There’s been a lot of public debate lately around the fact that businesses are struggling because no one wants to work due to the unemployment bonus. The low muted rumblings of paying a living wage have found their way to the surface, creating a fault line. Money brings out the worst in us, I think. I’ve seen people I’ve known most of my life saying some heinous things lately.
I understand that business owners are concerned about having to close their doors should the minimum wage be raised. I get that some solid careers with skilled professionals make $15/hour. I have college loans myself that I’m probably not going to get paid off before I die. But I really get the people who are tired of working for less than what they need to survive because I’ve done it.
The saddest part of this capitalism crap to me is that money equates worth, and it allows for there to be a hierarchy of a person’s worth to be created, as weird and twisted as it is, according to what they do for a living and how much money they make. What makes a person with an office job any more deserving of a stable life than someone working in fast food? Why does a business owner deserve to make ends eat and their employees not? Who made these rules?
And before you start screaming at me about how well you pay your employees or how good you are to them, just wait. I know some stellar humans who own their own businesses, and I support them when I can, but I have empathy for the folks, for example, in the food industry because I know too many of them struggle to make ends meet. I know some people who won’t do any other type of work because it’s the cash tips at the end of a shift that enable them to gas up their car and put food on their table at home. Why? Because their hourly wage doesn’t cover a gallon of gas. Imagine working a job for wages that won’t buy a gallon of gas.
Then there are the businesses who have created this “we’re great to work for because we are very generous to our employees through holiday food boxes” smoke screen. I always see Tiny Tim in my head when friends talk about this: Christmas, a turkey, poor folks celebrating the charity from a man who could afford much more … why hasn’t it become practice to pay the employees the money spent on food boxes? A raise is far less embarrassing to receive.
Yesterday morning, I read a comment that said something like, “It’s not fair that people without a degree think they should make the same wage. It’s not fair.”
I will expand it to say that life is even less fair to those people who want to be happy and sustainable in life but have to battle prejudice and bias based on what they do for a living. Poor folks are hearing their neighbors say they’re undeserving of food on the table and roofs over their heads. They hear that they’re not “class”y enough to not receive food stamps or free healthcare. And then they get to hear the same people tell them that they should have to support their own families and not expect the government to pay for them.
Wait. What?
My opinion is that life is better when you can rid yourself of the government assistance. The amount of stress associated with the paperwork and constant awareness of your poverty is toxic, for starters. But it’s also not easy unless you can jump far enough ahead of poverty to not be worse off and even under more stress when you make too much for assistance. And you know what? That’s not fair.
We’ve been brainwashed to believe that a college degree is the only path to a good life. We spend years of our lives becoming educated and then twice as many more paying back the loans. Meanwhile, we’re frustrated at that situation and use the “I have a degree and am paying back student loans” as our first argument as to why everyone should choose the same college path because anything else without student debt is less than desirable and “not fair.” And it’s not true.
The fact that we have allowed ourselves to buy into the B.S. that some people don’t deserve to be able to afford to live while working a full-time job is mind-boggling to me. The fact that we do it while simultaneously talking badly about people on assistance, people battling homelessness, and people struggling with food insecurity is thick with hypocrisy. And it’s an immoral shame.
Onward,
Amy Jo
