Pornography, Prostitution,and the Economy

Regarding the argument that pornography creates jobs for people who would other wise not have them:


The economy is going down the drain worldwide, but the sex trade is booming.
Porn is addictive, where many other forms of media are far less so, or are not addictive at all.
People are hooked on porn, and they get an arousal addiction. They spend money on that, and don't have it to spend on other forms of entertainment or other luxuries or, in severe cases, even on necessities.

How does that benefit it the economy?
If the money that was going into the porn industry were used for about anything else, it would go a lot farther. If it were invested, it could start thousands of businesses and create jobs that people might choose freely and not out of extreme desperation.
NO ONE chooses to work in the sex trade freely,trafficked or not. If the other option is dying for lack of basic resources, that is not freedom of choice being exercised.
Put the money into building the economy, not into exploitation.

I met a young lady once, in her early twenties. She lived in horrible poverty growing up and suffered considerable abuse and willful neglect (not a lack of resources causing her mom not to meet her needs, but deliberate neglect even when resources were available). Her mom had actually stolen her identity, ran up several thousands of dollars in bills, and then left it like that so when she came of age it impacted her employability and her ability to get an apartment and etc. She had to get her apartments in someone else's name,usually a man who put her bills and such in his name in exchange for you-can-guess-what, and then she paid the bills out of her disability check. Off and on, from her adolescence, she had sold her body. In her late teens, she had worked for an escort service, which brings me to my point in telling his story:
She told me of a a time when a man paid her $7,000 to do something very disgusting, which I wish she had never told me about.... Most of it went for drugs to try to survive the emotional damage that this lifestyle, I guess especially that incident, caused her,and from which she never really recovered. She saidit generates an amazing amount of money but is not worth it. She took huge amounts of prescription anti-depressants and street drugs to keep from resorting to suicide. Several years after leaving that behind her, she still needed a lot of anti-depressants for severe suicidal depression, and endless counseling.
If a person has $7,000 to spend on a night out, how many concert tickets,t-shirts, and EPs might that buy them? There are so many things a person can get that can be enjoyed for many years, that cost less than that. There are numerous ways a person can amuse themselves on a weekend, making memories worth having with those they care about. Addiction of the sort that man almost certainly had robs people of the ability to enjoy those things, and this does a lot of damage to the economy. The music and film industries are both suffering now, along with many others. Yet this addictive and damaging industry is thriving, Its not that there is no money, but little money is going into productive things. Buying band T-shirts supports the band, the silk-screeners, the makers of the t-shirt, those involved with growing the cotton, the makers of the dye, the makers of the equipment used to make the dye, grow the cotton, weave the shirt, and silkscreen it, and all the transportation businesses involved in getting these various products to the next phase in the process. Buying CDs affects bands, and everybody in any way connected to producing the CD or the equipment used in making and recording the music.
When that young woman gave in to that man'swishes, she, her pimp, and drug dealers benefited financially, no one else. She also suffered tremendous psychological damage from these activities, in addition to the circumstances that pushed her into those activities in the first place.

The sex and illicit drug industries are worse about hogging profits then mega corporations are, and do not improve the economic conditions in the areas where they thrive.
If you care about people having jobs, don't support, or tolerate, the sex trade. 
Unless you want an economy that runs solely on hard drugs and various forms of prostitution, don't support,or tolerate, the sex trade.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star

NEVER! GIVE! UP! - Appreciating the Power of the Little Things

Today the lesson is on how little things can make a big impact.

I found a plan for how to get through the semester with all my present income cut off.

I do not like having all my income being from some government program. Getting off of that would involve possibly having to go over a month with nothing coming in at all, not even the unemployment insurance and food stamps.
There are pretty healthy recipes I know that cost so little that I could afford to get through most if not all of the semester eating them. The ingredients last long enough, and are healthy enough, to do that, though they can be somewhat bland and I will need to take a vitamin supplement. I bought 15 bags of brown rice yesterday, thats one of the ingredients.
My LINK card, which is what the foodstamps are loaded on in IL, is missing. It may have fallen from my backpack or pocket when I was running errands yesterday.
No one can use it without the PIN number, but I can't get groceries without it.
If it does not turn up before tomorrow morning, my plan to go sign up for school at the last minute could potentially be foiled. I will have to go to the DHS office tomorrow, if I am well enough as I am now feeling ill, and see if I can get it replaced in the morning. Whether that can be done that quickly or not will effect how soon, and thus whether, I can register for school at RCC. A little piece of plastic, just a few square inches of plastic. Because of that, the direction of my life could be altered.

