It’s long been easy to get your hands on a decent Android phone for free or cheap, so poor people having smartphones is nothing new. But you still have a point, because iPhones carry more cultural weight, even if they are shittier.

So what’s the new thing poor people aren’t allowed to have? iPads, perhaps?

Wow, the timing of your post is eerie.

Not that I disagree with anything in it, it’s just crazy reading a blog post about iPhones less than an hour after the breaking news of Steve Jobs’ death.

Um, housing?  That is, any place that fancier than living under a freeway overpass?

Remaining warm and dry because you waste money procuring proper shelter looks like exactly the sort of thing we should look down on in the age of New Conservative America, as we tell the rest of the world:
Take your tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free and shove them up your asses where they belong — and take the ones that are already here and do the same!  Our Lamp of Freedom is lifted beside the Golden Door of Prosperity only for those who already have plenty of gold.  The rest of you moochers and leaches, get the fuck out!
In the name of our Lord Ayn Rand, amen…

Beef.

I mean, if we ended tax subsidies to meat farms, the jump in price would pretty readily make beef out of the price range of anyone not rich enough to waste 15 dollars a head on a meal at home, and exponentially larger at restaurants.

Shoes.

Their ancestors bred, toiled and died in the fields without shoes: what makes these people think they deserve footwear? Make them *earn* a pair of shoes by having some “skin in the game”.

I actually laid down and put some thought into it.

A close relationship with pets.

It has to be visible.  It has to be “frivolous”.  It has to be something that people with a green streak can’t easily get in the grok sense.

The poor woman with that playful, fat, and orange tabby?

What do you think is gunna happen?

Ah well, my “I once got panhandled by a dude playing with his i-phone” story was getting old anyway.

A decent retirement fund.

Kids.

People who are poor and have kids are always labeled irresponsible, especially if that kid is on social welfare programs (besides public school that everyone gets).  Part of the welfare queen myth is the women pop out babies to get a bigger welfare check, as though the kid wouldn’t incur any expenses so it would be a net gain for the mother.  Movies like Idiocracy also don’t help, since we have this cultural narrative that poor people breed like rabbits, but in fact they actually have fewer children than richer people.

I think this “everyone but the poor has iPhones” meme is only spread by social media types and urban hipsters.

I am 32, run multiple blogs, have a Twitter account, use the Internet for about 10 hours a day for work and personal stuff, live in downtown Austin, have a graduate degree, and love indie rock - but I don’t have a smart phone.  Because I cannot afford one.

I have a “free with your contract,” bottom-of-the-line Samsung flip phone with unlimited texting and long distance but no internet access or photo uploading, and split the bill with my mom.  I literally cannot afford paying $100 just for a freaking phone.  I find this ridiculous.  And I resent the assumption of so many social media obsessed, Facebook addicted types that “everyone” has a smart phone.  Bleh.

I also remember how to use a freaking map, and arrive at appointments on time.  I should probably just get some wire rimmed glasses already.

The new iPhone is a paying job.

@bananacat I dunno if kids is a fair extension. They’re not possessions, they’re people. I feel bad, because I am trying to expand my knowledge of classism, and I realize “welfare mom with a herd of children” is a terrible stereotype, and that historically, poor people and people of color have been regarded as “excess population,” and their right to exist is often attacked, but I get nervous when people attacking the logic of “poor people don’t deserve nice things” extend that to human beings. It’s hard for me to equate in my mind entitlement to children with entitlement to housing, shoes, healthy food etc. I’m not concerned with the proper care and health of an iPhone in the same way I’m concerned with the proper care and health of a person.

It’s a tough one, because the idea of social justice is to give everyone access to a full and happy life, and for many people having children is necessarily a part of that, but then children are people in their own right entitled to a full and happy life, not just existing as something to enrich their parents lives.

  Movies like Idiocracy also don’t help, since we have this cultural narrative that poor people breed like rabbits, but in fact they actually have fewer children than richer people.

The problem for me is that movies like this portray intelligence as strictly tied to genetics when we know that isn’t the case.  Retarded people have a defective gene but can still produce normal intelligence or even geniuses.  Everybody else has a statistically even shot of producing children of their intelligence or greater.  If anything this is just a huge cultural extension of “us vs. them” because white baby boomers brought up a generation of 1-2 kid households and now those kids assume that is the norm across the world. 

