Sept. 19, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
11:54
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| So on my last video criticising the Conservative Party, I received this comment from Pagada, which was, I find Sargon's commentary on feminism spot on, but boy it hurts my ears when he talks politics and economy. | |
| And I know this is a sentiment that a lot of my more conservative minded viewers share, and I guess this is where we really can tell that I'm not a conservative, but I am always open to discuss anything that I say. | |
| But the thing is, these kind of broad generalisations really aren't very useful. | |
| I mean, this doesn't help me in any way. | |
| I need something specific to be able to think about. | |
| Otherwise, I can't change my position if you happen to have more information on this subject than I do. | |
| So I had a polite back and forth with Pagada in the comments, where he made the point that anyone can save money on minimum wage. | |
| And I pressed him on this, and he said, as to minimum wage, if you're stupid and irresponsible, then you will not save a penny. | |
| If you have that kind of job and want kids, big house, new TV, etc., it's your selfish choices and not survival. | |
| Now that's the main point I'll be addressing in this video, but I'll also address the second point that he makes quickly. | |
| You're perfectly fine admitting that feminist choice to get a gender studies degree is useless, and that they shouldn't see a penny from the taxpayers' money, but when you change feminist with poor and other bad decisions, you freak out citing your beloved Guardian. | |
| Doublethink. | |
| Well, to start with, I don't really think that that accurately represents anything that I actually do. | |
| If I ever cite the Guardian, it's because they have accurate information pertaining to the topic at hand. | |
| I hate citing the Guardian. | |
| Secondly, I do not think the terms feminist and poor are interchangeable. | |
| People choose to be feminists because they accept feminist dogma. | |
| People are born into poverty, and can spend a lifetime trying to escape it, and often don't. | |
| So back to the assertion that if you're stupid and irresponsible, then you will not save a penny. | |
| If you have that kind of job, a minimum wage job, and want kids, big house, new TV, etc., it's your selfish choices and not survival. | |
| Now, as I understand it, this guy's Polish, which is why his English was bad, which is why I wasn't picking him up on it. | |
| But I wonder if you understand exactly what it is like in the United Kingdom for someone on minimum wage. | |
| So in the UK, someone 21 years old or older will receive £6.50 an hour as the minimum wage. | |
| And we'll just assume they work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year without taking any kind of breaks or leave or sickness or anything like that, making their yearly gross income £13,520, which we'll round off to £13,500 just to make it easier for me. | |
| We of course have to pay income tax and national insurance on our earnings, which comes to a grand total of £1,788, rounding up £4p, leaving us with £11,712 as our net pay. | |
| Everything that we have now for the year. | |
| So now that we've got 11 big ones to spend, we've got to find somewhere to live. | |
| In the town I live in, if you want a one-bedroom apartment to rent, that's £550 per calendar month, which is £6,600 per year, reducing our total to £5,112. | |
| Since we're indulging in the luxury of living somewhere, we then have to pay council tax on it, which I'll be generous and assume is the cheapest rate going at £1,000 a year, as well as £145.50 for the TV license. | |
| I'll round these off to £1,145, leaving us with £3,967 to kick around. | |
| Of course, we can't watch our brand new TV if we haven't paid our energy bills. | |
| Now, we could say that our energy will be the average energy bill of £754 for a small house or flat, but let's assume it's the cheapest one at £588 a year. | |
| I mean, we probably have quite a small flat. | |
| So that leaves us with £3,379. | |
| We will, of course, need to eat, so we'll shop at the local supermarket, the cheap one, not any expensive ones. | |
| And we won't be buying any brand name things, like these Heinz beans. | |
| We won't be getting those. | |
| We'll be getting the Tesco Value beans, because they're half the price. | |
| In addition to food, we're going to need toiletries and cleaning products, bleach, toilet roll, all that sort of thing, the sort of things that are necessary to maintain a clean household in which to eat our three square meals a day. | |
| And I do think that all of the food and sundries you're going to need for a household can be purchased for about £25 a week, if you're very frugal, and we're going to be. | |
| So that's £1,200 a year, bringing our remaining money for the year down to £2,179. | |
| We will of course need clothes and shoes to wear, but don't worry, we won't be wearing any sort of top shop gear or anything like that. | |
| We'll be shopping at Pre-Mark and the Shoe Zone. | |
| We'll be keeping the third world employed, don't worry. | |
| We'll set our clothing budget for the year at £200, and this will include one new pair of shoes every six months after we've worn the old pair out, one coat per year, costing roughly £40, three, maybe four pairs of jeans depending how quickly we get through them, and then a bunch of £5 t-shirts, and then underwear, socks, you know, the sort of thing you need. | |
| This reduces our total to £1,979. | |
| If you live in a city or large town like Swindon, there's a pretty high chance that your workplace isn't going to be in walking distance of your house. | |
