Listen in the past the poor have had to improvise cheap food the rich never wanted as a means to survive. And over the many years of innovation made the food taste good until eventually the rich where like: “Oh hay you actually like that garbage? Why on earth would you like it?” Then they try it, love it, start buying it, and then drive the price up so much it becomes a luxury good.
They do this and its devastating, the food typically never becomes affordable again. It don’t matter how cheap the foo dis to produce, it doesn’t matter if there is almost no meat on the bone or its super difficult to eat and messy. Once the poor discover how to make some bit of cheap food taste good, the rich take it away via driving the price of it up.
THEY DID THIS TO RIBS.
Ribs were garage meat. Just look at them, there is hardly any meat on the bone, you have to eat them by hand usually, and they are messy. They where an undesirable cheap source of junk meat. But the poor being the poor made them taste good. (Because they don’t have much to choose from.) The rich discovered the meals the poor made with them and decided they liked ribs too. People discovered they could sell a few ribs to rich people and make way more money then selling lots of ribs to poor people and the price was driven up.
DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO CEREAL!!!
They did the same to brisket. You used to be able to get brisket for less than a dollar a pound, which meant you could get a twenty pound brisket fairly cheaply. And then you smoked it, sliced it, and had meat for weeks if not a full month. And it was tasty. I grew up eating brisket at least once a month because my family could afford it.
It was a cheap meat because no rich person looks at the dangly part of the neck of a cow and goes ‘ooh, that looks tasty!’.
But then Food Network started showcasing things like barbecued brisket. Rich people started showing up at places that weren’t just Rib Crib to get their barbeque. And the price of brisket went up. A lot.
I regularly see it for over five dollars a pound in stores now. And while yeah, that might not seem like a lot when you’re talking only a pound or two of meat, brisket is normally sold in ten to twenty pound sizes. It’s become completely unaffordable to the people that made it delicious.
Sushi used to be really cheap, too, until it became ‘trendy’. Guess why you’re now paying twelve dollars for your order of California rolls? Because rich people discovered something that poor people had been eating for ages.
Noticed the prices of fajita meat, chicken thighs, or ham hocks has gone up recently? You guessed it. Rich people are taking our food and now we’re scrambling to afford the things that we grew up eating.
Lobster is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
For hundreds of years, lobster was regarded as a sort of insect larvae from the depth of the sea. It had zero appeal as a “luxury food” until people living in NY and Boston developed a taste for it. Before the 19th century, it was considered a “poverty food” or used as fertilizer and bait - some household servants specified in employment agreements that they would not eat lobster more than twice a week.
It was also commonly served at prisons, which tells you something about prison food.
Only by cleverly marketing lobster as an indulgence for the privileged made it cost so much. It became a vehicle for enormous profit spawning a multi-billion dollar global industry in the process. This mythical affection for lobster flesh - not its practical value in terms of taste, nutrition, or any other reasonable consideration - drives its value.
LMAO. Wait.
Anyone else’s eye twitchin?
Food gentrification is a long standing practice and it’s some of the most evil shit I can think of. It’s why I refuse for example as someone living in the US to buy things with Quinoa in them. It is specifically pricing an indigenous population out of their prime staple food. It’s a horrific invasion of one of the final requirements of staying alive.
Oysters were another too poor to be eaten food, they were almost a waste product of the river pearl industry and were sold in London as cheap as it got, in the winter months oysters were one of the main sources of protein in workhouses. Now they’re a “delicacy”
Same thing’s happened to bacon over the past 15, 20 years or so.
In order for disabled people to receive any sort of financial assistant for their housing, food, bills, medical supplies, etc., they cannot ever have more than $2,000 of resources to their name. Ever.
It doesn’t matter what it’s for.
You’re saving up for a new wheelchair?
For college?
To put a downpayment on a house?
Hell man, you just happen to budget for once in your life so that you can have some extra money in case something bad happens?
Your benefits immediately get cut off if you’re a cent over $2,000.
And, even worse, you usually end up having to pay back every dollar the government gave you that month.
So say you get $400. If they find out you’re twenty dollars over the resource limit, you have to give them all $400 back and you undergo an investigation of your funds to see if you will continue getting money.
“What if I spend the money that day?”
Doesn’t matter. In fact, from what I can tell, people who do this are actually put under investigation for fraud.
And yes, this system literally kills people.
Remember when “Guardians of the Galaxy” came out? one of Rocket Racoon’s creators, Bill Mantlo, suffered an accident in 1992 and has irreparable brain damage.
before the movie came out, Marvel gave him an exclusive preview screening. SOme people were upset because they felt if Marvel was really wanted to thank mantlo, they should have donated money to Mantlo’s family.
Bill Mantlo’s brother had to come out and explain: If Marvel gave them monetary aid, Bill Mantlo would lose his financial assistance.
That’s so utterly depressing.
disgusting
I have friends on welfare who won’t pick up a penny in the street because they’d risk the welfare they struggled to get for 10 years.
oh look another fucked up thing in this world. let’s just add it to the list. number 63858b
My brother has been on California State SSI for autism for the last 10 years, and he absolutely has to (no joke, HAS TO) spend all 720 bucks of his SSI every month, because if he puts it in the bank he risks losing his SSI altogether.
Sometimes, at the end of the month, he has no idea what to do with his money because the whole month went by and he still has 400-ish bucks in his account, and he fucking panics because he doesn’t want to get anywhere near 2,000.
And here’s the funnest part of the story!
