The American "Scheme"

         

                The American dream, the promise this country offers all who live with in its borders.  If one obtains a job and works hard at it, one day s/he will gain prosperity.  Not quite.  This is a theory.  There is no solid evidence or foundation for this belief, this assumption.  This is only speculation.  Can just anyone become society’s version of successful? Today’s society requires a college education in order to even be considered for most jobs.  Those that do not require a college degree usually pay minimum wage.  Parents working low waged jobs can not afford to send their kids to college.  In turn, they also do not earn a degree and become a blue collar workers just like their parents.  Is it possible that the cycle can be broken?  Is the minimum wage enough to live off of and save at the same time? 
         No, it’s not.  Basically, making minimum wage, you’re working just to work.  You go to work, come home for a brief few hours to do the things we all have to do like fix dinner, give the kids a bath, run errands, etc. and then go to bed.  Next morning, you start the cycle all over again, living the same day over and over.  There is a book titled Nickel and Dimed where the author; Barbara Ehrenreich, decides to experiment and takes a dive into the world of poverty.  Before beginning this experiment, however, she sets a few rules for herself:  1) She can not fall back on any skills derived from her education or present job.  2) She has to take the highest paying job she is offered and make sure she keeps it.  3) She must live in the cheapest accommodations she can find, with reasonable consideration for her safety and privacy.  Though she makes these rules she is also not willing to: give up her car, become homeless, or go hungry as a result of her participation in this experiment. 
         In the first chapter, the author goes down to Key West, Florida where she takes up a waitressing job, working nine hours a day for $2.43 per hour, including tips.  She applied for several other places, but no calls were returned.  She rented an efficiency apartment for five hundred dollars a month. She finds the management to be lazy and have little compassion for employees.  She takes a survey on her co-workers and finds that most of them are barely making it, with several of them living with their parents or as many as five of them living with each other in a hotel room.  Some lived out of their cars.  Ehrenreich discovers that it is nearly impossible to rent an apartment if you cannot afford the initial security deposit. This forces many to live in hotels which are ultimately more expensive, especially if there is no kitchen.  In that situation one is unable to save money by buying food in bulk.  Many of these employees, including the author, had to have second jobs.  This means that leisure time is a luxury, something that rarely happens and as a result can lead to depression.
         Another thing that can lead to depression is not eating healthy and getting all the vitamins and minerals that you need.  Problem is, living a healthy lifestyle is expensive and time consuming.  People who live off minimum wage can’t afford the money or time to afford to live healthy, which then leads to sickness and hospital bills that they also can’t afford.
         Ehrenreich had to break all three of her rules at some point or another, an option that people who really live off of minimum wage don’t have.  Still, she gets her point across and I hope I am getting mine.  What can we do about it?  It’s quite simple really.  We do what other civilized nations do.  She says “Most civilized nations compensate for the inadequacy of wages by providing relatively generous public services such as health insurance, free or subsidized child care, subsidized housing and effective public transportation.''  We should feel ashamed that we send out our poor citizens to make it our on their own with little help, and that little help may be gone soon, and naturally I am talking about welfare.  She predicts, and I agree with her, that if things keep going the way they are going, blue collar workers may not put up with it any longer.
         Make no mistake about it.  The government can afford to raise minimum wage and keep the costs of living down at the same time.  Gas companies rake in billions of dollars in profits, and the government does nothing about it, yet the middle class is disappearing.  We need blue collar workers.  We need houses to be built, waitresses to serve our food, people to pick up our trash.  They are the backbone of our society.  I realize that this is a complicated problem, but I truly believe that our country could solve it, if enough people were not ignorant of the problem and if enough people, especially those with power, cared.