(Working) Poverty
I finally gave my newly repaired van the chance to get on the highway this morning, and I am VERY glad I didn’t use it to pick up Sam. The distributor cap/rotor, coil, plugs, and wires have all been replaced, but when it gets up to about 50 mph, the entire chassis shakes so hard I think the doors are going to fall off. My father thinks it’s the tires, and I’m inclined to agree. Unfortunately, that’s another thing I can’t afford, because I’m a member of the working poor. I don’t make enough money to make ends meet, but I’m too “wealthy” (HAHAHAHA) to qualify for government programs like LIHEAP or food stamps.
Last week, I had to borrow money from my parents to afford Sam’s visit, and because I’m ashamed of that, I only borrowed the enough to replace the $210 that went into repairing the van. Would you like to know where that money went? Right into the gas tank. By the time I got home with Sam, that $200 had dwindled to $100, and I still had to do grocery shopping. Thank heavens for Thanksgiving: we’re going to an all-you-can-eat potluck tonight at my friend Donno’s house, and then going to my parents for a couple of days, so I won’t have to spend money on food.
The worst part is the lack of heat. Oh sure, I have electric space heaters in my room and in Sam’s room, but because I can’t afford my share of the oil until next week, the house hovers a little over 36 degrees in the evening. You ever have a little kid tell you “Daddy, I’m cold” as he shivers, and realize there’s not much you can do to make it better other than say “put on a sweater and get under the blankets”? if you haven’t I’ll take this opportunity to tell you how it feels: it feels like shit.
And I know it’s not just me: the ranks of the working poor grow every single day, yet no one believes they’re poor, not even the poor themselves. We call ourselves “middle class”, especially if we have jobs. We can pay our bills on time (mostly), we just don’t have money for luxuries like vacations or car repairs whenever we need one. We don’t go out to dinner all that much, because that’s a luxury. Going down to the bar for a couple isn’t a luxury, on the other hand: that’s what we call “keeping our fucking sanity while the world falls apart around us”.
And the Democrats are yapping about cutting student loans, about raising the minimum wage. These are all good things, but I have one question: when do I get MY break? When do I get to keep more of MY money, so my kid doesn’t have to shiver in my house in November? When do I get MY break, so my car repairs don’t necessarily bankrupt me? When do I get MY break, so I can pay off some of my credit card debt? When will I be able to afford quality health insurance, instead of the bottom-of-the-barrel free stuff I’m always forced to select?
I’m just so fucking tired of it. I’m really tired of working and living paycheck to paycheck, and even that doesn’t cover what I need. Whenever I hear some loopy-ass Republican talkign about how the economy’s just gangbusters, I want to gran the moron by the neck and begin using their teeth as a punching bag while screaming “Not for most people it’s not! Not for most people it’s not!” Yeah, great: corporate profits are through the roof, and CEO’s are getting paid hundreds of times what their employees receive. And if I was sitting in a room with Bill Gates the average worth of the two of us would be Bill Gates wealth split in half. It’s great that in the Neighborhood of Make Believe, Americans are doing splendidly.
But in the Neighborhood of Reality, we’re getting shafted, repeatedly. A hungry man is an angry man, Bob MArley once sang, and he gets angrier when he can’t fix his fucking car or keep his kid warm. And when he sees his friends paying their bills by collecting aluminum cans, as my buddy Tim has been reduced to doing in Boston, that man goes beyond anger. Instead, it’s a relentless simmering, seething in a bitter stew of humiliation and frustration. It’s like being my van, unable to get up to speed on the highway.
