"You can feed 4 people on $300 a month.
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Suppose you *could* through constant labor, strenuous planning, & deprivation manage to feed yourself & your family on a tiny budget, that would still be extreme poverty.
I hate that people who aren't in poverty try to explain to those who are "no, really, you can survive. You just need to find a way to suffer a little more."
The problem is not a lack of ingenuity & creativity. The problem is poverty. No one should have to struggle every moment of every day just to live.
@artemis Oscar Wilde, a fuckin rich man, got it:
"Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal."
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"You can feed 4 people on $300 a month. In this video, I will show you how to make a thin rice gruel..."
(The first sentence is really from a real person. The second is what I assume came next)
@artemis "...if you can afford to be a full time coupon hunter and sales shopper."
It's never "in 15 minutes a day, you can make this work comfortably", it's always "add another full time job to your roster to make existence almost tolerable".
They hate the poor and especially the fact that the poor aren't suffering enough.
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@artemis one of my absolute pet peeves in "budget friendly cooking" is that there are *very* few I've seen that aren't coming from a perspective of privilege.
They go "oh, this meal only costs $5 if we count that you use a tablespoon of milk" ... but you can't buy a tablespoon of milk. You need to buy a whole carton.
They often assume that you have a bunch of things at home already, some decently reasonable (hopefully all have basic salt and pepper), but some that ... aren't (several different types of oil, including olive oil; onions, potatoes, carrots ...)
They go "oh, but you save so much money if you buy dried beans and then cook them yourself!" ... but don't think about the fact that boiling them for a long time takes electricity, and you can't just leave them on the stove while you go out and work to actually make a living.
And that is the final point: saving money by shopping at half a dozen different places (which takes time) and making things from scratch (which also takes time), completely ignoring that a lot of people are poor *despite working far more than full time*. So they don't have the time to do this.
@melindrea @artemis there was this BBC programme in I think the 2000s or early 2010s, about "how to save money on food/shopping" and I fucking loathed it so intensely. And that was before another decade of fascism - sorry, "austerity" - made everything even worse
It featured a "real" couple every episode, and would take them through the ways they could save money. And every episode I saw, these couples were the most bougie money pissing arseholes you've ever seen. So all the advice was this smug, patronising shit that everyone who was poor even briefly already knows, and even a lot of people WITH money are smart enough to know too.
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@melindrea @artemis there was this BBC programme in I think the 2000s or early 2010s, about "how to save money on food/shopping" and I fucking loathed it so intensely. And that was before another decade of fascism - sorry, "austerity" - made everything even worse
It featured a "real" couple every episode, and would take them through the ways they could save money. And every episode I saw, these couples were the most bougie money pissing arseholes you've ever seen. So all the advice was this smug, patronising shit that everyone who was poor even briefly already knows, and even a lot of people WITH money are smart enough to know too.
@melindrea @artemis it was invariably stuff like "you can save lots of money by buying cheaper brands, or even supermarket versions!!!"
"don't buy four times as much as you need and then throw most of it away!!"
"try cooking in batches!"
and at the end was always the big reveal of WOOOOW look how much you saved per month, and the "savings" were double what I have ever spent in my life, because they were having twelve takeaways a month and falling for shit like £6.40 for 200g of premium individually bagged moravian oats
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We are just going to hear more & more & more about how you can theoretically survive on next to nothing, all delivered with the attitude of "you selfish, lazy person. Just eat a tiny bowl of unflavored rice & be grateful."
@artemis Despite what I said earlier, you are 100% right.
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@melindrea @artemis it was invariably stuff like "you can save lots of money by buying cheaper brands, or even supermarket versions!!!"
"don't buy four times as much as you need and then throw most of it away!!"
"try cooking in batches!"
and at the end was always the big reveal of WOOOOW look how much you saved per month, and the "savings" were double what I have ever spent in my life, because they were having twelve takeaways a month and falling for shit like £6.40 for 200g of premium individually bagged moravian oats
@sinvega @artemis Yeah, me and my spouse live on the "what's on special" pages for our two local stores (because we can't get to further away stores). And sometimes we realise that the pasta we got as a "4 for ..." deal isn't all that nice to eat, and then we need to still go through it, because it's just "not too good", not "can't eat it".
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@sinvega @artemis Yeah, me and my spouse live on the "what's on special" pages for our two local stores (because we can't get to further away stores). And sometimes we realise that the pasta we got as a "4 for ..." deal isn't all that nice to eat, and then we need to still go through it, because it's just "not too good", not "can't eat it".
@melindrea @artemis I can't remember when it started, but now when I experiment with something and it turns out disappointing (usually for lack of options), I call it "rations"
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@melindrea @artemis I can't remember when it started, but now when I experiment with something and it turns out disappointing (usually for lack of options), I call it "rations"
@melindrea @artemis a few meals/snacks are intentionally like that. It's bland and it's basic nutrition, sometimes even a chore to eat. But it'll get you fed that day
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@melindrea @artemis it was invariably stuff like "you can save lots of money by buying cheaper brands, or even supermarket versions!!!"
"don't buy four times as much as you need and then throw most of it away!!"
"try cooking in batches!"
and at the end was always the big reveal of WOOOOW look how much you saved per month, and the "savings" were double what I have ever spent in my life, because they were having twelve takeaways a month and falling for shit like £6.40 for 200g of premium individually bagged moravian oats
@sinvega @melindrea @artemis Yeah, shows like these package middle class people's astonishment about things poor people already knew. I don't buy name brand anything. I buy exactly as much as we're going to use, sometimes less. And yeah, we buy a good number of premade meals because buying the ingredients and doing it ourselves is more expensive and vastly more time consuming.