| You'd be very lucky if that were the case. | |
| You're probably going to need a bus pass, which, lucky for you, is only £54 for four weeks worth of travel to work. | |
| So it's only costing you £648 a year to get to your minimum wage job. | |
| This brings our remaining total to £1,331. | |
| And the final two necessities for modern life in the UK are a mobile phone, of which we'll buy the cheapest we can find, around £5 a month, and an internet provider. | |
| Again, we'll get the cheapest we can get, which is around £17 a month. | |
| Together, these come to £264 a year. | |
| Now you may want to argue that having a phone and internet access is actually a luxury, but I'm going to stop you there because you and I both know that's bullshit. | |
| Just to sign on to the job centre these days requires internet access. | |
| And how did you get your job without having internet access or a phone? | |
| These things are mandatory for modern living in Britain anyway. | |
| God knows what it's like in Poland, but in this country, you need them. | |
| So at the end of our working year, after we've removed tax, our room, our bills, our food, our clothes, our transport and communications, after all of the necessaries of existence are removed from our minimum wage salary, we have £1,067. | |
| And just in case you're under any misapprehension that £1,067 annually isn't actually a pittance, if you break that down into months, it's just under £89. | |
| Broken down into weekly, it's £22.25 a week. | |
| For my American listeners, that's about $30. | |
| £22 a week is what you have to actually live on. | |
| And God forbid, something breaks, something needs replacing, or that someone has a birthday. | |
| Get used to telling people, sorry, I don't buy presents because I'm on minimum wage. | |
| So let's go back to Pagada's assertion. | |
| If you're stupid and irresponsible, then you will not save a penny. | |
| Because remember, if we want kids, which we haven't accounted for, a big house, which we certainly don't have, and a new TV, which I don't see how we're going to afford, it's apparently your selfish choices and not survival. | |
| Because that's what you're talking about, survival. | |
| This isn't living. | |
| This is existing. | |
| This is just about keeping your head above the water and assuming that nothing goes wrong. | |
| And it also assumes that nothing's going to get worse, like your rent going up unexpectedly, or next year when the council tax freeze wears off and councils are bound to hike up their council taxes. | |
| Not only that, but your quality of life is going to be poor. | |
| Just think about the food you're going to be eating. | |
| It's shit. | |
| It's complete and utter shit. | |
| It's the sort of stuff that's going to cake your artery so fucking thick, it's going to knock years off your life. | |
| But you know what? | |
| We've been frugal. | |
| We've been sensible and we're going to save half of our available money every week. | |
| £11. | |
| Over 52 weeks for the whole year. | |
| Giving us the princely sum of £572 saved. | |
| It only required us to live like a goddamned Spartan for the entire year. | |
| But we finally did it. | |
| On minimum wage, we managed to afford a nice new TV. | |
| Seriously though, to Pagada and the 331 people who upvoted their comment, I really want you to have a think about what has been said here. | |
| You've made up a false narrative in your head. | |
| What you have said, that people on minimum wage should just give up their big houses and big TVs and their families, it's nonsense. | |
| They never had any of these things to start with, because they can't afford any of these things. | |
| And I know what you're going to say, you're going to say be proactive, get a better job, but it's not that easy. | |
| In Britain, there are just under 2 million people unemployed, and there are just under 700,000 jobs available. | |
| There isn't enough work to go around. | |
| And beggars can't be choosers. | |
| If you can only find a minimum wage job, then you take the minimum wage job. | |
| And even the Conservative Party has been persuaded that this is an issue. | |
| Which is why in October this year, the minimum wage is going up to £6.70 an hour. | |
| That's a grand total of £13,936 a year. | |
| So I am sorry if you do not enjoy it when I talk about politics and the economy. | |
| But you, Pagada, and anyone who happens to agree with you, is living with a false narrative. | |
| As far as I can tell, it is a view of the world that is factually inaccurate. | |
| But you know, I could be wrong. | |
| I'm no economist. | |
| I'm doing this from a layman's perspective of someone who has lived on minimum wage in a one-bedroom flat in Swindon. | |
| I don't know who has put the notion of the poor being really well off into your head, but I do think you should dislodge it yourself. | |
| Because you're acting as if being poor is a character flaw. | |
| You're acting as if these people have chosen to have such restricted opportunities in their life. | |
| In most cases, poverty is something that happens to you, not something that you choose. | |
| You've got to get this notion that these are just lazy and feckless individuals out of your mind. | |
| They're not. | |
| They're working full time just to maintain the bare minimum. | |
| I don't see why a bit of compassion is out of order. | |
| If it were you in their position, unable to catch a break, unable to get off the bottom rung, are you honestly going to sit there and tell me that you would say the blame lies entirely with you and none of it lies On the system within which you are Cracked, |
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