WE IN A RECESSION, RIGHT?
Yet almost everywhere you turned in Barbados this Christmas – and for some time before – it seemed like business as usual.
Bridgetown was bustling.
Broad Street was, well, Broad Street – flurries of in and out movement, sidewalks often space-short.
Swan Street filled up, filled out, the scene of a seeming exponential increase in buying and selling these days.
Businesses of all types are emerging on this street and its byways, with wares almost jumping out at you from everywhere. This stretch is constantly thronged from top to bottom, and in all the intersecting streets.
Maybe a lot of cash-challenged people just love the sight, smell and press of bodies brushing, bumping, even breasting. Not.
But the seeming spree was not limited to Town. Truth is, quite a lot of spending has been going on all around – and on purchases that you would not expect in these times.
Ask, for instance, the operators of stores that sell the new technologies – and you know dem things en cheap.
Hard times?
So there is this troubling disconnect between the complaining you frequently hear about “hard times” and all the spending that is obviously going on.
In the midst of all this ka-chinging, there is another sound we hear: that of some social observers using the term “the working poor” and calling for action to mitigate their plight.
Now, we have always had people who were working and finding it difficult to meet living expenses – but we never designated them the working poor.
So this is a relatively new expression in these parts, and it is also interestingly applied.
The fact is that the term is applied not just to low-wage earners but increasingly to so-called middle-class people (for us “middle income” might be a more appropriate term – there is a significant difference) who are perceived as being in danger of falling into a lower bracket.
Now, I will not make light of the fact that there are people who are snarled more and more by financial difficulties.
But it does seem that those who employ terms like “working poor” have not been particularly examining lifestyles and buying patterns before making their assessments.
The “poverty” of which they speak and write is apparently determined on the basis of whether people are finding it difficult to take care of living expenses (especially bills) or save. Which should certainly be in the equation.
But it sometimes seems that there is the assumption nowadays that certain acquisitions are givens and if after purchasing those you can’t eat and pay your bills, then you are one of the working poor.
I’m talking about such things as cars, cable TV or satellite TV, smartphones (mostly BlackBerrys here), expensive jewellery, brand-name shoes and other wear, large flat screen TVs, Wii or some other video game equipment, vacations overseas, iPods, iPads, laptops, $3 000/$4 000 living room suites, large fridges and freezers, fancy stoves.
You got them things covered? Now you finding it hard to pay your electricity bill, the water bill, the rent, the mortgage and so on? Yuh poor, bro – working poor.
Many such people may be defaulting on some bills, but are they giving the non-essentials, the virtual luxuries a pass too? Or are these things, even in these admittedly difficult times, now seen as standard issue for living?
Shopping frenzy
Duty-Free Friday a few weeks ago was very revealing. I hear that people were at the chosen outlets ’round five-thirty in the morning.
And I hear too that not a few people pushed right up to the $1 000 limit. Were these all the higher-ups and the better-offs? Could the working poor afford such expense?
Does it make sense to describe people as the working poor and only look at defaults and such?
Does this not send a dangerous message that engaging in what is arguably luxury spending will not compromise your status as one of the working poor, with all the frantic advocacy that attracts?
Genuinely poor people must be catching a fit. And dead grandmothers and grandfathers must be turning over in their graves and stupsing.
In fact, even an astute 15-year-old student of accounts and life would be somewhat perplexed – ’cause in Barbados, amid all the bona fide desperate cries in these desperate times, you can be tagged the working poor as you watch your recently acquired 52-inch flat screen TV and count down the days to that 7-day cruise.
? Sherwyn Walters is a writer who became a teacher, a song analyst, a broadcaster and an editor. Email offwally@gmail.com.