The cost of living,
he would argue, is not the worth of being alive.
Richard Michelson, More Money Than God
In the past few days, two articles have highlighted the economic and existential difficulties of living as more than surviving, in this instance in Namibia. On Monday, two days ago, “Old people in Namibia are going into debt to pay for everyday costs – new report examines strained household budgets” relying on a new report, shared the “stark” central argument: “Disability is produced as much by environment as by the body. Manageable health conditions become crises because of failing housing, absent sanitation, unaffordable assistive devices and precarious income. It falls to unpaid family caregivers to absorb these crises.” One day ago, another report, “Namibians need N$44 000 salary to afford homes” had an equally “stark” argument: “70% of the population cannot afford formal housing because of low incomes and limited access to mortgages … The cost of putting a new house on the market is increasing faster than the cost of living for households hoping to buy one.” There it is, that phrase, “the cost of living.” A phrase that hides as much as it reveals and reveals its true nature in its acts of hiding.
The cost of living is generally defined as “the cost of maintaining a certain standard of living.” What exactly is this “certain” standard of living? On one hand, it isn’t exactly anything, in that it isn’t and never has been exact. On the same hand, “prior to the World War attention was directed by Mr. Seebohm Rowntree (Poverty, A Study of Town Life, 2nd ed. 1902) to the cost of obtaining in York (England) and elsewhere food, clothing, heat, light and shelter sufficient for a family to maintain itself in health and efficiency for work, when all possible economy was practised, subject to the availability of commodities and the legal requirements for housing, decency, etc.” Etc. This is “where the standard is a physiological minimum”.
In other words, from its early days, the cost of living was founded in class struggle, that is, the struggle of one class of people, workers, to survive. People of means do not have a cost of living, because they do not have a standard that is a physiological minimum. Put differently, the cost of living is the cost-of-not-dying is the cost of dying silently and unseen.
In Namibia, a senior in the capital, Windhoek, is having trouble breathing. The family calls the public ambulance, to no avail. They then call the Windhoek Ambulance service. It comes, with a charge of 800 Namibian dollars. The senior’s family doesn’t have the money. No problem. The city will add it to their utilities bill. The family still doesn’t have the money but needs electricity and water … and so they go into debt. The cost of providing care is increasing faster than the cost of living.
And the costs and cost of caring? Who measures those, and how are they measured?
(By Dan Moshenberg)
(Image Credit: Pedro Vorster, “This Space Is Vacant No More” / Imago Mundi)