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And here's your Conservative Content for this week...My income is still outrageously, preposterously low. That's not changed. I'm still qualified to write a book about how it's even possible to survive on such a ridiculous, un-American income. You're still encouraged to help fund the things that have been on my personal wish list for years, like getting the older part of my home re-wired so I could have a refrigerator again. Most Americans would consider most of these things "essential, survival needs" enough to go into debt for them. I've been just waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more...not very happily waiting.
At the same time, I know a lot of other online writers out there are...very likely collecting more money than I am, if you count the dollars alone. But they're enjoying it less, because they're still accustomed to having and spending more; their expenses are higher; if they've gone onto one of those bank-managed payment plans people get sucked into in the cities these days, they may have ten times as much money flow into their bank accounts, have it sucked out again by all the (non-essential) expenses they've agreed to make automatic payments to, and have less money to take to the grocery store.
I owe my existence--let alone the fact that, most of the time, it is basically a pleasant existence, that most of the time I actually feel pretty cheerful--to being fiscally conservative. I don't spend money unnecessarily on myself or on my business. I don't think the United States government, or any individual State government, should spend money unnecessarily either. I think a lot of the people who are wailing about their reduced incomes, prospective unemployment, prospective business failures, etc., actually need to learn more about how they too can live on less money.
I do think we all need to help cushion the blow for these people--especially since far too many of them have children, yes, often more than one child per working parent.
They're being told, "Stay home and homeschool your children."
Many of them could and should have been doing that already, but (1) they've never planned or prepared to do it well, so they are predictably not doing it well; and (2) those top-down, one-size-fits-almost-none diktats don't work very well in a democracy.
They're not merely wailing, but screaming and howling. "Stay home and homeschool our children on what? The handouts the federal government is promising won't pay the rent on our flats for another month!"
(Survival tip: People who are either paying rent or living in flats aren't ready to have children.Yes, that means that if parents want to have time to enjoy being grandparents, they should help reduce the cost of real estate, generally, and also help pre-pay any thirty-year mortgages the younger generation may have had to sign.)
Online writing is a great way to earn money if you can keep your cost of living down to a level online writing will support, which definitely rules out expenses like having children. As an online writer you can afford a major disability if the monthly cost of whatever treatment or compensation or assistive devices it requires is less than, say, $50. You might be able to have a car if you could get somebody to pay specifically for driving it, e.g. by using it as a taxi or wrapping it in paid ads; otherwise, I think most full-time online writers get used to walking everywhere, because few of us can afford to live in cities that have bus service.
How can we help people make the transition from what mindful Americans have known for a long time was an unsustainable economic-bubble lifestyle (remember The Waste Makers?) to a more sustainable lifestyle? Not by bankrupting the federal government or the state government. We really need to be thinking about the fact that the twentieth century's economic boom floated an unsustainable amount of government on which we need to cut back drastically. We can't afford for people to make dependence on government handouts a lifestyle.
We need to get creative about ways to help people get through the Great Artificial Depression. That means that those of us who have food this week should be thinking about the people we know, how many of them have food this week, and what goods or services we can pay people for to ensure that they have food this week.
Real conservatives oppose handouts. Real conservatives don't allow their neighbors to "need" handouts.
I don't find much food that didn't grow in my own not-a-lawn that I can eat, these days, but since the not-a-lawn is not quite wet enough to grow rice I really like being able to buy some groceries at a store. I am also very fond of my one electric light, and of being able to type things into a computer at home. Those and property taxes are my cost of living. It's low. You should show appreciation of my talent and support for my work by all means, and the good news is that for a lot of people that won't rule out showing support for other deserving writers as well.
Not all people are or should try to be writers. Not all people are or should try to be online. When my income exceeds my cost of living...well, I've tried to save out a little to put into expanding the Internet Portal; before the virus panic I'd scraped out enough to look at another physical store site. I have, whenever possible, made time to buy a cup of overpriced coffee "to go" from the cafe that employs the mothers of the two adorably well behaved children. Somebody's paying me for what writing I can do with my drastically reduced online time, so I'm paying those women something, passing it on. If I were being paid more I might be able to pay other people to do more of what they do--things like driving, or replacing roofs, or rewiring houses. Or providing a phone and Internet connection to a physical store.
Readers who still have incomes should definitely support this web site but there are others you should consider supporting, too. I've tweeted about the Singapore Unbound site's fund for Asian-American artists and authors. Why is that site ethnically specific? When a web site exists to publish the work of authors and artists within that specific literary niche, in a Great Artificial Depression it becomes necessary for those publishers to try to make sure those authors' and artists' children eat regularly. Those of Amy Tan's fans who have gone on to discover an interest in modern Asian literature will want to help the young writers we've discovered, but that in no way implies that our support for the people who are desperately trying to become full-time online writers this summer needs to be ethnically specific. I don't happen to have been working with a site dedicated to introducing modern British, European, African, or Latin American writers to the U.S. market, but sites like that exist. Maybe you know a legitimate one of them that deserves support.
In an overcrowded world, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his 'need'" is about as de-motivating a thought as can be imagined. In an overcrowded world people who sit around "needing" are clearly seen not to need anything, to be in fact a waste of oxygen. But that doesn't mean we become selfish hoarders; the thought is "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."
The same principles that worked in the 1930s will work again, to keep people working without the monster corporations that needed to implode years ago, without the federal handouts they should never have been able to get, without the advertising and other organizational bloat...just doing something useful in their own neighorhoods.
Use money to encourage those who deserve it, Gentle Readers.
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