Hatched
along the line came row after row of wretched slum properties, their
obscene backs lit dimly from uncurtained windows. . . .
They
were getting out of the slum area now. Dark gaps were appearing in
the laval deposit of slate, bricks and dirt. . . .Gently settled
himself back more comfortably on the generous first-class cushions.
Why should he spoil the rare pleasure by tormenting himself with the
imagined wretchedness of the dwellers of that petrified forest? It
might be better than one envisaged . . . there were occasional
television aerials.
Alan
Hunter, Landed Gently (1957)
*
Plus
ça change . . .
Today,
over half-a-century later, a journey by rail or road past rural or
urban slums will offer you, in place of aerials, the sight of
satellite dishes attached or adjacent to dwellings constructed of
discarded stone, brick, and cardboard (Google “satellite dish slum”
for images).
But,
apparently, that the poor today have television sets (especially flat
screen TVs) really gets up some people's noses. For example, just
over a year ago jumped-up hash-slinger Jamie Oliver prompted a row in
Britain when he claimed that (in the words of Sky News) “he
struggles to talk about modern poverty after seeing families living
on junk food but spending money on enormous televisions.” More
recently (and more typically) it was a wingnut politician
complaining:
Obama
is rewarding the lazy pigs with Food Stamps (44 million people), air
conditioning, free health care, flat screen TV’s (typical of “poor”
families).
Republican
Arizona state schools Superintendent John Huppenthal*
Economists
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo traveled “to rural villages and
teeming urban slums around the world, collecting data and speaking
with poor people about what they eat and what else they buy, from
Morocco to Kenya, Indonesia to India.” They discovered “a world
where those without enough to eat may save up to buy a TV instead.”
For example:
In
rural Morocco, Oucha Mbarbk and his two neighbors told us they had
worked about 70 days in agriculture and about 30 days in construction
that year. Otherwise, they took care of their cattle and waited for
jobs to materialize. All three men lived in small houses without
water or sanitation. They struggled to find enough money to give
their children a good education. But they each had a television, a
parabolic antenna, a DVD player, and a cell phone.**
Those
of us who have comfortable incomes and comfortable lives, Banerjee
and Duflo point out,
often
see the world of the poor as a land of missed opportunities and
wonder why they don't invest in what would really make their lives
better. But the poor may well be more skeptical about supposed
opportunities and the possibility of any radical change in their
lives. They often behave as if they think that any change that is
significant enough to be worth sacrificing for will simply take too
long. This could explain why they focus on the here and now, on
living their lives as pleasantly as possible and celebrating when
occasion demands it.
In
a review of Banerjee and Duflo's work in an Economist magazine
blog “J. P.” points out something nutritionists and aid donors
often forget:
well-intentioned
programmes often break down on the indifference of the beneficiaries.
People don't eat the nutritious foods they are offered, or take their
vitamin supplements. They stick with what makes life more bearable,
even if it is sweet tea and DVDs.***
*
King
Lear, on the verge of a breakdown, rages at his malevolent daughters:
O,
reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are
in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow
not nature more than nature needs,
Man's
life is cheap as beast's.
One
might argue, then, that superfluity is a mark of humanity. As Lear
reminds his daughters, the rich clothes “thou
gorgeous wear'st . . . scarcely keeps thee warm.” Fashion is
superfluous (and not particularly utile), but it helps some of us to
signify our humanity.
There
are those—let's call them "modern medievalists"—who would seem to
desire a resurrection (and extension) of the sumptuary laws of the
Middle Ages, which regulated what each level of society might wear,
from “Lords with lands worth £1,000 annually, and their families,”
who had no restrictions, down to “Carters, plowmen, drivers of
plows, oxherds, cowherds, swineherds, dairymaids, and everyone else
working on the land who does not have 40s of goods,” who could have
“No cloth except blanket and russet at 12d per ell, belts of linen
(rope).” English
Sumptuary Laws of 1363****
And
so we would like to ask these modern medievalists, who bridle at flat
screen TVs and cellphones (let's not forget how nuts they get about
cellphones!) for the poor:
"What are the poor allowed to have? Would you care to make an
inventory of the possessions allowed to the poor?"
*
But
it's not just the poor who are under attack for their spending
habits:
Personal-finance
gurus have a certain playbook. They take a representative
middle-class family. They pinch their pennies, encouraging them to
clip coupons and give up life's little luxuries, like those $4
Starbucks lattes.
Annie
Lowery, New York
magazine
And
to give them up for what? To “end up with hundreds of thousands for a
secure retirement.“ But this advice is, Lowery states, “one big, caffeinated
misdirection.” (See the rest of the argument.*****)
In
conclusion, let us recall the words of Thomas Hobbes: “Life is
nasty, brutish, and short.”
So,
drink that latte while you can!
***
****Ian
Mortimer, The
Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to
the Fourteenth Century
