RE: Land of let's only talk about whats wrong with the US

From: Spike (spike66@comcast.net)
Date: Sat Aug 23 2003 - 17:50:12 MDT

  • Next message: Matt Welland: "Re: Considering standard of living (was Re: Land of let's only talk about whats wrong with the US)"

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Barbara Lamar

    Spike wrote:
    > Depends on what you mean by the term "support". If
    > one is satisfied with the standard of living they
    > had "then," one minimum salary is way more than sufficient
    > to make it happen.

    Barbara wrote: I challenge you, Spike -- I'm not kidding, this is an
    honest-to-dog challenge -- next time you can take six months off from
    work, go out and try living at the lower end of the economic scale...

    Barbara, I have *some* experience with poverty in the
    form of a summer in Seattle in a $50 a month "apartment".
    It had no electricity or windows, but the four apartments
    had running water in the common kitchen down the hall, and
    even a homebrew "shower" of sorts, plus an actual flush
    toilet, so it wasn't as primitive as Gilligan's Island.
    I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better. {8^D

    ... Here are the rules:

    1. You cannot rely on your higher education or professional
    experience...

    I didn't have those at the time, just an incomplete
    engineering degree and not the foggiest clue.

    ... 2. You have to leave your vehicle(s), credit cards, nice clothing,
    etc. at home...

    That was easy: didn't have a vehicle at the time,
    unless you count a junkyard-refugee motorcycle I
    managed to resurrect. Didn't have credit cards
    or nice clothing either.

    ... 3. You cannot take money from your bank account via ATM, online or
    through any other means...

    There were no ATMs in 83, but it didn't matter, since I
    had no bank account anyway, nor any actual money to put
    in it had I had one.

    ...The only way you're allowed to get money is to earn it or obtain it
    through begging...

    The minimum wage was so high with respect to prices
    in the early 80s that teenagers had to compete for
    those jobs with actual adults. I lost. {8^D

    ... (by the way, I've been told by people who know from first-hand
    experience that for the short term, you can do better by begging than by
    getting a minimum wage job...

    Funny you should mention that, for I just returned from
    a motorcycle trip down to one of my favorite hangouts,
    Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. I had to check
    out the controversial new Hooters, make sure that the
    young nubiles employed there were not being exploited
    by the evil capitalists, you understand. (Oh my goodness,
    if only I were an evil capitalist. There were a number
    of shapely young lovelies at that Hooters who I would
    cheerfully and repeatedly exploit. {8^D )

    On the wharf, one can see a large number of unoccupied
    ecological niches for those in the gray area between
    working and begging, an occupation that may be generically
    defined as "Will work for fooding." Along with the usual
    collection of harlots of both genders (and everything
    in between), one will see various street entertainers,
    mimes, joke tellers, buskers, instrumentalists, card
    tricksters, fire-and-brimstone preachers, etc, all making
    an apparently decent tax free living off of tips from the
    touristas.

    The will-work-for-fooders can make it by having a
    schtick: pretending to have Parkinsons disease, for
    instance. Today I saw one dressed in fishing garb,
    hip boots, lure encrusted vest, with a sign saying
    "The worst day fishing beats the best day working."
    He had a pole with a paper cup tied on the end of
    his line. Whenever a tourista would drop a few
    coins in his cup, he would shout "GOT ONE!" and
    reel it in.

    Of course everyone there was a Vietnam veteran,
    including those who were born well after the fall
    of Saigon and those older than Senator Strom Thurman.
    A notable exception was one whose sign insisted
    "NOT a Vietnam vet. Went to Canada. It sucked there too."
    The touristas gave him money.

    The saxophone player got my attention, for I am
    sure I can play better than he. With my
    scrawny build, I could set up a sign saying
    "Starving Musician" and people would believe it.
    I have never used any kind of dope, but I kinda
    look like a heroine addict, so perhaps people
    would withhold donations for fear that they
    would be contributing to my downfall. {8^D

    ...4. You have to live like this for a minimum of six months...

