The right to be poor.

Untill fairly recently, being poor meant, not earning much money, so not being able to buy much. I remember a young man on the dole in Wales in the 1980’s buying a bottle of Southern Comfort. I must have questioned the wisdom of this, and he said, when the money’s gone, I just can’t buy anything till dole day. Now the lesson from this is, he might have a couple of days of misery, but come dole day all the money was his to spend.

This was before the great relaxing of regulation in the City of London, and of Banking. Now how many people can say, on pay day, this money is mine to spend as I wish. No debt to pay, no direct debits. What I’m really asking is, if you got paid in cash, would you have to run and put some, or most of it into the bank to avoid a disaster of some kind.; charges penalties repossessions electric phone cut off etc. The freedom to be poor, would mean, can’t pay, don’t have. It sounds harsh, but it is a great improvement on the present situation. One example, don’t put money in the bank to pay your insurance debit and the bank and insurance company will charge, and then there won’t be enough money in the bank to pay the electric bill, so they’ll charge and then cut you off, and then your oil central heating pump won’t work so you’ll freeze, because you can’t even light a fire, because you don’t have a chimney or it’s a smokeless zone. New sytem, don’t pay your insurance bill, you won’t be insured, that’s it.