However Do We Get the Poor to Save Money?

Look, the title of this Slate piece alone sent me into a rage. I'm surprised I didn't turn green, tear out of my clothes and go rampaging through Pennsylvania screaming "Faith MAD!" (Good thing, too, I don't have the insurance to cover that.)

I May Be Poor Now, but Wait Until I'm 65 ...

Is there a way to get the poor to save for retirement?

Um, no, really. Here's why:

Is there a way to get the poor to save for retirement?

THE POOR ARE POOR BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE MONEY!

I know I'm not with the Heritage Foundation or the Tax Policy Center, nor am I an economist, but I do have one qualification the asshat who wrote this piece doesn't: I'm poor! See, I can tell you why poor people do what we do, because I'm just telling you what I do.

What do I have saved for retirement? Zilch. My retirement plan is dying before I get too disabled or old to work. Seriously. I'm not being snarky, that's the plan.

Why haven't I saved for retirement? Well, I wrote this yesterday, Wednesday, and on Wednesday, I had $5 until payday on Friday. The bus costs $1.25 per trip. So, I have exactly enough money to get to and from work. That's it.

Why? Because I'm fucking poor, that's why. That's what being poor means. I got paid Friday, cashed my check at the pawn shop ($8 fee), paid bills (what I could anyway, paid $1 per money order), bought food and then I need a prescription. That was $15. The next day I went to feed the dog breakfast and realized I only had enough to feed him half of breakfast (he eats 2 cups of food twice a day), so I needed to buy dog food. Then my husband says to me that he needs CDs to burn his mixes to so he can check them on various sound systems*, so I bought CDs.

Then I had no money left.

Seriously, I hope I don't get my period before Friday. I hope I don't need any food or medicine or anything at all, because if so, it'll suck to be me. I had to steal toothpaste samples from my boss' office** to get to Friday.

Does anyone think that there is a way of getting me to save for retirement without giving me more money?

Apparently, economists do. Apparently, if they just convince me of the benefits of a 401(k) I'll rush right out and fill one up!

Through automatic savings . . . By simply switching the default—requiring people to opt out of a savings program, rather than asking them to opt in—the savings rate could shift significantly.

Seriously, that's the answer. Just take money I need to buy toothpaste out of my check automatically, and everything will be fine. Because it's not like I need every penny of my check or anything. And I love explaining things like that to the woman in charge of payroll. It was awesome explaining to her why direct deposit is not for me. (There are so many judgments against me, if I ever deposit any money into a bank account, I'll never see it again.)

Some have advocated making a retirement-savings tax credit refundable, which means that if the value of the credit exceeds the worker's tax bill, the government would actually deliver a check for the difference. In effect, the working poor could pay a negative tax.

That's not so bad, but keep in mind, I don't need toothpaste next March, I need it yesterday. That's what being poor is about. A person with money notices that their stove is acting funny and shops the sales to replace it. A poor person notices that their stove is acting up and does nothing, because they don't have the money to do anything, and then when the stove completely stops working, they stop cooking or they ask around to see if a friend has one. If you give this person the option of $200 now or $200 six months from now, what do you think they'll do? In fact, they'll take the $200 now even if the figure six months from now is $1,000, because they need a stove now. Which brings me to the last suggested solution:

A few think the only way to really pump up savings among the poor is to offer a matching program, similar to the way some companies match employee contributions to 401(k) accounts. Uncle Sam would pitch in $2 for every $1 a low-wage earner contributes, and he would match middle-class contributions dollar-for-dollar. The rich would be on their own.

Again, if you have money to pay bills and buy food and deal with broken appliances, then that probably seems like a great deal. But if you really, really need $200 today, $600 30 years from now is not much of an incentive to wait, now is it?




*Please say you'll participate in the release of The Cheat Code's first album! The songs are so good they may actually cure cancer!

**Once I borrowed on from him before a dentist appointment and he told me to take one any time I wanted, so it's not technically stealing. Poverty turns one into quite the ethicist.

A Different Perspective, but Still Missing the Point

This critique of the New Atheists (so very unchanged from the old) takes an entirely different tack than I usually see. The author doesn't attempt to prove or disprove the validity of belief in gods or the lack thereof, but instead points out that religion makes people happy. So we should cherish it. Especially for those poor people in developing countries, who have so little reason to be happy.

Not only should the more rational and therapeutic elements be distilled from the opi­ate of re­li­gion. But the wacky, su­per­sti­tious, cloud-cuck­oo-land forms of re­li­gion, too, should be cherished and preserved, for those forms of religion some­times do great good for our emo­tion­al lives, even when they com­pro­mise our more-rational lives.

