It doesn't necessarily apply to Starbucks, but it's the only thing that I could think of that would really be much of a sacrafice.
No offense, but, Starbucks is... Still not really a sacrifice. I don't consider eating fast food (and yes I count Starbucks coffee as fast food, overpriced though it may be) a necessity: It's a pure luxury. So... I mean... I'm not really following you.
My husband was out of work for two years. We both tried our damnedest to find jobs, but this was when the unemployment rate was obscenely high and there were hundreds of people applying for one job at McDonalds.
Isn't that basically apocalyptic levels of unemployment? How would McDonalds stay in business if everyone has lost their jobs to such a degree as to swarm a single McDonalds establishment with hundreds of resumes? o-o
My birthday money went to my kids. My Christmas presents, gift cards, anything that I got went to my kids. I'd get $100's in gift cards, and out of that money I might have spent $1 on myself for a candy bar. So yes, I do know what it's like to be poor.
My family didn't get shit. No gift cards, no christmas presents, nothing. Nobody could afford it. No hundreds of dollars of gift cards, definitely.
And this is my point. No, it's not easy to skim through everything and make bare minimum payments on every bill so you have enough to put food on the table at the end of the day.
How do you "skim" through when your total expenses at base minimum to survive is greater than your total profits? When this occurs to a corporation, it shuts down. When this occurs to a person, they starve to death and/or become homeless. You're still assuming that your case of poverty is the same as everyone else, and that people who make less than necessary can magic up, say, another job from the job tree, or magic money from nothingness, or have family drop hundreds of dollars of gift cards onto their lap multiple times a year.
Some people get none of the above. They get completely screwed.
I mean, Jesus, one of the examples you list is that you got
hundreds of dollars of gift cards to amplify your lack of monetary production, which you used on your kids. Imagine if you got none of that. That's what the average ghetto kid has to deal with, atop a poisonous culture.
The main reason that most of these places are in disrepair has little to do with the residents themselves, and more to do with the environment. Florida is not the best place to live when it comes down to it. Flooding, hurricanes, and sink holes make it impossible to actually buy a house there unless you've got a few thousand a month to pay for all the damn insurance that you need to maintain. There were people being charged $7,000 a month for flood insurance. I understand why people are poor down there, and why the neighborhoods are the way they are. You're forking out a small fortune just to keep a roof over your head, and there's not much more you can shell out afterwards.
This is a fair point, but speaks volumes to how hilariously broken your insurance system is when 7,000 a month is allowed to even
be a thing.
I'm not judging them as people. To be honest, I think they chose the wrong individuals to interview. They looked a bit too young to really understand the situation. But the truth is, this could have been avoided. That kid resorted to his actions because he did not see any other way. Maybe he was taught better, maybe he wasn't. Maybe he thought he would try it once might have felt terrible afterwards. I don't know, but I do have to question what kind of environment he grew up in when his relatives are saying that he turned to breaking the law because he was poor. He had to have learned that somewhere. It could have been the media, or it could have been influences inside his house. No one really knows.
A ghetto. He grew up in a ghetto. A toxic, self-perpetuating dump that acts as a black marker on your life until you manage to escape it. He likely grew up with kids and teenagers who were indoctrinated into believing some pretty fucked up shit. Seriously, y'all have some nasty ass ghettos: They should be America's greatest shame right now. Good thing y'all have terrorists to distract yourselves with or you might actually have to look inside and realize that the parents of ghetto kids are so far beyond fucked in even trying to control them that they're basically gambling on random chance not to have their children indoctrinated.
Imagine if every day you left to work, your kids were exposed to horrifyingly awful ideas by their classmates. Every day. And not accepting them meant rejection from the social group, and potentially even further harassment or assaults if they went to you for help. What are you going to do: Arrest all of them? Lock your kids inside your house and never let them out?
Blaming it all on the parents, when the environment itself is dangerously toxic (in large part due
exclusively to poverty), is dangerously underestimating how large the problem really is.
But to say that stealing because someone is poor is a bit disrespectful. There are millions of people who are poor. Don't you think they have things that they want that they can't afford? Yet, the majority of them either find some legal way of getting it, or they simply go through their lives without. It's not right to say that just because someone is poor they're automatically going to turn to crime, and it's not fair for other kids like him. How the world is today, that one little statement is going to have every single person questioning each kid they see on the street, wondering if they're going to catch that same kid later on trying to break into their house, and it's not right.
