Tag: poverty

“Why ain’t you rich?”

Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.

Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse Five”, 1969.
Photo by Timur Weber on Pexels.com

This quote could have been published yesterday and it would still be just as true, though it would probably apply to more countries than just the United States now as Capitalist ideals have become more prevalent in other cultures.

No one wants to admit that they’re poor, even if they are, in the United States because there is still an assumption that poverty and unworthiness go hand in hand. If you’re poor, you must be stupid, as Vonnegut wrote, or lazy, or ridden with vices. I wonder how much of this idea is genuinely out there circulating among average people these days.

It seems like more people are starting to understand that you can work hard every day and still have nothing to show for it at the end of the month. That’s how the system is set up, and with increasing wealth disparities and higher prices for even necessary goods, let alone “luxury” items like basic entertainment, almost everyone is starting to feel the pinch. Even the faltering middle-class.

I don’t think the American poor hate themselves, though. I think the American poor hate being poor. I think the problem is just that people tend to think they need to be wealthy before they can be happy. It’s definitely easier to be happy when you can pay all of your bills and live comfortably, but I think we need something more than just material comfort for happiness. It would be incorrect to say that the poorest people in the country need assistance to reach a basic level of security, but I also think there has to be a change in mindset in terms of what we see as worthwhile ways to live.

Think of the people we idolize on television. Think of the Kardashians. They’re wealthy, but are they really role models? Are they what people should aspire to be? Are they worth glorifying? Are they better just because they’re wealthy? I don’t think so. There’s nothing necessarily good about being wealthy and there’s nothing necessarily bad about being poor. The goodness and badness of a person is based on more than that and value in life comes from more than the thickness of a person’s wallet.

I particularly enjoy the bit Vonnegut added about the tiny, poorly put together American flag attached to the register. I see it as symbolizing an idea that continually contributing to the current economic system is essential patriotism, even when you’re barely hanging on. There’s really no reason for our country to be this shabby when the country as a whole has so much wealth to go around. I’m not saying we should be wholly socialist, but I am saying we should have caps on wealth generation that force company executives to fairly distribute company earnings to all employees, say by limiting top earners to a percentage of what the bottom earners receive, including both real wages and stock options, bonuses, etc.

People who start businesses often come to the table with wealth in their pockets. They have ideas, but the employees who help them realize their vision are an essential part of the process. It’s absurd that people working at some of the most successful companies on Earth receive government subsidies because they’re paid poverty wages.

Money is definitely hard to come by and easy to spend. Depending one your circumstances in life, where you were born and what family you were born into particularly, you may never become wealthy, but that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, or not worthwhile. And fuck feeling grateful for being paid minimum wage. It’s called the minimum wage because it’s supposed to be the bare minimum a person should earn to be able to live. It’s not a requirement. It’s a choice. And employers should choose to reward employees who work hard to keep them rich.

The cherry on this quote from Vonnegut, though, is the comment about a pub owner being poor. If Vonnegut thought a small business owner was poor, then what would he think of the rest of us?

Being happy with enough

Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

A lot of the problems we have in the world right now are because people want things that they don’t need, like a new phone every two years for example, and it creates a constant dissatisfaction with the present.

I wonder if this is why rich people kill themselves? They have so much, and not knowing what to do with it and not having time to use it must create additional layers of dissatisfaction.

The focus on living in the present moment that Marcus Aurelius wrote about reminds me of Buddhism. Aurelius even says that we shouldn’t worry about the past or the future because they do not exist.

Montage of Poverty and Upscale Construction

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While we were commuting back and forth through the Philippines I noticed something that I haven’t seen anywhere else.  The Philippines is like a montage of poverty, middle class, and upper-class establishments and homes.

What I mean is that in, say, the US, you have neighborhoods that are well-to-do.  The houses are all very nice.  Then you have middle class neighborhoods, lower class neighborhoods, and poverty level neighborhoods.  In the commercial areas, everything is fairly well put together.  Everything has a sort of continuity to it.  You see what you expect to see for the area of town you’re in.  Maybe it has something to do with zoning, or with developers buying large plots of land.  I don’t know.

In the Philippines, however, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of zoning.  There doesn’t seem to be any sort of building code either.  You might be standing in front of a popular mall that’s as modern and attractive as any mall in the US or Singapore, but right next to it, or across the street, are buildings that look like they were constructed entirely of plywood and sheet metal.  You could be standing in front of a McDonalds, but when you look down the alley next to it, you see shanties that would make the Red Cross cringe for the lack of quality of life.  It’s an incredibly jarring experience.

This seems to be common to almost every part of the Philippines.  The old and the new, the ultra-poor and the ultra-posh, set up right next to each other.  You can even see this in the housing areas, such as they are.  You might have a nicely built home right next to a house that even bums wouldn’t want to live in, in the US.  From what I can see, as long as the land is yours, you can put whatever you want to on it, of whatever quality you want.  There was one instance where I wondered about whether or not the homes were built legally.  We were riding a bus on the highway between Angeles City and Manila.  The portion of the highway we were on was raised about two stories above the ground.  I’m not sure why it was raised, except maybe that there were quite a few little streams passing below the road.  What caught my attention is that people who were farming the land had set up their houses below the road, in the shade it created.  Maybe laws are different in the Philippines, but I assumed that doing something like that would be considered unsafe and illegal.