    Interesting challenge Barbara, but I must decline,
    for in my business, aerospace engineering, a six
    month hole in the resume will result in one's losing
    one's clearances, for the security people cannot
    be sure one was not conspiring with the commies
    during that period. That small portion of aerospace
    engineering that does not require clearances has
    already been mostly outsourced to Russia, with
    little chance of it ever returning. A lot of
    those who left the biz to chase a dream during
    the dot.com boom were unable to get back in. Im
    not ready to retire, altho the possibility of
    job loss in the next couple years looms large.

    ...Also, bare survival isn't enough if you have children...

    This I freely acknowledge. By the time the kids
    get to first grade, they quickly learn that
    poor is not sexy, and counterculture is not sexy.
    I suspect that some of our best ruthless capitalists
    grew up in antimaterialist homes. But the media
    soon bombards them with messages that wealth, glamour
    and glitter is where it is at, brought to you by
    glamour and glitter salesmen. This is not a value
    judgement on my part, merely an observation.

    > Today you can earn enough to support yourself in
    > a similar manner by working only a few months.
    > Look around you, Robbie. Farmland is as cheap as,
    > well, dirt. It costs practically nothing.

    ..."Practically nothing" is quite relative. You can pick up land in the
    middle of the desert for just a few bucks an acre, but most tracts of
    land on the market are in the thousands of acres...

    My comment came from our family's experience with
    my great-grandfather's farm in Greenup county Kentucky.
    The family moved there in 1915 and they farmed it until
    about the mid sixties, not very profitably I might add.
    Then my grandfather and two of his brothers hobby farmed
    it after he retired on and off in the 70s. The vacant
    farm is still owned by one of my uncles but has been
    fallow for three decades.

    Greenup county has fewer people now than at the dawn
    of the 20th century, as most of the small farms up
    thru there have been abandoned. The soil is good there,
    a stream runs year around, but it is hilly, so the 16
    (or so) farmable acres are irregularly shaped and not
    well suited to large farm equipment. Somehow they managed
    to raise six children on that land. That farm and
    others like it can be had for a very low price. Many
    of them are likely being held merely for sentimental
    reasons, and arrangements could be had to rent those
    farms for almost nothing.

    But none of the farms up that way have been operated
    for any real profit for a long time. Tobacco is the
    only profitable product, but tobacco is a very labor
    intensive crop, so it would require a large family
    to make it go, and even then, most of the children
    would likely eventually conclude than a minimum wage
    job in twon is a far easier way to live.

    Another example of a way to make a living without
    begging or a 9 to 5 is found up along the Kern
    River in Southern Taxifornia. On the map, find
    Ridgecrest, go west on 178 to Lake Isabella, turn
    north up to Johnsondale and Camp Nelson. There
    are a few subsistence farms along the river, and no
    one cares what the hell you do up that way.

    Gleaning of fields: I have an old college buddy who
    raises potatoes in Idaho. Every year people show up
    with burlap sacks right after the harvesters
    are finished, every year he gives them as many
    potatoes as they can physically carry away. He's
    a generous guy: last year a vw bus showed up. He
    loaded them up with as many as it would hold, these
    being potatoes he already paid to have harvested.
    I figure it is only a matter of time before someone
    arranges to step on some sharp object or somehow
    "accidentally" injure themselves while gleaning those
    fields, so they can get themselves a free ticket in
    the lawsuit lottery.

    Those who say it is getting tougher seem to want to
    both live near a city and raise larvae, two tasks that
    I would agree would be tough if one wants to drop
    out of the rat race. My contention is that if you
    forgo all luxuries, don't smoke, drink or do drugs,
    then it is easier now to merely survive than ever before.

    Still, I cheerfully opt for the modern rat race and
    everything that goes with it: the pressing crowds,
    the vanity and vexation, the endless search for meaning,
    the hurry, the struggle of constant competition,
    the pointless glory of it all.

    May the fastest rat win.

    spike

     



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Aug 23 2003 - 18:04:59 MDT