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 ...
I would add, though, that for thirty years it’s been my job to be the one to face the hard options for us. She’s content to let me do it. That and swatting the spiders, and dealing with the boo-boos (she can’t deal with the sight of blood).
“Many Catalans resent that their region pays more taxes and receives fewer government services than other regions where the economy is less robust.”
They might be surprised at how much they consume in “services”. In good economies the developed areas have a legitimate gripe, but with the economic depression I’m sure they’re not sending nearly as much into the central government’s coffers as they have in the past.
We would wait until it was nearly closing time at a local Dunkin’ Donuts, then go in and buy one donut; they’d give us four in a bag because they would just be thrown in the trash otherwise...
done that too
You are pathetic because you have no clue about the bottom, the top or anywhere in between. I'm really glad I didn't meet you "back in the day." You probably would have tried to impress me with your big belt buckle, and when I wasn't impressed, you probably would have spread the word that I was a low-class citizeness.
I met you a long time ago. I wasn't impressed then, and I'm not impressed now.
I see a lot of what you describe in the corporate world, as aging women look for a sugar daddy to take them out of the daily grind and give them easy, part-time like work. In return, they have to make the boss “want to keep and feed them”.
It is as old as time...
You are so laughable! Your understanding of women is also laughable. You think all we can do is kiss a boo-boo and life will be better? Did you have a mother who really loved you?
All the way through your life? How about a grandmother? Did she love you as well? If so, with these women in your life, they must have taught you how to BE A MAN! It sounds as if that is a totally alien concept for you.
A “provider” should never be confused with a “nurturer,” neither of which you seem familiar with. Horses sire colts. Mares provide the milk and education, no matter how sparse the grass it.
Stop lumping women into your convenient categories. There is no such thing as a white knight. It is your wishful thinking that wants to put all women in a class lower than yourself. BAH! HUMBUG!
How sad for them...
It is sad for them; it is even sadder for those of us actually working, who have to watch money from the budget go to these obsolete toys for lonely men while we try to feed our families.
I haven’t worked an extra minute in a year because of it.
Can’t disagree with you there.
I am old enough to have been properly brought up as a girl. My parents taught me the importance of protecting my virtue before marriage.
The lack of self-respect and the lack of dignity in so many young women today is appalling and so very sad. The progressives have been extremely successful in encouraging the erosion of sexual morality.
Green energy, starting to pay off.
If you've lived in the US your whole life, and you're still young enough to have young children, then you have not seen bottom. Not even close.
Bottom is not having to dumpster dive for slightly out-of-date fruit. That's not even close to bottom.
I had an aunt in Europe see bottom back in the 40's. Bottom is having to watch your baby starve to death because there is no food to be gotten, by any means available to you.
Have a good night.
I would like to see the woman you have dominated for so many years, giving in to your “suggestion” every time, because she wanted to “keep the peace.”
I saw a lot of women like her on a lot of military bases around the world, and also in my neighborhoods when I was working. Many had no clue what life was like without their dictator husband to tell them, to manage the checkbook and tell them how much they could spend at the grocery or wherever they wanted to shop.
As for “observing people,” well, you can only base your “deductions” on what you prefer to believe, and not on the education that you garnered because of a REAL interest.
You have become boring. You repeat platitudes that have been running through your mind for years. None of which suggest you had an interest in really learning anything worthwhile.
Do not assume you know about me or mine. You have no clue what “bottom” is. Not having a dumpster to dive in was not a thought because there WERE no Dumpsters. They hadn’t been invented, yet.
How do you know where I came from or what I went through?
Your arrogance would be astounding if it wasn’t so stupid.
Interesting comment. I read at one of these economic collapse sites that the first sign that the party’s over will be when the EBT cards stop working.
bump
People that don't want to see what is happening right before their faces.
People that don't understand "God of the Copybook Headings" by Kipling, written in 1919, if they ever heard of it at all.
Water is wet. Fire burns. And a burnt fool's finger goes wabbling back to the fire.
Meh... I'm done with it. Who am I to forstall God's judgment on an idiot.
There will be teachable moments in the future.
/johnny
Like my Grandpa used to say: "Boy some people will do stupid things no matter how hard you try and stop them, you just gotta learn to let them get about it. But do it from a safe distance."
Her: You were going to let him do that!
Me: yep.
Her: He coulda been killed!
Me: I got spare grandsons.
/johnny
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