I’m not even sure how coherent this ends up being – I am having a very bad brain-fog day and it has taken HOURS to write. But, here goes.

Today, I saw a conversation between a family (the father is disabled and they are living in extremely difficult conditions) and numerous others on Twitter – most notably, Demi Moore taking them to task for their criticism of celebrities who flaunt wealth and fame. Effectively, Mrs. Kutcher told them not to be mean but then changed her tune when she realized the circumstances were more complex than the conclusion she immediately jumped to (which is, by default: “Hey, just because we’re celebrities doesn’t mean you can criticize us”).

Of course, being twitter, this unleashed a shitstorm of messages attacking the poor folks with remarkably enlightened messages like “Get a job” and “Stop whining, things are hard for everybody”. Once again, I’m shocked when I realize I have underestimated just exactly how stupid so many people who consider themselves Joe Average can be.

We have this problem in the “First World” – the problem is people do not understand what being poor is in this culture. They see poor as starving children in Africa, or homeless people living in cardboard boxes. They look at television shows like Roseanne and think that’s as poor as you get, and hey – those people laugh and have fun, so it can’t be too bad… In spite of the point of the series being that they were a “working class poor” family, the Conners were rarely portrayed as all that poor. It was just background.

The fact is, being a low-income family in this culture doesn’t always look that much different than being middle-class at times, and that leads to ridiculous prejudice, assumptions and bigotry. Then, there’s the “It could be worse” syndrome that always afflicts those who are better off and choose to lecture…  Poor people struggle to pay their bills not because they spent/wasted the money on luxuries like some have, but because they don’t have the money in the first place. They sit at home, isolated, unable to afford evenings out, time with friends, or travel. They lack any ability to get the intellectual or emotional stimulation that is an ESSENTIAL part of the human experience. In the meantime, others far better off piss and moan about “having to go out AGAIN”.

Low-income kids get teased at school because they can’t afford the “right” brand names, while the family struggles to clothe them at all. Low-income parents who own vehicles have to drive around in them while they are poorly maintained and potentially unsafe because they have no choice. Low-income homeowners – and yes, there are some – can’t afford to repair problems, so they live with leaky roofs, and malfunctioning appliances, and have to board up broken windows because they can’t replace them. Yet, people look at these families and since the kids aren’t in rags, they have a vehicle, and they don’t live under a bridge in a refrigerator carton, they must not actually be “poor”.

On a scale comparing all but the poorest of the poor here to displaced people who are starving in other places, yeah – we’re pretty fucking fabulous. In Canada, we have health care and social benefits and drug plans. Without these benefits, I can’t imagine where we’d be – but it would most likely be dead. That is NOT hyperbole. Our family lives on HALF the level of income that is considered to be the poverty line in Canada. The poverty line is calculated by agencies and know-it-all types as the bare minimum income for a family to survive. I reiterate: we live on half that amount, and not only that, we have a vehicle (couldn’t live without one, no public transit), cell phones, own our home, pay property taxes, have multiple computers, a Wii with some cool games, and we actually own half-decent cameras.

The difference is: we have no financial security. If something breaks and I can’t fix it, it’s gone. We’re one malicious neighbour’s false report to social services away from losing our house. If your car were to break down, you’d be inconvenienced while you wait for it to be repaired for maybe a day or two. If you need to, you rent a car or something. When our car breaks down, we usually have to save for a month and eat absolutely the cheapest food possible to be able to get it back on the road. We’ve gone as long as 3 months begging rides from people here and there until we had the money to get our car fixed.  We’ve driven for months with clear vinyl over broken vehicle windows until we could afford a replacement – that I, in spite of being extremely limited physically, had to install myself because we can’t pay someone else to do it. There are others far worse off because they don’t even have that skill set.

My wife and I are smart enough to make the most of the resources available to us, and to constantly research what is available to us so we can achieve certain things: activities like getting  our kids into organized sports or swimming lessons; government programs to help us fix our leaky roof; getting a couple of meals worth of food from the food bank. Many low-income families lack the resources to even find the resources, others have too much pride to use them because of the humiliating ordeal they need to go through to use these supposedly freely-available programs. Regularly, we’re at the mercy of unconcerned bureaucratic machinery, causing further stress and erosion of morale.

So, you see, except for the poorest of all, the poor people in OUR society spend their time trying very hard NOT to look poor – mostly because of the response of assholes like this today. In the process, they sacrifice having a social life. They sacrifice having dignity. They have little freedom, live under constant high stress (we’re on the verge of losing our home stress, not “My job is shitty” stress), have very few rewards, and can’t just do the things that you constantly take for granted to relieve any of this pressure. And worst of all, if you say to some people that this causes people who receive government benefits to live shorter lives, there are those who would think that’s great, because it shortens the time they have to pay out benefits… right Mike Harris?

In response to this situation, I’m working on a list of “Frequent Idiotic Questions“, so in future I can simply refer to them by number. I’m linking it from here rather than including it as part of this post because 1) this is long, and 2) a true FAQ page stands on its own.

***UPDATE***

Just as I was about to publish this, I was messages on twitter by @solcomhouse who tried to convince me that the “poor family” was a bunch of scammers. Their evidence?

1. Some news story was published on May 8th, 2009 about some tweets that this user had posted. Apparently, reporters tried to contact the father about his tweets about “swine flu”. He never called back. (Gee, maybe that would be because he has a BRAIN INJURY and was not interested in/not capable of  talking to reporters?)
2. They are ebay “Power Sellers”¹. Let’s review, now: To be an ebay power seller, you need to sell $1000 worth of stuff 3 months in a row. $1000 in sales, not in profits. But lets say it WAS profits. $1000 a month for a family of 6 – how far does that go?

As usual, someone WITH money tries to prove that someone saying they are poor is in fact somehow not being truthful, using innuendo and rumour-mongering.

Do I agree with most of what “Steve Lange” says on twitter? Not on your life! But here is not the post to talk about that, as the things he/they have said are all covered by other blog entries, tweets and the like from the past. But have I experienced being attacked for making the best of being low income – like accusations of “How can you afford internet then?” – HELL yes, and you know what? It’s still wrong, no matter who you do it to.

Note ¹: Mr. Charles Welch, AKA @solcomhouse, is the type of person who says nasty things and then deletes the messages, cleansing himself like a fine Fleet Enema. I am leaving the link he broke intact. I wish I had thought to screencap it before he deleted it from twitter, but I have the screencap from Tweetdeck. Clearly, this is a person who has NO understanding of poverty or the struggles of having limited income. Look at the picture for what he said to me:

Really? I'm glad I am rich in order to afford the computer I capped this on.

State of Mind: Furious & Disgusted