As I reflect on the books that we have read in class I realize that I have enjoyed $2 A Day. It reminds me of my own life, as I have been living check to check for years. I have been living in Springfield, IL for about 15 years. My son and I have moved eight times. I was looking for a better neighbor and a place to live. I worked for MMC for 11 years. My starting pay in 2008 was $8.25 an hour and I received a 3% ($0.25) raise each year. If I would not have attained a section 8 voucher and SNAP from the government, we would have been living on the streets of Springfield or in a shelter. It is mind blowing, shocking, and surprising.
In the book, Economix the author described the means by which individuals, groups, and society produce and distribute manufactured items and performed skills. the book states how systems are structured where richest families hold most of the wealth in American. This is sad because families like mine and those in the book $2 A Day are living in poverty despite our labor. We have the lack of means to support ourselves and our families. We would not have to struggle, so hard to provide our basic needs. All Americans should be able to have basic needs like a roof over their head, food on the table where everyone can eat, clothes on their back, and shoes on their feet.
In the book Economix the author described about the theories of Maltheus and Social Darwinists who were concerned about balancing the population so that people do not die of starvation because it takes too long for the population to die. Instead, according to their thinking, we need diseases and war to kill people to balance our food supply. What in the HELL? I hope that I am misunderstanding this on page 35.
The movie we watched in class (I Daniel Blake) illustrates clearly how the poor get treated when they ask for help. Everyone should experience how it feels to be poor. All we are trying to do is survive just like everyone else.
A family of two; one adult and one child, in which the adult works 1,516 hours per year at a $9 per hour wage, would take home on average $1,062 per month in wages (after taxes), but would get about $3640 each year in Earned Income Tax Credits (about $303 per month, if spread out over 12 months), and would qualify for approximately $355 per month in SNAP benefits on a LINK card. If you add the value of the SNAP benefit and EITC, that would give the person a $1,721 per month income (working full-time). The household’s income is below poverty, so if the child was in school, they would also get free meals in school. The parent and the child would both have health insurance through Medicaid.
Assume they own a car with a value of about $3,000, and they sink about $50 per month (on average; usually it’s a couple $300 repairs each year) into repairs and another $50 in gas and another $100 in car insurance; their car is costing them $200 per month. They pay $60 for phone service and $100 per month for internet and cable television.
Let’s say they have an apartment with utilities paid, and they pay $740 per month for that. That’s a low rent, so the housing isn’t that great, and this could only be in a small city or town, because the bigger cities that are more expensive don’t have apartments that inexpensive.
After car and housing and telecommunication, they have $266 for food and all other expenses, plus $355 in LINK benefits for food. The average American pays $60 per week ($200 per month) for their food. With two persons in the household (and one of them getting free lunches on school days), let’s imagine they use their $355 SNAP benefits and $66 of their remaining income for food. That’s a frugal food budget.
That leaves them with $200 each month for household goods (paper, soap, sponges, etc.) recreation, clothing, saving for expensive items (that car of theirs might only last two or three more year), computer or phone equipment, and any emergencies that come their way.
It’s doable, right? But, it’s not an easy life, and there isn’t really much room for luxuries. And, this is a person holding a full-time job all year long. And while $9 per hour is well below the Illinois minimum wage, that’s way higher than the federal minimum wage.
The main problem in $2 A Day as described by the characters portrayed in that book is that they could not find steady work, even at minimum wage jobs; or, they could not take such work because they had child-rearing responsibilities and no job would offer them sufficient income to allow them to pay someone to to assist them in caring for their children. The second main p problem is that they could not find any apartment at the sort of low cost I described in my scenario. Reasonable apartments in safe neighborhoods would have cost so much that after meeting the necessities of housing, food, transportation, telecommunications, and clothing they would have nothing left over, and any expensive disaster that came their way would become a crisis.
The three central problems, then, are: How do we ensure that everyone has a job? How do we ensure that everyone with a job earns enough to secure a reasonable and decent standard of living? How do we ensure that everyone has a stable and safe home, and doesn’t face imminent risks of being evicted if they suffer a crisis (such as a month or two of interruption in their income during a health emergency?) I would suggest a fourth question, about securing for people an ability to live a decent life without so much consumption, as I do not think increasing the scale of consumption beyond a certain extent where security is attained really creates well-being or life satisfaction in a sustainable way, but until people have incomes that provide them security against housing insecurity and food insecurity and the desperation that comes from not having enough to meet the basic needs of life, my concern about sustainability takes a secondary place after the primary concern of addressing health-damaging material deprivation.
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