[Newfie]

VT SAID:
“What about the pig farm the guy lived behind?
What did everybody else do for a living including your folks?
I've shoveled my share of horse and cow manure so know a thing or two about growing up poor. It wasn't the pine barons of New Jersey but then you didn't have forty below zero or six feet of snow on the ground.”

The “pig farm” itself was a defunct operation of just a few animals. “pig farm” was more a derisive place name, not a “farm” in the true sense of the word.

My Dad was a bayman, tonging for clams, literally scrapping the bottom of the bay for a living. Mom cleaned houses, I guess you would call her a domestic. Many others worked construction, building cheap vacation house developments, all piece work, and seasonal. Then there were those who worked the vacation trade, 10 weeks a year. Yes a few, damn few, had anything like what we would call a regular job. 10 miles to a “super market”, 15 miles to a movie, 39 to a hospital. A “good job” was as tool taker on the Garden State Parkway.

So your point about folks being displaced by mechanization is far from relevant.

My point remains that as poor as things were most folks found a way to make a living. A few chose to live very poorly. Those folks up the road, they always had a few horses. No farm, so all feed was bought. They could buy horse feed but not electricity. That is a choice.

Now I suppose a lot of folks would say that’s the way we live now. We gave up our downtown Philly brownstone. We don’t have heat or AC. We use a foot pump to get water in the sink. We have no TV and do not listen to the radio. Most people don’t understand our life style and would never ever consider it. Hell, must cruisers we meet are only doing it for a few weeks or months as a break. Yet we don’t consider ourselves poor or deprived, indeed we are rich in experience.

People make life style choices that do not make sense to us personally. It is not good to over generalize about what is good or bad for another.

[Tanada]

Drug dealers, hookers, loan sharks...Do you think this money just disappears? No, the drug dealer is making lots more money than he gets from welfare.

I have lived on the streets...this is something people don't understand. Drug dealers and hookers are making big money. They operate outside the system so we view them as downtrodden and criminals. But they are making money while we pity them and give them more. They are working the system a whole lot better than you are

Why not just let people be people. Accept that there are other ways to be and tax it We really are one community. Hiding from it doesn't change a thing.

A lot of people who grew up middle or upper class suffer from a shortsightedness problem when it comes to poor people. They think money makes you happy so they assume poor people must be unhappy and downtrodden and need to be 'lifted up' for which they will be eternally grateful to those who supply the lifting.

The reality however is much different. I grew up on the edge of poor and had many less fortunate relatives. We were on average no more or less happy than the middle class folks and on average we were happier than the upper middle class and wealthy folks because money doesn't make you happy, and the more money you chase after the less time you have to enjoy what you do have. I knew people growing up who had all those exciting toys, from go-carts to the first generation three wheeler off road trikes to snowmobiles or even powerboats they used for water skiing and fishing. But I learned early on that what most of these families actually had was separation problems because to pay the mountain of debt that went with all those toys they had to have two incomes and often the main worker was working 60-72 hours a week to pay for everything. That in turn meant not much time with the family except for formal vacations for two or three weeks of the year, usually one in winter over the Christmas holiday period and two in summer around the 4th of July and Labor Day.

IOW these upper middle class types had all the used pinball machines or later video games and multiple TV sets in 'family rooms' where the kids kept themselves occupied while dad was gone except to eat and sleep and mom got home just in time to warm up a TV dinner in the oven or later on in the microwave. When the parents did get the occasional day off they would go out with their friends leaving the kids with a baby sitter so they could blow off steam from the stress of all that work they were doing. Society told them they were happy, but in reality most of them drank heavily when not working to numb themselves and dull their senses to reality.

Make no mistake, the folks in those pictures Cid posted were poor, they have beat up clothes not worth additional sewing to close the small holes. But look at the people, they are not scrawny starving skeletons on the cusp of despair. Sure the kids are wearing cruddy clothes and dirty, but that is because they are kids and mom is smart enough to let them play outside instead of confining them to some antiseptic 'family room' as is the more modern practice. The kids are plump but not obese, the mother looks tired but not desperate. Do not make the mistake of judging someone else's life because you would not want to live in its context. There are as many ways to have a happy life as there are humans and for the majority that doesn't mean a storage shed full of toys you use once or twice a year and kids you only see briefly.

[GHung]

I think a lot of people are happier living as they're used to living. I know some folks whose financial situation 'improved' significantly who didn't change much, and often those who find the dream and come into money fail when they adopt a higher income lifestyle. I knew an elderly couple who lived in an old leaky farmhouse. Their son made a lot of money and built them a nice house. They ended up living in the mostly unfinished basement with a woodstove and letting the church use the upstairs as temporary housing for homeless folks. They were quite content living in what many people would describe as poverty. He was a wood/stone carver and she kept a garden and canned their food, same as always.

