h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think the government's benefit cuts have ushered in a greater level of inequality in the UK.

The gaps are widening between the poor and the middle classes and between the great majority and the very rich. This level of inequality can inspire crimes of violence and civil unrest.

It's a disgrace! Extreme inequality is one of the worst things in the world. Having to exist in permanent economic insecurity ravages body and mind ... and this is now happening to the majority of people in pretty much all countries in the world.

I don't feel like an adult either, but I have a better excuse than most: I can show my white hair and let people think I'm in my second childhood.

But seriously, I hope things get better for you. And if they don't, would a subscription to the Tightwad Gazette help any? Many of my neighbors squeeze their dollars 'til the eagles grin.

Equality is something that frustraes me a great deal. I din't per se mind some people being richer than others but the fact that some earn more than they could ever need while many more struggle for a basic quality of life is just unacceptable.

Paulh: is the tightwad gazette a real thing or was that a figure of speech? I don't know if we have eagles in the uk but I fear squeezing them would be frowned upon.

I think it's a real thing, Ben. There are books:

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Tightwad-Gazette-Promoting-Alternative/dp/0375752250

'Squeezing the eagle' comes from the eagles on US coins.

Bessie Smith was a blues singer during the Great depression of the 1930s. She famously sang "Nobody knows you when you're down and out." There's a line from the song:

If I ever get my hand on a dollar again,
I'm gonna hang onto to it til them eagles grin.

I think it would be an eye-opener for first-world people to spend some time living in cultures where you have to make the best of terrible circumstances -- there is no other way to survive. Think of people in interior Peru, where guinea pigs are not pets but the only thing on your plate at mealtime. If you need to travel to another part of the rainforest, you hop on whatever truck is going by. In parts of Africa, the only electricity you will ever have comes from a roof- mounted solar panel the size of an iPad. It gives you enough power for one electric light or playing your radio, which is your only connection to what's happening elsewhere in the world. This simple solar panel has significantly reduced kerosene imports into Africa.

I live in an area that has skyrocketing water rates. This, despite the fact that I get more than enough rainfall to rely on rainwater entirely, with a few simple precautions like boiling water for washing dishes or myself.

And don't get me started on growing your own vegetables. There's a good reason why many Russians are almost obsessive about their gardens. Think of the mass starvation of the Ukraine in the 1930s, or the siege of Leningrad in the 1940s.

There are many low-income people who somehow manage to save a few dollars or rubles or pounds or whatever.

As I reread this, realize that I've gotten on a soapbox. Sorry about that. I just find this subject fascinating.

Incidentally benjaminpmoore, have you tried the Citizens Advice Bureau?

Hi Paulh, while it is true that there are ways to better manage money, and to get by on little, on a society-wide scale increased poverty is really a bad thing. Some people still manage to get by, but many don't ... what they see is a steady erosion of their quality of life, freedom and dignity. As for inequality, we probably can never have complete equality, but we can try to limit it to a less-than-obscene level.

We do need fixes to enable people to live more frugally ... but that life still has to be a meaningful and valuable life, not a scrabble for every little necessity. And I think maybe the rich folks need more advice on how to be frugal than the poor do!

Anyways here's a piece I wrote on poverty, living in a nation with way, way too much of that.


People in Africa aren't 'coping' with poverty. You don't cope with extreme poverty, the way you don't cope with suicidal depression, or terminal cancer, or a bad case of decapitation. At best you can keep up appearances until it finally destroys you. When you have large-scale poverty in a country it means your society has failed in every possible way. There is nothing ennobling about poverty. It is a crushing, demeaning, dehumanising grind. It means people, children, dying of diseases that with a bit of help could have been cured or prevented. It means parents having to feed their children grass, bark and roots – while there's still nice food on the supermarket shelves, but they’ve not the money to buy it. It means massive levels of frustration seething in the populace. It means not being able to find work, OR only being able to find work that is destructive of your own health, OR that isn't at all making use of your true talents or interests, OR you get fairly meaningful work, but it pays barely enough to keep the soul inside the bones. It often means outright slave labour … with the only thing sort of disguising it, being a pitiful wage tacked onto your condition. In practice, those to whom you're beholden for your 'job' own you, body, mind and soul. It often means that you have to have your children go out and work as well. Children are still working in mines for the precious rare metals that make our high-tech devices work, and children are labouring in factories to make and assemble those devices. And those children don't have the support of mothers or fathers, since families crumble under poverty's pressure. Men would prefer to remain with their wives and children but are forced to go this way and that way to please those who use their work. Men with or without work go drinking to excess each weekend and end up going at each other with bricks, bottles, screwdrivers or anything else they can find. Poverty means more crime, and more of the ugliest crimes. South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and its rape statistics are even worse. Now not all of that can be attributed to poverty, but poverty sure helps. People are angry, but can't direct their anger towards the ones that are really injuring them. And poverty means bad education. It means many people being illiterate. And that makes them easy to exploit, by governments or anyone else. People stay superstitious – here in South Africa we still have a huge problem with people thought to be witches being burnt alive in public. Part of the rape problem is because of a belief that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. Prophets, priests and politicians exploit the public's gullibility to the limit, to enrich themselves. A poor, poorly educated, confused population is just the thing for them. And at the same time as most people remain mired in this poverty, a few are able to enrich themselves to absurd, obscene levels. And since we maintain the pretense of a meritocracy, such people, who earn a thousand or more times as much money as the average, can pretend to themselves that they are indeed a thousand or more times as valuable, as worthy, as the lowly herd. So finally insult is added to injury, and poor people are blamed for their circumstances, are told they deserve their poverty – or worse, should get some additional penalties for being lazy, weak and worthless, why not? And all the while people's true talents go to waste as they have to use the very last bit of their energy to slog through the morass. It doesn't help knowing that pretty much everyone else is in the same morass as yourself. Outside the morass, the true masters are laughing. And what do the poor do when the armies come and at gunpoint force them to give allegiance to this one or to that one? You do what comes easiest, because that's all you can do. And when a different army comes, you suffer for it. But you're helpless. You're truly the dregs of society, you're at the bottom of the HUMAN food chain, being both fed on and cr*pped on by all those above you.

