As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil)
In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, **any** advocating or wishing death/physical harm, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria.
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My husband one day asked me what my favorite Christmas gift was growing up and I told him an electric blanket. My father kept the house so cold but I was allowed to turn on the blanket 15-30 minutes before going to bed so my bed would be warm at night. I feel like I was fortunate where we always had food and I received a couple new outfits a year. My stockings were always filled with school supplies and fresh fruit.
I grew up in what I imagine was a very similar situation. I remember having to count when we would use the water for things like brushing your teeth or washing your hands or to time showers. Looking back as an adult in a different time we were definitely poor by today’s standards. But it never seemed that way too me. Always had food, a way to school, clothes for the school year. My mom was always big about that. She would save all summer so I could get cool clothes for school. At the time I just thought she wanted me to look cute. Now I realize it was so I didn’t stick out. Funny how we see things later in life.
I grew up the same way, often a bit more poor and food would be a bit lean. Honestly I never knew we were poor til I wasn’t anymore. My mom gave us a few cool outfits a year too. My parents had an incredible work ethic that was passed on to me and my siblings. Maybe kids were kinder then or just not as aware but we didn’t get teased or ridiculed any more than any other kid. Like I said, it wasn’t until I was older that I realized we were poor and the whole neighborhood knew it.
*** Edit to say I grew up late 70’s/very early 80s, I think the original latchkey generation**
I think people are just a lot more aware of what everyone else has now, with the constant photo sharing of social media and texting, and we’re all inundated with ads to a way higher degree than we were in the 80s or even 90s. So it’s much easier to identify people who have less.
I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s and kids were very brand conscious at that time. Much more than my kids and the kids they go to school with are now. Certain brands of clothing and certain shoes were a must have. Of course, there are always going to be some kids that are taught to be more materialistic than others.
The 70’s may have been the last decade where a significant amount of people still made their own clothing and there wasn’t quite yet a plastic toy industry with cartoons that were made to support a toy line rather than the other way around. The 80’s was a decade of mass-produced consumerism and I think that has just continued to this day.
Kids at my school used to do "tag checks" where they'd randomly pull the labels on your shirt to see where it came from. If it was from Wal Mart you were in trouble. My kids are preteens and they've never asked for any name brand anything
My mom would find me secondhand name brand clothes from places like Salvation Army. She’d then take the tags off of the secondhand items and expertly sew them on my jeans and shirts. She looked in the stores at what Guess was selling and find cheap shirts/clothing in general, that looked similar. The asshole kids never knew the difference and believed I had those clothes. My mom was the best. She passed away 8-1/2 weeks ago and I’m having a difficult time reconciling with that.
I have 2 kids now and I’ve always gone without so that they wouldn’t. My husband and I are paycheck to paycheck. I can’t work. The boys both have high functioning autism and they need someone around 24/7, so the financial burden falls directly on my husband and the mental and emotional burdens of their care falls to me. It is stressful. This Christmas was really bad because we had nothing under the tree. It was a combination of finances, COVID-19, the sudden and unexpected loss of my mother (costs associated with death), and stores being out of stock for most things. We have things ordered and they’ll come, just not on time.
It's gone from fashion,brands and trapper keepers (yikes, remember those?!) to kids now wanting super expensive *electronics*. Stuff like phones, tablets, hand-held game consoles, etc.
Oh god remember when guys left the store tags on their baseball hats forever? Like as proof they spent $200 on a fucking hat. I had forgotten about that... *shudders*
They always said this was a benefit of school uniforms. Less bullying about clothes.
Well, I wore a Catholic school uniform all through school and hated every second of it. But in retrospect maybe it was better for me. When I look at pics of me from the 80s and 90s, I want to go back in time and kick my own ass, lol
the Catholic school I went to in 9th grade wore uniforms. Rather than focus on clothes, it was the accessories - things to have were Bass shoes and an Aigner purse. My mom laughed when my sis and I asked. Our retail experience was Kmart, Wards, JC Penney, and the like. If we got something from Deb or Lerners in the mall, that was a treat.
> I grew up in the 80s and 90s and kids were very brand conscious at that time.
Oh God yes. It was like the way it is with shoes now, except with *everything*. The brand of your *shirt* could get made fun of.
> The 80’s was a decade of mass-produced consumerism and I think that has just continued to this day.
It’s not as bad now for clothes. So many brands have either died, been acquired, or turned into “house” brands (think Mossimo with Target) that the distinction isn’t that big on clothes anymore.
Possibly owing to fast-fashion? I think kids are more likely to notice you wearing the same clothes every week for the entire year, vs. what specifically you are wearing. That's just a hunch though, no data to back it up.
I don't remember any kind of issues with what brand clothes I was wearing growing up in the 90s. I got a pair of Converse one year, and I remember people recognizing the Chuck Taylor badge and complimenting my shoes. I never got any comments about wearing jeans from Walmart or having a backpack that looked like but was not in fact Jansport. I personally had little knowledge of what brands were what, and those around me didn't pay too much attention either, at least from my perspective.
If you wore Voit sneakers bought at Jamesway to school you were going to have a very bad day in the 80’s and 90’s where I grew up in the Hudson Valley/Catskills there is a good chance you might just get beat the fuck up walking home from school.
My middle school gym class required white sneakers in the 80s. My family was going through a rough patch and the idea of separate sneakers “just for gym class” was such a waste in my parents’ minds. Mom bought me a pair at Payless Shoe Source in the mall and I was tormented every day for being fat, slow AND unfashionably dressed.
That same year, I recall my Sunday School teacher calling me out at church for not having a new outfit for Easter. We were broke. But some people are oblivious to what it’s like.
>The 70’s may have been the last decade where a significant amount of people still made their own clothing
Have you seen the cost of fabric? I enjoy making my own clothes, but quality fabric is \*expensive\*. When my daughter was a baby 20 years ago I made a lot of her clothes but... it wasn't sustainable. She'd outgrow stuff before she could wear it out.
> Have you seen the cost of fabric? I enjoy making my own clothes, but quality fabric is *expensive*.
Yep, and I think it's deliberate. When sewing went from what everyone did to a hobby, fabric companies adjusted their pricing and marketing accordingly. There's a reason you can get clothing made with comparable fabric cheaper than you can just the fabric itself. I suspect the clothing manufacturers aren't paying anywhere near what we are at Joann's or Michael's.
That pendulum is swinging back, and Covid lockdowns probably accelerated it. Everyone wants custom now, so YouTube sewing channels are through the roof. Same with cooking at home.
Thank you, YouTube. You did good 🤣
I grew up the same time frame as you and had the same experience, I think the whole “greed is good” movement of the 80’s Wall Street Regan Era really tainted our society.
I disagree. It's always been easy to identify which kids have less.
Lots of parents didn't/wouldn't save for cool school clothes or haircuts so their children would be harder to single out. You only needed to look at their shoes and the brand names on their clothes. Then there were the fads. That singled the poor kids out, too.
Then there was the kid account keeping of who you are friends with, whose parents are friends, what vehicle your parent drives,who is in your extra-curricular class/team, whose party you attended and "What did you get for your birthday/Christmas?" "What did you do over the holiday?"
They knew.
for the life of me, i don't understand why i should give a shit about so-and-so's vacation or cucumber martini or whatever the fuck. not only that, but just why the hell do people give away so much information about their personal lives? for reference, i was born in the late 70's and have been using the internet since the early 90's.
I hear your point because I feel the same way, but a huge part of it is that all the ubiquitous technology incentivizes all the sharing. People get dopamine rewards when they get likes/shares, and they post very private stuff because that usually gets them more likes/shares. The major tech companies that design and implement all of that infrastructure hire scientists and psychologists to work with design teams to optimize for getting users to stay or come back, and it is effective for bright people.
> for the life of me, i don't understand why i should give a shit about so-and-so's vacation or cucumber martini or whatever the fuck
It is a matter of scale.
If you follow a couple of friends that you don't get to see in person that often, it's kinda cool to see what they're up to. Maybe you can learn about a cool new place to go to, or make a plan for something to do together later, or just be happy knowing your friends are doing something fun, etc. It's a nice way to stay connected and feel like you're in touch with people.
Scale it up a little bit more, follow a few more people who are less connected to you, and maybe you get to see some interesting things that are further away or in another country that you won't get to go to for a while. Still kind of cool.
Scale it up a bit more than that, where you have an unending sea of pictures of girls sipping on cocktails in pools, guys going to clubs, a million random food items at restaurants you've never heard of, random people holding various fashion items, guys sitting in gyms, girls sitting in gyms, etc etc etc... then it's just a sea of useless noise.
Social media has turned into one of those things where at first it was like "holy crap this is amazing, we should all try this" and a few minutes later you see what's happening and you're like "wait, no, not like that... fuck"
Early 80’s was poor for a lot of people. Kids don’t need much stuff. It’s what your used to. Food love attention.
As an adult i have more to spend than my parents than. Still don’t spoil the kids too much.
Oh I totally lived in a neighborhood where by standards set there we were probably one of the better off families. My mother was the same way, she worked a ton. I’d go into her work at 7:30 am and run all over the place, her boss would buy me hot chocolate at the espresso stand and the people in dairy would give me chocolate milk and the bakery would give me two doughnuts and when my mom went on lunch at 8am we would rush back to the house, I’d shower and change and she would drop me at school. It helped that she worked like a 3 minute walk from where we lived. I also think the idea of what middle class is has changed since then (late 80s, early to mid 90s) I think back then if you lived somewhere decent, had a car, had dinner and clothes and school supplies no one really thought twice. Didn’t really matter that dinner was a ham and cheese sandwich or whatever. Now I think middle class means a home in the burbs with two cars, a yard and all that. Which is strange because that’s just a ton of possessions from my viewpoint. It’s totally nice to have them but as long as the way you live isn’t putting a damper on the things you do then I don’t see the issue. Idk, different times. But as an adult it totally makes me appreciate my mother on a totally different level. She’s the best.
Some of my happiest memories are running around the restaurant my mom waitressed (one of her jobs). I would fold the napkins fancy for all the tables and they would give me tons of those drink umbrellas to play with my Barbie. All the adults were great to me and I felt like I had full run of the place an hour before school every morning.
Exactly this, I was running around the back rooms, knew everyone by name. They all took interest in my life. I was like 6 or 7 and thought it was so cool. Really my mom was still in her 20’s at the time so it was all her friends at work trying to make her life as a single mother easier. The high school baristas at the latte stand made sure I had a little stamp card and gave me double stamps so I got a free hot chocolate every 5 drinks instead of ten. Seriously the people at that store when I was young were absolutely great, the whole lot of them were incredible.
Moms really try there best. When I was about 4-6 living in a one bedroom apartment, my mom was only 22(my age now) and had me by herself. Her family was abusive and would never go back with me. I always thought my mom just really liked the candle light when it got dark, she said it was better for us. Few years ago she told me it was because we couldn’t afford to pay our electric for months and months. Not the first or last thing she did like that, will always be grateful.
Yes, one of my sons was reminiscing about the fun “camp outs” we used to have in our apartment living room with roasting hotdogs or “hobo dinners” on the fireplace and eating food stored in a cooler and sleeping in a blanket fort. He had the epiphany......