The new iPhone is a decent job.  Of course that’s too obvious…so why don’t we go with iPads or tablets in general.  Of course as Nooks and the new 7” android tablets filter out that will fall next.

Movies like Idiocracy also don’t help, since we have this cultural narrative that poor people breed like rabbits, but in fact they actually have fewer children than richer people.

Where do you get that?  I thought that women’s education in particular has a negative correlation to the number of children she will have.  That’s certainly the case in the third world.  Education is also positively correlated to income,  so intuitively I would think that income and children are negatively correlated.   

”@bananacat I dunno if kids is a fair extension. They’re not possessions, they’re people. I feel bad, because I am trying to expand my knowledge of classism, and I realize “welfare mom with a herd of children” is a terrible stereotype, and that historically, poor people and people of color have been regarded as “excess population,” and their right to exist is often attacked, but I get nervous when people attacking the logic of “poor people don’t deserve nice things” extend that to human beings.”

Jillie, you have to admit that any child represents at least one (male) orgasm.  And orgasms, despite the best efforts of our finest religious scientists, working hand-in-hand with the leaders of Ingsoc the Republican Party, are still pleasurable (as least for him, if only for a few minutes).

As pleasure in any form must be denied to those who have decided to be poor and drag down the rest of society, then children must be denied these moochers and leaches…obviously…

Mandatory sterilization for the poor and unfit like our inspirational eugenics-believing, pre-Fascist forefathers and foremothers?  Thinning the herd to strengthen the race?  Leaving more room in America for thousands more Duggars?...

Part of the welfare queen myth is the women pop out babies to get a bigger welfare check, as though the kid wouldn’t incur any expenses so it would be a net gain for the mother.

Yeah, it infuriates me how stubbornly conservative assholes believe this. It should be simple for anyone to understand that kids cost a lot of money to care for, but then, 90% of the assholes I see making these claims about “welfare queens” are men, and we can safely assume that conservative men don’t give half a second’s thought to what it takes to care for a child. They probably figure their wives are spending all that money on manicures.

so intuitively I would think that income and children are negatively correlated.

Not in the US, generally. The average family on food stamps has between 2 and 3 members (according to this here official data (PDF)), and that includes both adults and children. So contrary to the popular conservative myth, we don’t have an epidemic of women popping out lots of babies and bleeding the system dry. That’s just a story conservatives make up to hide the fact that they don’t really care if poor kids starve.

Actually, richer households do have less children, but it is a fairly small difference. This is hardly evidence of poor people having hoards of children, mind you.
http://www.russellsage.org/research/social-inequality/chartbook/income-inequality-households-children/children-by-income

I also think the conservative view that the poor are like rabbits hascausality backwards—if you delay having children you are more likely to be able to advance in your career or have a stable relationship with your spouse, etc.

“That’s just a story conservatives make up to hide the fact that they don’t really care if poor kids starve.”

That is so wrong!  Of course conservatives care!

For each night a poor child goes to bed hungry, a conservative somewhere adds another feather to their wings…

...or would if their wings weren’t made of leathery skin like a bat or a dragon or a balrog…

“So, what’s the new iPhone, people?”

The iPhone, of course.  The folks who complain about poor people having “nice things” tend to be profoundly ignorant of technology and years out of date.  They still think of cellphones as an expensive piece of lux- grade high tech, for example.

Things I’ve heard people complain about:

* TVs
* Tattoos
* Jewelry
* Clothes that aren’t shabby enough
* Clothes that are too fashionable

More interesting is the things that folks don’t complain about poor people having:

* cars (as long as they’re suitably rusty)
* PCs

Heartily agreed, StellaTex @11.  I’m so rarely even far enough from a work computer or home laptop (with internet access I already pay for) to warrant having a smartphone for times when I wish I wasn’t.  And I am also codger-ly convinced that GPS users can’t use maps - but then, I also once assumed that everyone having cell phones meant no one would ever attempt to be on-time again.

@21

Oh, it gets far, far worse. Skip to 4:30 in that video for the relevant portion, although obviously the whole video is worth watching.

And I am also codger-ly convinced that GPS users can’t use maps

I used to have a back seat full of map-books for various metro areas. I’m SO glad I don’t have to clutter my car with those anymore.