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Suppose you *could* through constant labor, strenuous planning, & deprivation manage to feed yourself & your family on a tiny budget, that would still be extreme poverty.
I hate that people who aren't in poverty try to explain to those who are "no, really, you can survive. You just need to find a way to suffer a little more."
The problem is not a lack of ingenuity & creativity. The problem is poverty. No one should have to struggle every moment of every day just to live.
That little boy and his shaming attitude about poverty fucking enraged me. I studied home economics. This kid can fuck all the way off back to his green smoothies and yoga class.
Farming While Beige did a short about this, called iirc Stop telling poor people to be better at being poor, and he explained all of the time, prep work and storage capacity you would have to have to come even close to this milquetoast shitposter’s numbers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXTF61r-RT4
Grrrrrr! Infuriating.
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@artemis we're past just rice and beans though considering I've actually seen people saying you shouldn't have rice for various reasons
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@TheTenuousOrder @artemis a real conversation someone had with my wife recently went like:
Person: How can you afford to feed a family of four these days?
Wife: We eat a lot of cheap one pot meals like beans and rice and pasta
Person: Oh that's not good for you, those really pack on the weight
And of course, that person did not volunteer to supply us with fresh produce and whatever else they imagine we should be eating
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@TheTenuousOrder @artemis a real conversation someone had with my wife recently went like:
Person: How can you afford to feed a family of four these days?
Wife: We eat a lot of cheap one pot meals like beans and rice and pasta
Person: Oh that's not good for you, those really pack on the weight
And of course, that person did not volunteer to supply us with fresh produce and whatever else they imagine we should be eating
@AldinTheMage @TheTenuousOrder
Oh my god, this encapsulates so much. -
@AldinTheMage @TheTenuousOrder
Oh my god, this encapsulates so much.@artemis @AldinTheMage @TheTenuousOrder There's also, what do you do if you're already relying on those cheap foods?
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"You can feed 4 people on $300 a month. In this video, I will show you how to make a thin rice gruel..."
(The first sentence is really from a real person. The second is what I assume came next)
@artemis Maybe the 300$ is bribes for security to not care about dumpster diving
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@TheTenuousOrder @artemis a real conversation someone had with my wife recently went like:
Person: How can you afford to feed a family of four these days?
Wife: We eat a lot of cheap one pot meals like beans and rice and pasta
Person: Oh that's not good for you, those really pack on the weight
And of course, that person did not volunteer to supply us with fresh produce and whatever else they imagine we should be eating
@AldinTheMage @TheTenuousOrder @artemis
I was once talking to someone (middle class liberal) about the program where you can use SNAP to buy double the amount of coins at the farmer's market and they told me it should apply to everyone.So no fresh produce is unhealthy, but affordable fresh produce is unfair.
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@TheTenuousOrder @artemis a real conversation someone had with my wife recently went like:
Person: How can you afford to feed a family of four these days?
Wife: We eat a lot of cheap one pot meals like beans and rice and pasta
Person: Oh that's not good for you, those really pack on the weight
And of course, that person did not volunteer to supply us with fresh produce and whatever else they imagine we should be eating
@AldinTheMage @TheTenuousOrder @artemis That person needs to educate themselves about nutrition. Beans, rice, and pasta do not cause one to gain weight. What causes one to gain weight is overeating for one's caloric output. One might point out that the problem of obesity (insofar as it is a problem) is primarily a problem of the relatively wealthy nations, not of the developing nations, where beans, rice, and grain products make up the majority of the local diet.
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As more & more people slip below the poverty line there seem to be a whole lot of others (still living comfortably) who are lining up to explain why the poor actually don't need even the smallest comforts in life.
"Stop whining. You haven't died yet. If you haven't died, why are you upset?"
Convenient that the people who HAVE died can't complain.
@artemis real "we survived the aids crisis" energy
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Telling people they should live on a diet of exclusively rice & beans or whatever is just fucking cruelty.
"You're poor? Stop complaining & just suffer already."
@artemis "like, subscribe, and use my code for 25% off an annual subscription to AI Therapy!"
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As more & more people slip below the poverty line there seem to be a whole lot of others (still living comfortably) who are lining up to explain why the poor actually don't need even the smallest comforts in life.
"Stop whining. You haven't died yet. If you haven't died, why are you upset?"
Convenient that the people who HAVE died can't complain.
@artemis "they're the same picture"
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@sinvega @melindrea @artemis Yeah, shows like these package middle class people's astonishment about things poor people already knew. I don't buy name brand anything. I buy exactly as much as we're going to use, sometimes less. And yeah, we buy a good number of premade meals because buying the ingredients and doing it ourselves is more expensive and vastly more time consuming.
@gwynnion @melindrea @artemis I need my oven junk because I am fuckin disabled and poor as shit and tired.
I remember some tosser online, when I was travelling for 30+ hours a week to work, lecturing people on "you can make lots of pizza bases and freeze them" and like... oh yeah? so then my section of the freezer is full and I can't eat anything else and I have to fuck around with a half frozen half fresh pizza every night? Or maybe you should shut the hell up about lives that are way way harder than yours"
like yeah actually, I CAN make pizzas. And yes, I am aware many cheap frozen ones are garbage. But they are cheap and they do not take 20 extra tasks or require a fucking schedule, or rely on the randos I live with not stealing shit
I fucking hate the comfortable.I want to rub sand in their eyes
