bemusedlybespectacled:

themadcapmathematician:

themadcapmathematician:

themadcapmathematician:

The same people who think billionares stimulate the economy by buying huge quantities of useless shit they don’t need really get offended at the idea of teenagers, the disabled, and poor people earning more cash to buy a little of what is even perceived to be useless shit they don’t need

Like even putting aside the fact that someone who is poor or even middle class buying themself something for recreation actually does something good for their quality of life whereas a billionare buying themself 3 yachts or golden donuts that taste terrible almost certianly doesn’t, its clear that people who feel this way have a specific preconception in their minds of who is worthy of having spending money, socioeconomic power, and recreation and who isn’t

My point is if the idea of a teenager who only spends their summer job money on music and movies and clothes being paid $4 an hour more so they can buy more music and movies and clothes or a welfare recipient being able to spend money on chatskies and eat out offends you but not a billionaire buying their 4th house or a golf plated toilet, it reveals that what really disgusts and maybe even scares you isn’t the idea of frivolous spending and mindless consumerism, but the idea of teenagers, poor people, and disabled people having purchasing power and distractions and leisure time

“Behaviors indulged in the rich are not just condemned in the poor, but used as a justification to punish them, denying them access to resources that keep them alive, such as healthcare and food assistance. Discussion of poverty has become almost impossible without moral outrage directed at lazy “welfare queens”, “crackheads” and other drug addicts, and the “promiscuous poor” (a phrase that has cropped up again and again in discussions of public benefits over more than a century).”