I mean, plenty of people can’t navigate with a sextant anymore, either. But it’s not the end of the world.

I think this “everyone but the poor has iPhones” meme is only spread by social media types and urban hipsters.

Woo-hoo, first sentence and we’re already bashing hipsters! This post is going places!

I am 32, run multiple blogs, have a Twitter account, use the Internet for about 10 hours a day for work and personal stuff, live in downtown Austin, have a graduate degree, and love indie rock - but I don’t have a smart phone.  Because I cannot afford one.

Establishing your cred as a member of the hip middle-class, well-done. Clearly, this means that when you say that you can’t afford them, there’s no way that someone with less income than you could possibly afford to own one. Sure, they might make totally different calculations about where to spend their money than you would, even choices that lead to them being able to fit a smartphone and data plan within their limited means, but why bother thinking about that when you can just get all bent out of shape about how these cell phones are big ol’ luxury items?

I literally cannot afford paying $100 just for a freaking phone.

Well, if you actually mean that you would be in the red each month if you had to pay for a voice and data plan, then I’m sorry for being snarky. Otherwise, I generally tend to read this kind of comment as “Whatever value a smartphone might have, it is not worth the monthly bill, and surely anyone who does not calculate such things in the same way I do is irresponsible and/or stupid.”

But of course, an iPhone is cheaper than a number of things. It is cheaper to own an iPhone than to pay for a dumb cell, a computer, broadband Internet access and cable television. It’s cheaper than paying car insurance every month. A smartphone is far more useful in a large city than a car is. When you consider that the number one way that people in developing nations are accessing the Internet is on mobile devices, mostly phones, the assumption that a smartphone is a toy of dumb rich people that couldn’t possibly bring value worth having to poor people kind of starts to fall apart.

As for your resentment, please build a bridge and use it to get over yourself.

Oh, one other thing:
<blockquote>I also remember how to use a freaking map, and arrive at appointments on time.</block quote>

Have a goddamn cookie. The implication here being that the tools people used in the pre-mobile age, like paper maps and datebooks, are somehow more morally pure than the smartphone versions, like maps that don’t need to be folded, or purchased in unfamiliar cities, or datebooks that chirp at you to help you remember appointments. Yeah, that’s a new and exciting take that I’ve never heard before.

Lots of maps users can’t use maps. They get lost. GPS users are less likely to get lost. That sounds like a good outcome, but wtf do I know?

@stellatex: Really it’s just a younger group of consumers thing. You already have a computer and your life is arranged to accommodate that particular form of access. Now take someone who’s just out of school or just enter the workforce. They’ve been getting by so far on a. really old tech they were given or bought cheap that probably can’t run a lot of things anymore, b. borrowed tech from a roommate or family c. public terminals in internet cafes, libraries, or schools, c. some combination there of (I’ve done all of these at one point.) They’ve got a little extra from work and they need some form of reliable internet access. They can buy a ridiculously cheap laptop for $500 or a brand new smartphone with internet access already included in the phone plan for a $100. That’ll get them a bare minimum package of computer functions and they can always fall back to public terminals if they need something more complex.

grolby, for every person that cannot read a map there is one who let their gps direct them into a lake.

A vacation out of the house. 

Poor people shouldn’t be able to do anything but huddle in their miserable shitpiles whenever they’re not working.

When I was a kid in Oregon, you weren’t allowed to buy fresh or frozen meat (or fish, but you could have eggs and I think poultry) with food stamps.  It’s not the case today, but… You still can’t buy toilet paper or a pot to cook in.

Comment #28: scrumby on 10/06 at 12:54 AM

grolby, for every person that cannot read a map there is one who let their gps direct them into a lake.

Ok, let’s be tediously literal about this: no, there isn’t.

I know how to read a map, and I vastly prefer the GPS nav.  Why?  Because it freaking tells me instructions out loud while I’m driving so I can actually concentrate on the road.  Also, I get to skip the anxiety over missing the turns I need to make, since the unit will recalculate and figure out a new path without me having to intervene.

Plus… get ready for this… it shows you a map centered on your current location at all times, oriented according to your direction.

@Tyro: I was the same way. I’d fight a bear to keep my GPS. Back when my job required huge amounts of driving, I think I must have spent about twice what my GPS cost on maps, and still ended up lost because frequently stuff either isn’t marked, is marked incorrectly, or the map is out of date. Never again will I listen to a local ramble on about “Oh, you go to the old Stevens place and turn left.” while thinking “Who the fuck are the Stevens? I’m from 900 miles away!”

