So, for whatever reason, the author Barbara Ehrenreich has recently become a blip on my radar screen. So I have been doing a little surfing around and reading about her book Nickel and Dimed:On (not) Getting by in America.
And so, thought I, what better place to talk about poverty and the working poor that here in the Great Debates.
For those that didn’t link, the gist of what happened is that the author chose a variety of low paying service sector jobs, and then attempted to live on them. While I have not read the book yet, the articles talk enough about her experiences that I have had several issues raised.
First of all, I am struck by the fact that she (and some of the folks with who she speaks) seem to be genuinely surprised by the fact that these are not living wages and that rent/housing is the huge boogie-man for the so-called working poor. Perhaps it is because I am so close to this that this sees like a rudimentary conclusion, hardly worth wasting time on.
And then I got sort of frightened. In that (from the admittedly little I have read about her) she seems to have somewhat of a liberal or socialist worldview. If this can be a revelation to her, it sort of implies that the folks running the show are simply out of touch with the facts of millions of citizen’s lives.
And so, I guess, the Great Debate here is this: What, if anything, can be done to alleviate the suffering of the folks that (while working hard) are living in poverty?
we are stuck in a system that has evolved over centuries. we grow up not being taught how the system really works. plenty of the teachers don’t know how it works, but they teach us to believe in the system anyway.
my encyclobedia britannica says banking is ancient but first mentions the 13th century. so accounting must be at least 700 years old. steam engines are only 300, gas engines 120, microprocessors 30. we have computers powerful enough to run banks in our homes but we were not taught accounting which is 5th grade arithmatic.
our pseudo-educational system is part of the process of creating and maintaining our class structured society. people will keep talking about improving the schools forever but most really smart people don’t want to teach below college level anyway. the problem is in the grammar schools.
everyone needs to concentrate on NET WORTH not JOBS. and the private ownership of land is no different from slavery, a legal delusion. [that should get a rise from the capitalist syncophants, LOL.]
Boy, I wish I knew, because most of the people I know are working class. I would think some smart developer would build low-cost housing, like a number of developers did after WWII. A heckuva lot of people would be delighted to have a basic three, four or five-room house (living room, kitchen, one bath and one, two or three bedrooms)(bathrooms aren’t included in a room count, just FYI). Instead, developers today concentrate on the over-elaborate upscale homes. John F. Long in Phoenix, just to name one such post-war developer, got rich off those small homes.
Low-cost apartment complexes in infill property would also make good money for their builders; less elaborate apartments would be cheaper to build and maintain, and they’d almost always be full.
Just my .02 (had to break the piggy bank to get it ).
In the town I lived when I was poor, many jobs paid minimum wage, even those requiring some skills, like hotel auditor. Minumum wage jobs pay so little that even buying the most modest house is not feasible. Many who work still qualify for benefits available, like food stamps, but these programs require that those who receive them not have savings. Attempts to save money would disqualify somenone for benefits and without the benefits, the poor are even less likely to be able to afford to save up for things like houses or even just maintain a rainy day fund.
One false hope is that of raising minimum wages. Whenever it is done, there is a temporary but insufficent increase for those workers. Then the guy that was working at just above minimum wage demands a raise and the guy above him and so on and so forth and then companies raise prices and lo and behold everything quickly gets back to where it began with just a little more inflation built in. The people that get the most good out of it are the politicians.
As mentioned by dal_timgar education is needed. I don’t know if he and I are on the same page, but we’re in the same book.
Education would help improve the lot of the children. A lot of poverty is systematic in that the children are not given the skills to cope with the real world by the institutions that are supposed to. Hence, better inner-city and rural education as well as more job training programs would help.
But we’re talking about the working poor; people who do have jobs, who do the best they can to manage their money, but the income they’re bringing in just can’t cover the high cost of living.
Binarydrone, just so you know, Barbara Ehrenreich is a liberal, not a socialist.
We recently had a thread on “the living wage”: much huffing and puffing from some quarters about how raising the minimum wage would cause unemployment and therefore be self-defeating. Yet the minimum wage hasn’t kept up either with the rate of inflation or with worker’s productivity gains (IIRC the 1960s min. wage would be over $7 in today’s dollars); and previous increases in the minimum haven’t caused serious unemployment problems.
All of that aside, there are other ways to raise living standards without raising the minimum wage beyond the point of catching it up to where it ought to be. There could, and IMO definitely should, be reductions in payroll tax for people at that level (this would have the added bonus of being far better for the economy than the fatcat taxcut we’ll be getting over the next decade). It is also possible to subsidize the things that the working poor most depend on: transportation, childcare, healthcare and, as you say, education.
In any case, why don’t you tell us what Ehrenreich suggests. (I know you posted some links but I’m pressed for time and hoping you’ll summarize or post a few excerpts.)
If you drop out of high school, you have to pay the government back every penny that Uncle Sam spent for you to go to school all those years. If you go to college (or vo-tech or whatever), and take out grants to pay for it, and you quit, same thing.
