Poverty and the Holidays

By DON ROLLINS

Sheer genius stalks among us, albeit it of a most insidious sort. It’s nothing new, nothing even all that obvious for the privileged many. Put simply it’s the practiced, calculated art of taking money from those who have the least to spare.

This fleecing of hard-times Americans is of course an unrelenting phenomenon. The consequences for normalizing unprincipled markets, crooked business practices and rigged tax laws are not confined to Wall Street bells or election cycles: Hurting folks hurt year round.

But there is something especially heinous about robbing the poor to give to the rich during the holidays. There’s an added degree of betrayal and hypocrisy when peace and goodwill are in the air, but so is the January rent payment. Happy holidays can ring pretty hollow on the wrong side of the wealth gap.

While poverty is not a reliable predictor of many things, the systemic obstacles facing those living on the economic edges are easier to predict. At least three of those obstacles will loom large as we move further into the holiday season:

• Title Lending: Although banned in a majority of states, this industry thrives by making up to triple-digit interest loans against low-resource (especially persons of color) borrowers’ auto titles. These offices are often found in “loan deserts,” areas where few or no legitimate lenders exist, and the holidays are their busiest season;

• Counter Pricing: Although no department chain has proven as despicable as Dollar General, some brand-name stores have recently been caught charging customers higher prices at the counter than listed on the shelves or displays. Given the genre skews heavily below a family income of $40,000 per year ($8,000 less than Walmart shoppers) those living with low resources are at far greater risk for price swapping. It adds up, especially for some elders swiping food assistance cards for holiday gifts;

• Credit Card Desperation: COVID has been especially brutal on those who previously qualified for credit cards, but suffered job loss/medical debt/education charged to their existing cards — the majority persons of color and under 40. These folks are facing disastrously long paybacks, even bankruptcy with few to no allies at either the state or federal levels. And the holidays are surely an invitation to go even deeper in the hole.

The common factor here is the use of exploitative practices to gouge people who can least afford it, at a time of year they least deserve it. And these are but a few of the corporate predators whose policies embody the very opposite of the season.

In the end, the winter holidays will always be an opening for separating economically strapped Americans from their dollars; be it predatory lending, price swapping, maxing out credit cards or any of a thousand other ways. Runaway capitalism is nothing if not cunning.

But lest we reduce those seasonal tactics to just another “issue” to be addressed, mother, activist, writer and business owner Andrea Fuller reminds us there is nothing haughty about real-time poverty and the holidays: “When people say that the holidays are stressful, I want to say, ‘Define stress.’ For me and many others, the fullest meaning of peace and joy is simply this: not having to worry about how we will provide food, shelter, and heat for our loved ones.”

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister in Jackson, Ohio. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2022

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