Thursday, April 25, 2019

Punk Rock Art Photos: "Abandoned Toilet Roll" x 5 (It's Expensive Being Poor)

It's expensive being poor 
Because everything cost more
Someone pick me off the floor
It's expensive being poor
How can I live with what I did 
When the cinema is 6 quid

It's expensive being poor 
But I look good when I get desperate
Let the good times roll 
Into a bottomless hole 

TV Smith, "Expensive Being Poor"

<Take I:All Photos:
The Squawker>

We'd just pulled up at our favorite taqueria to eat. As you can see, this event took place awhile ago, because we still had snow on the ground. But this abandoned toilet roll caused Squawker and I to do a double-take.

"Well, that's a bit extreme, isn't it?" I ventured. "What made somebody to leave this behind?"

"You'd think someone would need it," Squawker agreed. "Especially seeing how things are going in America lately."

"Indeed. I remember seeing a woman on some PBS show, who'd just been laid off from her printing company job, when the place shut down. She'd gone from making double digits an hour, to zip, just like that." I snapped my fingers. "I remember what she told the interviewer: 'I just had to choose between hunger and toilet paper, and toilet paper won!'"

"That's what being female does," Squawker said.

"You might as well get the camera out," I urged. "I smell an art photo coming, and maybe a post of its own, too." 

 This moment got me thinking.

<Take II>

One measurement of how far we've come along, or gone down (depending on your viewpoint), is the willingness of many food banks and food pantries to pass out toilet paper and other household items, something that you just didn't see regularly until about five years ago.

These days, you might actually score a roll or two of paper towels, and even a bottle of dish soap, plus a bar or two of hand soap, or some combination thereof. Though it's taken forever, it seems, for our local food banks to recognize those needs, I'm glad to see them finally doing it.

Whether you're flat broke (or nearly broke), keeping clean is one of the first things to fall by the wayside. And it's not just an American curse. One of the strangest side effects of Britain's threat to bolt from the EU -- or the curse of Brexit -- is the "period poverty" phenomenon, as you'll see in the links below.

A study on behalf of the National Union of Students showed that 83 percent of the 16- to 24-year-olds surveyed felt that so-called "period products" -- as in, sanitary napkins and/or towels -- are too expensive. 

A previous study found that 49 percent of UK girls missing a school day because of their period, due to the shame and embarrassment of not having what they needed to stay clean in a sensitive area.

For a developed country, this is an amazing statistic, but all too inevitable, sadly, after years of austerity that has seen the rich get richer, while the rest must hear the mantra of rugged individualism shoved down their throats: "You're on your own, kid, you're on your own. You're on your own, kid, you're on your own."

So what's the British government doing, you may ask? Admitting their austerity was wrong? Redirecting money for some short-term fix to address the problem? Scrapping Brexit, to take the edge off the national anxiety?

Are you
f#cking
kidding me?
This is Theresa May ("Keep calm, and kick the can further down the road"), the most reactionary and xenophobic Prime Minister in decades -- who makes the late "Iron Lady" (Margaret Thatcher) seem positively warm and fuzzy by comparison. (And, it goes without saying, a fraction of  the Iron Lady's political skill set.)

No, the UK is launching a "period poverty fund" and task force to make period poverty a thing of the past by, oh...2050, give or take. We don't want the heavy lifting to feel too difficult, right? If this weren't were so surreal, you'd swear we were making this up. Alas, no such luck.


<Take III>

How has this played out in the US? One clue comes in another survey done by Feeding America ("In Short Supply: American Families Struggle to Secure Everyday Essentials"), in 2013. A few findings suffice, though you can click the link below for more:

1. One in five (21 percent) of low-income families skip, delay, or cut back on medical expenses to afford household necessities, despite many households also reporting significant chronic health conditions such as asthma and diabetes.
2. Three in four families (74 percent) who are unable to afford household necessities skip washing dishes or doing laundry.

3. Sixty-three percent of families prioritize washing only the children's clothes in an effort to promote good hygiene among their children.

4. One-third of families unable to afford household goods report bathing without soap (33 percent) or reusing diapers (32 percent) in order to get by without these basic necessities.

5. Some families also substitute specific household goods for others, such as using shampoo as dish soap or baking soda as deodorant.


I can put my hand up and say, "been there, done that" on the last point (#5), at least when it comes to the laundry side of things. As I say, this is the hidden side of poverty, one that doesn't garner as much attention as the food aspect. But it's surely no less important. 

