tonyc_76: Hi, Aver.
The average Occupy supporter probably has more money than the average person on earth.
This does not detract from their plight. Jobless is jobless. Not being able to afford food, housing, education, and health care are bad, regardless of where the person is. Having an iPhone or Blackberry, usually purchased back when they still had jobs, don't prove anything except that they bought one when they had jobs, a sensible decision then. Selling them afterward won't do much. Food and housing cost in America is so high that it will get them about two weeks worth of money and then it's gone. It makes much more sense to keep them so that they will have a phone that they can use to contact and be contacted by potential employers.
Aver: Oh come on. You have lower unemployment rate than most of Europe. I know that being jobless is terrible thing but when I was one I was looking for a job and I was trying to learn stuff, instead of protesting.
First I found work as damn cashier in supermarket. I accepted it even tho my ambitions was way higher. Now, I found nice job in bank and I'm pretty damn sure I would not have it if I would spent time on street instead of trying to change something myself. And I live in country that has a way higher unemployment rate than US.
You may not realize how shit works here, which is fair, this place is quite different from most places in Europe. Would that cashier job have worked out for you if you'd had to walk or ride the bus 2-4 hours each way? What if you had a kid and were responsible for getting them to and from school? Oh, bus passes are pretty damned expensive here (around 6 USD per day, which will equate to 1 hour of your shift), forgot to say. Maybe you could have afforded a car to get to work? In fact, some employers won't hire you if you don't have one.
You don't get benefits for low paying jobs, typically. Hope you don't get sick, because all you can afford is some aspirin or tylenol. Oh, we also have a lot of states that allow an employer to let you go for any reason whatsoever (for example, if you miss a shift due to being very ill), as long as they don't admit it was for bigoted reasons you'll probably lose your cashier job.
Long commutes are common here, everything is very spread out. There's a big lack of social services other places take for granted. Family typically is not close and you cannot rely on relatives for childcare. Daycare runs around 400USD per month per child in my area. At minimum wage that would be 1/3 of your paycheck or so, before you'd bought food or paid rent.
I don't know how they count your jobless rates over there but ours excludes anyone who can't actively look for work or has given up, even temporarily. It also doesn't count people who've run out of unemployment benefits. So the number of adults without jobs is much higher than our jobless rate would imply, even if you remove retired people.
tonyc_76: Having an iPhone or Blackberry, usually purchased back when they still had jobs, don't prove anything except that they bought one when they had jobs, a sensible decision then. Selling them afterward won't do much. Food and housing cost in America is so high that it will get them about two weeks worth of money and then it's gone. It makes much more sense to keep them so that they will have a phone that they can use to contact and be contacted by potential employers.
Arkose: Sorry, but no. A smart phone is a status symbol, not a necessity. Replacing it with a cheap phone would provide identical core functionality while freeing up a nice pile of cash. My nephew has a phone that cost a mere NZ$20 (roughly US$15). It doesn't have "apps" and other trendy things but it has all the core phone functionality plus some extra goodies like taking photos and accessing Facebook.
We're not expecting them to sell their wedding rings or other items of personal value to make ends meet--it's just a phone. Holding onto meaningless possessions which would be far more useful in cash form--and will be obsolete in a few years anyway--really says something about a person's priorities.
That's simply not true, poor people often use them to tether (it only takes them one family member or friend who knows how to unlock the phone to do this) and use it for their home internet as well. It's a net savings for them. They're also useful beyond what a dumb phone does, especially if you're job hunting. They're also pretty worthless used and you're locked into a contract paying for them for 2 years whether you want them or not.