Is that really what we want? From my part – I DO NOT want that Britain, Europe or the US should also become societies dominated by poverty like here in Africa. We absolutely need human civilization and its ideals to not die out. We can't afford a dystopia where the majority of the people of the world exist in a powerless and ignorant, medieval-serf sort of condition while they're being exploited and lorded over by a tiny, super-technologically-advanced elite. PLEASE don't let it come to that. Those of us who still have some freedom and ability to act, need to do something, and fast, for the sake of the others.

Sorry. It's hard to generalize, because people face so many different situations. I was trying to offer things that people could choose if it was convenient for them. I'
m well aware of grass=-roots efforts in Spain, Bangladesh, and other places. I support them. Mostly, I would like to see people get help coping with things until the cavalry arrives.

Yes I do hope the cavalry DOES arrive someday! But I do think as I've said above that there is something to be said for frugality. Heck, I try hard to apply it myself! But another thing I think is that we also need to apply frugality at a society-level ... just encouraging more efficient lifestyles. It's not necessary that every person or every family should stay in a single house, I really think if we could go back to more communal styles of habitation a lot of money can be saved society-wide. And efficient public transport systems means less need for every individual having a car. And we're bombarded with advertisements for things we don't need ... and the lifestyles displayed by supposed 'ordinary people' in the media are often way beyond what real common folks could easily manage. So we need a less materialistic culture overall. That would save a lot of money for more of the really needful things.

Well said Ben and well said Willem...

"At an individual, being jobless and short on cash leaves you short of control or options."

Yes indeed - I am aware of this as a disabled person, that money helps with options (eg being able to pay for something to make life easier now rather than having to wait for someone to assess whether you really need it or not)...

"But in the short term, the easy thing we can all do is talk. When you're feel scared or small or powerless or wish your parents would make it all better, tell other people. They feel it too, sometimes. And that's ok."

Yes indeed - that's something I love about this place, that I don't feel alone in my feelings because there are people here who understand because they feel too...

The way we waste energy nowadays is horrendous. The 19th Century grouping of homes around town squares where all the shops are within walking distance was great. If people needed to go long distances, there were trains, which were four times as fuel-efficient as our modern day trucks. The only form of transportation more efficient than trains is ships. And if you have a crew trained in running sailing ships, you can go around the world using just the wind.

Another way to go around the world (but only on the land masses) was by bicycle, which many people tried in the late 19th century.

In the rainier parts of the world, many wells are needlessly dug, when people could, with proper filters and some occasional boiling, get all their water needs by collecting rainwater. IN an average year in Boston, a 1,000-square-foot roof gets 25,000 gallons of rainwater falling on it. Here in Boston, the water that comes out of our faucets has top travel 65 miles from Quabbin Reservoir. Those aqueducts have to be maintained. The water has to be drinkable, even though only a tiny portion of it does get drunk. Few people would mind the cost of bringing this water to us, but the water rates keep going up year after year, at a rate that's faster than inflation.

So why are the water rates keep going up then?

I've thought of getting a tank to catch the rainwater ... I don't know if I have a suitable part of the yard to put it in. Water is still fairly affordable over here, even though we're in a rather dry part of the country. We get our water from the much moister mountain region to the east of town.

Because of my mental illness I can't fit into a typical job. I work part-time for a friend, doing laundry deliveries. We serve about 8 businesses around town with this delivery system. I ride out in my car, picking up the washed laundry, delivering it and then picking up the new dirty laundry. Do you think this measure is wasteful or sensible? It's just one car driving and using the shortest routes to connect the various places, instead of lots of people individually driving to the laundry and back, to deliver their washing as well as to pick it up. I can't think of a better system for laundry delivery ... would have been nice to be able to use trains or even horse carts to do the same job!

"So why are the water rates keep going up then?" [Willem]

The Environmental Protection Agency made Boston Water & Sewer separate storm runoff from sewers. They had to borrow abut three billion dollars in order to do this, and they had to pass along their borrowing costs to their customers. This roughly doubled the water and sewer rates