Fears or Failures

under revision

How We Save Money

Our local NPR affiliate, KHSU, was on this morning begging for donations again.  Are they increasing in frequency, those fundraisers?  No matter, that is the topic for another blog.  I am writing about the little book of coupons you get if you give them a check that passes a certain threshold of giving.  Here's the pitch.  If you donate amount X you'll make it back and more by using the coupon book, so in reality, joining the station costs you nothing. Let's examine that hypothesis.  First, you have the amount you send in to the station.  Let's say the threshold is $10 a month for the next year.  That comes out to $120 dollars, or approximately 0.02 cents a minute if you listened the station 24 hours a day every minute for a year.  Man that's cheap. Then, when you get your coupon book in the mail, you get all these buy-one-get-one-free offers from businesses in our local area and as far away as Ashland, OR.  So, you go to a show in Ashland and you spend 60 bucks on gas, another 100 on the hotel, and then 55 bucks on one ticket to a play and you get one 'free'.  Then there's food - you have to dine out on the trip - and other incidental expenses.  Let's call that 80 dollars.  So, to the listeners who bought the membership in KHSU for one year, this is how to save money.  For me, saving money is an entirely different enterprise.  Example: I get my paycheck and I go down to the bank and I deposit 55 bucks into my savings account. 

Let's review.  Saving money to me does not involve spending money, but apparently spending $415 dollars on a weekend in Ashland is the same for the subscriber (and the promoters) as me putting 55 bucks in my savings account; because they only payed for one theater ticket.  However, the only way you could convince me that those coupon books save you anything is if they were for PGE, or for some other expense that you could not avoid.  Now, that would be savings, because your normal budget, perhaps requiring you to expend a routine monthly fraction of your income, could be reduced by the coupon.  That reduction could be placed into your savings account and real savings would have taken place.

Is it any wonder that the world is in the shape it is, when we have promoters and consumers both believing that spending is the same as saving.  Folks, in your quest to retrieve the original $120 is based on a false premise.  That coupon book is a spending device and not a savings device.  I had hoped that KHSU would promote truth in advertising, but clearly that hope was in vane. The promotion, if offered in its reality would still be a good one.  I would change the pitch though to this.  If you want to support your community while spending your hard earned cash, get our coupon book and spend less.  You will pay the non-recoverable cost of 120 bucks and we will offer you this coupon book.  Although you will not get your original $120 back, you will realize a decreased output, if you are continuing a traditional amount of eating out, etc.

Poverty Is Not Cultural

Michael Harrington popularized the theory of "Culture of Poverty" in his book "The Other America"; later pushed by his drinking buddy Moynihan and becoming the cornerstone of conservative ideology since Reagan's day. Harrington's book galvanized the 'better people' (i.e. the non-poor) liberals and conservatives alike - into action. Readers and adherents understood that 'poor people' are different than 'us'. They have no impulse control, base instincts, and really need someone to guide them away from their indulgences and excesses. Money in the hands of 'the poor' deepens their depravity, while money in the hands of the "better people" is in its natural habitat. I guess that is why I am worried about buying gas for my car so I can visit my mother, instead of thinking about building a new library. Being in the 99% I can't seem to see beyond my immediate needs and imagine the Zastrow Library.

Now that the 'middle class' is sliding relentlessly into the ranks of 'the poor' perhaps it is time to realize that being 'poor' isn't cultural, it comes from a shortage of money (or resources if you like). While 'working hard' works for some, working hard alone doesn't get you riches.  The "working hard story" is the mythology passed through the ranks of the 1% and the wannabee 1%. Just ask a ditch digger or someone working 3 part-time minimum wage jobs to pay someone elses retirement dream (rent). It's more luck than anything - being in the right place at the right time, or being in the right group. I won't say what the right group has been in the country, you figure it out.

And now the 1% wants you to shovel more their way, by getting rid of the protections for the rest of us. "If we could only get rid of regulations..." they say "it'll be happy days again." What they mean is happier days for them and misery for those not willing to sell their soul to get into the 1%. Gee, all one need do is get someone in a third world country to put thousands of people into sweat shops and voilà, up go the value of your shares. Oh, those people volunteered to be in the sweatshops? Well yeah, I guess you are technically correct,... they wanted to feed their children and hopefully eat themselves. But they could console themselves by knowing that their "better people", backed by the US CIA, are in their mansion munching on caviar. In the voice of Daniel Tosh - wake up people on the side of the room who think they are immune to poverty. Or, join that country club and hope that the "better people" recognize you as one of theirs.  Wherever you end up, it won't be your personal culture that got you there.