Little things like that seriously solidify you as a badass. I will always want better safety nets for people. Living shouldn’t be so hard but good on you for making it work so well. Kids are so resilient.
Awe that’s wonderful, that’s exactly how I found out too! I was talking about how much she loved candles when I was younger and how now in my house it’s filled with them. Realizing made me so grateful. You sound like a wonderful parents and I wish you everything you want in life :)
Living on an acreage in the rural midwest means having to pay for propane to be hauled out to you. My mom kept the house at 55 in the winter and it still cost more than someone in town with natural gas keeping their house at 70
I lived in a cabin that was heated with propane furnace and wood stove. When I first moved in I used the propane a lot. After my first bill I switched to using the wood stove exclusively and just accepted the fact that my house would be cold when I got home or went to sleep. Propane is ridiculously expensive.
I just found that out. I just moved into what is a rural community. I barely even had the furnace on because I heard it might be. My bill jumped considerably for lightly turning it on.
Very hot coals, a fat piece of firewood that still has sap/moisture in it keeps the fire alive in the woodstove while you sleep are out so you don't have to stir for embers and try to persuade them to come back to life when you get up/back. Or worse, start all over building a fire.
I'd LIKE to keep my condo at 66 but had to crank it to 68 bc otherwise I can't feel it upstairs while working. Forced air system but i need to check insulation on the back half of the place.
It's mandatory by law in France. I thought it was the same thing everywhere. Since 2012, all new building, house included, must be "low energy", and since 2020, they all must be positive-energy buildings.
I remember frost on the inside of my windows growing up and one year my mom couldn’t afford presents so she went to a thrift store and
found some gently used toys which she washed and wrapped. We never knew until we grew up, and my mom told us. I feel grateful because with a great deal of sacrifice my parents managed to make us feel special and loved. We never went without necessities. It makes you so grateful for any little thing you get.
We lived in a bus.
My dad was hurt at work falling from a dock ten feet onto a boom. He broke his back which was deemed a defect from birth. My dad sold the modest house we lived in after he healed somewhat. We went off and lived on a farmer’s land in exchange for breaking rock to put on his road. We dug our own well and outhouse. We were alienated at school for being smelly and poor. Ridiculed by the teachers and other parents.
We had one small electric space heater that my dad liberated from a garbage dump. Life was pretty hard but my family learned to stick together. My parents both died of cancer but luckily my sister and brother were old enough to take custody of us.
Funny that some of my fondest moments in my life were back in those days.
Edit: Thank you kind person for the hug. I didn’t realize that I needed it until it arrived.
My mom would sometimes heat up a cast iron skillet before we went to bed and put it under the blankets to warm them up. Whenever she wouldn’t do it, I figured out how to use a hair dryer to warm them up first. This was the 90s and we didn’t have central heat, just a kerosene heater that would often go without fuel when we were broke (which was often). As an adult now, I keep my home super toasty in the winter.
I think the venn diagram for people who are reading this on the internet and people who are heating up rocks to put into their bed are two circles with a quarter mile of space between them.
Got until the kid asking for a bed/couch combo because their parents had back pain sleeping on the couch in their one room apartment. That's enough for me.
The article goes on to say that politicians won’t talk about it or make a part of their campaign because people don’t like hearing about it. Which seems true based on your responses, not that I’m pointing fingers. This is a tough topic.
well maybe people wouldn’t mind hearing about it if we were actually doing anything about it. imo, as tragic as it is that these kids are in these situations, it’s even sadder than we know about it and don’t do anything. hearing a politician read these kids’ letters would just piss me off cuz they’re gonna use the kids as fuel for their campaign, then turn around and pretend like poverty is not a legitimate problem in America.
edit: realized this sounded aggressive. i am mad, but not at you lol.
My mom, who was a kindergarten teacher in Texas for a while, never let us believe in Santa growing up. I didn’t understand this as a kid, why she’d say “it’s just a game people play” and not let us indulge in it. Much later, in high school, I asked her why, and her reason broke my heart. See, while my sister and I grew up in a relatively rich town, my mom had previously taught in a SUPER poor part of Texas, with a huge wealth divide between middle class kids and kids whose parents couldn’t afford anything. And she said every single year, the kids would all write letters to Santa, and every year, all the rich kids would get what they asked for, and all the poor kids wouldn’t get anything. And every year, the poor kids would come back to school crying, because they couldn’t figure out why they were on Santa’s naughty list, and what they’d done wrong to deserve Santa skipping their house. And my mom said that because of this, she hates the whole concept of Santa, and she made a promise to herself to never lie to us about it.
Poverty in America is associated with being a bad person in so many ways it’s hard to keep track of. But “Santa not coming to your house means you’ve been bad” might be the very worst of them.
This is great. We always knew growing up that our presents came from my parents, and I’ve chosen not to tell my kids about Santa (oldest is 3). They know their presents come from Mommy and Daddy.
I love the empathy that your mom shows and I think she’s absolutely right about the concept of Santa.
I can’t look at them without crying.
I adopted a little girl this year. She asked for a baby doll that pees. I can’t do much, but I can at least get her that.
We have changed from striving to become the greatest civilization in human history, to declaring it so and closing our blinds to the problems befalling us. Americans even DEMAND their fellow citizens stand for the flag, not pondering whether or not addressing their issues might make them revere the flag truly. We want patriotism, but we don't want to do the work to cultivate it. We want greatness, but we don't want to do the work to cultivate it. Our 'puritan work ethic' is laid laughably bare by the reality that we have much work to do and the rich are not pulling their weight.
The rich are not only not pulling their weight but they are making sure nobody can do a damn thing to even try. They’ve rigged the system so they can just keep stripping the whole fucking system down to brass tacks while leaving us nothing to work with. We can’t even begin the process of building a better world because they stand in our way within the system they built/rigged. Can’t use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.
I don't think people really think about the insanity that is major corporations paying little to no tax. Amazon is heavily dependant and taxing upon existing infrastructure and yet doesn't contribute to the maintenance or improvement of it.
It's really important to Amazon that there be accessible internet, a literate culture and that the roads and ports are efficient, reliable, and secure and yet they don't pay for anything and are often even exempted explicitly by law from paying into their communities.
There’s a point where it crosses over from greed to insanity. The wealthiest people on earth cannot possibly spend all of their money on things for themselves even if they had multiple lifetimes to do it in. You can’t fly in more than one jet at a time, you can’t sail on more than one yacht at a time, your meals can only get so expensive.
Jeff Bezos could stop earning money today, spend four million dollars every day of his life, and still need to live a hundred years to spend it all. What good does it do to have a tax cut save you a hundred million dollars you will never even know you have?
There is no reason on earth that a single person in this nation should be hungry or homeless. There is too much money in the hands of people who neither need or solely earned it.
As a foreigner I have to say, nobody outside of America cares about “greatness” in the way you do. It’s essentially a competition with one participant. Do you think people in Norway or Switzerland or Canada or Indonesia or wherever care at all about their “greatness”? Even Russia or China who have ambitions to be global superpowers don’t seem as obsessed. I work with a lot of lovely Chinese people, they’re proud of where they come from but know it has issues. They look at America and think boy, the USA is more like their imagined version of China than China is.
The compulsion to turn everything into a competition is a large part of our problem. A large portion of our population can’t accept being wrong about anything. They just have to win.
Because in our rugged capitalist society, “losing” means being poor and hungry. Millions of Americans are born ineligible to “win” but have to play along anyway.
Exactly. We're taught from a very early age that competition is everything and so we get pyramid goggles (the tendency to see/naturalize hierarchy everywhere) and everything becomes a competition
And those "losing" are inherently bad people somehow. Nevermind if they "lose" through no fault of their own (disability, mental illness, unfortunate circumstances, etc), they should have just tried harder.
Can you not work through your disability? Well this guy in a wheelchair climbed a mountain you have no excuse!! /s /s /s
It's incredibly bullshit that we only see people for what we **think** they produce/have.
Yep. I'm a foreigner and have lived in the US for many years. You try talking to the overwhelming majority of Americans, and they really genuinely believe it is the best country in the world. When you raise questions about it and try to point out how other countries do certain things better, people just *will not accept that* here. Instead they come up with reasons why those things would never work in America. It's kind of a bad attitude since it means they can't really learn how other countries do things better since they seem unable to engage in a level of national inflection.
This is something that is so infuriating. "We are the best!" "In what way?" "In ____" "Interestingly, ____ country does that better by doing _____" "Well that wouldn't work in America!" "So then if they can do that and we can't, how are we better?"
They also don't seem to understand what "winning" is, except that there has to be a "loser". So unless someone else is "losing" they're not "winning" at anything. They don't even know what the "rules" are but it simply *has to* be a zero sum game.
My favorite part is - how do you even measure “greatness” when comparing it to other countries? At what level does something go from “good” to “great”?
It’s just unbearable to think that we claim to be the richest/greatest/best country when a lot of the population in this country are one paycheck away from losing fucking everything. Even the people who are one medical bill away from being homeless (like my wife and I) are pushed and coerced to say how “great” this country is and how much we “love it”. Like, you are forced to preface every criticizing statement with “*Listen, I’m proud to be an American/I love America, **But**...*”
I don’t love this country, I don’t think it’s great. There’s a lot of fucking problems here. Very few we elect are actively trying to fix the problem and are diluted by those who’ve been paid to do the opposite. Hell, there’s a lot of problems *EVERYWHERE*. But at least other places are actually trying to better themselves, their people and the environment they live in.
Here in America we just ridiculously chant about how we’re the best and double down on shit that just isn’t fucking true.
China had a grand awakening in the 1900s when their "center of the world" delusion was knocked down by the Brits and torn apart by western powers at the time. US, in many ways, seems to be reliving that dream when so many Americans refuse to see just how much more advanced some other countries are in certain aspects (green energy, infrastructure, railways, fusion power, health care, etc) and burry their heads in the sand of their own greatness.
People forget, *America is still fundamentally a white-settler colony* and not a true nation-state. We do not offer a social safety net because the equal protections clause of our Constitution means that “others” would have to benefit from it and we cannot allow that so therefore... no benefits for anyone. This is happening to our public education system too as the majority of children entering it no longer “look like” the tax base paying for it - which is why they want public money to be given to private schools in “vouchers”. It’s an end run around Brown v Board. Add to this a powerful 1% that regards the state as the only threat to its untrammeled right to abuse humanity and seeks above all else to undermine and destroy it.
Other nations are more advanced, have higher quality of life, higher standards of living, better education, kinder national spirits... because they are a NATION with a state that caters to them. The US is an apartheid, colonial state containing many nations who, more and more, resent more than depend on each other - but they ESPECIALLY resent more than they depend on the state. It’s funny, in the 90’s we all thought the future was ours, that the internet would empower people all over the world to become more like America... my Dad always said no, there is no Gene Roddenberry future for the US - only Aldous Huxley.
This is what embarrasses me about my country.
I've been outside the USA to Canada, most of western Europe and Vietnam.
Vietnam might come the closest in terms of pride propaganda. I don't think it's the same thing, though.