I think this would discourage people from playing around with their chance to get a good education.
No, a college degree does NOT guarantee you a good job (my mom has 2 and has been poor all her life), but dropping out of high school pretty much does guarantee that you’ll be poor.
That’s just going to make the poor even poorer! Face it, some people are going to drop out no matter what, especially from high school. A 16 year old isn’t thinking about what his life is going to be like 10 years down the road when he drops out. He just knows that he can’t hack Algebra II and doesn’t want to.
Hell, I considered dropping out of high school myself. I didn’t want to learn a lot of the things they were forcing me to learn. I was working at McDonald’s at the time and figured that I could work my way up to store manager in a couple years and live a lower-middle class life. That was how my stupid 16-year-old brain worked.
If my 24-year-old brain was in that same position, I would have stuck it out no matter how bad it was. Luckily (though it didn’t seem so at the time), my parents said they’d kick me out of the house if I quit school, so I stayed in and I graduated.
Minimum wage jobs are punishment enough for dropping out of school. The poor don’t need more financial headaches.
Really, the simple fact of the matter is that we need ditchdiggers, fast food workers, and other menial laborers. It’s not realistic to suggest that everyone go get a college education. A lot of people really don’t want to learn. Or maybe they can’t. They’d rather just drive a truck, and that’s great because we need people to do that.
The issue here is not eliminating or discouraging the participation in menial labor, but rather to give the laborers a livable wage and affordable housing. I’m no economist, so I’m not even going to wager a guess on whether raising the minimum wage would be effective, but, from a layperson’s standpoint, it at least sounds like Squish’s low-cost housing idea is pretty logical.
Well, it’s significantly diferent from slavery in the sense that you get to chose where and how you want to work. IIRC, slaves don’t really get to chose. That and massa’ wouldn’t let me work from home like I am now.
As I mentioned in the Living Wage thread, I agree with creating more affordable housing. McMansions are great and all but there are a lot of people who neither want or need to live in a house w a 3 car garage.
Problem with minimum wage and subsidized housing is that you can’t beat basic market forces.
The other problem is that you can’t sit around waiting and hoping for things to change. So my advice to poor people is this:
Finish school - Its a fact that the more schooling you have, the more money you wil earn. Take classes at night if you have to.
Save money - there is always someone poorer than you. Live like someone who makes a little less than you and put some money away each month in an IRA or something, even if its only $50.
Consider moving somewhere cheaper - For the same price as the rent for my NYC studio, I could could buy a really really big house outside Albany.
Stop buying shit! - self explanatory. If you don’t have a lot of money, don’t wast it on stupid stuff you don’t need. That includes beer, cable TV, and gold rims for your Toyota Corola.
If you can’t handle a credit card, tear it up - I like them because the statement helps me keep track of what I buy. They also come in handy for emergency purchases like car repairs. The important thing is I pay off the balance each month so I don’t get charged interest (which can be steep).
The sooner you start this the better - It’s a lot easier to finish school before you have kids and car payments,
I understand and applaud the concept of more education=more skills=more jobs. However, and forgive me if this sounds naive, if everybody has a B.A. or better and is qualified for well paying jobs, who’s going to flip burgers or mop floors or pick strawberries?
Mandelatam, unfortunately, I really can’t comment on any of the author’s suggestions, as I have not read the book, only interviews, excerpts and reviews. The general tone that I get from those sources is that she more reports on what is, without offering much in the way of suggestions.
In general, as I see it, the problem really is that our way of life is completely dependant on cheap labor. Assuming that we actually paid people what they would need in order to live. This would mean that prices would go up. It would really require a basic shift in the way that our economy works to make the situation better.
So then, the question starts to become one of revolution. The way of life, as it now exists, is quite functional for those that are not waiting on people, selling shoes and picking strawberries. There is no motivation for this to change. And really (as a scraping by, holding two jobs person that could pretty easily be called working poor), I at least don’t need to redistribute vast amounts of wealth or land. All that I really want is to be sufficiently rewarded for my demonstrably hard labor, such that I can live a subsistence life.
Finally msmith37, there are a couple of comments that I would like to make about some of the points that you raise. Specifically, I would like to address the notion that the poor should consider moving somewhere else. This is really not a feasible idea. First of all, because of transportation and logistical needs, most of the working poor find it necessary to live near their place of employment. For the most part, this will mean that they need to live somewhat close to the rich, as that is who is being provided the services and labor. Also, and this is more personal experience, I have spent most of my adult life moving to the cheap part of town, watching that part of town become gentrified, and then having to move again because I have been put in the position of competing way out of my league for housing.
Perhaps what is in order here is a change in the way that we define poverty (in terms of qualifying for food stamps and other government type programs). That and a discarding of the notion that this is a mediocrity.
binary, I think you are mistaken that the upshot of the question of working poverty “starts to become one of revolution.” From what I’ve read of Ehrenreich, a straightforward liberal, in the past, I’m quite certain that she, at any rate, is suggesting no such thing.
