How ATM Fees Disproportionately Harm the Poor

Putting my Sociology degree to work -_-'

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/3zs28b/the_bernie_sanders_pledge_2_atm_fees/cyopv6w

The poor are disproportionately harmed by ATM fees and denying this fact proves nothing except that you lack critical thinking skills. So allow me supply some for you.

A. Suppose you are a poor working person and you get paid by check.

(1) If you don't have a bank account, you get hosed paying the fee at a check cashing service. I know what you're thinking, and allow me to say, not having a bank account is not a problem that can be simply solved by being "smart." Go do some research on the concept of the "unbanked" in America and actually try to understand that not everyone has the same circumstances or privileges that you might take for granted.

(2) If you do have a bank account, you have to go to a bank in person and cash your check, unless your employer does direct deposit, which saves you a trip but has the same ultimate outcome. (Note that in this thought experiment I skip over the possibility that a poor working person might pay by check or debit card; not to say it doesn't happen, just that we're focusing on the question of ATM fees and cash management here, and local businesses in poor areas often don't accept non-cash payment methods anyway.) Your options for avoiding the ATM fees are:

a. Cash the entire check and carry all that money, quite possibly the only money you have to your name, on your person for the next 7 days as you go about your life living in a poor, possibly dangerous, area. The problem of living in a high risk area when you are poor is not something that you can solve just by being "smart."

b. Deposit the check, and plan to return to the bank later to withdraw more cash or to use an ATM. Why is this a problem?

(i). Regarding going to a bank branch: If you live in a poor area, chances are that your community is dramatically underserved by bank facilities and therefore making a trip to the bank is a much bigger time commitment for you than for the average person living in a middle class neighborhood. Certainly you can overcome this challenge by taking that time away from other activities that advance your quality life, but that's not the same as being "smart."

(ii) Regarding using the ATM: as the above article points out, there are many more ATMs than banks in poor neighborhoods. It's not even close. We're not talking about the nice Chase ATMs that have their own storefront on Broadway. We're talking about the crappy, slow ATM in your corner bodega. So if you have a busy life (perhaps you're raising kids, or working multiple jobs), in order to save some time by not going to the bank as in (i) above, using the ATM probably looks like a great alternative. However, it comes with a cost, namely the ATM fee. In this situation, the "smart" thing to do may very well be to go use the ATM anyway, and eat the fee, sheerly for the time savings. Regardless of how you do the math, at least it should be obvious by now that this is not a cut and dry situation.

B. Alternatively, if you are a working person and you get paid in cash, you might save a trip to the bank, otherwise the situation is much the same as we already discussed.

(1) You do not have a bank account and you proceed as in (2)a, above.

(2) You have a bank account and you must go there and deposit your cash, putting you back at (2)b, above.

TL;DR: I take issue with this claim:

my point was you don't have to be very smart to figure out how not to pay ATM fees

The problem of ATM fees and how to avoid them has nothing to do with intelligence. It has everything to do with your life circumstances, your employer's business practices, and where you happen live. If you're a poor working person, none of these three things is much in your control, let alone subject to "smart" decision-making or its opposite.

shi’er yue shi’qi hao rijiben

This post is part of a new series I'm going to do, which will probably constitute the bulk of my posts for the next month or so. Because I'm so pressed for time and energy during this busy work season, I'm going to post my Chinese homework.

This is my self-assigned rijiben (日记本, journal). To give you an idea what's going on: first I quickly outline my day in bulleted English; then on my computer I roughly compose the text you see below in pinyin (拼音, Latinized Chinese pronunciations); after which I handwrite it, this time with tone markings (which are beyond annoying to insert on my computer, hence why they're absent below); and finally review with my teacher for grammar and vocabulary.

Since the pinyin I type in OSX TextEdit has no tone markings and will therefore be pretty much incomprehensible to everyone, this series will primarily amount to an art project. If you're someone who is curious what the general letters and sounds of Chinese look like in English, then you'll probably dig this extra hard. Enjoy!

                                             *               *               *               *               *

wo zuotian xiuxi yinwei wo hai youdian bing[le], ranhou wo jintian zaoshang ganjue geng jiankang.
shi’yi dian wo shangban. dang wo qi zixingche de shihou, wo zheme leng wo toutengle.
wo daole yihou, wo faxian wo jieshoule yizhang youdide heka.
zhezhang cong wo nupengyou fale, suoyi wo feichang gaoxingle.
[zai] heka limian shi yige xin, [which is that] wo nupengyou feichang xiang wo.
ranhou wo gei ta fa weixin gaosu ta wo jieshoule tade heka, ranhou ta ye hen kaixin.
ranhou, wo tongshi gaosu wo [that] womende di san ge[usage] xuesheng jieshoule tade “college acceptance letter”[vocab, see Sat class notes].
zhege xinxi feichang hao, yinwei ta xian yinggai nian nage daxue[le], suoyi women buyao gei ta zuo [ling]gengduo gongzuo.
ranhou wo bangzhu wode xuesheng, jiao Jin Shaoming, kaishi xie tade xiayizhang[usage] daxue shenqingde wenzhang.
guo yihuir[vocab] women tongshimen cong bangongshide fuwuyuanmen dou jieshoule hen duo tiande liwu, keneng yinwei shengdanjie kuaiyao dao.
xiawu wo zuo[de] hen mang.
liu dian yidian[usage] yihou wo chuqu wo fudao yingwende xuesheng.
hai youdian leng, danshi wo qi zixingche dao ta Xintiandide bangongshi.
women zhejieke dasuan taolun yingwen[de] keshumingci, danshi tongku hui wo duzi, suoyi women tongyi[de] xiakele.
ranhou wo hui wo ziji[de] bangongshi.
guo yihuir[vocab] wo ting zai chuanr fanguan jie wode wanfan.
dang wo diancaide shihou, wo faxianle naxie doufu chuanr shi bingde
(yinwei tamen baitian zuo tamende chuanr, ranhou lengdong[de] yihuir mai).
dui wo lai shuo zhege dongxi feichang haoxiao, suoyi wo gaosule laoban:
“nimen zheli you bingkuai chuanr!”
ta juede wode xiaohua duoshao haoxiao, suoyi wo hen manyile.
haole.

