adddiction, mental illness, lawbreaking – these things are associated with low class and poor people because it’s what happens to us and what we resort to when the system fails us.

Also, consider start up costs. If you are purposefully living on minimum wage to “prove a point”, you probably have things like decent pots and pans for cooking. Or pantry stuff like spices, etc. Or, laundry facilities in your home, which is a huge, huge time and money saver. Like, I can’t explain how much that makes a difference. Or an actual decent house that doesn’t need repairs in ways that make it more difficult to do day to day life (like, good functioning plumbing or screens in good repair, or light fixtures that work right). All of those things are going to make it easier to get by with minimum wage money. Plus, things like insurance are plain cheaper when you have more money, so less is coming out of a paycheck for premium payments (by percentage if mot actual cash). Or copays are less. Etc.

The point is, trying some sort of challenge to “see what it’s like to be poor” just doesn’t take into account of all the things beyond the paycheck or the food stamp budget or whatever. There are a ton of nuances and things that people don’t realize unless it’s something they have lived or have close experience with through family, etc.