One statement is going to make everyone in the United States of America suddenly beware kids committing acts of breaking and entering on everything they see?
I guess this explains Feminism then.
People can criticize me as much as they want, but the fact is the parents and family are still responsible, because it is their place to show how to behave.
You're right. People can. I won't. I'll criticize your idea, your thoughts, your beliefs. Not you. You're a decent person with an opinion I think is terrible.
Doesn't make
you terrible.
EDIT
Also, to expand on that: Two
years of unemployment and y'all survived? With kids? You have my respect. That takes some damn hard work. I'm glad you made it.
I have four kids. I do this several times a day. Kids are not stupid. They understand when there's actually a valid reason for you not to say no, and when you're simply saying it just to say it. Kids do not miss a thing either. They hear and see everything, no matter how much a parent might try to hide it. My kids know when I'm stressing about bills and money without me saying it to them. Does that stop them from asking for things? Nope. Does it stop them from whining when they really want something? Not at all. But it does open a door for me to explain to them why they can't have what they want, and what they can do to speed up the process of getting it.
Imagine if you could
never promise them getting it though. Do you really think they'd still absolutely listen and absolutely obey everything you command without rebellion, for years? Especially if we factor in the above mentioned "everyone else in their social circle is out to pull them into darker paths" problem?
My son tried to shoplift one time. Once. Do you know what made him not attempt to try again? I explained to him that when he steals from a store not only is he putting the employees' jobs at risk, but he could be preventing someone else from getting a job as well. The store has to make up for what was stolen, and in order to do that they'll cut hours, or stop hiring. Of course not for just one thing, but it all adds up in the end. Kids need to be taught that stuff. They need to be shown that their actions have consequences that do not just effect them. I'm fortunate enough to have some pretty empathetic kids, and they do feel bad when they know they're doing something that could hurt someone else. However, it's sad that I consider that fortunate for me because it's not a normal thing anymore.
It has never been a normal thing. Look up some of the stuff that kids used to be taught and which kids used to do in medieval societies: It's pretty fucked up if not at the very least macabre and fascinating. We're actually at one of the most developed and empathetic stages in human society, it's just that dark acts get spotlighted more than good acts do.
A lot of these kids growing up don't understand that their actions have consequences, and it's not always the parents' fault. Most parents work 2-3 jobs just to maintain a halfway decent lifestyle for their families. However, there has to come a point where they're talking to their kids about life rather than letting them figure it out for themselves. Every kid is smart enough to figure out if they get caught stealing something bad is going to happen to them, and in Florida where there is a 'Stand your Ground' law, you need to tell your kids to watch what they do around other people's property.
You assume every kid is smart enough, you assume the parents know how, you assume the parents have the time to do so, you assume the kids in question respect their parents when indoctrinated into cultures of violence surrounding them while their parents are away working.
Occam would blush.
I don't think that I'm wrong on putting the blame on the family, but again, that's my opinion. A child died. A mother lost her son, and it could have been prevented. You can't blame the woman who wanted to protect her home, the law clearly allows her to do that. I do think she was a little quick to draw the gun when the cops were on their way, but there really isn't much in the story that says there wasn't something transpiring that caused her to feel threatened, or maybe she intended to do something to stop him from running and had really bad aim. The fact is though that the kid shouldn't have been there to begin with, and it could have been prevented. The crime didn't happen just because he was poor.
I don't blame the family, because this has been altogether a shitty situation. Nobody at any point in this should have been forced to do anything they did. The kid should have never felt the temptation to steal, the home owner should have never felt the need to shoot a fleeing kid in the back, and the parents should have tried to (presumably) parent better. This was a whirlwind of shit on everyone's parts, but nobody is particularly evil when you look at it. The kid wanted to get something, he didn't want to murder people. The homeowner wanted to defend what she had, she didn't want to murder people. The parents just wanted to survive another day, they didn't want to murder people.
This is a tragedy in the most general sense of the word. Nobody is evil here: Neither the criminal or the victim. This was just plain wrong. Period. There is no easy black and white answer for this situation.
Also, never said he committed a crime just because he was poor. Poverty is a large factor in it, but it's not the only reason.
You can't blame the woman who wanted to protect her home, the law clearly allows her to do that.
Never did.
