Posted on 09/26/2012 10:02:15 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
On a recent evening, a hip-looking young woman was sorting through a stack of crates outside a fruit and vegetable store here in the working-class neighborhood of Vallecas as it shut down for the night.
At first glance, she looked as if she might be a store employee. But no. The young woman was looking through the day’s trash for her next meal. Already, she had found a dozen aging potatoes she deemed edible and loaded them onto a luggage cart parked nearby.
“When you don’t have enough money,” she said, declining to give her name, “this is what there is.”
The woman, 33, said that she had once worked at the post office but that her unemployment benefits had run out and she was living now on 400 euros a month, about $520. She was squatting with some friends in a building that still had water and electricity, while collecting “a little of everything” from the garbage after stores closed and the streets were dark and quiet.
Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs. So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
And you know that because?...
Hysterics? The "current situation" as you put it, is that PEOPLE are scavenging in the garbage for sustinance. You chose to select the woman the story was written about, and ignored the fact that MEN are also scavenging for sustenance.
Seems to me, you have a one-track mind: it was written about a specific woman; therefore ALL women can be put into her category.
I am SO sad you are not my neighbor! I would educate your wife in the ways of Defiant Womanhood, and your pathetic attempt to seem "macho" would be yesterday's news. *gag*
I survived just fine, thankyouverymuch, as a single mom. I had no car, no credit (in THOSE days, credit belonged to the husband) an no visible means of support BEFORE WELFARE!
Did I sell my body for food, rent and utilities? NO! I looked for a job and even though the pay was low, we MANAGED without me ever having to give in to big belt buckles, fast cars or fancy houses.
Papa, you really need to get a grip on life. You are so far behind LIFE it isn’t funny. The more you talk, the stupider you sound.
OMG, there is so much wrong with this.
“Most recently, the government raised the value-added tax three percentage points, to 21 percent, on most goods, and two percentage points on many food items”
People are going hungry so they raised the tax on food!!!!!!!!!
““It’s against the dignity of these people to have to look for food in this manner,” said Eduardo Berloso, an official in Girona, the city that padlocked its supermarket trash bins. “
I don’t know about you but I’d rather lose my dignity and have something to eat.
During the depression my mother and her family survived just that way. She always tried to feed us overripe fruit because that was how she liked it.
Sad part is that I'll have to break the news to the dog that no actions are being taken anywhere in the world to create a nation of Dogalonia, or any other nations with the word Dog in the name. Best if she hears it from me rather than someplace else.
In other words, you found somebody who was willing to pay money for something you were willing to do.
Just as I laid out in my post # 16:
(1) Find somebody who has money, food and/or shelter.You found somebody who (1) was hiring and able to meet a payroll, (2) you figured out which open job you were able and willing to do, and (3) you performed it to the best of your ability. Congratulations! You survived and provided for your kids by finding something that was needed and wanted, and then providing it.(2) Find out something that you can do that would please that person enough that he provides you with some.
(3) Do what's needed.
Yes, I do concede that women tend to have an easier time of it. It's one of the difficulties of being a guy.
We're only seeing the beginnings, though. If things get much worse, then things will change in the following ways:
(1) The jobs that HAVE to be done (keeping infrastructure operating, driving the trucks that bring food and goods to market, providing security, keeping cars and other things in repair) are disproportionately held by guys. The jobs that women predominate in (except for life-essential jobs like nursing) can be cut back if things go really south.
(2) Jobs like cashier will become more dangerous as robberies and flash mobs increase. Women currently holding those jobs will be laid off in favor of people who are willing and able to use force to maintain the viability of the source of their pay.
(3) The streets will become increasingly dangerous for women.
I learned at my church Sunday from a speaker that girls working as prostitutes for mere sustenance is fairly common. In India one of their most successful projects is to teach these girls to be seamstress and then provided them with a sewing machine and help them start their own business. Cost a mere $150.00
You are so sly at disseminating...and then there were the times when there WERE no jobs, and welfare was a wish, and you tell me I was successful? Only in that I never gave my body to anyone to pay for anything. I would rather beg. And I often did.
STFU.
Your comments tell me all I need to know. The streets will become dangerous for women as long as there are men like you who are looking for easy prey.
You are all the men my mother warned me about. And I will never ever acquiesce to you perception of womanhood. Again:
SHAME ON YOU!
That is a wonderful service.
I’m not sure why you think you are saying something hard-hitting or original in your posts.
Yes, times are horrible and we better prepare. But, apparently, unlike you, I can feel sorry for hungry people. That is called “empathy.” I hope some day if I’m hungry, someone will help me. Probably not - which is why I’m trying to take care of myself and my family.
Can we drop the conversation?
None of the above changes the fact, yes, fact, that seeking a patron to support you when you have no means of supporting yourself actually is a means of survival.
Next comes the “it's so unfair, not every woman can do that” tripe, again right out of Marxism 101, no doubt.
Why are you here, to keep us from scraping our knuckles on the ground?
You successfully received money to survive on by providing a service to your employer, is all I said.
Only in that I never gave my body to anyone to pay for anything. I would rather beg. And I often did.
And you were lucky enough to live in a place and time when there were enough people willing to give charity that begging was a viable option. At the point where every viable donor of charity is besieged by dozens of pleas, and has nothing more to give, it becomes a different story.
I'm not looking for prey, nor will I be. I'm merely pointing out how far down the bottom is.
Hey, Pops, if there is no food as you speculate, there probably will be no male truck drivers to deliver the food. Duh.
That's the difference between men and women. Men examine what the hard options are.
Many women want to deny that hard options exist, and just want to chatter about how bad things are, give each other "empathy", and have faith that if things get bad somebody will save them. They get upset if somebody suggests that maybe the white knight isn't coming.
When I was younger I was working as a dishwasher at a restaurant because that was all I could find, and it wasn’t anything being thrown away that I didn’t check out first.
Another job had me walking home after 2 AM, and I would walk down the alley that went in the back of this pizza shop, and not only what I take home any pizzas that were thrown away, they would throw out the leftover pizza dough and I would take that home and bake bread loaves out of it.
My worst desperation story, is when I was sharing an apartment with a roommate in my twenties... He ripped me off not only taking anything I had of value, he also took my wallet while I was sleeping, and hit the road.
I awoke with nothing in the house to get me through the week except a sack of rice, and a country boys ingenuity.
I took a grocery bag to the park, look in the garbage cans until I found a bag of Fritos with a few Fritos left in it... sat on a park bench and begin feeding the pigeons... Except every once in awhile one of the pigeons would disappear into the grocery bag.
I ate pigeon breasts and rice for a few days, and it was delicious. Exactly like dark meat on a turkey. And then I went to another park that had a pond, and nabbed a couple Muscovy ducks. They weren’t bad, but those ducks are a tub of guts... not much meat on them.
I have no problem expediting, adapting, and overcoming when my stomach is concerned. And I’ve never been on any kind of public assistance.
Something tells me that you once had a really bad marriage.
There will always be food for those willing and able to pay the asking price. The asking price might be very high, though.
Nope. I have a very good marriage. Been married 30 years, have three kids, my first and only marriage.
I am, however, old enough to have observed people and how they react.
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