There's a little debate over at Bubba's on unemployment, and what the gov't should do about it. Apparently, since I am not real sympathetic towards recent college grads who prefer to sponge off mom and dad until their dream job falls in their lap instead of working their way to their dream job, I'm a right wingnut.
Well, so be it.
When I got out of the Navy in 1993, the nuclear industry was in a major downturn. Operations and maintenance jobs were few and far between, so I took a job in field service for a bio-med firm, making use of the electronics portion of my training. It was entry level, and paid accordingly, and kept me on the road covering a three state territory, but it put food on the table and a roof over our heads. I was a road warrior for a little over a year until I found an opening in the nuke field. It wasn't the perfect job, but it took me one step closer to where I wanted to be. The pay was significantly better, almost double, but it involved long periods away from home. I stayed with it for a year, then found the job I wanted, and got back to Tennessee, hopefully for good.
The bottom line is that I took what was available to work my way to where I wanted to be. There are some who suggest that it just isn't possible today, that the job market is too tight, that unemployment is too high. For comparison, the unemployment rate then was 6.9%, roughly equivalent to today. With no college degree, and only specialized military training, I managed to go from well below the poverty line to solid middle class in about 5 years.
Don't tell me it can't be done today; I won't buy it.
As for that so called "poverty line", during my last two years in the Navy, even adjusting for benefits, my family lived significantly below the poverty line. We qualified for every program out there, WIC, section 8 housing, the whole ball of wax. When I got out of the Navy, my income took a jump, but it was outweighed by the loss of benefits, which kept me below the poverty line for about another year and a half, until I took my second job. Again, we were eligible for WIC, etc.
At no time did I take advantage of it. We had a car, two TV's, and a VCR. The kids had food, clothes, and went to the doctor as needed. We didn't have a lot of luxuries, we rarely went out for dinner, and there were tough times, and an emergency could have wiped us out. We did face one housing crunch, but fortunately I had my family to fall back on. We survive the crisis (It lasted a week, involved a duplicitous Yankee, and forms the root of my dislike for the state of Ohio) and moved along, scrimping and scraping until we made it past those rough years. I never considered us as part of the working poor, since we had the necessities covered, and even had a little money to play with from time to time.
Here's a quick test to see if you're poor:
That's not poverty.
Poverty is living in a cardboard shantytown outside of Rio de Janeiro, drinking filthy water.
Poverty is living in a tarpaper shack in the foothills of Appalachia, selling moss for pin money.
Poverty is living on the streets because you have no family to take you in, and nowhere else to go.
Poverty is your kids going to bed hungry because there's no money for food.
I've seen real poverty in my travels around the world; what we call poverty would be considered luxury just about anywhere else on the planet. We define poverty too broadly in this country, which dilutes our efforts in helping those who truly need it. There are two possible reasons for this expansion in the definition of poverty. Either we are aiming high, trying to elevate all of our citizens to a standard of living that would be considered wealthy by the rest of the world, or it is a cynical manipulation by politicians who want to amplify the problems of the poor in order to advance their own agenda.
Posted by Rich at June 24, 2003 11:11 AM | TrackBack