They left the house to a hard-working Mexican family who helped them in the garden for years.

[dohboi]

I believe most of the research generally supports T's claims, with one exception--if you are so poor that you are actually homeless, happiness drops off considerably, no matter what country you are in. I seem to remember that there is a minimum income below which happiness drops off--if you can't get food and water, things can get pretty hard. But I don't have that research at my finger tips.

Of course, access to basic services--education, health care, etc--help a lot. If your poverty does not translate almost inevitably to a death sentence or a prison sentence (as it pretty much does in the US these days), that helps. The countries with the highest happiness levels tend to have rather robust support systems.

I have always thought that most people should be poor and that should not be any kind of badge of shame or of inadequacy or desperation. But that situation is made viable by things like free healthcare and education...

[Ibon]

Congratulations to the authors of the last several posts. Very thoughtful and true!

[Ibon]

]

Dude, it never stopped. There are still people in the US who are living on the fringes. They will probably be the survivors...

This what I think everutime I read from KJ and other smug first worlders that peak oil will adversely affect developing countries and the poor.

As Dohboi points out there is very little wellbeing when truly impoverished. But right above that level wellbeing rises sharply and then quickly tapers off with increased wealth.

Poor but not hungry is not a bad place to be when it comes to family and community. The other day I drove past a cabin of squatters living in a run down shack. No electricity. It was pooring down rain, kids in raggedy clothes soaking wet were running on a downward slope using tattered pieces of plastic as sleds taboggining on their bellies like otters.

[KaiserJeep]

Ibon, YOU are the smug First Worlder in this conversation, with your position as Lord of the Manor and manager of the fancy eco-resort, with your descriptions of how happy your $1.40 an hour workers are on your tropical plantation. Which is an entirely fair description of your posts since your return from your self-imposed exile from this place. I was pretty incredulous at the tone of your message about your hard-working dark-skinned employees, shucking and jiving and oh-so-happy.

If you want to know what I am doing, I am playing house husband, feeding the wife as tax season reaches another frenzied conclusion. Meanwhile my backyard is a quagmire of soggy clay after the pool removal, and the front yard was devastated by the heavy equipment used. The pool removal was so over schedule that we went through the rainy season and still don't have sod in place, and need another week without rain before somebody can even venture out back to give us a quote. So I am sitting here while the neighbors make cutting remarks about my formerly pristine yard, which now looks like a war was fought here.

We MAY have closure of the MIL's Will in July, assuming none of the others named in the Will want to dispute the wife's Executorship. Then we get to catch up on years of deferred maintenance on the place. Either way, we'll almost certainly have to be there in Summer, with tens of thousands of tourists underfoot. If we are really unlucky, we'll be paying a small fortune to relocate there during that Summer.

BTW, the wife doesn't even want to live there anymore, it's not the same island she remembers. It has gone from a nice Middle Class place to live with a Summer tourist rush to a "destination community" for well-heeled flaming rectuums. She was reminded of how poorly she gets along with many of her Portuguese relatives last trip, especially her brother who lives next door. Yet we have to live there for at least a year to get the resident tax rates, which is something we need. The place is a money pit already.

Meanwhile, I am a Social Security pensioner, fighting with my Health Insurance provider, and the wife hasn't started our own taxes yet. The wife's car is showing signs of approaching death, which will ding my pocketbook for $50K or so I don't have in the bank.

I can see a huge inflationary spiral coming with a revival of the old Cold War paranoia in Syria, which will put a crimp in both of our lifestyles, I think. Unless you think you can get by with a quarter of the tourists you have had in prior years.

[asg70]

Only a clear-headed climate-change skeptic would have the cajones to say this.

Last I checked you were on the denier end of the scale yourself, as far as you continue to attempt to downplay climate impacts at every turn.

[Ibon]

Ibon, YOU are the smug First Worlder in this conversation, with your position as Lord of the Manor and manager of the fancy eco-resort, with your descriptions of how happy your $1.40 an hour workers are on your tropical plantation. Which is an entirely fair description of your posts since your return from your self-imposed exile from this place. I was pretty incredulous at the tone of your message about your hard-working dark-skinned employees, shucking and jiving and oh-so-happy.

I recognize my privilege and I have no shame over it. The only ones who can attest to your claims though would be the very staff who I employ, the folks I contract work out to, my own organic community here. You seem to think these may be a bunch of brown Uncle Toms which reveals more about your own racist judgements. I don't think you'd get much respect or obedience if you hung around my staff for a given day if they got any whiff of you preconceived notions my friend.