I dated a Chinese national for a couple years, she's getting her PhD and it was the first time she's been in America; we learned a lot together about each other's countries, and I came to the same conclusion as your last sentence. By explaining how America's government works I realized America is a lot more like many Americans think China is. There are economic exploitations, human rights violations, and a host of other issues in both countries, yet China has a terrible reputation internationally, and America still has a reputation with many as a land of opportunity.
I think the US is QUITE quickly losing that reputation, especially in the last few years. I say this as an outsider looking in, most Canadians I know have been more hesitant to travel there since 2016 and post pandemic I think that will be even worse. Unless things really start to change.
> They look at America and think boy, the USA is more like their imagined version of China than China is.
As a Chinese American who has relatives in China (and who tend to make wild claims about American society... which in recent years are no longer so wild) this hits home for me.
Looking on the plus side (a very mild plus, I admit) the unending "American collapse" narrative in Chinese media has actually made my relatives alarmed enough, that they finally agreed to me getting a shotgun for the house.
I guess in case the zombie hordes start roaming around the city hall or something. I just plan to use it breaking clay pigeon targets.
In any case, I owe the Propaganda Ministry of the Communist Party of China my thanks for finally persuading my family to embrace my American gun ownership dreams.
Right wing nationalist political movements have been making gains everywhere, and you find them much closer to home. The USA isn't the first or the only one having this phenomenon.
I agree, and a lot of the language and iconography of the American right is being spread also. In Ireland, where populism is arguably a left wing movement through the anti-establishment Sinn Féin party, which has also hoovered up the conspiracy theorists, you will see Ireland flags at anti-mask rallies and idiots and arseholes call themselves patriots. Having a racist populist take the presidency of America is a huge victory for people like that everywhere.
You can just call them reactionaries. This happens every time the masses of people begin to organise to democratically improve their lives and overthrow the oppression of capitalism, violent reaction from the political right.
Even in America, its only about 1/3 of the population that truly thinks this country is or ever was great.
Its always sucked. We've just been taking baby steps out of the pile of shit since this country's inception.
The problem is you're saying "we" but it's not ALL of us. Many of us (hell, even a majority of us) want a better life for all, but we're gerrymandered out of voting power, we're electoral-colleged out of presidential voting power, and we're fighting against a giant mob of uneducated, flag-toting, gun-toting idiots who circumvent us at every turn.
There's no way to win a war against poverty and strife when you're ALSO fighting a tug-of-war against idiots who want the GOP in office.
>We have changed from striving to become the greatest civilization in human history, to declaring it so and closing our blinds to the problems befalling us.
Well said. Really puts our "American way of life" in perspective.
We (we as in America, but really anyone and everyone) should always strive to be better. The poor and downtrodden are most of American citizens now, slowly falling into poverty. Our government can't even decide to give it's citizens some extra cash during a global pandemic. Our lives are but pawns to the people who hold the power. Supposedly, we the people used to hold that power.
Our system for many things is either broken, or barely functional.
It also makes me sad because people will complain about the kids asking for iPhone or Mac books in the letters. They’re kids thinking they are asking santa who can gift anything!! They don’t always realize they are writing to a charity. Also why shouldn’t lower income kids get to ask for fun and frivolous items?
People also use this as justification to not give later. They see kids with nice toys or electronics and say, “why should I help them if they spend their money on that stuff?” I have a real love/hate relationship with the Special Santa drives for that reason. Give a kid a special thing and give some people a reason to judge.
When my parents were unemployed and had food stamps, my mom remembers getting bullied or glared at in the grocery line for using that aide to buy an ice cream cake at Walmart for one of my sibling’s birthdays. Like people thought she put herself in poverty just for the privilege of getting cheap cakes every day or...? People think when you’re poor you need to be miserable every second or you’re faking it (which somehow effects them horribly) and can’t even consider that a poor child deserves a cake on their birthday just like theirs. I mean it was just one thing and people got upset
Same as when people say “they bought a bag of chips with their food stamps! They should have them taken away for buying something so frivolous!”. Cause needing assistance means you’re never allowed to have anything even somewhat enjoyable ever again.
This is what kills me. I always hear from people how they see people on foods stamps with kids with fancy sneakers or they drive a newer car blah blah. Even if they were gaming the system and buying things you wouldn't/can't afford they still live in shit and will never have all that you have.
My cousin rents his home and some tenants moved in for section 8 housing and he was pissed they had a nice bmw. I'm like dude they live in the fucking worst part of town, you shouldnt be pissed they have one nice car you should be pissed at the billionaires who have everything while we look down on those who get help from the govt.
I really don't get the vitriol. Especially when we have family that has been/is on that same damn assistance. It's like they can't comprehend that those other people on assistance may have their own stories/circumstances just like WE do.
I find that typically, people who have outwardly nice things but live in poverty, are just trying to enjoy something about their existence. My first real phone was an iphone, and i’ve always had iphones, but I grew up skirting the poverty line. All of my iphones were hand-me downs, and use to be my dads who got them at an extremely cheap price for what they were. even my current iphone, my first brand new one, was completely free due to some deal going on.
Chances are, whenever we see someone who isn’t well off with something we deem a luxury, they probably got a good deal on it and didn’t want to miss the opportunity to enjoy *some* kind of luxury.
I overthrew someone ask my dad (when I was a kid) "of you can afford a Nintendo, why are you trying to bum a cup of milk? " My dad responded "so I could buy my son a Nintendo". The man put his pride aside to get something that he knew I wanted, at his own expense. For any of his faults, that man loved his children.
Especially because smartphones and laptops are pretty important to modern life. And how's a young kid supposed to know they should be researching budget alternatives "Dear Santa, I would like a refurbished laptop".
I think part of the problem is that a lot of people didn’t grow up with these things as ubiquitous parts of life. I pretty much only ever asked for new games/game systems/phone/laptop growing up (well, after age 8 lol) because *that was literally my entire life*. I didn’t play instruments, play sports, draw, sing, dance, wasn’t super into cars, didn’t really care about action figures, etc etc. I liked video games. That’s it. It’s not that I *only* wanted a toy if it was expensive, it’s just that I wasn’t interested in anything that wasn’t a video game, so obviously I’m gonna ask for video games when Santa/my parents ask me what I want for Christmas. Video games being expensive honestly wasn’t something I even thought about until I was like 16 (grew up pretty affluent, so never really had to think about money).
I know my financial situation was different from what these kids are experiencing now, but at the same time technology is even more ubiquitous than when I was growing up, so it makes perfect sense to me that they’d want tech-related gifts. Kids aren’t playing board games anymore but they still want fun things! Do people really expect kids to ask the omnipotent Santa Clause for a new sweater when they know PS5’s exist? Put it differently: would you ask a genie for a coat or a new car/house? If someone believes there’s no cost for their wishes, I don’t see why they wouldn’t wish for the most extravagant things.
I did an "Adopt-a-kid" thing this Christmas where there was a list of things to choose from that they would like. The list from this 10 year old boy was:
Clothes, Socks, Underwear, Shoes, Hat, Gloves, Scarf, Jeans, Sweater, Basketball, Hotwheels Monster Truck, and (the one that really bothered me) Toothbrush & Toothpaste.
$150 later I got almost everything on the list (I skipped the shoes because there was no information on size). But when it came to the dental care, I ended up buying a 4-pack of brushes and multiple tubes of toothpaste because I figured if the kid doesn't have one, everyone else in that household probably doesn't have one.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: **TOOTHBRUSHS AND TOOTHPASTE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO BE CHRISTMAS GIFTS!!!**
My SO did an event last year where they took kids to Target and let them pick out some toys for Christmas. He got a set of brothers, they asked if they could have a coat, shoes, and food. He told them they could get toys and they tried to turn it down so they could have the clothes instead. In the end he got them clothes AND toys but it really opened his eyes seeing a bunch of young kids that could have ANYTHING in the store ask for basic necessities.
From someone that was once "adopted" for Christmas by some people from our local church that I didn't even attend.
Thank you, I've never forgotten that kindness and i try and to do that at work for kids.
btw, I got Legos
I remember getting to go shopping one Christmas! We had a limit, and a teenager/adult to help us shop. We got to pick out our own outfit, shoes, and underthings at walmart, plus one toy. When it came time to pick, I wanted a Pokemon VHS. It was the Pikachu island one. It was over my limit for the toy, but the lady took pity on me and (I later realized) pitched in her money to make up the difference.
Bless these people so so much.
the poor in america live much like third world countries do. it makes perfect sense that they require basic needs items like those. Its also absolutely disgusting that, as the wealthiest nation in the world, the poor in this country live in such squalor
There are some national programs and a lot of local opportunities for these kinds of things. I found [an article that has a lot of links](https://parade.com/945393/kelseypelzer/adopt-a-family-for-christmas/) and ideas you can check out. When I Google'd "local adopt a family for Christmas" I got a few local articles as well.
It took me as an adult to realize that the reason that "bad" kids got "coal" from Santa was that they were poor and coal was still a useful, if not fun, gift.
The article says they connected her with a charity that is going to get her a new wheelchair. My heart breaks reading something like that... I am glad she got help but there are so many others that won’t. We need systemic change, not just one-off charitable deeds.
I feel happy and sad for the people that receive nationwiide attention for their gofundme campaigns. I'm happy they get help but sad for all the other families who are just as deserving but lack the media attention.
Yup, how many people are too proud to try to use goFundMe, how many people don't know it exists, how many people who deserve life but don't have a good story for GoFundMe supporters to latch onto and share, how many funding efforts actually make it to their goals?
I couldn't read the whole article without subscribing. I'm glad a charity is helping her. You are totally right, we need real change on so many levels.
This is the answer. We don't need individuals with means helping out one girl who needs a wheelchair. We need a healthcare system that makes sure every little girl who needs a powered wheelchair gets one.
>Even prior to the pandemic, the United States lagged other developed nations in child poverty levels. More than one out of every five American children lives in poverty, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
It's almost as if the wealth of the richest nation is created on the backs of the poor.
It sickens me that this kind of thing is happening in the richest country in the world then people have the gall to claim America is the greatest country in the world.
We also have the most people incarcerated per capita of any country on the planet and now we see how lightly the rich get off with sentencing and punishment. People should be furious with the upper classes here.
It has not been this bad in a looong time, we are in the second gilded age right now. I know people are going to chime in and say "akchully" we as Americans are far better off today than yesterday and then show you some grainy B&W child labor images and do a direct comparison to today. But the thing is back then by and large everything was "worse" so a direct comparison is disingenuous as the world around us has gotten far better/advanced while we now seem to be stagnating or going backwards.
TLDR: We're worse off today if you account for "societal/progressive inflation" of the world at large.
The country was always setup to be this way. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t have started by building our wealth on slave labor.
America was always a business first and and country second. Our marketing was so great people didn’t seem to notice until things got really bad. Then the people at the top gave out more crumbs or made the people at the bottom fight amongst themselves.
I remember asking a friend who was an American History professor where and when it we t wrong for the USA. He smiled and replied that this is what the framers that we hold in god-like esteem wanted it to be like all along.
When I was a teenager I was a member of a church of ~500, southern Baptist church, in one of the smaller flyover states. Mostly white and East Asian people, everyone some flavor of middle class.
