Hustling Backwards: How the Economy Fails the Poor

[nofoil]

I found this article especially poignant.

January 20, 2006

Common Dreams: Hustling Backwards: How the Economy Fails the Working Poor

We all remember that, after Katrina, folks were abandoned in New Orleans because the system failed. That's what the documentary Waging a Living is about, Americans who work for a minimum wage and still are left behind by our economy. No matter how hard they struggle, they are "hustling backwards."

Whenever the growing gap between America's rich and poor is brought up, conservatives respond that the rich do more work than the poor. Therefore, they should be compensated more. In the abstract, no one disagrees that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers, should be paid more than the janitors that clean up after other Apple employees go home. The question is how much more?

Twenty years ago the ratio between America's highest paid and lowest paid employees was around 40 to one. Now it's 431 to one. According to a recent report, the average CEO pay is $11.8 million, while the average work pay is $27,460. "If the minimum wage had risen as fast as CEO pay since 1990, the lowest paid workers in the US would be earning $23.03 an hour today, not $5.15 an hour."

Roger Weisberg's Waging a Living describes what it's like to be at the bottom of our economy. For three years, Weisberg followed four low-wage workers as they struggled to hold onto the American dream. Mary Venittelli is a waitress in New Jersey. Jerry Longoria is a security guard in San Francisco. Barbara Brooks is a recreational counselor at a home for troubled girls in New York. Jean Reynolds is a nursing assistant in a convalescent hospital in New Jersey.

They're not slackers. All four of Weisberg's subjects work fulltime, and take as much overtime as they can get. Three things make their lives particularly difficult: they are on their own - they have no adult partner or family to help them, they have children, and they are relatively uneducated. Mary Venittelli is a recently divorced, middle-age woman with no previous work experience. She works as a waitress for $2.13 an hour plus tips. In her struggle to maintain her three children in the same life style they had before the divorce, she is forced to feed her kids from a food pantry. She covers the huge monthly difference between her income and her expenses by maxing out her credit cards. In the one of the documentary's most poignant scenes, Mary applies for yet another credit card. When her friend asks her if she isn't worried about identity theft, Mary quips, "What do I have to worry about, someone stealing my identity? Please! Take it."

More at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0120-23.htm

[RufusEarl]

1. Rich & Poor

Watching the tele last night, and we were watching an auto auction. Has some great looking car's btw, but what I noticed were thousands of people bidding on car's and spending up to 100K. Now that what I call disposable income.

I believe people that work hard and play by the rules and get a good education deserve whatever they can get, but in a present political environment the difference between the wealthy and the working poor keep getting larger.

I was wondering while watching that auction, how much better that money could have been spent. And if folks out there have that kind of money why they don't do something worthwhile with it.

Just an observation!!

[nofoil]

2. I'm with you

What you said bothers me every day. According to the United Nations Development Program:

“The combined wealth of the world’s 200 richest people hit $1 trillion in 1999; the combined incomes of the 582 million people living in the 43 least developed countries is $146 billion."

Such unbalance.

Could this be why a child dies every 3 seconds from hunger?

[nofoil]

3. Every 3 Seconds

[RufusEarl]

5. This picture is difficult to look at!

And when you think of all the other people in third world countries and some here in the USA, that will go to bed tonight hungry, it hurts!!

[nofoil]

6. And Neocons call themselves

good Christians. Where is it in the Bible that Jesus says it's ok to let people starve and thirst at the expense of the rich? How can these people look at themselves in the mirror!

[AllegroRondo]

7. The top 50 richest people in the US

make as much in one year as the bottom 50 PERCENT.

Sad.

[nofoil]

8. Unbelieveable!

[hfojvt]

4. Is it the system that has failed them,

or is it their spouses/parents-of-their-children? If you found four people with basically the same job who were still married would they be just as bad off?

Also, he closes the article by quoting the song "It's money that matters" and yet the whole point of the article seems to be that these people need more money, that their lives suck because they do not have enough money. Having been in the bottom quintile I would say a) it is not all bad, and b) it's about more than money.

I always want to be a snoop too, and maybe the show provides more details, but the one person was seemingly not just scraping by "In her struggle to maintain her three children in the same life style they had before the divorce,". Any income is going to be insufficient if you spend more than you make (sometimes it is a necessity, and sometimes, perhaps in this case, it is not) and if you dig yourself a hole by maxing out credit cards.

It sounds like a neat documentary though.