Overlord Morgus wrote:

4chan's words, not mine:

People want a new phone and car every year, the full cable package, and a house so big that they'll gladly take at least thirty years to pay it off.
Then they want to turn around and bitch that the rich shouldn't have so much damn money. Fuck those people.

Yeah! Fuck those people who want a phone! And a new car every yea.... wait.

Who the fuck gets a new car every year?

Not a new used car. A new car.

Show of hands. Anyone? Bueller?

Yeah, income inequality.  Has nothing at all to do with lower class and the poor, it's just upper middle class people whining. Wanting a comfortable and secure life for you and you're loved ones sure is unrealistic and selfish of us.  How dare we.

But that's if you have credit in the first place.  There are lots of things I would purchase on credit -namely, having something there to help back me up in the case of an emergency.  If I needed 100 dollars for a few nights hotel space in a strange area, 300 for dental work or even the 700 I just had to spend on my dog's sudden and serious medical problems.  But I haven't passed a credit check in two years.  And that is entirely due to three things:  I don't enough money, my credit was damaged by trying to the do the right thing and apply for loans without a co-signer first, and AT&T fucked up and double-billed me for three months straight, sending me to a collection agency before they rectified their mistake.

Credit enough to do something with is such a luxury, that once you have it it's hard not to use it.  Because suddenly all those things that were unobtainable because payment plans are getting scarcer (no vet in Springfield has a payment plan, for example) finally are.  And hey, you get to make payments.  I also see many people buying expensive phones and nice make-up and video game consoles who live in shit conditions.  And that doesn't surprise me.  Because it is not the price of those small luxuries that is exorbitant, it's rent, cars, homes and the cost of living that is.  If you can't afford a nice place to live, you may still be able to afford smaller treats like an Xbox off of ebay, or some junk food every week.  Because people still want to live happy lives.  I mean, you could save that money and eventually have enough to get a house (not a nicer apartment, because the higher rent will eat at those savings too quickly without building equity), but you may not have the credit.  That's the problem my sister and brother in law had in purchasing a new home. Which they were never able to do.  They ended up building one instead because it was cheaper (they got help through their Hall).   

The credit cards that ARE easier to get, well, they are often predatory.

But we have all done crap like this.  Spend money we know we should have saved.  Purchased something outside our means.  And it's not just the "American Dream" pressure put on us.  We want to enjoy this life we are all working so hard to get through, and we are ashamed, so very ashamed of our own poverty.  Because it is implied in most political rhetoric that to be poor is to be lazy or uneducated.


[I only even got television because my internet went up to 45 a month here, and the new cable/internet package was only 50 dollars with completely free install and equipment.  The only other company that offers internet where I am at was wanting 45 month for internet as well, so I figured why not.  It gives my guests something to distract themselves with when they come over, since my tiny apartment is not super hospitable or properly furnished.)

From 4chan, re: Ayn Rand

But if we're all golden child artists and industrialists, who tills the fields?

Oh right, the people whose calling it is to till the fields, who love that work and take great pride in it. The Professional Field Tillers, whose destiny it is to till the fields, and whose big rough hands looks really sexy while they till the fields, and everyone agrees that they tilled those fields really good.

Oh wait, shit. There's no one like that. Because that's a fucking fantasy, and manual labor is done by the less wealthy in the service of the more-wealthy.

Rand theorizes a really nice skyscraper where we all live on the top floor, but the foundation doesn't exist. What foundation? The skyscraper will hold itself up; we all just have to stand up really tall.

And on perhaps a more abstract note: the ubermensch may or may not be a possibility, but being rich and self-important certainly isn't enough to earn you that title.

And finally, my words, not 4chan's:

It is common to deride the underclass as parasitic, when the truth is they are indispensible. They are the reminder to the lower and middle classes of the price of disobedience, that terrible things await them if they step off the treadmill. They're what keeps people in their jobs, they're the electrified wire that keeps the cows fenced in.

Last edited by Overlord Morgus (10-11-2012 01:59:11 PM)