I think we should just carry right wing policy to its inevitable conclusion right now: The ability to read should be the new iPhone. It hits all their rage spots: Poor people, public education, pleasure and class mobility for anyone but old white men.

enjoy reading

Sex.

How often have you heard conservatives tell anyone who mentions that draconian social policies hurt children the most say “she should have kept her legs closed.”  The implication is that the children aren’t wanted or planned or even understood to come from sex, it’s the inability of the mother to properly control the sexuality of the men around her.  Like they’re animals rutting in an alley somewhere.

As pleasure in any form must be denied to those who have decided to be poor and drag down the rest of society, then children must be denied these moochers and leaches…obviously…

Mandatory sterilization for the poor and unfit like our inspirational eugenics-believing, pre-Fascist forefathers and foremothers?  Thinning the herd to strengthen the race?  Leaving more room in America for thousands more Duggars?...
Comment #17: MikeEss on 10/05 at 10:54 PM

Sterilization would NEVER be an acceptable answer, nor is contraception and abortion.  That allows them to have their “cake” and eat it too.  No, these people must be kept from having sex, ever, and if they do, it must benefit the state by providing new people to compete for crappy jobs so the wages can stay low.

Education.  The whole magnet school and charter school and homeschool movements suggest that it’s okay to have good and bad schools so long as *I* can get my kid in the good school.  There’s an acceptance that some kids will just have to go to bad schools, because their parents don’t care enough (work two jobs so they can’t go to every PTA meeting and can’t afford a private school or transportation to a good school).

Safety.  Obviously if they live in *that* neighborhood they should expect to get raped, robbed, mugged, assaulted.

TVs are a big thing, too—every time you see a poor person with a TV of any kind, someone somewhere is bitching, “he has a bigger TV than I do (spit).”  I remember any time people would talk about “coddling prisoners” the whole “they have COLOR TVs” thing would come up.  Poor people and prisoners are basically the same thing, amirite?

Cars.  If you live where public transportation sucks you probably can’t work without one.

Hair or nails.  Never mind if you did it yourself, a manicure indicates you sit in a nail shop and get your nails done for hundreds of dollars.  Never mind if you leave your hair natural, you might get called all kinds of names.  Don’t be trying to rise above your station.

@ 21 lightning

This.  Wasn’t there just some crap on Fox News about the poor not being poor because the vast majority have microwave ovens in their homes?  Microwave ovens have essentially been throw away toasters since the early nineties.  You can get one for $60.

What’s frustrating is that this attitude isn’t even restricted to the right-wing.  Not too long ago, my wife was incredulous that a pan-handler was talking on a cell phone.  I had to explain that he was on what my sister refers to as a “terrorist phone” (cheap, with few features), and that a good day of pan-handling could pay for it and a month’s worth of minutes.  Simply owning a cell phone does not mean someone is doing well.

The only solace I take is that normal people can be educated on what indicates poverty.  A reich-winger will not accept that someone is poor until they are wearing potato sacks and living under a bridge.  And heaven help them if they have a curtain rod to roast that pigeon on.

@23 Triplanetary

Ah yes, that was it. 

Any form of pleasure, hell anything that even gives the whiff of something above subsistence living means that the person who possesses it is not poor.

Back in the mid-80s, when most of the chatterati were young, a personal computer cost $2500, and a decent 2-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn cost $350 a month (not that anyone who was anyone lived in brooklyn). That’s the way it was, so that’s the way it always must be.

(Yeah, I’m characterizing the iphone as a computer. Big deal.)

More interesting is the things that folks don’t complain about poor people having:
* cars (as long as they’re suitably rusty)
* PCs

Really? I thought poor people weren’t allowed to have their own computers. Or is it just that they can’t have Internet access and are supposed to go to a public library to look at porn?

...or would if their wings weren’t made of leathery skin like a bat or a dragon or a balrog…

Don’t insult the bats, dragons, and balrogs.

My guess—Cars.  Or more specifically, gas. My SIL is on assistance, and while she has money for food and shelter, gas money is more of an issue. (Her vehicle could also use a few repairs, but it does work)

Yep, gas is a big deal. Clunker and longish commute means $5-10 a day, i.e. the price of a smartphone contract and all the minutes you can eat in way less than a month.