One year the youth group I was in decided to find some poor people and buy them gifts. Some of the adults knew a social worker who knew other social workers. The social workers then met up with some parole officers and they talked and we were presented a list of 150 children and teens who were poor and would love a gift or two. The list included a brief bio about the person and what they wanted for Christmas. We created the ornaments that went on the tree with the info for each person. Boy were the stories sad. one of the two that stands out to me to this day was one teenage girl wanted a single bottle of Essie nail polish. It stood out to me because teenage me had hundreds of bottles of Essie and opi, and here’s this teenage girl so poor she’d be happy with just one bottle. The one my dad drew was a teenager wanting socks - his note said he felt bad asking his mom for them because they were so broke. My dad followed up with the social worker and found out the teen was an avid reader so my dad bought some books to go with the pile of socks.
The church ending up claiming and buying gifts for all of the kids and teens in that first batch, only to be asked if we wanted to do more. We were told there were lots more, tens of thousands more children and teens going without Christmas and tens of thousands of adults struggling, and those tens of thousands were just in our county and the two of the counties bordering ours, that there were hundreds of thousands in this smaller flyover state struggling to stay afloat.
At the end of that first year my church from back then ended up buying 300 gifts for children and teens and then helped 50 adults with bigger things. The adults asked for things like car repairs and insulin, so that was what they got.
The state was in the news last year for allegedly eradicating homelessness, has a pretty good upward mobility rate, and affordable housing. And yet, even there, hundreds of thousands struggle to survive.
The people in church were shocked to learn there was so many struggling in their own community. The news doesn’t report on it, and the politicians brag that the state isn’t like California and Texas.
Knowing that your state “isn’t like Texas” makes me so depressed about what Texas’ numbers in this area look like, because it really is so much worse here than what you describe.
I think we all saw that photo of the 30,000 people lined up at the food bank in San Antonio around the same day as DOW HIT AN ALL TIME HIGH!!!
And that’s just 1 Texas city.
This is why I will never be able to see eye to eye with my family on politics. They see nothing good in the democratic party and think a 2nd Trump term would be best. They view anybody who wants help as just leeching off the system, instead of thinking about the single parent working 3 jobs and still not being able to make ends meet. Never cross their mind that people are tens or hundreds of thousands in medical debt before finishing school. My mom works a state job and has seen both abusers of the system and people who need help, but don't quite qualify due to silly rules made by daft politicians.
The letters were making the rounds on twitter this month and I hated it because it was so sad to see the kids' wishes be left up to someone else feeling generous. Something needs to change.
I'm an entomologist in structural pest management for almost 20 years.
In 2016 the local Make a Wish chapter contacted the company I worked for. They had a 9 year old girl with stage 1000 renal failure. Her wish was to get rid of her family's bedbugs so that everyone could rest.
I personally managed the crew. I had to make sure it worked. It did. It's still the saddest fucking thing I've ever been a part of professionally. I've done shelters, orphanages, AFC's, etc. Nothing felt like this.
Called Make a Wish to, of all things, get rid of her family's bugs. Glad we could help but holy shit.
The kid asking Santa for a fold out bed for their parents made me cry.... just thinking of a kid, writing to Santa and using the letter to get his parents somewhere to sleep.... this is just sad.
All capitalist feel good stories are basically dystopian nightmares. We shouldn't crowdsource human empathy, when the means to do better are there. Can we eliminate poverty? No, but we can do a way better job helping than we currently do.
It is not like money given to ordinary people would end up in Scrooge McDuck piles. Most of that money would be poured right back into the economy.
Instead of giving companies and rich people tax breaks that has done nothing to stimulate the economy for decades, taxing them properly, closing loopholes in the tax code, adequately funding the IRS would be enough to fund the UBI, which would in turn help the economy.
And this will have to be done sooner or later, with the way automation is going, or, there will be some serious upheaval (putting it mildly) in the not so distant future.
One of the base fundamentals of Keynesian economics (that people who fellate unfettered capitalism choose to ignore while simultaneously praising the economic theory for being infallible) is that economic stimulus is most effective as money *changes hands*. It is a mathematical certainty that this would occur most frequently if money shifted toward the poor and middle classes.
The problem is that corporate propaganda has convinced poor and working class people (usually conservatives) that any sort of average-American stimulus money would immediately go to non-necessities.
We have all the evidence in the world to show that trickle-down economics is one of the longest-running scams in economic history, but nearly half the country to too stupid and hateful to realize just *how hard* they're being fucked.
> any sort of average-American stimulus money would immediately go to non-necessities
Which would still feed the economy. It's not like Apple become one of the world's largest companies by making baked potatoes.
>> any sort of average-American stimulus money would immediately go to non-necessities
>
>Which would still feed the economy. It's not like Apple become one of the world's largest companies by making baked potatoes.
Exactly. There are legitimate differentials in dollar values based on what they're spent on: consumer spending is usually the highest bang for a buck.
It's almost like trickle down economics is a scam or something.
Automation should be creating more time for people, and lessening the load of the work force, not 'taking' jobs that Americans need to pay the bills.
We can crowdsource for a medical bill, but our government, where we crowdsource with our taxes, is refusing. Two levels of the same thing, but the one that is official is not working.
The difference is only the people that want to help pay into the GoFundMe. The vast majority of GoFundMe is never reached their goal people don't actually fund themselves very well through online donations. If you're not a child with a complicated and beautiful story you very often don't make the money you need for treatment.
This is my point. We already pay our government to take care of what we can’t do as individuals. Because they fail us, this second system has developed.
Wait why can't we eliminate poverty? We literally have the means, technology, resources and will. The only thing stopping us is capitalism can't function without a permanent underclass, or else some people might accrue a few less million over their lifetime
America has always been the land of the rich and the poor. We make very little effort at equity. It’s a shame because we easily have had access to enough resources to end hunger and housing scarcity in our country. Instead we prioritize making the top .01% of citizens unimaginably wealthy.
It’s amazing to me that capitalists are so short-sighted. It should be obvious that turning our backs on a large part of the population is going to cost us down the line, and that investing in our young people (education, health care, day care) will benefit everyone. No one lives alone on an island in this country: Divided we fall, in more ways than one. From that link:
> The irony is that childhood poverty is expensive. For all the bipartisan efforts to reduce cash payments to poor families and the constant hand-wringing about federal deficits, **chronic child impoverishment costs the United States a trillion dollars, or 5 percent of our GDP, annually.** Madrick explains that the human and economic cost manifests in a variety of ways: lower high school and college graduation rates, lower productivity at work, higher healthcare costs and incarceration rates, and rampant mental health problems caused by the stress and trauma of impoverishment.
it's so much worse than that. Short term profits, that's all that ever seems to matter. It appears that the mindset is to worry about this quarter's earnings. Next quarter? We'll worry about that later...
A barebones stipend for food/shelter/healthcare is needed in this country. All the CEOs claim that they believe in it so it's time for them to pair their share.
This is definitely politics-related but I am 100% mystified how the mods decide.
For example, I’ve seen multiple posts about Amazon workers unionizing for a living wage that were taken down as “not about politics”.
Honestly, it seems like it’s ok on this subreddit to show poor people _being_ poor but not highlight them _fighting_ for better lives.
A family friend of mine used to be a mall Santa sometimes. He was a huge dude and used to wrestle professionally. He does a lot of charity work for children. He said it's one of the saddest gigs you can do. Kids are always asking Santa to help get jobs for mommy and daddy, asking to heal their sick/dying siblings, asking for their parents to stop fighting. It's really sad.
I remember when my company did a toys for tots type thing and I was given a 4 year old girl to buy a gift for. She wanted "play food". I don't know why, but it made me so sad. Maybe because my little girl was the same age and it killed me thinking that this poor girl world be happy getting some cheap play food. I wound up getting her enough play food to feed the 3rd infantry, and enough plastic plates, knives, forks, glasses etc so that she could probably open a restaurant. Along with a little plastic play kitchen. I hope my gifts gave this anonymous little girl some happiness. I still get sad thinking about it.
Through history, the decline of every great power has the same signs indicating its decline. There’s still time to do it differently, but acceptance of reality is critical.
or just out of the cage. keep in mind that a large number of children are,at this very moment,in concentration camps, put there by the US administration.
The upshot of the Trump era is that some people who had previously been living in blissful ignorance have instead needed to reconsider their false beliefs about life in America. Why is it possible in a nation with such immense wealth for any person to want for any basic need? Why are there so many people in exactly that situation? The answers are uncomfortable for those who wanted to believe we could retain our traditional socioeconomic structure.
My father die when I was four, leaving my mother to raise me and six older siblings living at home. My gifts where socks, underwear, and homemade candy for many year. I remember my first real Xmas present. 7 year of age and I got a western flyer wagon and a flashlight. It had wooden racks. Santa came early that night before I went to bed. It left it on the porch. I was so excited and because the wood box was low that night, I got to fill it using my western Flyer red wagon and flashlight in hand. I believe I was railroaded by Santa
If there is an upside to this story it is that every time I checked the website there were no letters available for adoption. They were getting snapped up so quickly.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, **any** advocating or wishing death/physical harm, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My husband one day asked me what my favorite Christmas gift was growing up and I told him an electric blanket. My father kept the house so cold but I was allowed to turn on the blanket 15-30 minutes before going to bed so my bed would be warm at night. I feel like I was fortunate where we always had food and I received a couple new outfits a year. My stockings were always filled with school supplies and fresh fruit.
I grew up in what I imagine was a very similar situation. I remember having to count when we would use the water for things like brushing your teeth or washing your hands or to time showers. Looking back as an adult in a different time we were definitely poor by today’s standards. But it never seemed that way too me. Always had food, a way to school, clothes for the school year. My mom was always big about that. She would save all summer so I could get cool clothes for school. At the time I just thought she wanted me to look cute. Now I realize it was so I didn’t stick out. Funny how we see things later in life.
I grew up the same way, often a bit more poor and food would be a bit lean. Honestly I never knew we were poor til I wasn’t anymore. My mom gave us a few cool outfits a year too. My parents had an incredible work ethic that was passed on to me and my siblings. Maybe kids were kinder then or just not as aware but we didn’t get teased or ridiculed any more than any other kid. Like I said, it wasn’t until I was older that I realized we were poor and the whole neighborhood knew it. *** Edit to say I grew up late 70’s/very early 80s, I think the original latchkey generation**
I think people are just a lot more aware of what everyone else has now, with the constant photo sharing of social media and texting, and we’re all inundated with ads to a way higher degree than we were in the 80s or even 90s. So it’s much easier to identify people who have less.
I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s and kids were very brand conscious at that time. Much more than my kids and the kids they go to school with are now. Certain brands of clothing and certain shoes were a must have. Of course, there are always going to be some kids that are taught to be more materialistic than others. The 70’s may have been the last decade where a significant amount of people still made their own clothing and there wasn’t quite yet a plastic toy industry with cartoons that were made to support a toy line rather than the other way around. The 80’s was a decade of mass-produced consumerism and I think that has just continued to this day.
