Hey, Dollface, You’re Not Helping

Whenever I check my Hotmail account I find various MSN articles advertised in the margins. The majority of these articles are written for people who are either very stupid, very insecure, or both: I don’t want to check my horoscope, thank you, I don’t need a list of easy tips to find love in the new year, and I don't need to make any changes to my weight, my wardrobe or the circumference of my hips, thanks for asking.

So I hardly ever read these pieces. Today, however, an article titled “Survival on $6.50 an hour” piqued my interest enough that I clicked on the link and started to read. Six-fifty an hour? “There but for the grace of good luck go I,” I thought, as I read the opening sentences:

As a single professional woman, for years I sat securely among the lower rungs of the middle class. Now I've fallen off the ladder. In a matter of months, I went from a comfortable life with decent pay and health insurance to a $6.50-an-hour job with no insurance, no furniture and just enough resources to keep the wolf from the door.

Shudder. Horror. That could happen to me! I took a reassuring glance around my comfortable, well-furnished home before I continued reading the article. Oh, the poor author, victim of bad luck and evil fate!

Then I got to this paragraph:

Here's my story in a nutshell: I lost my job as a managing editor at a small newspaper in Montana after the ownership changed hands. Six months later, I moved to Pennsylvania to take a similar job. But finding a rental seemed nearly impossible because I have three dogs, and after two weeks of campground living, my boss fired me, telling me my living situation was "bad for business." I sold off my household goods -- everything from a sofa to pots and pans -- and drove back to small-town Montana.

She unloaded useful items like pots and pans — which she’d need to replace if she wants to cook her own food in her new home — but she kept the three dogs. She lost her job because she couldn’t find a decent place to live, but kept the pets which made finding a place to live impossible. She got rid of her home furnishings and then complained about not having any.

The article goes on to discuss how she accepts gifts of food from her friends because she can’t quite afford to feed herself, yet when she lists her various expenses and ways of cutting back, “feeding three dogs” somehow never makes it onto her financial radar.

As a softcore libertarian, one of the ways I differ from my hardcore brethren is that they say poor people only ever get that way due to laziness, stupidity or some combination thereof, whereas I insist that even the smartest go-getter in the world can be plunged into poverty if fate and circumstance conspire to make it so.

I hope none of my hardcore friends find this article.