I have two ways out of my predicament: I can reduce my living standards even further and live like a monk, or I can get a raise (I’m going for that the Monday after Thanksgiving). If I don’t get that raise, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Utah Phillips does a great little bit about his mother sending him to school with newspaper clippings of community heroes or show-and-tell: each clipping was about a different bank robber. Woody Guthrie has a bit to say about that too:
Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
When Mr. Bush gave tax cuts to the rich, he robbed us all with a fountainpen. When he signed “No Child Left Behind” he used that pen to rob us again. When Democrats like Steny Hoyer, Joe Biden, Tom Carper, and others in the Blue Dog Coalition voted to make bankruptcy harder to obtain for individuals, and allowed credit card companies to raise their rates and penalties, they robbed us all with a pen, and they are continuing to rob ordinary Americans who are just a paycheck or two away from abject poverty.
You wanna know what it’s like living in America these days, when you’re not rich? It’s like being a fucking sharecropper. I thought we were past those days: I guess I was wrong.
11 Responses to “(Working) Poverty”
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November 23rd, 2006 at 2:38 pm
Yours is a sad story.
What kind of work are you in? Do you have a college education? Is working toward that a possibility?
November 23rd, 2006 at 7:16 pm
I’m in a great field human services and development) and I have a college education. I just need a higher income.
It’s not so much that my story is sad, it’s that it’s more and more typical for more and more people.
The middle class has been shrinking for years, and many people who consider themselves middle class are actually working poor, a paycheck or two away from disaster.
November 24th, 2006 at 1:19 am
Well, I gotta tell ya’, if it were me, I’d make a change. If you wish things to change, then you must change. You cannot expect things to be different until you make them different.
There are plenty of opportunities out there for college educated people. Perhaps it’s not the field of your choice, but the reason why we all work is for the money when you get down to it. If no one got paid, believe me, few would show up Monday morning.
Waiting on government to help you in a capitalistic system is like waiting on someone to fill up your tank at a self serve gas station. The rules are that you help yourself.
good luck
November 24th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Brendan-
I hate to play Devil’s Advocate. Actually, I do love being the Devil’s Advocate. I’d represent Satan himself, or Dick Cheyney on a public charge of child molestation.
You’re in an enviable position. You can (barely) afford to do a job that makes the world a better place. In addition to your paycheck, you get psychic benefits.
Me, I’ve always chased the money. If I had your background, I’d be copywriting for an ad agency. I can’t afford to take a job that makes the world a better place or lets me advocate for causes I believe in. I’d love to have the choice.
November 25th, 2006 at 12:42 am
Hey guys,
I hate to tell you this, but I think you are both missing Brendan’s point. He loves his job, he is really good at it, and he is not waiting for the government to bail him out. He does a job that is needed in our society, and is not paid enough to live on, even given his much less than extravagant life style. Sure he could apply for and do a higher paid and more prestigious line of work, but he wouldn’t be happy and who would do his job? Someone else that can’t live on that salary and has to change fields in another year? If it is a job we as a society want preformed then we need to pay accordingly.
November 25th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Hey, Brendan -
This is a really excellent post. I’m not even working poor anymore, I’m just plain poor, but I know everything you say is true. It irritates me when people who don’t have money problems try to lecture those who do. They aren’t smarter; they don’t work harder; they aren’t better educated; they’re just lucky.
The problem with our government is that you have to be rich to run for office. Virtually none of them know what it’s like to be working poor. They never have to worry about feeding their kids, or paying for school, or trying to keep a car running. They don’t have to have that humiliating talk with the electric company to try and keep them from cutting of their heat.
Even if you have things like LIHEAP and food stamps, you still can’t make it. If you need dental work or glasses, forget it. I vividly remember having to ask the Salvation Army for help with that one time. They were very kind, but it was still humiliating to be an adult with a college degree and not be able to afford a pair of glasses.
You should distribute this post - submit it to local papers, and send copies to people in Congress who might actually read it. Dennis Kucinich comes to mind. He was homeless at one point when he was a kid, so he might try to get through to his colleagues.
November 25th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Tom Knox, when he declares for mayor, will be an interesting candidate. It’s my understanding he grow up in the projects and knows very well what it’s like to be poor. Today he is a self-made millionaire.
