Ingrained

Well, we had a surfeit of guests - first Ray came for the weekend, which was, as always, a good thing: as more or less my only friend in the flesh here, and a fellow wargamer. Sadly he was pretty sick this visit, and we didn't get to play a game, just sat around, mostly bitching about how bad the current rules & lists are, and floundering about trying to find a superior alternative. The current leaders for that, btw, are WRG 6th Edition, now a venerable 28 years old I think, and Armati, also not exactly fresh out of the gate, but so be it.

As always though, we stayed up very late watching movies & talking ... well, yattering on endlessly to be honest, about anything and everything. One thing that does disturb me about Ray is his seemingly reflexive sexism & racism, which - I'm not sure - either underpin or grow out of his elaborate & well-defended republicanism/conservatism. I know this periodically drives Cat absolutely wild, and occasionally leaves me aghast too, but it's a bit late to be trying to change his behaviour, so we both let it ride: besides, he has been a very staunch friend, and is in general such a good-hearted guy, it more or less just puzzles me that he hasn't grown out of that, for some reason.

Then we had 2 of Cat's friends over for lunch yesterday while I was working from home. They brought a grandson, and also their mother, and while the others were smoking, I had a fairly lengthy, and to be honest horrifying, discussion with the mother. Her racism was not just overt, but a bit breathtaking. Of course, she would be in her 60s or 70s, and I guess it may not be untypical for her generation, and for someone who grew up in rural Arkansas.

Naturally, as our guest, I didn't challenge these attitudes - they were too obviously deeply felt and strong, and having a blazing open argument over it was hardly going to change her mind, just upset everyone & terminate the visit, and possibly Cat's friendship. It did serve me as a reminder that these people are still around, and still oozing their poison where their grandkids and great grandkids can hear it, and probably absorb at least some of it.

Perhaps I was wrong to let it slide, when I think on it: that is the sort of attitude that does allow it to continue to fester. But I don't seem to have a strongly confrontational approach, and that sort of thought usually occurs to me only far after the fact.

One other thing she said almost did trip me into a heated argument though, and it's something I hear a -lot- of in the US: 'Oh they ain't poor, there's plenty of jobs if they wanted to work, they just don't want to work'.

Of course, I've heard this arrant nonsense everywhere I've lived - it was practically a mantra for Robs' Mob, and for most of the National Party, and it's endemic in bits of UK society, but over here it seems even more widespread. It always drives me a bit nuts, especially in times like these when there's 11% unemployment and we're going through a fairly severe depression*.

The truth is, people DO want to work, with amazingly few exceptions. Even when it is barely more than the dole, and sometimes when the net (after transport & such) is less than it, people will work, at the most amazingly wretched jobs, for disgustingly little pay.

Waitressing in this country, for instance. The legal minimum wage here is something like $7.25/hour now - except for waitresses & waiters, who have a special exemption to be paid a minimum of $2.13 .... and trust me, the number of places that pay more than the minimum is extremely small, even in quite high-tone places. The assumption is that they will make this up and more in tips, and most americans who have never worked these jobs assume that they not only make it up, but make very good money on top, just from tips.

I doubt it, severely. From what I've read and heard, there are an awful lot of tightwallets who tip minimally or not at all, and most waitstaff struggle to even make an extra $5 an hour to get to the usual legal minimum. Of course in the tightening economy, tips are one of the very easy economies: while it is 'customary' to leave a 15% tip, it is very easy to squeeze that - plus of course quite a few people just cut dining out to a minimum or nothing.

Our visitors on Monday both work as waitresses in the weekends, and one - an extremely good waitress and very popular - used to clear about $100 a day on the weekends, i.e. about $12 an hour, which is, well, OK, but hardly overwhelming. This has fallen by over 50% in the last year, so she is now getting $50 a day net ... after paying for travel, about an hours' drive each way, it leaves very little money indeed. Naturally she's looking for a position closer to home, but - also naturally - there's damn-all of them available in the current situation.

I wish I could make these people who bang on about plenty of jobs if you want them, see exactly what rubbish they are talking: and what wretched jobs are actually like. But then, I might as well wish for the moon :/


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*That's a word that gives me a wry smile: originally it was called a crash, but that upset people, so they changed the word to a crisis - after a while that sounded too alarming, so they just called it a depression, something softer-sounding and less scarey. Of course 1929 screwed the pooch on that, so they switched to recession.

It all means the same thing tho - the economy is explosively shrinking, shedding jobs as though it were deciduous. At one point recession in the 80s started sounding scarey so they tried contraction, but that never caught on. You now have the ludicrous situation that some of the TV talking heads, exhibiting their complete cluelessness, argue about whether the current fiasco is a depression, or 'just' a recession. Duh.