If you’ve come to bash me for my remark
I tend to use the term food stamps and welfare interchangeably, because individuals tend to use both at the same time (god forbid you don’t fit into my generalization you special snowflake you). My remark was not racist, it was merely an economic observation. If you’re using food stamps, you are economically disadvantaged. If you are on food stamps you tend to have your income (or lack of) augmented with welfare. If you’re using your welfare money to purchase consumer goods designed for those with disposable income, you’re out of line. If you can afford it with your own income, and you have food stamps and welfare, good for you. But your money is better off being saved and put to a better use than a iPhone. Perhaps more food for your house, a repair on your car, affordable and durable clothing for you or your children, rather than spending it on your own vanity.
Ok but here’s the thing.
You’re wrong. You are approaching this situation on a flawed basic premise and making a lot of really bizarre assumptions.
Here are some incorrect assumptions you have made:
That smartphones are ‘designed for those with disposable income’ as opposed to designed to be multifunction tools for maintaining communication and accessing online spaces and services.
That people who receive SNAP benefits must also receive TAFDC Cash benefits. (and that people who don’t are ‘special snowflakes’
Let me lay some facts on you (I pulled this shit off google in five minutes, it wasn’t hard)
46,700,000 people in America currently receive SNAP benefits.
12,800,000 people in America currently receive TAFDC ‘welfare’ fungible cash benefits.
That’s 33,900,000 ‘special snowflakes’ who receive food assistance alone. Food assistance cannot be used to purchase goods, which means that all non-food goods must be purchased with other income, usually from jobs.
That people who receive either SNAP or TAFDC benefits have cars (that need repairs), have children (that need new clothes) and have savings accounts (that are viable) and that all of these things are more important than having internet access.
Do you comprehend how important it is to have a means of stable contact with the rest of the world? ESPECIALLY if you’re homeless or at threat of being homeless?
No seriously, try to become employed from a state of unemployment, or get a better job from a state of under/poor employment, without having internet access. Do you have ANY idea how many places ONLY accept online applications these days?
Do you have any comprehension of what life would be like if you didn’t have a phone -at all-? If you didn’t have a stable call-back number?
And if you’re going to only have one electronic device that you won, doesn’t it make sense to obtain one that has as many features as you can cram into it? Because you don’t get to go home to your laptop and your TV and your landline phone.
Things you have not even begin to consider: That the phone was a gift (smart phones have practically no resale value, and certainly not a resale value in excess of their functional capacity) by someone who wants to maintain contact with the at-risk person (ask me how many of the girls at my workplace have smart phones that were given to them by family members, agencies, social workers, and assorted programs. Go ahead.)
In sum, you are espousing strong opinions about something that you demonstrably know nothing about. You would do well to educate yourself about the realities of a situation before getting loudly opinionated about it in a public forum.
^
(via moniquill)