Here's the thing. I rarely take issue with what makes people happy. For one thing, it's not really my business. For another, I know that happiness is fleeting, yet entirely worthwhile, so if collecting string provides you with happiness, far be it from me to comment.

I will, however, take issue with what makes you happy when it's harming you or others. Collecting string is harmless fun- until you start spending your entire paycheck on string and your house becomes so packed with string that it's dangerous to live in. I will also take issue with your string collecting when it starts to harm your children and your neighbors.

Religion is the same way, especially religion that infringes upon rational facilities. I don't have an issue with people believing in god and attending church or enacting rituals naked under each full moon. Whatever makes you happy. But when that religion starts inspiring you to legislate its rules or deny civil rights to your gay neighbors or withhold medical treatments from your children, that's when I find no issue with stepping in.

I especially take issue with religion in the developing world, which is what this article is about. I have no idea what it is to be poor in the developing world. I can't even imagine. So I understand the argument that religion provides happiness to people who have little to be happy about, ever. I even understand the argument that religious people provide necessary charity in the developing world, without which life would be even worse.

However, I find religion in the developing world, especially as proselytized by privileged Westerners, to be abusive. "Let me tell you about Jesus" is a little different from "Here's the only clean water in 100 miles- now let me tell you about Jesus." I especially take issue with missionaries who care only for the spiritual welfare of their victims intended converts. (You see this in super evangelical communities.) "Hey, don't worry about improving your lot in life or even drinking water that does not contain feces- we've got heaven! It's great!"

Anyway, the author also seems to think the New Atheists don't go far enough- they condemn Christianity and Islam, but not East Asian animism. There's a reason for that: the average American or Western European has little to no experience or knowledge of animism, and nothing makes you look stupider than criticizing something you have absolutely no knowledge of. (See: every evangelical Christian's critique of Islam) Never mind that "you go too far!" is an odd argument to juxtapose with "you don't go far enough!"

Is an­i­mism a mere "opi­ate," as the athe­ists ar­gue? Well, yes, but don't underestimate opi­ates. They can be high­ly in­spi­ra­tion­al and con­sol­ing. Af­ter all, a drunk­en man is usu­al­ly a lit­tle hap­pi­er than a so­ber one. In fact, to con­tin­ue the met­a­phor, op­pos­ing re­li­gion is a lot like pro­hi­bi­tion­ists' oppos­ing drink­—a rath­er cru­el pro­ject in my view. I'd glad­ly give my copies of Mao's Little Red Book, and Daw­kins's The God De­lu­sion for a six-pack of Grolsch. But if all that is too of­fen­sive, we might re­place the word "opi­ate" with "an­al­ge­sic," and my point may be more a­gree­a­ble.

Um, sure some drunks are happier, though some people get morose or pugilistic while drunk, and anyway, you may be happier drunk, but it's not a good idea to be drunk on a regular basis. "Analgesic" doesn't make that argument more agreeable to me. I'm on painkillers 24/7, and have been for years, just like the religious in your argument. It's not like they're only religious a few times a month, which is how often I think healthy people take analgesics. (I really don't know.) Being on painkillers constantly is a problem. It's bad for your body and it reflects a much larger problem: if I were even close to being healthy, I wouldn't have to take painkillers constantly. I'd call this an analogy fail, but it's actually the best analogy I've heard in a while, the author just doesn't realize the import of it.

So how do we dis­crim­i­nate be­tween dan­ger­ous and be­nign re­li­gions? That is the more fruit­ful ques­tion, be­cause it in­vites the oth­er world re­li­gions into the dis­cus­sion.

No, it's not. It's not. Trying to figure out whose invisible pink unicorn is prettier is a waste of time. Some religions lend themselves more readily to abuse, but none of them are true. Helping the developing world will not be accomplished to trying to find the least dangerous religion for people to believe in. It will be accomplished by improving the situation and lives of the people to the point where they don't need emotional aspirin anymore. (Yeah, don't ask me how to do that, I have no idea.)

In short, the re­duc­tion of human suf­fer­ing should be the stand­ard by which we meas­ure ev­ery re­li­gion.

How about it's truth? Really, we can't judge religions by truth? We can't demand proof? It seems more than a little condescending to say that people in developing nations cannot adopt logical thinking or the scientific method. It's not like religion has changed the plight of people in developing nations, maybe we do need to try that.

