Why Do Poor People "Waste" Money On Luxury Goods?
2017 07 17 | journal
"If you are poor, why do you spend money on useless status symbols like handbags and belts and clothes and shoes and televisions and cars?"
For the very same reasons that others do it - to fit in, to feel better, and also to place some kind of control on their lives. They also do it, on the note of feeling better, for the same reason someone might eat a litre of ice cream when they're depressed, as a band aid to not be depressed, even for an hour. Being poor is depressing in a pretty special kind of way. When you can't do anything - maybe not even get a haircut to look good for a job interview, or go out for a coffee with your friends, or go see a show, or buy a CD, or food - then when you do have the chance to soothe, you do it.
Those are some reasons. But here's another.
Status symbols get you past the gatekeeper. They get you accepted. They get you noticed. This article does a very good job of pointing that out. I've seen it happen myself. I was at a staffing agency a few years back; almost everyone there was dressed business casual, except for the guys who were there for labour positions, and one woman wearing a sundress and sandals. I don't think she was hired for anything. You could see that all the other women in the room were taking a look at her, and assessing her. She looked out of place, inappropriate. She didn't fit in. Maybe she didn't know how to dress; or maybe she didn't know that you treat a staffing agency interview like an in-house interview, and dress the part; or maybe she didn't care; or maybe, just maybe, those things were all she owned. Maybe that's the nicest outfit she had. I get that. I've been there; when the nicest thing you have isn't really nice at all. When I had a little money, though, knowing I had nothing nice, I got myself a black suit jacket. I have a couple of skirts I can pair with it. I have a pair of low-heeled ankle boots. All of this together may not be runway chic, but it makes me look more than just presentable. It's a nice enough outfit. I don't offend the gatekeepers.
I'm going to tell you something I did that's embarrassing, arrogant; something I did so I did not "fit in".
At the same time that the poor do things so they can fit in to the acceptable baseline of the culture in which they live, there are things about the poor of every culture that are norms about that group - one of the things that's prevalent about some swatches of the poor in Hamilton, is lack of education - formal, self-continued/directed, and social. I know this. I've known it since I was a kid. It had nothing to do with how I self-directed my learning when I was a child - I was just a voracious reader who was never filtered by her caregivers. My grandparents had no real clue what I was reading, so I read everything. I had no appropriateness filters placed on me; no one told me what was right or wrong for children to read or watch, and I was curious. I watched it all. I read it all. As a consequence of this, I had a reading and comprehension level well beyond what was normal for kids of my age - not necessarily because I was a "genius", but just by virtue of exposure. It affected my learning in school (in a good way), it affected my world-view, it affected the way I speak even. People still say to me "I can tell you're well-read just by the way you talk." So it all had an impact - one that was noticed.
For a couple of years not that long ago, my financial situation was quite bad. No work, no real hope for any (though I tried my damnedest). Things were so bad that I had to regularly go to the food bank. I hated that. I don't even like talking about it too much. I don't like to admit that my life was so out of my control that I couldn't even afford food sometimes. It's shame-making. Purchasing power is one of the ways in which we measure people in this culture, and I had none. I only had the one thing that was completely under my control, and I kept that. I had my mind. So this is where thee embarrassing, arrogant thing comes in - whenever I would go to the food bank, I'd take a book with me. In fact, I don't leave the house without a hard-copy book in my purse. There's two in there right now. But I wouldn't take just any book with me. I'd take Hitchens' essays, or Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach, or a 19th century British lit novel. I'd take something that was very obviously a book that only a "smart" person would read. It was my self-defence - not against the other people using the food bank so much; but more to prove - I don't know to whom - that I didn't belong here; that this was not the norm for me; that I was not part of this group. I hated being there so much; this was the only aspect of all of that that I could control at all, so it could have been as much for shielding myself from the situation I was in, as it was anything else. I think it's the only very obvious posturing I've ever done. I'm ashamed of it.
But, on the note of formal education itself - studies have shown that the better-educated a person is, the less likely it is they'll be a drain on the public coffers. They have the tools to take better care of themselves in more ways. So, while some folks have a fit over free post-secondary education, I'm all for it. I've always been all for it. Education should never have been a privilege reserved for the rich to begin with. While it might not outright get you your dream job, it will help you cope better in the long-term. It keeps the mind working; which was the initial point to begin with, from at least part of the Socratic sense; not to provide specific information, but to help provide an environment to keep the mind flexible, working. It taught a coping mechanism.
University is not the only way to keep the mind flexible. Read a book once in a while. Read the news, not watch it. Engage in cultural activities that broaden the perspective. Take up a hobby. Take up a sport. Go for a walk. Coach something. Volunteer. Whatever it is, just don't stay in your bubble. Believe me, there's lots of stuff out there you can do for free. You'll feel better. I know I did. Staying in the bubble of the home as a poor person just makes being poor more depressing; but when you get out there, take control of even that tiny bit of your life, you feel better.
Addendum:
I never believed, by the way - and still can't believe others do - that the poor should be happy to be poor, and that everything they do should be pragmatically based. Unless you're some kind of monk, you can't live like that. If you think a certain thing is normative for your culture, you have to allow the possibility of that thing for everyone; and by denying some things to a person based solely on their economic class, is gross elitism. I'm not talking about luxury items either; but about food, shelter, decent clothing, education. Basics. You can't expect any level of decent societal participation from a person, if you deny them the very means by which to do so; and worse yet, judge them for it.
Spending power, as I've said, is a way in which we measure success in this culture - we know we are surviving or doing something right, if we can buy our way through life, get what we need whenever we need it. This is, as you know, a thing that is denied to millions of people - even ones who are working. A minimum wage isn't even a subsistance wage anymore. Besides, in order for an economy to remain stable and viable, people have to spend money in it. If they have the money, they will spend it. This is why UBIs and living wages are vital. If you keep denying the means of survival to people, they will not survive. If you deny money to them, they can't spend. The less spending they do, the weaker the economy becomes. To put it more simply: If you don't feed something, it dies.
Also, if you happen to be one of those folks who thinks that everyone should suffer through school on student loans or shit jobs just because you did, that's punitive thinking. Why do you want to punish people just because of your own experience? Imagine how much easier it would have been for you to make a success at school, if you didn't have to eat up your study time with a job you had to have simply to pay for the education you're not really getting because you have to be at that job; or how much easier things would have been after university, if half your wage wasn't taken up repaying student loans. The idea that this is the norm, that this is how it should be because adversity builds character, is also punitive. Just because it was the norm - and was so only out of necessity - doesn't mean it has to stay the norm. Be a little more generous, and don't wish misery on others.
And as far as charity goes - it's a nice thing when needed; but I can tell you for sure and for certain, that what people want is not charity, not hand-outs; they want the ability to control their own lives - and one of the ways to give them that control, is by giving them an income by which they can catalyse, instate, and maintain that control.