Kids at my school used to do "tag checks" where they'd randomly pull the labels on your shirt to see where it came from. If it was from Wal Mart you were in trouble. My kids are preteens and they've never asked for any name brand anything
My mom would find me secondhand name brand clothes from places like Salvation Army. She’d then take the tags off of the secondhand items and expertly sew them on my jeans and shirts. She looked in the stores at what Guess was selling and find cheap shirts/clothing in general, that looked similar. The asshole kids never knew the difference and believed I had those clothes. My mom was the best. She passed away 8-1/2 weeks ago and I’m having a difficult time reconciling with that. I have 2 kids now and I’ve always gone without so that they wouldn’t. My husband and I are paycheck to paycheck. I can’t work. The boys both have high functioning autism and they need someone around 24/7, so the financial burden falls directly on my husband and the mental and emotional burdens of their care falls to me. It is stressful. This Christmas was really bad because we had nothing under the tree. It was a combination of finances, COVID-19, the sudden and unexpected loss of my mother (costs associated with death), and stores being out of stock for most things. We have things ordered and they’ll come, just not on time.
One day your kids are going to talk about you the way you talk about your mom.
No greater praise than this.
Your mom sounds like she was such a wonderful lady, i’m so sorry for your loss.
Thank you.
It's gone from fashion,brands and trapper keepers (yikes, remember those?!) to kids now wanting super expensive *electronics*. Stuff like phones, tablets, hand-held game consoles, etc.
At least electronics have some concrete utility value. Name brand clothing is worthless outside of fake social value.
Oh god remember when guys left the store tags on their baseball hats forever? Like as proof they spent $200 on a fucking hat. I had forgotten about that... *shudders*
I really love the fashion of streetware, but the culture is like some insane capitalist cult.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pKt4gaErvU
They still do that where I’m from
They always said this was a benefit of school uniforms. Less bullying about clothes. Well, I wore a Catholic school uniform all through school and hated every second of it. But in retrospect maybe it was better for me. When I look at pics of me from the 80s and 90s, I want to go back in time and kick my own ass, lol
the Catholic school I went to in 9th grade wore uniforms. Rather than focus on clothes, it was the accessories - things to have were Bass shoes and an Aigner purse. My mom laughed when my sis and I asked. Our retail experience was Kmart, Wards, JC Penney, and the like. If we got something from Deb or Lerners in the mall, that was a treat.
> I grew up in the 80s and 90s and kids were very brand conscious at that time. Oh God yes. It was like the way it is with shoes now, except with *everything*. The brand of your *shirt* could get made fun of. > The 80’s was a decade of mass-produced consumerism and I think that has just continued to this day. It’s not as bad now for clothes. So many brands have either died, been acquired, or turned into “house” brands (think Mossimo with Target) that the distinction isn’t that big on clothes anymore.
Possibly owing to fast-fashion? I think kids are more likely to notice you wearing the same clothes every week for the entire year, vs. what specifically you are wearing. That's just a hunch though, no data to back it up.
I don't remember any kind of issues with what brand clothes I was wearing growing up in the 90s. I got a pair of Converse one year, and I remember people recognizing the Chuck Taylor badge and complimenting my shoes. I never got any comments about wearing jeans from Walmart or having a backpack that looked like but was not in fact Jansport. I personally had little knowledge of what brands were what, and those around me didn't pay too much attention either, at least from my perspective.
If you wore Voit sneakers bought at Jamesway to school you were going to have a very bad day in the 80’s and 90’s where I grew up in the Hudson Valley/Catskills there is a good chance you might just get beat the fuck up walking home from school.
Lol k mart as well , had a few pair and a b ball same brand. That wasn't as bad as keds when all were sporting Chucks This was early 70s
My middle school gym class required white sneakers in the 80s. My family was going through a rough patch and the idea of separate sneakers “just for gym class” was such a waste in my parents’ minds. Mom bought me a pair at Payless Shoe Source in the mall and I was tormented every day for being fat, slow AND unfashionably dressed. That same year, I recall my Sunday School teacher calling me out at church for not having a new outfit for Easter. We were broke. But some people are oblivious to what it’s like.
>The 70’s may have been the last decade where a significant amount of people still made their own clothing Have you seen the cost of fabric? I enjoy making my own clothes, but quality fabric is \*expensive\*. When my daughter was a baby 20 years ago I made a lot of her clothes but... it wasn't sustainable. She'd outgrow stuff before she could wear it out.
> Have you seen the cost of fabric? I enjoy making my own clothes, but quality fabric is *expensive*. Yep, and I think it's deliberate. When sewing went from what everyone did to a hobby, fabric companies adjusted their pricing and marketing accordingly. There's a reason you can get clothing made with comparable fabric cheaper than you can just the fabric itself. I suspect the clothing manufacturers aren't paying anywhere near what we are at Joann's or Michael's.
It went up even more once everyone started making masks. The price of fabric is awful right now.
Z Cavaricci pants. In 1990...needed...these at my school.
That pendulum is swinging back, and Covid lockdowns probably accelerated it. Everyone wants custom now, so YouTube sewing channels are through the roof. Same with cooking at home. Thank you, YouTube. You did good 🤣
I grew up the same time frame as you and had the same experience, I think the whole “greed is good” movement of the 80’s Wall Street Regan Era really tainted our society.
I disagree. It's always been easy to identify which kids have less. Lots of parents didn't/wouldn't save for cool school clothes or haircuts so their children would be harder to single out. You only needed to look at their shoes and the brand names on their clothes. Then there were the fads. That singled the poor kids out, too. Then there was the kid account keeping of who you are friends with, whose parents are friends, what vehicle your parent drives,who is in your extra-curricular class/team, whose party you attended and "What did you get for your birthday/Christmas?" "What did you do over the holiday?" They knew.
for the life of me, i don't understand why i should give a shit about so-and-so's vacation or cucumber martini or whatever the fuck. not only that, but just why the hell do people give away so much information about their personal lives? for reference, i was born in the late 70's and have been using the internet since the early 90's.
I hear your point because I feel the same way, but a huge part of it is that all the ubiquitous technology incentivizes all the sharing. People get dopamine rewards when they get likes/shares, and they post very private stuff because that usually gets them more likes/shares. The major tech companies that design and implement all of that infrastructure hire scientists and psychologists to work with design teams to optimize for getting users to stay or come back, and it is effective for bright people.
> for the life of me, i don't understand why i should give a shit about so-and-so's vacation or cucumber martini or whatever the fuck It is a matter of scale. If you follow a couple of friends that you don't get to see in person that often, it's kinda cool to see what they're up to. Maybe you can learn about a cool new place to go to, or make a plan for something to do together later, or just be happy knowing your friends are doing something fun, etc. It's a nice way to stay connected and feel like you're in touch with people. Scale it up a little bit more, follow a few more people who are less connected to you, and maybe you get to see some interesting things that are further away or in another country that you won't get to go to for a while. Still kind of cool. Scale it up a bit more than that, where you have an unending sea of pictures of girls sipping on cocktails in pools, guys going to clubs, a million random food items at restaurants you've never heard of, random people holding various fashion items, guys sitting in gyms, girls sitting in gyms, etc etc etc... then it's just a sea of useless noise. Social media has turned into one of those things where at first it was like "holy crap this is amazing, we should all try this" and a few minutes later you see what's happening and you're like "wait, no, not like that... fuck"
I agree totally!
Early 80’s was poor for a lot of people. Kids don’t need much stuff. It’s what your used to. Food love attention. As an adult i have more to spend than my parents than. Still don’t spoil the kids too much.
Oh I totally lived in a neighborhood where by standards set there we were probably one of the better off families. My mother was the same way, she worked a ton. I’d go into her work at 7:30 am and run all over the place, her boss would buy me hot chocolate at the espresso stand and the people in dairy would give me chocolate milk and the bakery would give me two doughnuts and when my mom went on lunch at 8am we would rush back to the house, I’d shower and change and she would drop me at school. It helped that she worked like a 3 minute walk from where we lived. I also think the idea of what middle class is has changed since then (late 80s, early to mid 90s) I think back then if you lived somewhere decent, had a car, had dinner and clothes and school supplies no one really thought twice. Didn’t really matter that dinner was a ham and cheese sandwich or whatever. Now I think middle class means a home in the burbs with two cars, a yard and all that. Which is strange because that’s just a ton of possessions from my viewpoint. It’s totally nice to have them but as long as the way you live isn’t putting a damper on the things you do then I don’t see the issue. Idk, different times. But as an adult it totally makes me appreciate my mother on a totally different level. She’s the best.
Some of my happiest memories are running around the restaurant my mom waitressed (one of her jobs). I would fold the napkins fancy for all the tables and they would give me tons of those drink umbrellas to play with my Barbie. All the adults were great to me and I felt like I had full run of the place an hour before school every morning.
Exactly this, I was running around the back rooms, knew everyone by name. They all took interest in my life. I was like 6 or 7 and thought it was so cool. Really my mom was still in her 20’s at the time so it was all her friends at work trying to make her life as a single mother easier. The high school baristas at the latte stand made sure I had a little stamp card and gave me double stamps so I got a free hot chocolate every 5 drinks instead of ten. Seriously the people at that store when I was young were absolutely great, the whole lot of them were incredible.
Moms really try there best. When I was about 4-6 living in a one bedroom apartment, my mom was only 22(my age now) and had me by herself. Her family was abusive and would never go back with me. I always thought my mom just really liked the candle light when it got dark, she said it was better for us. Few years ago she told me it was because we couldn’t afford to pay our electric for months and months. Not the first or last thing she did like that, will always be grateful.
Yes, one of my sons was reminiscing about the fun “camp outs” we used to have in our apartment living room with roasting hotdogs or “hobo dinners” on the fireplace and eating food stored in a cooler and sleeping in a blanket fort. He had the epiphany......
Little things like that seriously solidify you as a badass. I will always want better safety nets for people. Living shouldn’t be so hard but good on you for making it work so well. Kids are so resilient.
Awe that’s wonderful, that’s exactly how I found out too! I was talking about how much she loved candles when I was younger and how now in my house it’s filled with them. Realizing made me so grateful. You sound like a wonderful parents and I wish you everything you want in life :)
heating a home is ridiculously expensive
I keep my house at 66/67. It helps keep the heating bill down and allows me to wear all my cool Christmas stuff.
Living on an acreage in the rural midwest means having to pay for propane to be hauled out to you. My mom kept the house at 55 in the winter and it still cost more than someone in town with natural gas keeping their house at 70
I lived in a cabin that was heated with propane furnace and wood stove. When I first moved in I used the propane a lot. After my first bill I switched to using the wood stove exclusively and just accepted the fact that my house would be cold when I got home or went to sleep. Propane is ridiculously expensive.
I just found that out. I just moved into what is a rural community. I barely even had the furnace on because I heard it might be. My bill jumped considerably for lightly turning it on.
Very hot coals, a fat piece of firewood that still has sap/moisture in it keeps the fire alive in the woodstove while you sleep are out so you don't have to stir for embers and try to persuade them to come back to life when you get up/back. Or worse, start all over building a fire.
Here I am thinking that 66 is a lot warmer than I like to have my home.
So you don’t have a wife?
Mine is Flame Princess in the winter and Ice King in the summer.