I will acknowledge one thing where I probably raise the ire of some of you. I don't hide my arrogance and disdain over folks who replace real life organic communities by writing over a 1000 posts a year on this site. It's all there in black and white for you to see. KJ, you are a member not quite 5 years and you are close to a 1,000 posts a year. This post count is an excellent feedback for everybody to self monitor how much ersatz time they spend here instead of being with real organic people.

Only a clear-headed climate-change skeptic would have the cajones to say this. I have thought the same for years listening to Ibon's holier-than-thou eco-proclamations

Geez Pstarr, talk about the pot calling the kettle black, you with all your posts of eating popcorn and enjoying the show from behind your redwood curtain. You and me have each been a member here 14 years . My post count is 6,000 plus. Yours is 26,000 plus !!!! This is not a good sign Pstarr.

We have almost 500 people plus coming through here every year, we hire 8 locals. I have a special horn on my pick up I installed that either blasts a rooster or a cow mooing. If I wanted to be mayor of the nearest town I am confident I would get elected. Everytime I drive down mainstreet and play the rooster or cow horn I get smiles and laughs all around, even the stoic police salute me!

[Ibon]

C'mon Dudes...tell me how you really feel

11 years a member and 940 posts. That puts you at 85 posts a year. This is an excellent indicator that your organic social life is doing great actually even if you see yourself as an outlier Baha! It's all there folks in black and white.

[KaiserJeep]

Ibon, How the rest of us spend our time, or how much time and thought we put into the various topics related to hydrocarbon depletion, is up to us, and your judgements in this matter are not relevant. I find for example that I am posting a lot less the last couple of years, because I have no need to escape job stresses after my retirement.

Nor do I feel the slightest bit of shame over my online activities, as you obviously do.

But I want you to know, I am gravely offended to be called a rascist, after I merely called attention to your attitude as expressed by you in this Forum. Perhaps you had not noticed the nature of such posts, but now that I have brought them to your attention, perhaps you should re-read what it was you said earlier, and the context in which you said such.

I value your contributions here, and our online relationship. You think more deeply about most topics than the majority of Forum members. I respect your lifestyle choice and the sincerity of your convictions, but from time to time, an undertone of condescension is present in your prose.

FYI, the boss is always popular within Latino cultures. I noticed this when I had such folks in my work group and when I employed them to remodel my home. Before I was a boss myself, I was one of their peers, and I saw this outward attitude for what it really was, contrasting with a very different and far less respectful underlying attitude. Not at all like the outward jocular verbal abuse one gets from Irish, English, or Scots in the same environment. I first encountered this cultural difference in boot camp in the military, although I did not understand it for years.

I have also worked with and for Persians, Hindus, and Israelis. Very different, all of them.

[ozcad]

Re lifestyle, I read somewhere that to cope with the coming peak everything shortages we must live in (#1) "genteel, well-educated poverty".
Thinking about it, the only other available choice is (#2) ignorant, uneducated poverty.
During the resource wind-down we must consciously act to preserve option (#1).

[Newfie]

+1. Nice observation.

[vtsnowedin]

Re lifestyle, I read somewhere that to cope with the coming peak everything shortages we must live in (#1) "genteel, well-educated poverty".
Thinking about it, the only other available choice is (#2) ignorant, uneducated poverty.
During the resource wind-down we must consciously act to preserve option (#1).

I think there is a vast middle ground where practicable people with a useful education (Not necessarily what is considered a good education today) will do much better then both the genteel over educated fools and the and the ignorant uneducated poor.
What is the problem?
Can you solve it?
The uneducated don't have the knowledge needed to solve the problem and the Genteel think one of their underlings has to do that odious task.
Those with brains, ambition and work ethic will win out in the end as they always have, and perhaps it will take less generations then it used to.

[Ibon]

I was pretty incredulous at the tone of your message about your hard-working dark-skinned employees, shucking and jiving and oh-so-happy.

Really KJ, what are you talking about here? I went up thread and tried to find what you are referring to . I made reference to the kids of a poor squatter family playing in the rain and I also mentioned the wage of some of my staff and that they were not destitute and poor and are quite content. Why the incredulity? Where is the part about shucking and jiving? Projection perhaps? You made a reference using the words " my tropical plantation" . Like I am a plantation owner of the old south having brown employees? Are you aware of the words you used here. This is all shit in your head KJ. Are you even aware of the racist associations you thus used in your post. By doing so you started the accusation of racist innuendos not me.

I am incredulous ! Ha ha

P.S. I also value your posts....