<Take IV>
So how do people get to this pass, exactly? There's a brilliant study by University of Michigan professor Yesim Orhun and Ph.D. student Mike Palazzolo, who spent seven years tracking about 100,000 household purchases -- with a special focus on toilet paper, or roughly three million purchases. They then matched comparable purchases with comparable stores.

Not surprisingly, Orhun and Palazzolo found poor shoppers were less likely than wealthier ones, to buy in bulk, or to time shopping trips around sales. Overall, Orhun and Palazzolo determined that poor customers paid about 5.9 percent more per sheet of toilet paper, or only a little bit less than buying cheaper brands (8.8 percent).

None of these statistics should surprise anyone, though I'm always amused at the befuddled reactions that they arouse in TV stars like Dr. Phil, who always admonish the unfortunates parade before them: "Buy in bulk! It's so much cheaper."

But the point boils down to a simple inconvenient truth, as the Washington Post's 2016 report states: "Having more money gives people the luxury of paying less for things." This paragraph really drives home the essential point:

Orhun says she started thinking about these spending patterns in developing countries, where cigarettes are sold in singles and shampoo can come in tiny, pricey sachets. "When I say that, people say, 'Yeah, yeah, that’s Bangladesh,'" she says. "Well, actually the U.S. isn't a whole lot different when you look at households on $20,000 or below per year. That’s very little money."


<Take V>
We finished snapping our latest art shots -- or, should I say, Squawker did -- and left the toilet paper roll where it had been tossed by the wayside, so we could enjoy our steak tacos (for yours truly) and burrito (for Squawker).

So what, as Howard Beale mused in Network, does all this have to do with the price of rice, exactly? Well, as I write these words today, former Vice President Joe Biden has done what everybody talking head pundit had obsessed about for months -- he entered the race. As a development, it ranks right up there with, "Well, we kind of knew Rob Halford was gay." In other words, not exactly the best-kept secret, right?

Ill-kept secret or not, I'll address this development shortly -- though Squawker has touched on it here ("Watch Out For Neo-Liberal Democrats"), and I did likewise in 2016, with my essays, "Ghosts: Up Against The Establishment (With Bernie Sanders & The Jam)":

http://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2016/01/ghosts-up-against-establishment-with.html

And this one, written that same summer, "A Cure For Political Codependency":


Apparently, Biden dedicated much of his kickoff speech to the battle for America's soul -- and how he's just the man to put it right. The only problem is, he tends to leave out the less than flattering aspects of his resume, such as his connivance with Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2010, to make the Bush-era tax cuts permanent, because...well, he reckoned it wouldn't make sense to inconvenience his boss's re-election chances, on the grounds that some type of middle class tax cut was coming.

Where are those tax cuts? Presumably, they fell down the same rabbit hole that's claimed the likes of Amelia Earhart, Judge Crater and Lord Lucan. 

At any rate, I suppose I'll have to say my piece one more, dust off those essays, and do what I can to counter this new pressure blowing in from the elites, who definitely don't want the likes of us progressives -- whether we support Bernie or not -- to spoil their little party. 

Because the plain fact is, the Democratic elites would feel just as pleased at the return of Donald Trump to the White House as their Republican peers. Why not? All pigs feed at the same trough in the end. Or, as my father often used to say, "One crow doesn't peck another."

In any event, I wonder if the woman in that PBS film -- the one reduced to choosing between food and toilet paper -- saw that speech, and whether she feels the same call to battle for America's soul, Joe Biden-style. 

I'm suspecting...most likely, no. -- The Reckoner

 Just Say No To Joe!
Just Say No To Joe!


Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry,
Get Your Toilet Rolls While They Last):

BBC Wales: Period Poverty: Socks 
'Being Used As Sanitary Towels':

Feeding America: "In Short Supply"Household Necessities Survey:

Reuters:
UK Launches Global Fund
To Help End "Period Poverty" By 2050:

The Washington Post:
Why The Poor Pay More For Toilet Paper
-- And Everything Else:'


It's expensive being poor 
Because everything hurts more
Knocking on a bolted door
It's expensive being poor

Someone throw me down some crumbs 
I will eat them off the floor
It's expensive being poor 
But I look good when I get desperate

TV Smith, "Expensive Being Poor"
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