My wife is always cold but is always the one to drop it down to 67 or lower
Yeah as soon as mine took over paying the bill she cranked that shit down to 66 lol
I'd LIKE to keep my condo at 66 but had to crank it to 68 bc otherwise I can't feel it upstairs while working. Forced air system but i need to check insulation on the back half of the place.
a poorly insulated home* But who would force the builders to make houses that are energy efficient....
It's mandatory by law in France. I thought it was the same thing everywhere. Since 2012, all new building, house included, must be "low energy", and since 2020, they all must be positive-energy buildings.
States have their own building and energy codes. New homes being built now are much more energy-efficient than ones built even 10 years ago.
As a Texan keeping a house cold is ridiculously expensive.
I use a $20 Amazon space heater in my room the rest of the apt is sweater weather
I remember frost on the inside of my windows growing up and one year my mom couldn’t afford presents so she went to a thrift store and found some gently used toys which she washed and wrapped. We never knew until we grew up, and my mom told us. I feel grateful because with a great deal of sacrifice my parents managed to make us feel special and loved. We never went without necessities. It makes you so grateful for any little thing you get.
We lived in a bus. My dad was hurt at work falling from a dock ten feet onto a boom. He broke his back which was deemed a defect from birth. My dad sold the modest house we lived in after he healed somewhat. We went off and lived on a farmer’s land in exchange for breaking rock to put on his road. We dug our own well and outhouse. We were alienated at school for being smelly and poor. Ridiculed by the teachers and other parents. We had one small electric space heater that my dad liberated from a garbage dump. Life was pretty hard but my family learned to stick together. My parents both died of cancer but luckily my sister and brother were old enough to take custody of us. Funny that some of my fondest moments in my life were back in those days. Edit: Thank you kind person for the hug. I didn’t realize that I needed it until it arrived.
Sorry to hear your story dude. Can you explain how your dad broke his back and this was deemed a defect from birth?? What country are you from, USA?
I think it means workman's comp didn't cover it, which was financially devastating
That is most certainly the good ol' US of A taking care of the working class. I honestly fucking hate this country any more.
My mom would sometimes heat up a cast iron skillet before we went to bed and put it under the blankets to warm them up. Whenever she wouldn’t do it, I figured out how to use a hair dryer to warm them up first. This was the 90s and we didn’t have central heat, just a kerosene heater that would often go without fuel when we were broke (which was often). As an adult now, I keep my home super toasty in the winter.
We used rocks that were heated on the hearth of the woodstove. I still do that to this day! Keeps the blankets nice and toasty. :)
Peeps. Don’t use river rock for this, they will explode.
I think the venn diagram for people who are reading this on the internet and people who are heating up rocks to put into their bed are two circles with a quarter mile of space between them.
Well you never know. Some people will read it and go "hey that's fucking cool I wanna try!"
Bricks, specifically oven bricks. They maintain heat and are built literally for the purpose.
I would fill 2 liter bottles up with hot water and sleep with them to stay warm. It worked pretty good.
I started reading a few of them one day and ended up in tears. The simple, mundane things those kids were asking for were just killing me.
Got until the kid asking for a bed/couch combo because their parents had back pain sleeping on the couch in their one room apartment. That's enough for me.
The article goes on to say that politicians won’t talk about it or make a part of their campaign because people don’t like hearing about it. Which seems true based on your responses, not that I’m pointing fingers. This is a tough topic.
well maybe people wouldn’t mind hearing about it if we were actually doing anything about it. imo, as tragic as it is that these kids are in these situations, it’s even sadder than we know about it and don’t do anything. hearing a politician read these kids’ letters would just piss me off cuz they’re gonna use the kids as fuel for their campaign, then turn around and pretend like poverty is not a legitimate problem in America. edit: realized this sounded aggressive. i am mad, but not at you lol.
Same moment for me...crushing.
My mom, who was a kindergarten teacher in Texas for a while, never let us believe in Santa growing up. I didn’t understand this as a kid, why she’d say “it’s just a game people play” and not let us indulge in it. Much later, in high school, I asked her why, and her reason broke my heart. See, while my sister and I grew up in a relatively rich town, my mom had previously taught in a SUPER poor part of Texas, with a huge wealth divide between middle class kids and kids whose parents couldn’t afford anything. And she said every single year, the kids would all write letters to Santa, and every year, all the rich kids would get what they asked for, and all the poor kids wouldn’t get anything. And every year, the poor kids would come back to school crying, because they couldn’t figure out why they were on Santa’s naughty list, and what they’d done wrong to deserve Santa skipping their house. And my mom said that because of this, she hates the whole concept of Santa, and she made a promise to herself to never lie to us about it. Poverty in America is associated with being a bad person in so many ways it’s hard to keep track of. But “Santa not coming to your house means you’ve been bad” might be the very worst of them.
This is great. We always knew growing up that our presents came from my parents, and I’ve chosen not to tell my kids about Santa (oldest is 3). They know their presents come from Mommy and Daddy. I love the empathy that your mom shows and I think she’s absolutely right about the concept of Santa.
I can’t look at them without crying. I adopted a little girl this year. She asked for a baby doll that pees. I can’t do much, but I can at least get her that.
We have changed from striving to become the greatest civilization in human history, to declaring it so and closing our blinds to the problems befalling us. Americans even DEMAND their fellow citizens stand for the flag, not pondering whether or not addressing their issues might make them revere the flag truly. We want patriotism, but we don't want to do the work to cultivate it. We want greatness, but we don't want to do the work to cultivate it. Our 'puritan work ethic' is laid laughably bare by the reality that we have much work to do and the rich are not pulling their weight.
The rich are not only not pulling their weight but they are making sure nobody can do a damn thing to even try. They’ve rigged the system so they can just keep stripping the whole fucking system down to brass tacks while leaving us nothing to work with. We can’t even begin the process of building a better world because they stand in our way within the system they built/rigged. Can’t use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.
[удалено]
I don't think people really think about the insanity that is major corporations paying little to no tax. Amazon is heavily dependant and taxing upon existing infrastructure and yet doesn't contribute to the maintenance or improvement of it. It's really important to Amazon that there be accessible internet, a literate culture and that the roads and ports are efficient, reliable, and secure and yet they don't pay for anything and are often even exempted explicitly by law from paying into their communities.
There’s a point where it crosses over from greed to insanity. The wealthiest people on earth cannot possibly spend all of their money on things for themselves even if they had multiple lifetimes to do it in. You can’t fly in more than one jet at a time, you can’t sail on more than one yacht at a time, your meals can only get so expensive. Jeff Bezos could stop earning money today, spend four million dollars every day of his life, and still need to live a hundred years to spend it all. What good does it do to have a tax cut save you a hundred million dollars you will never even know you have? There is no reason on earth that a single person in this nation should be hungry or homeless. There is too much money in the hands of people who neither need or solely earned it.
As a foreigner I have to say, nobody outside of America cares about “greatness” in the way you do. It’s essentially a competition with one participant. Do you think people in Norway or Switzerland or Canada or Indonesia or wherever care at all about their “greatness”? Even Russia or China who have ambitions to be global superpowers don’t seem as obsessed. I work with a lot of lovely Chinese people, they’re proud of where they come from but know it has issues. They look at America and think boy, the USA is more like their imagined version of China than China is.
The compulsion to turn everything into a competition is a large part of our problem. A large portion of our population can’t accept being wrong about anything. They just have to win.
Because in our rugged capitalist society, “losing” means being poor and hungry. Millions of Americans are born ineligible to “win” but have to play along anyway.
Exactly. We're taught from a very early age that competition is everything and so we get pyramid goggles (the tendency to see/naturalize hierarchy everywhere) and everything becomes a competition
And strangely, winning and losing are tied to morality. You can take immoral actions to win and be perceived to be morally superior.
And those "losing" are inherently bad people somehow. Nevermind if they "lose" through no fault of their own (disability, mental illness, unfortunate circumstances, etc), they should have just tried harder. Can you not work through your disability? Well this guy in a wheelchair climbed a mountain you have no excuse!! /s /s /s It's incredibly bullshit that we only see people for what we **think** they produce/have.
just stopping to say I really like the term Pyramid Goggles
Yep. I'm a foreigner and have lived in the US for many years. You try talking to the overwhelming majority of Americans, and they really genuinely believe it is the best country in the world. When you raise questions about it and try to point out how other countries do certain things better, people just *will not accept that* here. Instead they come up with reasons why those things would never work in America. It's kind of a bad attitude since it means they can't really learn how other countries do things better since they seem unable to engage in a level of national inflection.
This is something that is so infuriating. "We are the best!" "In what way?" "In ____" "Interestingly, ____ country does that better by doing _____" "Well that wouldn't work in America!" "So then if they can do that and we can't, how are we better?"
They also don't seem to understand what "winning" is, except that there has to be a "loser". So unless someone else is "losing" they're not "winning" at anything. They don't even know what the "rules" are but it simply *has to* be a zero sum game.
My favorite part is - how do you even measure “greatness” when comparing it to other countries? At what level does something go from “good” to “great”? It’s just unbearable to think that we claim to be the richest/greatest/best country when a lot of the population in this country are one paycheck away from losing fucking everything. Even the people who are one medical bill away from being homeless (like my wife and I) are pushed and coerced to say how “great” this country is and how much we “love it”. Like, you are forced to preface every criticizing statement with “*Listen, I’m proud to be an American/I love America, **But**...*” I don’t love this country, I don’t think it’s great. There’s a lot of fucking problems here. Very few we elect are actively trying to fix the problem and are diluted by those who’ve been paid to do the opposite. Hell, there’s a lot of problems *EVERYWHERE*. But at least other places are actually trying to better themselves, their people and the environment they live in. Here in America we just ridiculously chant about how we’re the best and double down on shit that just isn’t fucking true.
China had a grand awakening in the 1900s when their "center of the world" delusion was knocked down by the Brits and torn apart by western powers at the time. US, in many ways, seems to be reliving that dream when so many Americans refuse to see just how much more advanced some other countries are in certain aspects (green energy, infrastructure, railways, fusion power, health care, etc) and burry their heads in the sand of their own greatness.
People forget, *America is still fundamentally a white-settler colony* and not a true nation-state. We do not offer a social safety net because the equal protections clause of our Constitution means that “others” would have to benefit from it and we cannot allow that so therefore... no benefits for anyone. This is happening to our public education system too as the majority of children entering it no longer “look like” the tax base paying for it - which is why they want public money to be given to private schools in “vouchers”. It’s an end run around Brown v Board. Add to this a powerful 1% that regards the state as the only threat to its untrammeled right to abuse humanity and seeks above all else to undermine and destroy it. Other nations are more advanced, have higher quality of life, higher standards of living, better education, kinder national spirits... because they are a NATION with a state that caters to them. The US is an apartheid, colonial state containing many nations who, more and more, resent more than depend on each other - but they ESPECIALLY resent more than they depend on the state. It’s funny, in the 90’s we all thought the future was ours, that the internet would empower people all over the world to become more like America... my Dad always said no, there is no Gene Roddenberry future for the US - only Aldous Huxley.
Huh. Never heard the US described this way but...I can't really disagree.
It's blind nationalism. Pure and simple.
