It’s official. Working age Americans living in poverty now outnumber poor children and poor elderly.
Counting adults 18-64 who were laid off in the recent recession as well as single twenty-somethings still looking for jobs, the new working-age poor represent nearly 3 out of 5 poor people — a switch from the early 1970s when children made up the main impoverished group.
While much of the shift in poverty is due to demographic changes — Americans are having fewer children than before — the now-weakened economy and limited government safety net for workers are heightening the effect.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gGem7hTvoC9ipYs8Lpo70d7y6ObA?docId=b64df4ae770a4995b89ec19e3d820c6aFor those of us who do not spend our evenings watching “reality” shows about women who make sex tapes and “teen moms” who shop for three bedroom homes, the Associated Press’s latest comes as no big surprise. If you do not turn your head away when confronted by your neighbor’s poverty, if you do not turn up the volume of you iPod when he tries to speak about the misery of his life, you know all about the suffering of the working poor.
Here, I want you to meet some of my friends. Don’t be afraid. They won’t bite. Almost none of them vote Republican in hopes that one day they will be rich. Few of them are racists. They grew up in the 1960’s, when the white cops with the fire hoses and the dogs were the bad guys. They distrust authority. They distrust anything that does not come from the heart. If they think you do not want to hear about how bad things are in America right now, because it would spoil your appreciation of your $350 a bottle wine, they will keep silent. But if you act like you give a damn, and---especially---if you don’t nag at them for smoking or being overweight or majoring in education or signing the mortgage without reading the fine print---they will tell you a story that even the Associate Press would not touch.
Sarah Beth has kidney stones. Sarah Beth works part time at two jobs, because her old job was sent overseas. She lost her health insurance, because she could not afford the COBRA. She ran out of unemployment benefits, and now she flips burgers in the afternoon and works a cash register on the weekends. Sometimes, when she is passing a stone, the pain is so bad she can hardly get out of bed, but she does not dare miss a day of work. There are too many other unemployed middle aged men and women who need her job. So, she pops a couple of pain pills and gets her neighbor to drive her to the store. Maybe you have seen her, leaning on the counter, grimacing slightly as another spasm of pain hits. Even when she is hurting, she still makes a point of wishing every customer a happy day. She really needs this job.
Marvelle needed her job, too, until her mother had a stroke. She tried to apply for Family Medical Leave. That was when her employer started writing her up for “poor grooming.” She was fired with cause, and she still has a case pending with her state employment commission. In the meantime, she and her mother live on a $1200/month Social Security check plus the $100 a week Marvelle gets for watching the neighbors kids in her own home---she can not leave her mother unattended. Recently, Marvelle applied for food stamps. Her state issued a card, which is better than the old vouchers, but she still dreads going to her neighborhood store. What will they think of her? She has worked all her life. She has never taken a handout from anyone. Will the people behind her in line grumble at the sight of a relatively young and healthy woman getting food for “free”? It does not feel like free. Her days begin before dawn, when she changes her mother’s adult diapers and bathes her and feeds her. Her day will continue well into night, since her mother likes to get out of bed in the early hours of the morning and wander around the house. Once, Marvelle found her trying to light to electric stove with a match. She sleeps with one eye open now, and lack of sleep is starting to wear her down. She vaguely remembers hearing something about a day care center for the elderly in her community, but when she asks about it, she is told “It was de-funded. There wasn’t enough money.”
For thirty years, Ralph took it for granted that he would always have a job in construction. He also took his health for granted. He did not smoke, he did not drink, he did not sit around on the couch growing fat. Then, one day he was rear ended at a stoplight. The other driver had no collision insurance. Ralph, who used to pay for his own private health insurance, had to give up the policy when he turned 50 and they jacked his premiums up sky high. The ambulance took him to the hospital where they told him nothing was broken and here, take these meds and see this doctor tomorrow and he will get you started on physical therapy next please. Ralph got the pain medication filled, but he could not afford any more medical bills. The ambulance and ER had already cost him $10,000. He tried to go back to work, but the pain in his neck and spine was too severe. With nothing to do but sit on the couch each day, he began to put on weight. His wife started working overtime at her job to pay the bills. The cheerful way she talked about the future started getting on Ralph’s nerves. He knew that deep down inside, she despised him, the way that he despised himself. Bills started piling up. Ralph’s wife tried to hide them from him, but one day, he found the foreclosure notice. The foreclosure notice on the dream house which he and his wife had scrimped and saved in order to buy. The house in which they raised two kids. They had selected the home because it was in a good school district. Both twins went to college, thanks to a second mortgage. Both twins were now working in fast food while trying to find more permanent jobs in their chosen professions. Ralph was glad the kids were no longer at home. It would have been a shameful thing if they had been forced to witness their family kicked out on the streets like deadbeats, all because their father was in the wrong car, stopped at the wrong light, at the wrong time in the wrong country, a country that treats its workers as if they are disposable.
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