When you are poor and have an iPhone....

[JackRiddler]

23. What's the first thing that comes to mind...

when I see "welfare recipients" with consumer electronics?

(How do I know they're on welfare?! Because I have the magic radar that comes with being a white guy? Anyway...)

I think that it's 2014.

Capitalism has gotten pretty good at over-producing formerly exclusive consumer junk and getting it into the hands of many millions of people at discount prices. Sometimes it even comes for free. Surplus junk has to be unloaded to clear the shelves for the next generations of junk, and these tend to arrive at shorter intervals.

At least, that's how it usually works in the rich countries.

I also think that most everyone nowadays, whether poor or less poor, needs this technology if they're going to work and get by.

And at the same time, I think production of this technology doesn't do jack shit to lower the exorbitant and soul-crushing rents and debts to which most everyone is subject.

It also doesn't magically conjure up jobs that can consistently pay the rent and the debt and the food and the health care and generate savings, not when there is a constant reduction in the labor required for increasing levels of overproduction. The time has come therefore to raise the question of working hours and the central role of "the job" in defining every single person.

Of course, I could always just forget all of this self-evident stuff, and instead reduce myself to an asshole and an idiot and take petty pleasure in passing judgement on people I don't even know, in a fashion that makes me feel superior.