gentrification

When everything man-made turns to crap

/ E Bishop Wooten / Leave a comment

I was watching a video on YouTube recently when I heard about how 70% of Americans were living in poverty. However the sad part is many of those who are impoverished are making up to six figures a year. It always sounds funny to hear someone making mid five figures and up complain about how poor they are despite how hard they work. Although they don’t usually work nearly as hard as those making close to minimum wage.

They say more money leads to more problems, and it’s amazing how the solution is always more money. Even the Bible says whoever loves money will never have enough. A Lyft driver who sold real estate told me once that no matter how much you make, you are always in the same boat. Rich people just have expensive tastes. Poor people find cheaper alternatives which are often just as good. It’s just the stigma and being more “resourceful”.

Another way to ensure impoverishing oneself is to live a life of luxury. How many luxury apartments have you seen going up in your neighborhood. Luxury living is the same as “lustful” living. I can’t knock it though since I am attracted to these myself. They aren’t really that luxury. The reviews are almost as bad as any ghetto apartment. People are never happy. All they have to do is see one cockroach or any other insect.

Give it a few decades and these luxury apartments will either be sold as condominiums or rented out as low income apartments; or turned into motels.

I confess that I almost rented out a small 400 square foot luxury apartment that I found for as low as $800. It was cheaper than the non luxury apartments around it. On a side note, renting is still a waste of money and you can buy a $200,000 condo for less than you can rent a luxury apartment for.

I think I may be onto something with that last statement. Either way, all the money we are spending to modernize everything through gentrification only to still be paying off the debt by the time the foundation starts to settle again. I almost call luxury apartments “shitholes of the future.”

How Sons of Anarchy TV show depicts what’s wrong with America

/ E Bishop Wooten / Leave a comment

“Chasing cash we don’t need and spending every dime to stay alive.”-Opie Winston in Sons of Anarchy

I admit I love the show Sons of Anarchy. It started off slow but after the 3rd season I watched a whole season at a time. Katey Segal (Peg Bundy) seems to get hotter with age. She even has a new show called Rebel on ABC although rumor has it the second season was cancelled. She’s also married to Vince Sutter who created Sons of Anarchy. We know how she got the job as Jax Teller’s mom. 😂

Sorry I got off on a tangent about Katey. She is a bit distracting, if you know what I mean. This post is centered around a quote said by Ryan Hurst who played Opie. By the way his him and his family were my favorite characters. Next to Katey.

Does the quote sound familiar? Kind of resembles the American way of life of consumerism. Most people don’t know what they want so they chase after money to pay for stuff they don’t have time to use. Meanwhile some of the poorest people are more financially prosperous because they are more focused on what they want.

Another thing I noticed was the minimizing of the working man. The Sons were all auto mechanics who, more often than not, have to struggle to survive because they typically get paid less than white collar workers who are more educated.

In fact the actual middle class is white collar educated workers while blue collar workers are the poorest class (no matter how much they make). Especially when you have people like Mayor Hale (mayor of the fictional town of Charming, California) who is trying to gentrify the town with luxury homes and driving small businesses out of town. Sound familiar?

To supplement their income from auto mechanics, the founder of the Sons get into arms trafficking with the Irish. Jax Teller’s dad, John, tried to get out of the gun running business and was killed by Clay Morrow (Ron Purlman( who also married John’s wife Gemma, played by Sagal.

That’s it for that. Anymore and I will give it away. I recommend watching it. I am just finishing up the first season the second time around. It’s actually better than Breaking Bad.