You are also mistaken to believe that changing this situation for the better would require anything so radical as a revolution, or shift away from a fundamentally capitalist economy. European and Scandinavian countries do a much better job than we do of combatting working poverty.
It’s all a question of priorities. I recently heard that the amount of money the government now spends subsidizing US agriculture (in direct contradiction of its supposed free-trade principles) would be sufficient to subsidize childcare costs for families struggling to meet those costs. And, as I said above, it would be both more equitable and better for the economy if the taxcuts we’ve now scheduled for the superrich were instead structured as payroll tax cuts to the working poor.
Byassuming that only socialism or revolutionary politics can help the problem you ignore middleground solutions that are right in front of our noses–if you know where to look.
I’d be surprised if Ehrenreich doesn’t at least touch upon some of these in her book (though I do seem to recall reading some less than glowing reviews, and perhaps that was part of the problem).
I am willing to concede that this is possible, and just a reflection of my own frustration with the way that things are. Also, please note that I am not talking about conclusion made by the author at this point, rather I am talking about my own thoughts
That said, I have some concerns. For instance, take a working schmoe such as my self. After working in the neighborhood of 70 to 80 hours a week (one job mentally demoralizing (Tech Support) the other physically demanding (Line Cook)), I don’t have a lot of time or energy to be a polite activist working within the system so that the goods and services that I need are available to me at prices that I can afford. But, I could be tempted if (on the way home from one of these jobs) I were to see a riot that was “taking back from the Man”.
Naturally, I exaggerate to make a point, but do think that there is a strong element of truth here. The so-called working poor are not going to be able to do this for themselves, and so will either need to wait until things are so bad that they collectively snap and take what they need, or will need to rely on a better way of living being given to them.
So, given the above, I am interested to know what some of these “middle ground” solutions are. How have European countries dealt with this in a way that is different?
Her book simply exposes the stinking hypocrisy at the very heart of our “work ethic”. We need service workers, but if we pay them a living wage, the conveniences and service they offer would be more expensive.
The best example of the cupidity of our “system” is what happened in Aspen. The rich folks sucked up every available square inch of floor space, to the porcine joy of local real estate whores. Now there is zero affordable rental units. Hence, there are the same number of affordable service drones to flip the burgers, smile at the customer, and generally debase themselves for what crumbs might slip from the fingers of the Invisible Hand.
“You can’t get good help these days” is the weary mantra of the obscenely privileged.
Go to your local fast good outlet, a Mickey D. or some such. Gaze on the happy fullfilment of the staff, how they beam with the joy of their labor, knowing that soon they will be able to afford basic cable, that they might gaze longingly on the luxury available to those with the correct entreprenurial spirit! They might burst into song at any moment!
Meanwhile, the Ken Lays of the world are farting through the silk.
Shit like this makes the Baby Jesus puke His little guts out.
Many jobs don’t pay enough to allow those working them to continue doing so without getting money or resources from elsewhere, whether that elsewhere is parents, the govenment, or a second and third job. Somewhere we decided that 40 hours is a good work week, and I think that is a good standard. Shouldn’t 40 hours of work a week support a person? Why doesn’t it? The Market seems to have failed here, partly because the laborers are negotiating from a position of weakness. Seems to me that the cost of laborers living should be included in the cost of the service they provide. Some will manage better than others, but they all should at least have a chance. They don’t now. Why do some want to make their lots worse?
Good point; after all, all manner of ‘costs of doing business’ are included in goods and services by the owners/managers; why shouldn’t the cost of living be included by the laborer?
I have a liberal arts degree. Do you want fries with that?
Tomorrow morning, the US government passes a law that the head of any household must be paid $25,000 per year. The following immediately results:
The labor market for heads of household begins to decrease. I can hire a teenager living with her parents for minimum wage, but if I hire the hard-working single mom, she has to be paid the twenty-five grand. If the position doesn’t earn at least $25,001 per year in net profit, I would be crazy to hire her. So I won’t.
I also fire all the heads of households working for me making less than that. Same reasons.
All the working single mothers who are living with their parents immediately move out and set up their own households. That way, they can earn $25,000 instead of whatever less than that they get now.
All the jobs worth less than $25,000 per year tend to move to some country without such living wage legislation. India, China, Haiti, places like that. Where possible.
Illegitimacy increases. Women can increase their income by having children, and thus becoming heads of households. So they do.
The barriers for people first entering the job market are raised higher. Women re-entering the job force after their children are old enough to be in school can’t find any work. It costs too much to hire them.
The amount of paper work to file your taxes, or to hire someone, immediately increases by a factor of ten.
Tax revenues decrease as more people work off the books. And there is no combination of laws or bureaucratic rulings that can reverse any of these trends. No matter what.
).