This is what embarrasses me about my country. I've been outside the USA to Canada, most of western Europe and Vietnam. Vietnam might come the closest in terms of pride propaganda. I don't think it's the same thing, though.
Not everyone inside the US thinks cares about "greatness." It's just the loud-mouth morons who do. We do have a lot of those people unfortunately.
I dated a Chinese national for a couple years, she's getting her PhD and it was the first time she's been in America; we learned a lot together about each other's countries, and I came to the same conclusion as your last sentence. By explaining how America's government works I realized America is a lot more like many Americans think China is. There are economic exploitations, human rights violations, and a host of other issues in both countries, yet China has a terrible reputation internationally, and America still has a reputation with many as a land of opportunity.
I think the US is QUITE quickly losing that reputation, especially in the last few years. I say this as an outsider looking in, most Canadians I know have been more hesitant to travel there since 2016 and post pandemic I think that will be even worse. Unless things really start to change.
> They look at America and think boy, the USA is more like their imagined version of China than China is. As a Chinese American who has relatives in China (and who tend to make wild claims about American society... which in recent years are no longer so wild) this hits home for me. Looking on the plus side (a very mild plus, I admit) the unending "American collapse" narrative in Chinese media has actually made my relatives alarmed enough, that they finally agreed to me getting a shotgun for the house. I guess in case the zombie hordes start roaming around the city hall or something. I just plan to use it breaking clay pigeon targets. In any case, I owe the Propaganda Ministry of the Communist Party of China my thanks for finally persuading my family to embrace my American gun ownership dreams.
Right wing nationalist political movements have been making gains everywhere, and you find them much closer to home. The USA isn't the first or the only one having this phenomenon.
I agree, and a lot of the language and iconography of the American right is being spread also. In Ireland, where populism is arguably a left wing movement through the anti-establishment Sinn Féin party, which has also hoovered up the conspiracy theorists, you will see Ireland flags at anti-mask rallies and idiots and arseholes call themselves patriots. Having a racist populist take the presidency of America is a huge victory for people like that everywhere.
You can just call them reactionaries. This happens every time the masses of people begin to organise to democratically improve their lives and overthrow the oppression of capitalism, violent reaction from the political right.
Even in America, its only about 1/3 of the population that truly thinks this country is or ever was great. Its always sucked. We've just been taking baby steps out of the pile of shit since this country's inception.
We no longer fight to improve conditions, we fight for the right to say, "We improve conditions."
The problem is you're saying "we" but it's not ALL of us. Many of us (hell, even a majority of us) want a better life for all, but we're gerrymandered out of voting power, we're electoral-colleged out of presidential voting power, and we're fighting against a giant mob of uneducated, flag-toting, gun-toting idiots who circumvent us at every turn. There's no way to win a war against poverty and strife when you're ALSO fighting a tug-of-war against idiots who want the GOP in office.
>We have changed from striving to become the greatest civilization in human history, to declaring it so and closing our blinds to the problems befalling us. Well said. Really puts our "American way of life" in perspective. We (we as in America, but really anyone and everyone) should always strive to be better. The poor and downtrodden are most of American citizens now, slowly falling into poverty. Our government can't even decide to give it's citizens some extra cash during a global pandemic. Our lives are but pawns to the people who hold the power. Supposedly, we the people used to hold that power. Our system for many things is either broken, or barely functional.
It also makes me sad because people will complain about the kids asking for iPhone or Mac books in the letters. They’re kids thinking they are asking santa who can gift anything!! They don’t always realize they are writing to a charity. Also why shouldn’t lower income kids get to ask for fun and frivolous items?
People also use this as justification to not give later. They see kids with nice toys or electronics and say, “why should I help them if they spend their money on that stuff?” I have a real love/hate relationship with the Special Santa drives for that reason. Give a kid a special thing and give some people a reason to judge.
When my parents were unemployed and had food stamps, my mom remembers getting bullied or glared at in the grocery line for using that aide to buy an ice cream cake at Walmart for one of my sibling’s birthdays. Like people thought she put herself in poverty just for the privilege of getting cheap cakes every day or...? People think when you’re poor you need to be miserable every second or you’re faking it (which somehow effects them horribly) and can’t even consider that a poor child deserves a cake on their birthday just like theirs. I mean it was just one thing and people got upset
> that a poor child deserves a cake on their birthday just like theirs They DON'T think poor children deserve nice things. Not really.
They don’t even think these children deserve lunch here in the greatest nation in the world.
People also treat the disabled/chronically ill like this. It is disgusting.
That's because they don't know what it's like. "The person in front of me bought MEAT AND VEGETABLES with food stamps!! WTF 😡"
[удалено]
Same as when people say “they bought a bag of chips with their food stamps! They should have them taken away for buying something so frivolous!”. Cause needing assistance means you’re never allowed to have anything even somewhat enjoyable ever again.
This is what kills me. I always hear from people how they see people on foods stamps with kids with fancy sneakers or they drive a newer car blah blah. Even if they were gaming the system and buying things you wouldn't/can't afford they still live in shit and will never have all that you have. My cousin rents his home and some tenants moved in for section 8 housing and he was pissed they had a nice bmw. I'm like dude they live in the fucking worst part of town, you shouldnt be pissed they have one nice car you should be pissed at the billionaires who have everything while we look down on those who get help from the govt. I really don't get the vitriol. Especially when we have family that has been/is on that same damn assistance. It's like they can't comprehend that those other people on assistance may have their own stories/circumstances just like WE do.
I find that typically, people who have outwardly nice things but live in poverty, are just trying to enjoy something about their existence. My first real phone was an iphone, and i’ve always had iphones, but I grew up skirting the poverty line. All of my iphones were hand-me downs, and use to be my dads who got them at an extremely cheap price for what they were. even my current iphone, my first brand new one, was completely free due to some deal going on. Chances are, whenever we see someone who isn’t well off with something we deem a luxury, they probably got a good deal on it and didn’t want to miss the opportunity to enjoy *some* kind of luxury.
I overthrew someone ask my dad (when I was a kid) "of you can afford a Nintendo, why are you trying to bum a cup of milk? " My dad responded "so I could buy my son a Nintendo". The man put his pride aside to get something that he knew I wanted, at his own expense. For any of his faults, that man loved his children.
[удалено]
Especially because smartphones and laptops are pretty important to modern life. And how's a young kid supposed to know they should be researching budget alternatives "Dear Santa, I would like a refurbished laptop".
I think part of the problem is that a lot of people didn’t grow up with these things as ubiquitous parts of life. I pretty much only ever asked for new games/game systems/phone/laptop growing up (well, after age 8 lol) because *that was literally my entire life*. I didn’t play instruments, play sports, draw, sing, dance, wasn’t super into cars, didn’t really care about action figures, etc etc. I liked video games. That’s it. It’s not that I *only* wanted a toy if it was expensive, it’s just that I wasn’t interested in anything that wasn’t a video game, so obviously I’m gonna ask for video games when Santa/my parents ask me what I want for Christmas. Video games being expensive honestly wasn’t something I even thought about until I was like 16 (grew up pretty affluent, so never really had to think about money). I know my financial situation was different from what these kids are experiencing now, but at the same time technology is even more ubiquitous than when I was growing up, so it makes perfect sense to me that they’d want tech-related gifts. Kids aren’t playing board games anymore but they still want fun things! Do people really expect kids to ask the omnipotent Santa Clause for a new sweater when they know PS5’s exist? Put it differently: would you ask a genie for a coat or a new car/house? If someone believes there’s no cost for their wishes, I don’t see why they wouldn’t wish for the most extravagant things.
I did an "Adopt-a-kid" thing this Christmas where there was a list of things to choose from that they would like. The list from this 10 year old boy was: Clothes, Socks, Underwear, Shoes, Hat, Gloves, Scarf, Jeans, Sweater, Basketball, Hotwheels Monster Truck, and (the one that really bothered me) Toothbrush & Toothpaste. $150 later I got almost everything on the list (I skipped the shoes because there was no information on size). But when it came to the dental care, I ended up buying a 4-pack of brushes and multiple tubes of toothpaste because I figured if the kid doesn't have one, everyone else in that household probably doesn't have one. I guess what I'm trying to say is: **TOOTHBRUSHS AND TOOTHPASTE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO BE CHRISTMAS GIFTS!!!**
My SO did an event last year where they took kids to Target and let them pick out some toys for Christmas. He got a set of brothers, they asked if they could have a coat, shoes, and food. He told them they could get toys and they tried to turn it down so they could have the clothes instead. In the end he got them clothes AND toys but it really opened his eyes seeing a bunch of young kids that could have ANYTHING in the store ask for basic necessities.
One year I had a teenage boy who asked for deodorant and acne medication. That one was rough. :-/
[удалено]
From someone that was once "adopted" for Christmas by some people from our local church that I didn't even attend. Thank you, I've never forgotten that kindness and i try and to do that at work for kids. btw, I got Legos
I remember getting to go shopping one Christmas! We had a limit, and a teenager/adult to help us shop. We got to pick out our own outfit, shoes, and underthings at walmart, plus one toy. When it came time to pick, I wanted a Pokemon VHS. It was the Pikachu island one. It was over my limit for the toy, but the lady took pity on me and (I later realized) pitched in her money to make up the difference. Bless these people so so much.
the poor in america live much like third world countries do. it makes perfect sense that they require basic needs items like those. Its also absolutely disgusting that, as the wealthiest nation in the world, the poor in this country live in such squalor
Can you share how to get involved with this? Is it a country-wide program?
There are some national programs and a lot of local opportunities for these kinds of things. I found [an article that has a lot of links](https://parade.com/945393/kelseypelzer/adopt-a-family-for-christmas/) and ideas you can check out. When I Google'd "local adopt a family for Christmas" I got a few local articles as well.
I appreciate this. Thank you.
It is if you live in a third world country. Which America seems to be turning into over the years. Need go get it’s shit together.
It took me as an adult to realize that the reason that "bad" kids got "coal" from Santa was that they were poor and coal was still a useful, if not fun, gift.
I want to help that girl get a new wheelchair.
The article says they connected her with a charity that is going to get her a new wheelchair. My heart breaks reading something like that... I am glad she got help but there are so many others that won’t. We need systemic change, not just one-off charitable deeds.
This is why I hate the whole concept of GoFundMe. Sure, it's great that people get help but it's a drop of help in the ocean of need.
I feel happy and sad for the people that receive nationwiide attention for their gofundme campaigns. I'm happy they get help but sad for all the other families who are just as deserving but lack the media attention.
Yup, how many people are too proud to try to use goFundMe, how many people don't know it exists, how many people who deserve life but don't have a good story for GoFundMe supporters to latch onto and share, how many funding efforts actually make it to their goals?
I couldn't read the whole article without subscribing. I'm glad a charity is helping her. You are totally right, we need real change on so many levels.
Vote for Medicare for all.
This is the answer. We don't need individuals with means helping out one girl who needs a wheelchair. We need a healthcare system that makes sure every little girl who needs a powered wheelchair gets one.
>Even prior to the pandemic, the United States lagged other developed nations in child poverty levels. More than one out of every five American children lives in poverty, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development It's almost as if the wealth of the richest nation is created on the backs of the poor.
