The Way We Live Now: going from poor...to profitable! If we're going to be sitting around being poor anyhow, why just waste time twiddling our thumbs? Get to know the poor subculture. Online begging! Bail bond harassment! And much more!

What is the internet like for poors and the unemployed? It's a bleak wasteland in which everyone friends everyone else on Facebook hoping to make "connections" for employment, only to find out that everyone else is doing the exact same thing. And the rest of it is just games that don't even pay you money. All the employed people are off on their own secret part of the internet elsewhere ("YouTube").

So yes, being poor comes with its own built-in hassles (besides the poorness). Like being chased around by bail bondsmen. When was the last time a rich person was chased around by a bail bondsman? Never, because rich people hire bail bondswomen who wear suits made out of chocolate and instead of chasing you around, they dance sultrily in a golden cage.

Or day laborers. They get exploited. And when you hear about some exploited day laborers, it's like a big green light going off inside your head, "Oh, these are going to be some poor people we're talking about." And more than 90% of the time you're right, so it doesn't even count as a bad stereotype. And when you're wrong it's usually cause some rich kid is "going undercover" to write an expose of exploited day laborers, and does that even count as shattering stereotypes?

If you're rich enough to live the contemplative life, you can contemplate that.

As for us, we have the real world to consider: a world in which what we need is more banking reform, but what we actually get is a surge in the vacation home market, because rich people have made the decision to spend more time going on vacation to their very own private tropical back yards where they can lay around naked if they so choose and less time reforming banks, which usually does not even give you a tan on your penis. And that's the problem.

[Photo: Dominick Brady]