Because iProducts are middle-class status symbols, there are a lot of people who would resent anyone who has one who doesn’t look “worthy”.

That said, the reason AT&T can offer a free smartphone is because they have a minimum $15/mo data plan ($25 if you actually want to do anything with it); over the two-year contract, that comes to at least $360.  I think a lot of poor folks aren’t going to go out and get iPhones, because they’re not likely to want to sign a 2-year contract with AT&T.

Also, there are very affordable Android phones on prepaid services with good data rates, and have been for a while.

For those confused by the seeming inconsistancy of the links @ 18 & 19, the first looks at those who receive assistance compared to the rest of the general populous while the second looks at the overall population broken into quarters.

A good bike, especially anywhere it snows.  A car is seen as more practical than a bike for some reason, like biking is still for kids, not a good alternate transport.  (bike as in bicycle, though the point would stand for a sensible (rather than show) motorcycle or a scooter, especially in urban settings)

They’re probably thinking that only starving children in Africa are truly poor.  Everyone else is just a lazy whiner who could easily be a millionaire in they worked harder or something.  You know, bootstraps.

I’m not concerned with the proper care and health of an iPhone in the same way I’m concerned with the proper care and health of a person.

The way to deal with this is to raise everyone up and guarantee necessities for all children, not to judge poor people for having kids or try to stop them from doing it.  First of all, there’s a huge practical issue of how you would actually prevent undesirables from breeding without forced abortion or sterilization.  I’m all for free and easy birth control for everyone who wants it, but sometimes people choose to have kids even when they’re not sufficiently rich.  And of course that brings up the second issue of determining just how poor someone has to be before we can judge them for choosing to have children.  Would it just based on straight income, or we would judge other factors too, like money management, debt, savings, and other financial burdens?  Or would it just be strictly based on social welfare programs (aside from public school which doesn’t have the same stigma)?

Look, I understand where you’re coming from.  I’m not married or planning to have children for a long time but someday I’ll probably have one or two.  I’d prefer to wait for the perfect timing, when I have a secure job, a husband with a secure job, and a lot of money in savings.  But there’s never a perfect time to have a kid.  Even in the best economy you could get laid off or become disabled.  So sometimes kids end up being born and their parents aren’t in an ideal situation.  That means our society needs to step up and make sure that those kids have what they need.  In the cases where a parent is genuinely unfit, that’s for CPS to decide.

@bananacat I lived in a country where they carried out 200 000 forced sterilizations on poor rural women, and I agree it’s monstrous. Those sort of things are clear violations of bodily autonomy. Of course we should support existing children, and things like lay offs and disability can sneak up on you. Right now I’m mostly turning around the idea in my head that being pro-choice means offering the full range of reproductive choices, that is, enabling women to become mothers as well as avoid motherhood. Along the lines of, whether assistant technology should be provided to poor people with fertility issues in the same way that contraceptives should.

That said, the reason AT&T can offer a free smartphone is because they have a minimum $15/mo data plan ($25 if you actually want to do anything with it); over the two-year contract, that comes to at least $360.  I think a lot of poor folks aren’t going to go out and get iPhones, because they’re not likely to want to sign a 2-year contract with AT&T.

The reason they can offer a free iPhone 3GS is because it’s two generations out of date.

And yeah, no matter how many free iPhones you’re throwing around, a two-year contract is often prohibitively expensive upfront, because if you have poor or no credit, they’re going to demand an exorbitant deposit. I have no credit and Verizon wanted me to pay them a $600 deposit. I declined.

And yeah, no matter how many free iPhones you’re throwing around, a two-year contract is often prohibitively expensive upfront, because if you have poor or no credit, they’re going to demand an exorbitant deposit. I have no credit and Verizon wanted me to pay them a $600 deposit. I declined.

What I ended up doing was getting a no-contract plan (though not pay-as-you-go) and since that means I would have to pay full price for a new phone from my provider, I shopped for a decent used phone on Craigslist. That means I’m one generation behind the newest, but it’s worked out well for me.

The “free” iPhone isn’t so free when you realize the big expense with any cell phone is the contract for service, it’s really just a way to get people to make an expensive decision that doesn’t seem expensive at first.