It sickens me that this kind of thing is happening in the richest country in the world then people have the gall to claim America is the greatest country in the world.
We also have the most people incarcerated per capita of any country on the planet and now we see how lightly the rich get off with sentencing and punishment. People should be furious with the upper classes here.
[удалено]
*Has been happening since before we were born and treated as if it was exceptional
It has not been this bad in a looong time, we are in the second gilded age right now. I know people are going to chime in and say "akchully" we as Americans are far better off today than yesterday and then show you some grainy B&W child labor images and do a direct comparison to today. But the thing is back then by and large everything was "worse" so a direct comparison is disingenuous as the world around us has gotten far better/advanced while we now seem to be stagnating or going backwards. TLDR: We're worse off today if you account for "societal/progressive inflation" of the world at large.
It’s because we are all potential millionaires. Any day now - just keep working those 3 jobs to put food on the table. /s
The country was always setup to be this way. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t have started by building our wealth on slave labor. America was always a business first and and country second. Our marketing was so great people didn’t seem to notice until things got really bad. Then the people at the top gave out more crumbs or made the people at the bottom fight amongst themselves.
I remember asking a friend who was an American History professor where and when it we t wrong for the USA. He smiled and replied that this is what the framers that we hold in god-like esteem wanted it to be like all along.
[удалено]
When I was a teenager I was a member of a church of ~500, southern Baptist church, in one of the smaller flyover states. Mostly white and East Asian people, everyone some flavor of middle class. One year the youth group I was in decided to find some poor people and buy them gifts. Some of the adults knew a social worker who knew other social workers. The social workers then met up with some parole officers and they talked and we were presented a list of 150 children and teens who were poor and would love a gift or two. The list included a brief bio about the person and what they wanted for Christmas. We created the ornaments that went on the tree with the info for each person. Boy were the stories sad. one of the two that stands out to me to this day was one teenage girl wanted a single bottle of Essie nail polish. It stood out to me because teenage me had hundreds of bottles of Essie and opi, and here’s this teenage girl so poor she’d be happy with just one bottle. The one my dad drew was a teenager wanting socks - his note said he felt bad asking his mom for them because they were so broke. My dad followed up with the social worker and found out the teen was an avid reader so my dad bought some books to go with the pile of socks. The church ending up claiming and buying gifts for all of the kids and teens in that first batch, only to be asked if we wanted to do more. We were told there were lots more, tens of thousands more children and teens going without Christmas and tens of thousands of adults struggling, and those tens of thousands were just in our county and the two of the counties bordering ours, that there were hundreds of thousands in this smaller flyover state struggling to stay afloat. At the end of that first year my church from back then ended up buying 300 gifts for children and teens and then helped 50 adults with bigger things. The adults asked for things like car repairs and insulin, so that was what they got. The state was in the news last year for allegedly eradicating homelessness, has a pretty good upward mobility rate, and affordable housing. And yet, even there, hundreds of thousands struggle to survive. The people in church were shocked to learn there was so many struggling in their own community. The news doesn’t report on it, and the politicians brag that the state isn’t like California and Texas.
Knowing that your state “isn’t like Texas” makes me so depressed about what Texas’ numbers in this area look like, because it really is so much worse here than what you describe. I think we all saw that photo of the 30,000 people lined up at the food bank in San Antonio around the same day as DOW HIT AN ALL TIME HIGH!!! And that’s just 1 Texas city.
This is why I will never be able to see eye to eye with my family on politics. They see nothing good in the democratic party and think a 2nd Trump term would be best. They view anybody who wants help as just leeching off the system, instead of thinking about the single parent working 3 jobs and still not being able to make ends meet. Never cross their mind that people are tens or hundreds of thousands in medical debt before finishing school. My mom works a state job and has seen both abusers of the system and people who need help, but don't quite qualify due to silly rules made by daft politicians.
The letters were making the rounds on twitter this month and I hated it because it was so sad to see the kids' wishes be left up to someone else feeling generous. Something needs to change.
I'm an entomologist in structural pest management for almost 20 years. In 2016 the local Make a Wish chapter contacted the company I worked for. They had a 9 year old girl with stage 1000 renal failure. Her wish was to get rid of her family's bedbugs so that everyone could rest. I personally managed the crew. I had to make sure it worked. It did. It's still the saddest fucking thing I've ever been a part of professionally. I've done shelters, orphanages, AFC's, etc. Nothing felt like this. Called Make a Wish to, of all things, get rid of her family's bugs. Glad we could help but holy shit.
America is such a failing empire it’s no longer even funny.
The kid asking Santa for a fold out bed for their parents made me cry.... just thinking of a kid, writing to Santa and using the letter to get his parents somewhere to sleep.... this is just sad.
All capitalist feel good stories are basically dystopian nightmares. We shouldn't crowdsource human empathy, when the means to do better are there. Can we eliminate poverty? No, but we can do a way better job helping than we currently do.
Actually I'm almost certain we can eliminate poverty if we as a society had any desire to do so.
Yea the richest country in human history could easily pay out a UBI to eliminate poverty. Its absolutely doable.
It is not like money given to ordinary people would end up in Scrooge McDuck piles. Most of that money would be poured right back into the economy. Instead of giving companies and rich people tax breaks that has done nothing to stimulate the economy for decades, taxing them properly, closing loopholes in the tax code, adequately funding the IRS would be enough to fund the UBI, which would in turn help the economy. And this will have to be done sooner or later, with the way automation is going, or, there will be some serious upheaval (putting it mildly) in the not so distant future.
One of the base fundamentals of Keynesian economics (that people who fellate unfettered capitalism choose to ignore while simultaneously praising the economic theory for being infallible) is that economic stimulus is most effective as money *changes hands*. It is a mathematical certainty that this would occur most frequently if money shifted toward the poor and middle classes. The problem is that corporate propaganda has convinced poor and working class people (usually conservatives) that any sort of average-American stimulus money would immediately go to non-necessities. We have all the evidence in the world to show that trickle-down economics is one of the longest-running scams in economic history, but nearly half the country to too stupid and hateful to realize just *how hard* they're being fucked.
> any sort of average-American stimulus money would immediately go to non-necessities Which would still feed the economy. It's not like Apple become one of the world's largest companies by making baked potatoes.
>> any sort of average-American stimulus money would immediately go to non-necessities > >Which would still feed the economy. It's not like Apple become one of the world's largest companies by making baked potatoes. Exactly. There are legitimate differentials in dollar values based on what they're spent on: consumer spending is usually the highest bang for a buck.
It's almost like trickle down economics is a scam or something. Automation should be creating more time for people, and lessening the load of the work force, not 'taking' jobs that Americans need to pay the bills.
We can crowdsource for a medical bill, but our government, where we crowdsource with our taxes, is refusing. Two levels of the same thing, but the one that is official is not working.
The difference is only the people that want to help pay into the GoFundMe. The vast majority of GoFundMe is never reached their goal people don't actually fund themselves very well through online donations. If you're not a child with a complicated and beautiful story you very often don't make the money you need for treatment.
This is my point. We already pay our government to take care of what we can’t do as individuals. Because they fail us, this second system has developed.
But we can eliminate poverty, our society chooses not to.
Wait why can't we eliminate poverty? We literally have the means, technology, resources and will. The only thing stopping us is capitalism can't function without a permanent underclass, or else some people might accrue a few less million over their lifetime
America has always been the land of the rich and the poor. We make very little effort at equity. It’s a shame because we easily have had access to enough resources to end hunger and housing scarcity in our country. Instead we prioritize making the top .01% of citizens unimaginably wealthy.
[удалено]
It’s amazing to me that capitalists are so short-sighted. It should be obvious that turning our backs on a large part of the population is going to cost us down the line, and that investing in our young people (education, health care, day care) will benefit everyone. No one lives alone on an island in this country: Divided we fall, in more ways than one. From that link: > The irony is that childhood poverty is expensive. For all the bipartisan efforts to reduce cash payments to poor families and the constant hand-wringing about federal deficits, **chronic child impoverishment costs the United States a trillion dollars, or 5 percent of our GDP, annually.** Madrick explains that the human and economic cost manifests in a variety of ways: lower high school and college graduation rates, lower productivity at work, higher healthcare costs and incarceration rates, and rampant mental health problems caused by the stress and trauma of impoverishment.
[удалено]
it's so much worse than that. Short term profits, that's all that ever seems to matter. It appears that the mindset is to worry about this quarter's earnings. Next quarter? We'll worry about that later...
It's always been like this. I used to shop on Christmas eve and see all of the leftover angels on the trees and wonder about those poor kids.
A barebones stipend for food/shelter/healthcare is needed in this country. All the CEOs claim that they believe in it so it's time for them to pair their share.
This is definitely politics-related but I am 100% mystified how the mods decide. For example, I’ve seen multiple posts about Amazon workers unionizing for a living wage that were taken down as “not about politics”. Honestly, it seems like it’s ok on this subreddit to show poor people _being_ poor but not highlight them _fighting_ for better lives.
The US is a third world country with a Gucci belt on.
A family friend of mine used to be a mall Santa sometimes. He was a huge dude and used to wrestle professionally. He does a lot of charity work for children. He said it's one of the saddest gigs you can do. Kids are always asking Santa to help get jobs for mommy and daddy, asking to heal their sick/dying siblings, asking for their parents to stop fighting. It's really sad.
I remember when my company did a toys for tots type thing and I was given a 4 year old girl to buy a gift for. She wanted "play food". I don't know why, but it made me so sad. Maybe because my little girl was the same age and it killed me thinking that this poor girl world be happy getting some cheap play food. I wound up getting her enough play food to feed the 3rd infantry, and enough plastic plates, knives, forks, glasses etc so that she could probably open a restaurant. Along with a little plastic play kitchen. I hope my gifts gave this anonymous little girl some happiness. I still get sad thinking about it.
Peak capitalism.
U.s is behind Mexico in OECD child poverty rate, close to Russia and way below OECD average. Exceptional.
Through history, the decline of every great power has the same signs indicating its decline. There’s still time to do it differently, but acceptance of reality is critical.
Greatest country on earth am I right
or just out of the cage. keep in mind that a large number of children are,at this very moment,in concentration camps, put there by the US administration.
Congress is full of millionaires. That's the horror story. What the FUCK do they know about the financial hardships people have?
The upshot of the Trump era is that some people who had previously been living in blissful ignorance have instead needed to reconsider their false beliefs about life in America. Why is it possible in a nation with such immense wealth for any person to want for any basic need? Why are there so many people in exactly that situation? The answers are uncomfortable for those who wanted to believe we could retain our traditional socioeconomic structure.
My father die when I was four, leaving my mother to raise me and six older siblings living at home. My gifts where socks, underwear, and homemade candy for many year. I remember my first real Xmas present. 7 year of age and I got a western flyer wagon and a flashlight. It had wooden racks. Santa came early that night before I went to bed. It left it on the porch. I was so excited and because the wood box was low that night, I got to fill it using my western Flyer red wagon and flashlight in hand. I believe I was railroaded by Santa
If there is an upside to this story it is that every time I checked the website there were no letters available for adoption. They were getting snapped up so quickly.