One day he did a huge commission on Second Life and wound up earning 1500 bucks off of it, and he told the guy to donate it 500 bucks at a time over 3 months. The guy didn’t want to, and just donated all 1500, which put my brother at 2,036 bucks.
The state IMMEDIATELY (I’m talking less than an hour) called him up to tell him over the phone that they were canceling his SSI, because they noticed he had gone over the 2,000 buck threshold. He had to tell them that someone had made a charitable donation to him and that this was not a common occurrence in any way shape or form, and upon not believing him, my mother had to call to talk to them as his legal caretaker and say basically the same thing until they called off the cancellation of his SSI money.
He also had to cancel his renter’s assistance because it put him to 1,062 a month, so if he went 30 days without spending any money they’d cancel his SSI altogether. Like, none of us in the family have any fucking clue why that regulation is in place and it’s the stupidest shit in human history.
Please, legal side of Tumblr, tell me what positive reasoning this law has?
Happy 4th of July everyone! This is what the “nation of opportunity” looks like.
There’s something called an ABLE account that can help. If you are on SSI and were diagnosed as disabled before the age of 26 you can apply for an ABLE account that will allow you to save up to $99,000. More people need to know about this!
thank you so much for this information. i’m applying for an abled account right now
THERES A WHAT
OH GOD BLESS THE SHIT OUTTA YOU YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW FREAKED OUT OVER THIS I WAS
I’ve been looking into SSI; I had no idea about this!
Kinda weird how you say you’re against fascism yet you shut down anyone just because they share a different opinion than you. You guys are exactly what you say you hate... FASCIST! How come I have never seen any member of antifa actually sit down with someone and have a civil debate? I’ve only ever seen them yell and throw tantrums. Doesn’t look good for you guys, yikes.
Something I heard recently: if you insist on sheltering both lambs and wolves, you will get in the end only wolves. If you insist your safe space is safe for bigots as well as minorities you will have a space full of bigots- minorities will be driven out.
Fuck Fascists. Punch all the Nazis. Punch them until they’re all dead.
Re: The Britney/IUD situation. Horrible as it is, I’m not sure I’d call it eugenics. It’s obvious what her dad’s real motives are.
- Another baby means she’d probably need to stop touring/recording for a couple of years, costing hundreds of millions in revenue/ticket sales. Her body’s just a commodity to him.
-No doubt he doesn’t like the idea of a new family member getting their share of her resources and money. As it is, I wouldn’t be shocked if turned out her first two kids get shafted by him and don’t get all the money they need or she wants them to have either.
Maybe he uses the superficial explanation of “You’re too ill and troubled for another baby” to justify it (also horrible and it’s not up to him) but that’s not really why.
Can it not be both?
Yeah, but with her family it’s clear it is more about the money than them genuinely thinking she can’t cope with another child.
She’s released 4 albums, been on American Idol and done countless tours since 2008. Fairly sure she can handle a baby.
That’s the issue: Everyone knows she is more or less fine these days. They just keep acting like she’s not to get to her money.
Well, yes, it’s all about the money BUT given the way it’s playing out it is still literally eugenics, even if the motives are financial not eugenicist.
this situation is only possible and defensible in court because of the widespread acceptance of eugenicist approaches to disabled people’s bodies… the problem isn’t that she’s actually fine and is being wrongly treated like a disabled person, it’s that the way disabled people are treated so frequently consists of human rights abuses that are seen as acceptable because of ableism.
So with everyone abuzz about the Britney Trial, and appalled and shocked and horrified at what she has had to go through, I want to take the time to state that this is commonplace and a very real threat for neurodivergent folks of all stripes. If you have a paper diagnosis of something it can and will be used against you by abusers. If you are disabled and/or neurodivergent you are owned in the eyes of the law and society by the people you depend on. This obviously and predictably creates situations where abuse is prevalent.
What Britney revealed in this trial did not shock me at all because this is the reality of many many people. This is the threat that hangs over people like me if we dont conform and burn out to please an arbitrary standard of normal and don’t lie like hell to doctors.
At any moment if my mother felt like it, she could simply take my autonomy away legally because I can’t live alone. If I didn’t censure myself all of the time around certain people regarding neurodivergence, I could end up in a similar position because a doctor decided I was too crazy to have rights, and unlike Brittney, there is no mass movement for justice for us common people.
I want everyone to realize that what Britney has said is commonplace for people deemed ‘too crazy to function’ and disabled people in general. We are abused at startlingly high rates by our caregivers (parents, doctors, etc), society thinks that our rights should be taken away for our own good. I want people to extend the horror and desire to see change to the rest of us who arent high profile and use that horror to enact real change.
Not just hashtag freebritney, but push to pass laws to protect the autonomy and freedoms of those of us who are effected by conservatorships, institutionalization, and general stamping on of the rights of neurodivergent and disabled folks in every area of our lives.
“The trial has started in the case of a French woman who shot dead a man she says abused her years - first as her stepfather then later as her husband.
Valerie Bacot was just 12 when Daniel Polette began raping her. He was jailed but later returned to the family home and allegedly resumed the abuse.
She alleges he forced her to marry him and fathered her four children.
Ms Bacot admits killing him in 2016 but more than 600,000 people have signed a petition calling for her release.
She says she shot Polette dead during an encounter in which he had allegedly been forcing her to work as a prostitute.
Ms Bacot hid the body with the help of two of her children but was arrested in October 2017 and confessed to the killing.
The trial is a major news story in France and has galvanised public debate about violence against women.”
Anonymous
