Jandos Rothstein
Poverty in America continues to be an invisible crisis, a “state of emergency,” as Barbara Ehrenreich describes, for millions of low-income workers. The affluent continue to ignore and often undermine the people who graciously serve them. The United States is a developed country, but it is not immune to poverty solely because it doesn’t have the stereotypical slums without water and sanitation we often associate with poverty. Ehrenreich’s goal throughout her journey was simple: She was determined to find out whether or not it was possible to live life on minimum wage.
“Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” by Barbara Ehrenreich
Ehrenreich’s account brings into focus the millions of Americans who work minimum-wage jobs; some work two to three in an attempt to scrape by. But why can’t we seem to manage to pay our workers more? A living wage is often confused with the term “minimum wage.” The minimum wage is the federal- and state-mandated minimum amount employers have to pay their employees. Whereas a living wage is a minimum amount of money a person or a family needs in order to pay their rent and feed their family. In 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services set the federal poverty level at $26,200 for a family of four, equivalent to $12.60 per hour for a full-time worker, meaning that a wage must be greater than this to be considered a living wage. As of January 2020, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 with only three U.S. states offering their workers a wage above the poverty threshold. Nearly 60 percent of Americans are employed in minimum-wage jobs and live below the poverty line, reinforcing the cycle of poverty. We regard this struggle as trivial, where in fact it should be treated as a major economic and humanitarian crisis.
Nobel laureates Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, and Michael Kremer conducted research attempting to reduce the magnitude of global poverty. Based on their finds, they believe that the best way to combat poverty is to separate it into smaller, manageable issues and design experiments for addressing it. They have introduced health care and educational platforms in several countries, with Duflo being a supporter of the wealth tax, explaining that the rich are simply not taxed enough. A universal health care system is another such experiment, one that has been part of the American political debate since it was championed by Bernie Sanders in 2016. This platform would ensure that everyone had affordable and attainable health care with basic insurance and the option to subsidize it. Finally, another experiment has to do with public education. The public-education system has been underfunded for years, sending many parents through the private-schooling route. If the government would allocate money and resources to disenfranchised schools from organizations that are deemed unnecessary there would be more fiscal opportunities for American children.
The low-wage workforce in America is invisible and acknowledged as “unskilled” labor. Every job, whether it be a CEO of a multibillion-dollar company or a janitor for an elementary school, takes some level of skill. As the Clintons say, “Talent and intelligence are equally distributed around the world, but opportunity isn’t.” It isn’t whether or not the janitor has the same capability to perform the job of CEO, it’s whether or not one will be given the opportunity. When looking at a societal ladder in the United States, we would have the billionaires as the top 1 percent, the new-money rich as the next 5 percent, and the working professional class as the top 20 percent. The wealthy have accumulated power while constituting a small portion of our population and a significant part of our economy, leaving our decaying, impoverished middle class, who tend to be below the poverty threshold and represent the majority of the workforce within our economy.
Undocumented workers are the invisible impoverished majority in the U.S. economy. They come to work the fields and to perform laborious jobs, for minimal pay, doing the jobs no American wants. They pay taxes and continue to supplement our economy, yet without protections and rights. Many Americans perceive the undocumented as threats to our economy. This undocumented “class” is the most underrepresented in American society. We don’t see them as one of us, instead, we perceive them as outsiders. In reality, they are the superheroes who pick our produce, care for our children, and clean our homes. They are the people we never get to see but should be honored the most. A global pandemic, COVID-19, is among us, and we are spiraling toward a recession. Millions of jobs will be lost at the expense of our blue-collar and undocumented workers. The global economy and those affected by the outbreak will suffer, inevitably, but America’s low-income population will suffer the most.
In the past three months, 36.5 million people have lost their jobs in the United States. Unemployment numbers skyrocketed to a staggering 14.7 percent in April from 4.4 percent in March. This is the highest since the Great Depression. Meanwhile, the stock market has had its best yearly start since 1987. The market is entirely controlled by large tech corporations such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google’s parent company Alphabet. The disparities present between the stock market and the unemployment numbers reveal the epitome of inequality in America. These inequities are leading the United States into a hunger crisis. The New York Times reported that more than 17 percent of children lack sufficient food in the U.S. This is only to grow worse as millions more become unemployed and furloughed, and is exacerbated as children no longer attend schools.
The United States should not be one of the richest countries in the world and be struggling to feed our people, yet we are. The pandemic has revealed major holes in our society and in our government, and this is the time to fix them. We need a universal health care system. We need to allow everyone the right to a ballot; they shouldn’t have to choose between their health and the right to vote. We also need to care for our food-insecure and unemployed populations, and as a country, we need to be increasing our testing capacity.
There is work to be done when it comes to income inequality and poverty in America. Throughout Ehrenreich’s journey, it was evident that she did not match income to expenses, as it is difficult in these predicaments. She found it to be impossible to get by on a minimum-wage salary.
She demonstrated that she didn’t execute the jobs any better than her counterparts just because she was highly educated. It was a matter of opportunity that propelled her career as a writer. We cannot allow our ignorance to blind us to the situation at hand. It is necessary that we ensure these human rights of a living wage, affordable and attainable health care, and a sound educational system. All of these are necessities, not niceties, within our society and should be given as an opportunity to the millions of low-wage workers and their children who dedicate their lives, spirit, and passion to our country each day.
