“Now you can pay rent AND eat” — Really?
by: Tikkun Intern -- Lauren Kinney on July 15th, 2009 | 2 Comments »
I snapped this photo of an ad in a BART station in September 2007. Viewed now, in the midst of a recession, the image takes on extra realism and a tone of increased urgency.
Not convinced we need a New Bottom Line? It’s revealing that a line like “Now you can pay rent and eat” is an effective marketing strategy, catering to people’s anxieties and realities. Needless to say, it greatly saddens me that people find themselves having to choose between shelter and food.
Its too true, and very scary.
This concept has always been true for those of us “of Color” and “po white trash” or other perjoritive terms for the working poor. My mother sometimes had to choose to pay rent, buy food, or clothing, or pay electricity. Sometimes we had no lights I think a couple of times no Gas for cooking food.
Now that many formerly middle-class people are going hungry (and some over-invested and unfortunate “upper-middle class” brothers and sisters have lost a ton on bad stock, real estate, or natural disaster…) we see this mix of hunger, fear, and humor: nice work BK!
…Burger King: as always, so tastful, so thoughtful, so kind.
My friend who works at a Walmart (affectionately called “wallyworld” when he spins tales about it) told us that he wears a head-mounted device with a keypad at work in the distribution center. He logs in and out, and it assigns him more work all day long. A computerised supervisor!
How fast he works, and how well he listens to the male or female robot voice that issues his orders, determines how much he makes. Currently, he makes $25 per hour.
He lifts heavy things, listens to the voice on the headset, and clicks in and out when he begins his work”trips” for his shifts. He is told by the pleasent little voice things like “You have 42 minutes to complete this Trip. Are you ready? Begin.” He and his co-workers must punch in and out, are watched by cameras throughout the facility, and cannot play thair own music at work – “you can get fired for that” he said to me, simply.
They listen to the voice. They dont talk to each other much, and the voice talks to them all day long. “Most of us pick the female robot voice. Most of us are single guys in the warehouse.”
There is no organizing or any union at wallyworld, of course.
“If you do well, you could earn stock. And I can buy stock in the company!”
Today he joked to me about WallyBucks, his idea of an internalized money system: “…so you could earn money and buy more stuff right at the “Company Store” just like a sharecropper!” He was almost gleeful in his disgust and evidently in deep inner despair.
Is this the future of “work” for more and more of us?
How sad. I wonder why this is all happening.
Do we all get the boss that we deserve? If we dont talk with each other, I think that we do.
Do we get the life that we deserve? Who knows what life a fellow human traveler on this sacred green planet deserves. Only the Supreme Light does.
I think, IMHO, that this friend of mine is working in a hellish state of wage slavery.
He makes $25 bucks American per hour, and he has health care.
But! He deeply fears having to support his parents as they grow elderly & infirm.
Perhaps he will become another working American elder himself, in the near future earning a (devalued) $100. per hour at Wallyworld, taking many many more pointless and pre-programmed “trips”, stocking the warehouse shelves with cheap junk made offshore.
All this fear and pain and sorrow… so he can Eat, AND pay the Rent.
One thing I haven’t been able to understand is why renters and landlords haven’t been helped by the stimulus packages. Our government has tried to help some people hold onto their mortgages, yet so many have lost their homes anyway. Then they try to rent and find that it costs just about as much as their mortgages did which they couldn’t afford. From what I understand, landlords haven’t been helped by any of the stimulus plans, so they have raised their rents to keep up when they are under water. Or they even lose their mortgages, their properties must be sold, and the renters have to move — usually losing their deposits.
Does anyone know why renters and landlords haven’t been able to get any help?