I hear people criticizing other people for pets sometimes, especially parents seem bothered by the idea that someone would spend money on doggy daycare.  Also, maybe health club memberships, where I live Ballys is much cheaper than a rec center but people seem to see a Ballys membership as wasteful, but not a rec center.

This may not be a representative sample as it’s mostly what my co-workers say to me

I recall during the health care debates how a lot of liberals were eager to point out how those irresponsible uninsured young scofflaws had CELL PHONES!!  How dare they spend their money on such extravagant bling instead of paying huge premiums on bullshit catastrophic insurance plans they’d never get to use anyway because the deductible was $5K. 

But it’s ALL THEIR FAULT that health care costs are so high!

Time was, the way you could tell a Southern racist from a Yankee racist was that in the North, they disdained Southerners for allowing the Cullud to be in physical proximity to them, while the Southerners disdained the North for allowing them to advance socially and earn money.

Apparently the two rules were, respectively, “Rise as high as you like, but keep your distance”, vs. “Stand as close as you want, but don’t rise upward”.

The luxuries are cheap, but the essentials are damned expensive.

It’ll still be an iPhone, because you can’t get a plan for less than $76/month.  I long for the day when I no longer have to pay $40 for a call plan I don’t use.  If that day ever arrives, maybe we will have to search for a new iPhone equivalent for the poor.

Ok, let’s be tediously literal about this: no, there isn’t.

I know how to read a map,

The number of people who cannot read maps does not equal the number of people who have followed the directions of their GPS into a large body of water because you, who can read a map, find your GPS to be a useful device.

Is that tediously literal enough for you or do you want to continue to tell me that GPS’s are absolutely without flaw and no one has ever struggled with one because you are just so pleased by yours? GPS’s are great but the “some people can’t read maps” argument for them is just plain stupid.

The “free” iPhone isn’t so free when you realize the big expense with any cell phone is the contract for service, it’s really just a way to get people to make an expensive decision that doesn’t seem expensive at first.

Umm, some people are actually capable of long-term financial planning.  Since the bill is the same every month, how does it become more expensive?  It’s not like I’m gonna decide to give up a cell phone within the next two years, and my cell phone would be the last thing I would give up if I were destitute, since it’s pretty damn hard to get a job with no phone or internet access.  How is a monthly payment for cell service so much more expensive than your monthly payment for internet, cable, and rent?  Yes, a contract is required, but if I’m gonna continue having a cell phone, why does it matter?  We’re not all a bunch of idiots who are duped by slick marketers.  Plenty of us already planned to have a cell phone for at least two years so a contract isn’t a big deal.  Month-to-month for the same amount of services isn’t any cheaper.

Data plans are quite expensive. When combined with voice/text they often offer only mid-grade voice/text which sucks for people like me who use voice rarely and never saw the point to texting (it’s harder and uses more attention than talking for me).

The worst part of a lot of the Data Plans out there, though, are the limits; when my sis had AT&T, their ‘unlimited’ plan actually capped you at 6 GB or so which was specified deep in the fine print where few ever bother to look, and hey, the plan said ‘unlimited’. Which made it a shock to get a $300+ phone bill after she and friends spent the entire month watching YouTube videos. Minimal plans aren’t much better: I’m online all the time, and I’d be hard pressed to know who much web 2GB gets you (I wouldn’t even TRY torrenting!).

Smartphones seem to me like a backdoor way to get people to buy apps when PC types have gotten used to getting everything you really need free.

@bananacat and JilliefromChile - I’m very uncomfortable with the idea that no one should ever be judged for bringing a child into the world.  Even if we didn’t have an issue of too many people - something very few people seem to take seriously - I think it’s a little weird that we can agree on limiting who can drive a car or fly a plan but not who can bear kids.  Giving birth is already a privilege of biology, so why act like it’s a right to protect for everyone?  Bad parenting can make a child’s life hell, yet so many bad parents have a creepy sense of entitlement - both to have kids and then mistreat them however they want.  Maybe some people need to be told no?

I’m very uncomfortable with the idea that no one should ever be judged for bringing a child into the world.