GiT: Escalator warnings

I don't think I need to explicate these for you any more :)

Gained in Translation (4): Upscale Apartment Ad

"Where you belong, belongs to you." This one must be some kind of Zen koan. Perhaps the place where you belong rightfully belongs to you, but you don't realize it yet. Or maybe the place that already belongs to you is where you belong. The more ways I try to think about it, the weirder the word "belong" sounds in my head.

你会中文啊! Part 1: Pinyin and Radicals

Probably the most intimidating thing for me in beginning to study Chinese was to adjust to the idea of a writing system that is non-alphabetical. Chinese writing is based on characters, each of which represents not just one letter worth of sound but a whole syllable. In addition to a sound each character also has a range of possible meanings.

For Westerners, the process of learning Chinese is made easier by 拼音 (pin1yin1) which is a Latinized, phonetic version of Chinese (the numbers after the pinyin indicate tone; we'll discuss tones in the next post). Pinyin helps you start speaking Chinese without having to learn any characters.

Now, if you want to really get around effectively within China (i.e. be able to read anything at all), you need to start recognizing some characters. Some characters can stand alone as words, for example 是 (shi4) meaning "to be" (i.e. "is/am/are"). Most however show up combined into words of two or more characters. Note that the Chinese don't use spaces between words. They aren't necessary for comprehension and they waste a lot of space on page and screen.

Now that we have an idea of how characters function, let's introduce the concept of the radical. A radical is a fundamental and simple shape that when stuck together with other radicals forms a whole character. Note that radicals do not work like letters; you cannot just stick radicals together to make new characters on the fly. Rather, radicals exist as the building blocks you use when physically drawing a character. In this way, knowing the radicals is helpful for remembering the characters.

Look at the title of this post: 你会中文啊 (ni3 hui4 zhong1wen2 a5), meaning "You can do Chinese!" If we look closely the characters look like this:

ni3 hui4 zhong1wen2 a5

I know from experience that at first this looks completely inaccessible. How do you possibly read this without memorizing every single character? The answer is... well, you don't. But the radical system acts as a helpful mnemonic for you to make guesses about a character's meaning or pronunciation. There are 214 radicals in the traditional systemization; below I've highlighted 2 from the above sentence:

The one in red I think is easiest to see. This is 口 (kou3), meaning "mouth" or "opening." You see it standing on its own in words like 出口 (chu1kou3) "exit," and 门口 (men2kou3) "doorway." Here it is as a building block in two different characters, 中 (zhong1) "middle," and 啊 (a5) which actually doesn't have a meaning other than to convey emphasis, sort of like an exclamation point "!".

The radical in green may look strange because it has two different shapes. This is 人 or 亻(ren2) and it means "person." Many radicals can be squashed to the top, bottom, or side of a character in this way; the way you know they are still the same radical is by how they are physically drawn.

Now, by some force of imagination you might picture how 你 (ni3) "you" contains the meaning of 亻"person." However in 会 (hui4) "to be able to," the connection to "person" is less obvious (in this case it's a "person" 人 on top of a "cloud" 云 (yun2)—what do you make of that?).

When learning the radicals you can't get too attached to the idea that they provide an easy path to understanding characters. They are a useful mnemonic, but their prime importance is in the physical drawing of characters. Sometimes they can be ridiculously clear, other times completely mysterious. Ultimately, they help a lot so it's important to learn them.

Shanghai is... (12)

Expat sidewalk bars. This one is called Dogtown on 陕西北路 (Shaanxi Bei Lu), just a block from my first Shanghai apartment:

Delicious Chicken Tacos and Beer.

Easy-to-move chairs and a sidewalk on a quiet street at night make for a comfortable temporary bar.

This is a rather slow night. The 4th of July here was really packed.

Gained in Translation (3): Shopping Bag

Capitalization and enjambment are crucial devices for creating meaning in poetry.

"ShangHai" is an unusual stylization, comparable to if you wrote "NewPort" in English. The extra emphasis on "Hai" (Sea) suggests approximately the same difference in stress as "seaside" versus "seaside." The absence of punctuation concludes the statement with an ambivalent tone; a period might be too neutral for a declaration of welcome, while an exclamation point would take up too much space.

"Evaded affection" at first evokes the pain of unrequited love, yet the connotation of "Evaded" demands closer inspection. One only evades what is aggressive or unwanted, so in fact this "affection" is far more than merely unrequited. This analysis leaves aside the beautiful and tragic left-justification of the lines, where "Evaded affection" seems to actually dodge to the left side. 

Furthermore, what are "pieces of the heart"? Are they emotions? Loving relationships? And why "pieces" of these pieces? Perhaps the poet is referring to the granular constituent parts of those larger pieces, e.g. gifts given or words uttered to beloved friends or family.

What does the author intend by separating "Thank you" from "Very Much," phrases that in normal use stand together? For one thing it emphasizes the two separate parts, especially the "Very much" which, having been given its own capital, takes on a range of meanings quite independent from "Thank you."

Of course, this is all just words on a plastic shopping bag.