Peter Whitehead: “The subtext of ‘millennials spend whatever amount on small pleasures’ is implicitly to argue that this is an extravagance, that if only they’d spend it on something better, they wouldn’t be so sad. It is the product of an ideology that cannot conceive of a common good beyond the market… The fact that we can no longer conceive of a future wherein people might be able — even entitled — to an existence that does not merely consist of subsistence but rather is actively pleasurable is depressing beyond belief, and marks one of the crueller turns in capitalist ideology post-crash. … Every time we see things like ‘the minimum wage is liveable if you just cut out luxuries’ we need to read the subtext: ‘I don’t think happiness is something the poor should be allowed to have.’ We need to reclaim the old slogan ‘Bread and Roses’, but this time with an emphasis on the roses.” In the Australian context, perhaps we need to demand ‘Smashed Avocado and Roses’…
18 June 2019