Name: Joe Carey
Section: ENGL 1301.019
Date: April 28, 2004
Assignment: Project 3
There is a marginal class of poverty in America that prevents those it has a hold on from participating in the “American Dream” of freedom and upward mobility. They are the ones who cannot qualify for assistance from any institutions, but work themselves to exhaustion constantly and never see improvement in their situation. Their situation therefore facilitates legal and economic crises with no clear path of resolution.
When I was a child, I had conversations with people who thought they were poor, yet had never experienced a utility cutoff. I can remember thinking they were stupid for taking for granted what they had. In an article addressing the condition of poverty, Paul Wellstone wrote, “[Poverty] means that life is a constant struggle to obtain the merest necessities of existence, those things most of us take for granted” (Wellstone). My parents had four children and floated right around the federal poverty level for as long as I can remember. Since then I have constantly been wondering how long it takes to get that foothold to hoist oneself out of this class.
Poverty can lead to a loss of self respect, depression, or addiction. The impoverished feel dejected, discouraged, that they are being held down, and in many cases they give up, resigning themselves to remain poor. Others might turn to illegal money making activities or lifestyles. Lars Eighner lived for a while by scavenging in Dumpsters, which he describes in his essay “On Dumpster Diving” (421), yet not once does he express any thought as to the legality of stealing people’s trash. But why should he? Should he starve to obey the law? If you say no, where do you draw the line?
One researcher went undercover as a working class American and observed a belief among management that they own and control the low-wage workers (Ehrenreich). The attitude seems to be that the people in this class owe the management for giving them the privilege of not being unemployed, rather than being owed respect as an equal human being. Is there relief from this type of tyranny? Our nation’s history shows that we formed unions to alleviate injustices to the working class, but the conditions I have described here seem to be worse in union represented jobs these days.
While working in a position represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, I observed a “letter of the law” attitude of management towards the employees, whereas everywhere else I have worked in recent years, management is comparatively lax as long as the job gets done. It is as if the fact that the workers are represented by a union gives the company the freedom to think it has no responsibility to protect the best interests of its employees, that they are now justified in trying to get away with whatever they can get away with, because the union would stop them if it was wrong.
The absence of union involvement does not guarantee beneficent managerial action towards the low-wage employees either. There is always a clear intent to obtain the greatest amount of work in the least amount of time, and to pay the lowest hourly wage that they can get away with.
I do not mean to contend that those in poverty have no responsibility for their situation; there seems to be a shameful movement in America towards renouncing personal responsibility. Every person should take ownership of their situation and assume the responsibility of affecting change in their own lives. Poverty, however, may not be the impoverished person's fault; Wellstone concedes that we cannot “offer a justification for the children who are born into a poverty that they did not choose or deserve, and whose conditions prevent them from gaining the skills and ambitions that would allow them to escape” (Wellstone). Most people living in poverty were born into that condition; poor parents are not equipped to teach their children how not to be poor. The responsibility in this case is to ask for help, but often there is no real help to be found.
There can be legal repercussions to being poor, even if a person does not break any laws. The impoverished have a tendency to drive cars that stand out or be out and about late at night after they get out of their second job. These types of activities attract the attention of police officers, and an experienced police officer can think of any number of things that you are doing wrong. Then, when a citation is issued, what do you expect the impoverished person to do? Hire a lawyer? No, he will take his lumps and pay the fine if he can find a way, otherwise sit it out in jail.
One day when I was driving to my second job, I was pulled over and issued a citation for “Speed Racing.” Naively believing that justice might prevail, I plead not guilty and stood in court opposite a police officer and told the judge that I was merely trying to get to work. Despite the fact that the judge said the words “I don't think you were racing” in the hearing, he let the conviction stand. The court fee for filing an appeal was higher than the fine on the citation.
It seemed to be mostly legal oppression and the presence of armed enforcement that lead Jefferson and those with him to declare independence from their presiding government (449), so the idea of contradicting authority because of a situational frustration certainly is not a new one. One author quoted a school principal as saying, “If [you] do not give [...] children a sufficient education to lead healthy and productive lives, we will be their victims later on” (Kozol 118). Talking about political strategies to deal with poverty, a senator stated, “We have a strategy for young men, [...] it is called prison” (Wellstone).
If one wishes to avoid lawbreaking or overthrowing governments, he or she must explore other terrains in order to find that elusive foothold. This is supposed to be the land of opportunity, and in fact there are comparatively few restrictions on operating any kind of business in this country. Unfortunately, the practical application of that freedom almost always requires capital, a concept foreign to most of the impoverished. It takes money to make money in business, and it takes a lot more than good intentions to attract investors. There are still some opportunities you can take advantage of without much startup capital, but the returns are almost always equally limited.
Recently, while exploring alternatives to remaining in poverty, I took my car apart and sold it piece by piece on eBay, ultimately making back more than I had spent on the car originally. While it was nice to have money coming in, the time it took to list things on eBay and then process the payment and pack and ship the parts was excessive. Ultimately I estimated that I was making less than minimum wage in the process, and I chose to save that time for school work, as somehow I have marginally bought in to the notion that if I stay in school and get a degree, I will be able to get a “good job” (i.e., one that pays an actual living wage).
Paying for school while simultaneously paying the necessities of life often proves impossible for an independent person in this class trying to better their situation, let alone anyone trying to support a family of any size. Wellstone wrote that Poverty “means that only the very lucky [...] receive a decent education” (Wellstone). Imagine if the Department of Education received as much funding as does the Department of Defense. We could afford to give anyone who demonstrates scholastic aptitude a free ride through college, and the economy would likely be repaid tenfold through that person’s lifetime.
Is there currently a foothold to be found that one can use to pull themselves up out of this working class? Even if one has been found, there is no formula that we can write out that will work for everybody in this situation. There is a great divide between people in this situation and their brothers in the next class. The working-impoverished in America are denied the freedoms that they cannot afford, and no allowances are made for them.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: on (not) getting by in America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001.
Eighner, Lars. “On Dumpster Diving.” The Blair Reader. Fourth Edition. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner & Stephen R. Mandell. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002. 421-32.
Jefferson, Thomas. “The Declaration of Independence.” The Blair Reader. Fourth Edition. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner & Stephen R. Mandell. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002. 449-52.
Kozol, Jonathan. “Savage Inequalities.” The Blair Reader. Fourth Edition. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner & Stephen R. Mandell. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002. 112-24.
Wellstone, Paul. “If Poverty is The Question...”Nation. 14 April 1997. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO Host. University of Texas at Arlington Lib., Arlington, TX. 25 April 2004 <http://www.epnet.com/>.