Yeah, You Didn't Prove Anything There

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence (hereinafter "ECREE") is something of a credo for atheists. There is a reason for that. Having never seen anyone raised from the dead or turn water into wine or walk on water, and knowing what I know of reality, I find the claims of Christians to be extraordinary. By definition, just look at the word: extra-ordinary.

Christians* will occasionally, and very annoyingly, respond with, "Oh yeah, well prove that you own a sweater. Hah!" Hence, ECREE. Owning a sweater is ordinary. While I certainly could prove that I own a sweater, and am in fact currently wearing a sweater, it's such a mundane thing that asking me to prove it is ridiculous. Raising the dead is just not in the same category as sweater owning. The only way sweater owning could rise to the level of ECREE is if I claimed my sweater was the sweater Elvis was wearing when he died, or that my sweater cures cancer. (It's a nice argyle in a wool blend, nothing more.)

As you might imagine, Christians get really frustrated by this, primarily because, outside of the Bible, there really is no proof of these claims. So then they engage in sophistry:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence or ECREE is nothing but an illogical catch phrase used by skeptics devoid of logic to judge religious claims. What constitutes an extraordinary claim is entirely subjective and relative to the person, for example; a man living his entire life in the amazon jungle might find the entire concept of an airplane to be an extraordinary claim, whereas you or I will find the concept of an airplane to be a mundane claim. Which leads me to my next point, there is no such thing as extraordinary evidence.

Sophistry is funny. On the surface, it seems like Theological Discourse (hereinafter "TD") has a point. There are tribes in the Amazon who have had no contact with the rest of the world, and I have no doubt they would find an airplane to be an extraordinary claim. However, this does not make ECREE illogical or meaningless. In fact, it proves the purpose of ECREE. I can provide evidence of a plane, very easily, in fact. I would merely have to drive that person to the airport and point. (Edited because I forgot to add) This person would have every right to dismiss the existence of planes if I simply said, "Airplanes: they exist". I wouldn't have provided any evidence, extraordinary or otherwise.

What TD seems to be missing is this: it's the receiver of the claim who decides whether or not that claim is extraordinary and demands equally extraordinary evidence. That's how ECREE works. You might find it annoying to have to provide proof for what you consider self evident, but that doesn't make that demand of proof less sincere or reasonable.

This is, by the way, ludicrous:

You might think certain claims from a Christian are extraordinary claims, but to the Christian they might not be, just like how an the guy living in the amazon might find the existence of airplanes an extraordinary planes, but to you they might not be.

Look, whether or not you believe in God or Jesus or the story of Jesus as contained in the Bible, you have to admit that turning water into wine, walking on water and rising from the freakin' dead are extraordinary events. You've never seen those things happen, have you? You don't live in a physical reality that allows for those things, do you? In fact, that's what makes the story of Jesus so remarkable, isn't it? If rising from the dead isn't extraordinary, then what's so special about Jesus anyway? That's just painting yourself into a rhetorical corner right there.

*By no means, not all. I doubt some of my own commentors find it unreasonable that I find these claims to be extraordinary.

At Least They're Honest About Their Hatred of the Consumer

So, I had a little Christmas money yesterday, and some seriously ragged hair, so I thought, "well, how much training or talent does someone need to trim 1/2" off the ends, anyway?" As it turns out, not much, the haircut went fine, but what led up to the haircut makes me think naked capitalism isn't always a good thing.

This was one of those low end strip mall hairstyling chains people work at for the first year or two out of beauty school. They have names like . . . Awesome Eddies, shall we say. A shampoo, haircut and blowdry is $17.99. (Keeping in mind that they have to wash your hair because it's easier to cut hair wet and whatever leftover styling gunk you had in your hair would dull their scissors, but whatever.)

Yesterday, December 26, in Pennsylvania, the receptionist asks me if I want the $9.99 special. Hey, I like saving money as much as the next person so I ask what the $9.99 special is. A wash and haircut. No blowdry. In December. In Pennsylvania. It was 22F (-5.6C) without the wind chill. Yeah, I'll be happy to pay $8 for you to blow dry my hair.

Seriously, I can see this as an option in the summer, though not for my supreme frizziness, but midwinter? That's like prefacing surgery by asking someone if they'd like to save $500 by not having the wound sewn shut. It's like some sort of evil marketing ploy to make me beg the hairstylist to charge me an outrageous sum of money for 5 minutes of blow dryer time.

No, wait, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what it is.