I'm not sure if the government is going to give me $900, but I have been thinking about the best way of spending it. I'd been planning to pay back my Tasmanian wilderness debt which is very large. However, I've been wandering about Campsie a lot the last few days and thinking that it would be better to spend it very slowly over six months on lunches in Campsie. Lunch is about $10 at most of the places. Today Kyung and I paid $12 each for a spectacular Korean feast. It seems like good value and it's putting money into the local economy.
I don't want to spend the money on things where the profits will go straight to the rich. It's good if we can keep the money circulating amongst the poor for as long as we can. If we tried harder to buy things from the working class and tried to avoid buying things produced by the intellectual class, then it we'd shift a bit of economic power away from the rich. So I've been trying to think of things I value that are made by the working class. Probably food is one of the best things. Although it obviously depends on what sort of food. But it probably excludes a lot of the imports I like, such as computers and digital cameras. A lot of those things are probably made by working classes overseas, but I suspect most of the profit goes to rich middle-men.
My compromise might be that I don't buy any digital cameras or computer upgrades, but I spend half the money on local food and the other half on debt. It's always nice to pay off debt.
I’m going to do this: http://www.stimulatechange.org/
then spend 1/3 on debt, 1/3 on digital recorder that will probably profit the rich in some way and 1/3 i will slowly whittle away while writing my thesis.
Miles / 3:31pm / 25 March 2009
I don’t want to close the gap, for reasons I’ve talked about before, but donating it probably is a good thing to do. And probably donating it to an indigenous community is a good idea, because I reckon they would have fairly low rates of saving.
Ryan / 3:49pm / 25 March 2009