http://www.crumbproducts.com/files/A-SHORT-HISTORY-OF-AMERICA-.jpg
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I should have said food stamps. There is a difference, right? Thatâs easy. The person in front of you pays with an EBT card, and as you leave you see them piling their stuff into a new SUV.
Iâve also delivered free turkey dinners to people on Thanksgiving for the Salvation Army, and was surprised that my car was one of the oldest ones in the neighborhood. While there were people clearly grateful and probably needed these dinners, I also saw people with $1000 TVs in their living rooms. Though I believe they give dinners to anyone who requested one. They may not have been on food stamps.
Anyway - while I am sure my limited anecdotal experiences are hardly âproofâ, I would still stand by my statement that car ownership <> rich. People of very modest means still have cars. (Of course this doesnât apply to everyone, YMMV. Void where prohibited by law.)
ETA - I donât know what all they are buying, though I think you can get steaks etc. Usually itâs like what most people buy - lots of junk food. No, they arenât all black or Hispanic. Around half of them are white. Thanks for playing.
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Thanks for playing?
Whatever, Mister. Itâs interesting that you wrote âwelfareâ at first, and how detailed your interest is in people who receive assistance while also having nice stuff. Sticks in your craw, does it? And maybe itâs only cuz youâre on BB that you didnât use the phrase âwelfare queenâ?
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The âplayingâ statement was for SamâSam who assumed I was judging who was on welfare by race. I am fully aware on the racial stats of welfare and how whites are like 40% of it. I find it frustrating when ever poor people are brought up, one automatically assumes it refers to poor minorities. Growing up in a poor white town, I assume the opposite, usually.
How detailed my interest is in people who receive assistance also having nice stuff? What does that even mean?
Yeah I used the generic term âwelfareâ, though thinking about it later there is a difference between welfare and food stamps and I made that distinction when asked further about it. I can clearly see if one is on food stamps - not other forms of assistance.
Not sure where all the hostile hot buttons like âsticking in my crawâ and âwelfare queenâ comes from. You donât know me. You have no idea what my background is. Iâm shopping in stores where it seems like every other person has an EBT card, so Iâm not living in a gilded community. Not that itâs any of your business, but I grew up on gov. cheese and powdered milk. I had a long era of unemployment, and am currently underemployed, making less than half of the average median income for my region. My car was made in America in 2001. It is on borrowed time.
I donât have any problem with people having ânice thingsâ, though in my experience a lot of poorer people have poor impulse control and their spending habits and priorities compound their troubles. Examples: woman spending $75 on hair and nails bitching she has no money for her kids for Christmas. Friend of mine with minimum wage job who had a sound system and laser disc collection that was better than anyoneâs I have known since. Friend of mine wanted $20 for diapers after buying new rims for his car the week before. And itâs hard for me to see the justification of paying $40-80/mo more for a smart phone plan (as well as the added cost of the phone in some cases) when youâre eating hot dogs and cereal everyday. Note - Iâm not immune to this. While I try to be frugal, I recently splurged on the new South Park game.
But anyway - I suppose none of that is any of my business and is besides the point. My original argument and statement that cars arenât afforded only to the rich still stands. If people doing worse off than I are some how able to afford newer, nicer cars, then obviously the car is accessible to the proletariat, not just the bourgeoisie.
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Yes, the whole topic is a derailment, so I agree that itâs best to get back to the main one. And hereâs hoping that you can find fuller employment (and a newer car) soon.
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You didnât say what you were judging it on in your first comment. When you say, as you did, âI see many, many people [âŚ] driving nicer, newer cars,â the obvious assumption is that you mean you see them driving by you, and so itâs not unnatural to wonder how you could presume to know they were on welfare, besides basing it on certain stereotypes.
Everyone jumped on you because (a) it certainly sounded like you were making judgements based on stereotypes, and (b) it plays into one of the most common conservative myths (welfare, Cadillacs, T-bone steaks, etc.) I think if you re-read your comment you wouldnât be surprised that you were jumped on.
But yes, this is a derailment of the topic. Sorry.
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Not that I consider myself a conservative, but yes, letâs stereotype conservatives by assuming that they are constantly stereotyping. :o/ I mean you really have to add some dots to connect that my one sentence observation was race based - like assuming poor=minority.
Youâd think that after 128 years these stuck-in-the-past pedestrians would have updated their antiquated travel model and adapted to the disruptive technology of automobilesâŚ
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Iâve spent a lot of time volunteering to teach disadvantaged people financial skills. One of the difficulties is that money has to be spent NOW, because by next week you might be robbed or have to give what you have to a family member in need. If you donât have any money, it canât be taken from you.
Also, if you see a new car rather than a beater, itâs almost certainly leased. People who canât afford down payments and/or canât get credit for less than usury rates usually can still get a car lease.
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In the failed state of a town I lived in recently, leasing of rims was becoming common. What is that, I donât even.
Normally, you have to pay me to watch a nine-minute video, but that was just incredibly full of win. Thanks!
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Donât forget that alcohol plays a role in a huge percentage of auto deaths and injuries, (10,000 deaths in 2010). Given the number of miles driven and the number of drivers, Iâm not sure the number of deaths is that high. Iâm surprised there arenât more auto/pedestrian deaths in urban areas. The car, for better or worse, has shaped the modern landscape.
I bloody canâtâŚ
Nine minutes? Youâd haveta pay me a lot. Be cheaper to pay someone to type up a transcript.
Naw, itâs awesome. Underwater cities, jet-cars, traffic slowing down to a mere 80mph in heavy congestion⌠totally worth nine minutes. Just have a barley-pop in hand and sit back.
Another thing I liked was that in the early 50s, solar power was considered to be a step up the technological scale from atomic power. Advocates of fission hadnât reached their current level of fetishism, where they literally canât conceive of anything ever being better than atomic power (even though in real life itâs no more technologically sophisticated than running a victorian steam engine from heated rocks.) Refreshing!
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Now, hey. Thereâs naturally-occurring nuclear piles. That means itâs green! Are you hating on my freedoms? You are, arenât youâŚ?
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I pray you are right. The tech will be ready, but will our driving culture just roll over for the robots?
best. in. thread.
fuckin saved.
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For point of reference, does anyone know how the rate of accidental deaths per miles travelled by automobile compares with the rate of accidental deaths per miles travelled in the pre-automobile age? I imagine a fair number of people died after being thrown from horses or run down by wagons, but I have no real idea how frequent such occurrences were.