There are areas where land developers seem to be trying to build a more modern type of sub-division.  One in particular comes to mind, near the housing area where my wife’s family lives in Antipolo.  It’s walled off, gated, and the houses inside have a modern construction to them.  Just outside the wall, though, is the normal eye-jarring experience.  I’ve also seen posh, walled and gated apartment complexes situated in the middle of an area that looks like a slum.

On my next trip I’ll try to take a few pictures to add to this post as examples.

Beggars In The Philippines

Bradley Farless3 Comments

Beggars are a pretty common sight in the Philippines, but not all of them are what they seem.

In the U.S. there’s a running joke that some bums are just bums part-time to make some extra money. When they’re done they go home to wash up for the night and get ready for work in the morning. My wife tells me that in the Philippines there are professional beggars.

It was pretty easy to pick out the people that were actually having a hard time there. In front of the Nepo mall in Angeles City there was a man sitting on the ground, begging for change. The guy was really old, really browned, really wrinkled, and really skinny, to the point that he looked like he might starve to death at any moment. We happened to have an extra cheeseburger on us (we’d bought some stuff from Jollibee to sneak into the movie theater; we don’t keep cheeseburgers in our pockets usually) and passed one off to him. His reaction was a bit odd. He looked at it, sniffed it, and then eyed us, as if he wasn’t sure it was really safe to eat. I couldn’t tell if they guy hadn’t seen a wrapped burger in so long he’d forgotten what it was, or if he was accustomed to people handing him garbage as a cruel joke.

On the other hand, there was a little girl at the bus station in Angeles City that was really annoying. Looking at her you could see she was well fed. Her clothes were a bit worn out looking, but not the ratty type you would expect to see on someone so poor they had to beg. As soon as she saw me she ran over to me and started begging for money, but it wasn’t just that. She started grabbing at me and grabbing at my bag. If her hand had found its way into my bag I’m sure she would have tried to run with whatever she got her dirty little paws on. Telling her no didn’t seem to work. It took having my wife tell her to get lost in Tagalog for her to finally give up. It seemed to startle her and she fled. She must have had a short memory though, because a few days later we passed through that same station and she tried her trick again. This time I didn’t even bother to stop. My wife turned to tell her to get lost again but when she realized the girl wasn’t there anymore we kept walking. I remember the kid sort of bouncing off my hip. I’m not sure if she wound up on her ass or kept her balance, but I don’t really feel bad about it, surprisingly, even though she couldn’t be more than 8 years old.

I guess by that point I became numbed to the people trying to rip me off and they stopped registering as ‘people.’ If you visit the Philippines you’ll have a better understanding of what I mean, but imagine having a cloud of mosquitos buzzing around your head whenever you’re in the street, but instead of biting you, they talk: “Bzzzzzzz hey mister bzzzz buy buy buy bzzz cheap bzzz good deal bzzz mister mister!”

That wasn’t the only time a little girl tried to hit me up for money in the Philippines. It seems like little girls, the cute ones at least, are the weapon of choice for Filipinos looking to make extra money off of foreigners and foolish locals. Child exploitation anyone?

In March of last year I was sitting with my wife at Gloria Jeans coffee at the Galleria mall in Manila, watching the traffic and the rain when a little girl walked up to the table. This was my first experience with this, though I’d been warned. At least this kid was trying to offer something in return. She had a handful of fake flowers that she was trying to sell for an insanely inflated price. I told her I wasn’t interested, and tried to shoo her away, but she played dumb and kept insisting. This was the first time I had to be rescued by my wife, who told her to get lost in Tagalog. I need to find a way to get rid of them myself, because my wife might not always be nearby when they launch their attack. I suppose I could just whack them in the head and tell them to leave me alone, but that might land me in jail.

This last trip, just after I plowed through the grabby little girl at the train station (and checked all my belongings) my wife and I sat down in a Jollibee and had lunch. While we were there I saw a dirty looking boy outside the window, lying down on the pavement in the shade. I asked my wife what was up with him, and she told me that he’s another fake beggar, but one that uses a different tactic. Instead of being energetic and grabby, like the little girls, they try to appear forlorn and destitute.

It all reminded me of a story she told me about how my former boss handed out money to beggars while he was visiting the Philippines and wound up getting lectured by his wife (a Filipina) about letting himself get suckered. Maybe I’m just a bastard, but I’ve decided to not take the time to try to figure out if they’re genuine or not. Unless it’s obvious, like the guy in front of the Nepo mall, I’ll just ignore them all.

It’s hard enough to hold onto your Pesos in the Philippines without letting yourself be done in by fake beggars. Keep that in mind if you ever go to the Philippines for a visit.