Friday, January 16, 2015

for whom the muzzein calls....,


WaPo |  The poor pay more for everything, from rolls of toilet paper to furniture. It's not because they're spendthrifts, either. If you're denied a checking account, there's no way for you  to  avoid  paying a fee to cash a paycheck. If you need to buy a car to get to work, you'll have to accept whatever higher interest rate you're offered. If you don't have a car, the bus fare might eat up the change you'd save shopping at a larger grocery store as opposed to the local corner store.

It's easy to feel that "when you are poor, the 'system' is set up to keep you that way," in the words of one Reddit user, "rugtoad." That comment is at the top of an extraordinary thread full of devastating stories about what it's like to get by with nothing in the United States of 2015.

"Growing up really poor means realizing in your twenties that Mommy was lying when she said she already ate," wrote "deviant_devices," another commenter.

You can buy only a single pack of paper towels at a time, rather than saving on a bundle of 10, as "Meepshesaid" noted:
When you are broke, you can't plan ahead or shop sales or buy in bulk. Poor people wait to buy something until they absolutely need it, so they have to pay whatever the going price is at that moment. If ten-packs of paper towels are on sale for half price, that's great, but you can only afford one roll anyway. In this way, poor people actually pay more than others for common staple goods.
You can't pay for health insurance, and instead buy medicine from pet stores, as "colorcoma" writes:
I buy "fish" antibiotics online because I can't afford health care. … Amoxicillin and such. Mostly for husband who has Lyme's disease. We can't afford our monthly health care rates. We are 30somethings in the US. Really feel like a "bottom feeder".
You can't also buy shoes that will last for more than a few months, according to "DrStephenFalken":
I'm making $150- $200 a week and I need new shoes. So I can buy $60 shoes that will last or $15 walmart shoes. So I buy the walmart shoes and some groceries instead of just the $60 shoes and no groceries. Three months later I'll need new shoes again. But I'll also have to pay rent and my light bill is due. So I'll pay the light bill and buy some "shoe glue" for $4 to fix my shoes for another few weeks until I can buy the $15 ones again.
Economists have documented the "ghetto tax," as the additional costs of living paid by the poor are often known. A Brookings study from 2006 found that someone who is not able to open a checking account will typically pay between $5 and $50 to cash a $500 check, and that people in poor neighborhoods paid several hundred dollars more for homeowner's insurance, or to buy a car of a given make and model, than someone living in a wealthier neighborhood.

5 comments:

Ed Dunn said...

So Google cancel their Google Glass project and ceased sales and I cannot get a comment from all the Afro-futurists out there touting like Google Glass was the next big thing. But back to the ghetto tax - this is really a surcharge for the ghetto to do business with the mainstream operations instead of build their own businesses and encourage local business development in their communities. There was no "ghetto tax" prior to Civil Right Era and came about when the ghetto wanted those big name insurance providers, those big name bank accounts, etc.

CNu said...

There was a ghetto tax prior to the CRM. http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2014/05/in-15000-words-ta-nehisi-coates.html - in fact - during the height of Jim Crow, gate keeping negroes enjoyed a near monopoly franchise on goods and services provided to urban black folk little different than had those gate keeping negroes run a company store. The gate keeping, responsible negroes by no means lived up to the challenge you issued http://dreamandhustle.com/2015/01/knowing-the-price-martin-luther-king-jr-paid-how-do-you-plan-to-pay-it-forward/

I figure i'm about 10 years older than you Ed, my mentor is 14 years older than me, and my most respected elder (still thriving) a full 26 years older than me. This gives me a span of living memory history reaching back to 1940. So my own first person view, the paternal view, and the grand paternal - stretching from 12th and Vine to the Florida panhandle and from there up to Boston - tells me that not only have we been preyed upon via the rule of law from outside our formerly segregated communities, but that we've been preyed upon from within by collaborationist negroes - who.to.this.very.day - lament the loss of the franchise their parents and grand parents formerly enjoyed.

Best analogy I can give for this under-the-radar vampire "familiar" layer would be those Cuban refugees, who've cock-blocked any kind of sensible rapproachment with the Castro brothers since before I was born.

Constructive_Feedback said...

Brother Dunn:

Actually Google moved "Glass" into a new division, lead by the guy who created the "Nest" thermostat.


Google Glass 2 is in the works.
Instead of having the paying public ($1500 per shot) do the beta testing - they plan to have a more closely coupled private development effort.


BY NO MEANS is "Google Glass" dead.

You had better believe that "wearable technology" is THE NEXT BIG THING

Constructive_Feedback said...

So let me get this straight.

The HIGH COST of "Living In The Ghetto" is deemed to be a matter of INEQUALITY rather than the need for a MARKET DISRUPTOR?


WHO SAID that the "Market Price" for the mass society is the "STANDARD PRICE" and that the 'GHETTO PRICE" is HIGH?

WHY IS IT NOT THE CASE that the "MARKET INEFFICIENCIES" as present in the GHETTO make it a REAL REFLECTION OF MARKET COSTS - while the GENERAL MARKET PRICE (which is lower) is the result of MARKET EFFICIENCY:

* Efficient "Wholesale Distribution"
* Rapid Product Turn Over - leading to reduced costs
* PREDICTABILITY IN SALES VOLUMES making "Credit For Accounts Payables" easier to obtain


The KOREANS/INDIANS/PAKISTANIS/DOMINICANS who operate stores WITHIN THE GHETTO are CASE STUDIES on how that which was called a 'FOOD DESERT' by the CIVIL RIGHTS BIGOTS, can in turn be harvested into a thriving business which pays to SEND THE OWNER'S CHILDREN TO SCHOOL so that their next generation does not have to sit in a store behind bullet proof glass for 14 hour days at work.

CNu said...

lol, it's not "their own" stuff. While you might argue that peasants ought to make efforts in the care and upkeep of their master's manor, the peasants may have a very different point of view. War and civil war is only ever fought among elites. The actual fighting and dying may be peasant-filled, and peasants may even be given patriotic and other faux-sentimental heads-full-of-mush in exchange for their fighting and dying on behalf of their overlords, but at the end of the day, the wealth destruction involves the property of those selfsame elites.

If you want a barometer of what's next in America, watch and see whether there is a further liberalization of controversial laws effecting individual sovereignty, or, a hard-right and fascist police state crackdown. If the former, then as per DD, we'll probably be alright in the long-haul. (if climate change and methane release doesn't get us) - if the latter, then we're at the endgame and that's all she wrote as per the Hypertiger.

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