In the chapter, “Lobster on Food Stamps,” why do you think Larraine chose to spend all of her food stamps on expensive food like lobster and king crab? What personal reaction did you have to her decision? Do you agree with Pastor Daryl that Larraine is careless with her money because she is operating under a “poverty mentality”? Why might it be dif cult for Larraine to lift herself out of poverty by practicing good behavior or self-control? What options do you believe Larraine has?
This question appears in the Penguin Study Guide.
April 3, 2019 at 11:43 am
Larraine has an outlook on her own circumstances that she will always live in poverty. She doesn’t see her status as a temporary one, but a set position for life, with few options to escape poverty. This is evident where Desmond says, “Larraine imagined she would be poor and rent-strapped forever.” (P 218) This disbelief in the possibility of social mobility has lead her to keep a mindset that she should stay under her SSI limit every month, in other words making sure that she never has more money in her savings account than the government allows for her to continue receiving benefits (a mere $2000). Because of this, she always feels a need to spend all of the money in her savings. This is problematic because without being able to save, it seems unlikely that Larraine will ever be able to even slightly better her financial circumstances. Instead, Larraine chooses to occasionally treat herself to nice things to stay under the SSI limit, such as the lavish dinner she buys of lobster and other expensive foods. She explains that she has the freedom to spend her money how she chooses, and in her mind she would rather have one very nice, special dinner and suffer the remainder of the month by eating cheap noodles for every meal. Quite honestly I was very surprised at first by Larraine’s choice to spend so much of her benefits at one moment because to me, it would seem more reasonable to spread the money out over the month. However, after learning about the limitations to savings cast by the government, I understand her inability to save money for herself. I also understood her reasoning better upon reading Desmond’s statement that, “Instead, they tried to survive in color, to season the suffering with pleasure… If Larraine spent her money unwisely, it was not because her benefits left her with so much but because they left her with so little.” (P 219) This exemplifies that if Larraine chose to spread out the minuscule $80 she receives a month, it wouldn’t even help her that much because it’s such a small amount that she’d still be pinching pennies. She’d rather treat herself to one nice dinner, to make her feel good, independent, and like she has the dignity to spend her money as she chooses like any other adult. This ties strongly back to the topic of human dignity that we’ve discussed in class as an important virtue to uphold when addressing financial assistance for the impoverished, as Larraine even says that she deserves as much as anyone else to buy herself something every once in a while. Overall, I think this chapter reveals how spending choices of impoverished individuals cannot be analyzed in such a black and white nature of smart versus frivolous spending because of the multitude of compounding factors that influence and burden impoverished individuals and the hoops they must jump through to receive assistance.