Strawman alert!  Neither of us made this statement.  But it’s far more practical to just have a decent society that takes care of all members than to try to enforce some standard of wealth that parents need before they can have children, whether this enforcement is from the government or just attempted through social pressure and judgment.  In most of the cases where people are bad parents, it’s not even intentional and if we can help them be good parents, then that’s better for everyone, rather than just writing them off as hopeless and judging them for ever having kids.  In the cases where bad parenting is malicious and intentional, you can’t really judge that just by looking at them.  Many abusers are very charming in public.  And none of this relates directly to poverty anyway, so you can take your concern and troll somewhere else.

Maybe some people need to be told no?

Once again, how do you enforce this without forced sterilization or forced abortion?

Mark:

You said it. Especially since the open source community has managed to come up with a reasonable substitute for nearly every basic application, from office software to such esoteric things as circuit simulators. There’s a reason I’m pro-jailbreak, even though I am a religious iPod touch user.

A decent smartphone could actually save money for those scraping to get by.  If the only thing you ever used your PC for was e-mail and light browsing, a cheap smartphone with data contract could be a lot cheaper than maintaining a desktop PC or laptop with broadband connection and phone connection.  And lets face it: cell phones aren’t luxuries anymore.

As for the map thing, how many people found themselves stuck in a constant flow of traffic, unable to consult the map to get a bearing on where exactly they are after missing a turn?  Or planned out their turns exactly only to get to one of them and find a sign that prohibits the very turn they intended to make?  Or maybe just ran across an intersection like this one (affectionately named Confusion Corner) and ended up going in the opposite direction of their destination without realizing it?  As long as you’re not an idiot who blindly follows the GPS instructions instead of the rules of the road, a GPS can get you out of all these situations fairly easily.

This romanticism for maps is just silly.  I’ll keep a city map around, but it’s only so that if my GPS-enabled phone dies I can still find my location.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter if it’s a map or GPS - our neighborhood is on a steep hill, and has an intersection at each switchback.  Half the maps and GPS units have the streets labeled wrong.  People get so lost up here.  And some of the streets which are supposed to loop… Don’t.  They’re interrupted by up to 50’ drops or people’s fences cross the right of way.

As for the map thing, how many people found themselves stuck in a constant flow of traffic, unable to consult the map to get a bearing on where exactly they are after missing a turn?  Or planned out their turns exactly only to get to one of them and find a sign that prohibits the very turn they intended to make?  Or maybe just ran across an intersection like this one (affectionately named Confusion Corner) and ended up going in the opposite direction of their destination without realizing it?  As long as you’re not an idiot who blindly follows the GPS instructions instead of the rules of the road, a GPS can get you out of all these situations fairly easily.

Exactly.  I’d be more worried about someone trying to read a map while driving, or even reading directions while driving, than someone listening to directions from a GPS.

Apparently the two rules were, respectively, “Rise as high as you like, but keep your distance”, vs. “Stand as close as you want, but don’t rise upward”.
Comment #52: Dr. Psycho on 10/06 at 01:56 PM

In the North, you can get as big as you want, but don’t get too close.  In the South, you can get as close as you want, but don’t get too big.

Can’t remember where I read it but it was decades ago.

As for the map thing, how many people found themselves stuck in a constant flow of traffic, unable to consult the map to get a bearing on where exactly they are after missing a turn?  Or planned out their turns exactly only to get to one of them and find a sign that prohibits the very turn they intended to make?  Or maybe just ran across an intersection like this one (affectionately named Confusion Corner)  and ended up going in the opposite direction of their destination without realizing it?  As long as you’re not an idiot who blindly follows the GPS instructions instead of the rules of the road, a GPS can get you out of all these situations fairly easily.
Comment #61: ckitching on 10/07 at 01:05 AM

Not arguing your main point, which is totally correct.  But sometimes GPS is stupid. 

I had my phone’s GPS try to force me to approach my destination one way and one way only—along a route that was closed due to accident.  No matter which direction I came from, it wanted me to make turns that would put me on the closed street.

Had I had the time to pull over I could have used its map function to figure out another route, so it still could have helped.  But I didn’t, so instead I called a friend who pulled up a map on line and directed me around the closed street.

Dr Psycho @ 52 & oldfeminist @ 64: if we are talking small town New England, that “just don’t get too close” seems to apply to everyone who is not a relation.  The townies here are so parochial that it’s sometimes like trying to navigate a foreign country when dealing with them.

(Yeah, I’m characterizing the iphone as a computer. Big deal.)

The iPhone is a personal computer.