The alternative/backup plan is to start the online program through Ashworth college as soon as can get car back to running. Got a starter for it, and a new positive battery cable. just gotta put it back together, and wait for the next (last?) unemployment check to get insurance back on it. That will not help me put the investment class I already bought and read the material for to use though, as my car will still be ugly and loud and ruin my credibility...

The thing with the investments is you have to get an option to buy the property, the kind where you can back out of but the seller cannot. Then you have to find a buyer within the option period, and when/if you do, you buy and sell them at the same closing. Your buyer pays closing costs, and of course they are paying more than you are, so you have a profit. Options tend to cost around $100. In order for people to accept your offer (most won't anyway as it'll be low, but you don't know who will until you try and there are people out there who will) they must believe you can actually buy their house though - which you actually need not be able to do, you just need to secure the option and find someone else to buy it. If you drive up in a noisy, smoking, rusty, heavily dented car like mine, NO ONE will believe you can buy their $100,000+ house! Forget it. Ditto with not having a car at all. That's my problem in that area now.

Going back to school this spring could, in addition to job skills, get me access to resources to get a car with. Being cut off for what little income I have because of returning to school would justify maxing out student loans if I have to, and having a decent truck would enable me to do the investment stuff AND scrap metal. It will also go a long way to help in the traditional job search. So while I am waiting for the right house deal, I can still make money to pay the loans down.That is, even though no payments will be due til I am out of school for six months. There's no sense letting it grow unchecked if I don't have to...

If that plan gets shot down, then I will have to persevere as I have been, and try to fix the car up on my unemployment while looking for a job in a job market where you basically have to have a car or else... In which case it will just take a lot longer to get the same things done, and I will have to persevere for longer. How much longer, I don't exactly know for sure. I have seen a few more "Now hiring" signs lately, so things are picking up...

In the next few days, it will all get ironed out, and the decisions will be made.

I met the deadline for that anthology submission, and I did some writing for clients since I got laid off, so to say I was self-employed as a freelance writer is not a lie, at all. I was doing a lot of writing. I had a big project I got done and will hear feedback on sometime in the next week or so, about getting published or not. That stuff all resolves the "gap in employment" issue, I think/hope. Returning to school works pretty good as a reason to stop that "job."
I cut my hair today, since the shagginess and dead ends probably made me look less "together," even though I tried to make it look real nice. I will have to ask my roommates' mom to help me even it out. Then I will be more marketable for both employers and as an investor. It does not look much better now, except the dead ends are snipped off...

Little things make a huge difference, A little bitty piece of plastic, a snap on a pocket or a small pocket zipper coming open, which possibly letting the plastic fall out. Split ends in one's hair. Things that can alter the course of your life in this modern world, because they can deny you access to what you need in the times when you need it, or create an impression of you other than what people want to see.

Life sucks right now, but it could really be SOOO much worse, I really cannot complain. I have internet access and am sitting here blogging to the world about what I am dealing with.
I started this series with the certainty that in the end, it would encourage someone, because they would see what I come up against and yet, I WILL win! I still believe that, and I will never give up.
Neither should you.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star

NEVER! GIVE! UP! - A Slap in the Face with Some Good Progress

Messaged my investment-class mentor about my prospective first move. Put my car on craigslist. Saw a truck on craigslist for same price that is ten years older but still runs.

My meeting this morning could have gone better, but could also have gone worse.
My friend basically let me know he thought I was a bum.
He's in his 60's and drove a truck for over 30 years. He has a CDL and a handful of endorsements on his license with 30 years at same company and spotless record. Employers are begging for people like him, not the other way around. He has a unique situation. As a retiree, he does not realize what "2nd most declining economy in nation" means. It has to do with job scarcity, layoffs, a glut of desirable employees in job market and a vast shortage of jobs for them to fill. That means hard-working, responsible people with good work ethics can end up jobless for extended periods of time. Lots of them. Droves of them apply for same jobs, along with all the people who really don't want to work very hard. Employers don't even try to be nice to people applying for jobs and are curt, sometimes even downright rude.
At the non-profit where he works, they need people with his qualifications who will work for minimum wage. People who will do that are retired, and are often not willing to do just anything the company needs. So the company hires people who treat it as badly as some companies - like for instance the meat packing business - treat their employees, yet they continue to have a position there. Therefore, he gets a very inaccurate picture of what's going on!

He eventually changed his tune, and he did tentatively agree to be my partner. that means do the driving and the negotiating, since he's good at those things, in exchange for 50%  of the profits. We are to meet again on Tuesday. Hopefully, that meeting will begin and end better than this one began.

My poor, dear little car. It is on craigslist now, if anyone wants it. You can find the ad here.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star