Alex: “You’re in an enviable position. You can (barely) afford to do a job that makes the world a better place. In addition to your paycheck, you get psychic benefits.
Me, I’ve always chased the money.”
Actually, I’ve always chased the money too. I took my job initially because it offered a better salary than a publishing job. But my position is not enviable: psychic benefits do not pay the bills or the child support. LAst week, when it hovered in the low 30s during the evening, an dmy two-year old was shivering and saying “daddy, I’m c-c-c-cold”, my psychic benefits had no effect. I had to cuddle him closer in bed to me and tell him it would be warmer in the morning.
And again, I’m not writing this out of some “poor me, please pity me” instinct: I’m writing this because more and more people like me, with degrees, experience, a strong work ethic and skills, are slipping further and further behind each day. That’s a story that needs to be told. Too often the poor are represented as those who are living in slums, utterly dependent on the government and agencies like mine. That is only one facet of the picture.
One facet that is consistently ignored is the working poor, those like me (and you probably) who work hard and never seem to have anything to show for it, because the money is always spoken for.
November 26th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
Charity does, indeed, begin at home.
December 20th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
I came here via Atrios on the Applebaum thing, and stuck around for the archived rants. I really feel you on this one. I don’t have a kid though. Anyway, I do have a college degree though, and a job I love. It just doesn’t pay shit. I’m a DJ at a small town radio station. I moved from Chicago to downstate IL for this gig. It’s my first job out of school, and when I was hired I was just jazzed I got a job in my field. I knew the pay was low, but I figured that my needs were simple and that this was a necessary step in building my career. What I didn’t anticipate is that I would continue on without health and dental insurance since I can’t afford the coverage offered through my job. Or that I would, from time to time, wash my clothes in the kitchen sink because I can’t afford to go to the laundromat. Or that I would dodge the calls of my student loan provider and ISAC. Or that, every once in a while, I would eat nothing but rice for a few day while I waited til payday.
Sometimes I feel like the victim of a hoax. I mean, I went to college and actually finished. I don’t do drugs. I didn’t get knocked up. I get up and go to work every day, six days a week. I did what I was supposed to do. Yet here I am, with two teeth rotting in my mouth and washing my drawls in the sink.
I know it could be a lot worse. I never go to bed hungry, for example. And then there is the blessing of actually having a bed. Still, on some days, like today apparently, I find it really easy to feel pissed at the world and sorry for myself.
Anyway, this blog is my new favorite thing. Sorry for so long a post.
December 20th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
Reading my reply again, I fear I sounded too judgmental of women who did have children relatively young and people who get high. I feel compelled to note that I am lesbian, so not getting pregnant wasn’t much of a challenge. Furthermore, I can only honestly say I don’t do drugs *anymore.* Gradually, pot only made me paranoid, and that’s no fun so that was the end of that. And saying I don’t do drugs anymore is still only true if you don’t count chain smoking Kools and downing more than my fair share of cheap red wines as not doing drugs.
December 26th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
If, as seems to be the case, you *aren’t* doing your job for the love of it, then I agree with “The Traveler.” This (wonderful) blog (I too came via the Applebaum rant and have stayed) makes clear that you’re really smart and insightful and a fine writer. So … sorry to say this … get off your duff, put down the beer, reconcile yourself to the fact that guitar’s now no more than a hobby, and get a better paying job. ASAP. Even if it’s a stupid, boring one. Even if you’re just word-processing in a soul-stifling law firm. You’re a father now. You have responsibilities. And you’re a college-educated white guy who, as far as I can tell, has no felony convictions. Many many poor people in this country would give anything to have the options you do. I recognize that you didn’t want this post to be about you. But the image of Sam shivering (and some of your other posts about the challenges you face regarding re Sam and your ex)impel me to offer this unsolicited advice. Please take it in the spirit in which it’s offered: empathetic good faith.