CLASS UNCONSCIOUS: Why the Working Class and the Poor are trapped by inequality in the US.

Albert Lanier
Jul 25, 2017 · 6 min read

by Albert Lanier

There was nothing wonderful about about what “Mr Wonderful” aka Kevin O’Leary- one of the hosts of ABC’s SHARK TANK-said about economic inequality on Canadian TV. In response to a report noted that a tiny number of wealthy individuals controlled more wealth and resources than millions of poor people globally , O’Leary gushed how fantastic and great this was because it would inspire these people to look up to billionaires and emulate them.

A terrible reaction but at least, an honest one. Say what you like about O’Leary, a man who in dealing with business owners on SHARK TANK plays brazenly sarcastic and bluntly heartless better than actor Dabney Coleman, but at least you get the sense that he is revealing what a number of millionaires and billionaires really think about the populace of not only the world but of the US specifically.

For the extremist rich, the very wealthy and even the upper middle class in this country, the poor and the working class are not like you and me.

This is because the narrative really the script by which media pundits, politicians and corporate types work from in talking about working class and poor people has remained largely the same for at least a couple of decades:

  1. POVERTY IS A TEMPORARY CONDITION THEREFORE IF YOU ARE POOR, IT IS BECAUSE YOU WANT TO BE: I have actually heard the first part of this point stated by conservatives like Economist Thomas Sowell. Its the strangest notion about poverty I have ever come across. If poverty were truly a visa that eventually expired, this might then mean that the poorest states in the country like Mississippi, West Virginia and Arkansas should then see their economies some how magically improve and jobs and capital flood into their states because poverty is somehow temporary. This makes about as much sense as saying that a company that goes out of business entirely is simply experiencing a momentary financial setback or that a divorce is a brief break from one’s marriage. As for wishing to be poor, that mindset implies that there is an advantage to having little to no income, a limited wardrobe, occasional health problems, poor to horrible living conditions and isolation from most necessary societal resources. I m waiting for the white paper, the study, the book that states that being poor is preferable to having a middle class or even upper class lifestyle. As I like to wisecrack, I await the peer reviewed studies.
  2. WORKING CLASS AND POOR PEOPLE STRUGGLE BECAUSE THEY MAKE BAD CHOICES: The moralistic, finger wagging arguments against working class and poor people always center around choices. The choice to have children before getting married, the choice to get married to the wrong person, the choice not go to college, the choice to go to the wrong colleges (for-profits), the choice not to work, the choice to have the wrong kind of work. These types who opine are all pro-choice… except of course when it really comes to being Pro-Choice where women are concerned then they become anti-choice but that’s another story. The notion that one’s life is solely in one’s hands is one of the most powerful myths of American life. The idea of choice is fine…if you have substantial choices to make. People in Appalachia don’t have the options to have Grey Poupon with their caviar after jetting home on their Gulfstream from visiting their sons at Harvard and Dartmouth. Most people do not have much in the way of solid choices to make. They end up doing both the worst and best they can.
  3. THIS COUNTRY IS FULL OF OPPORTUNITIES: There are plenty of chances to advance oneself, plenty of careers one can choose from, plenty of jobs to be filled. Plenty of jobs… that is if you want to work in retail, security, fast food. If you want to make $10 an hour or less. If you want to work 2 or 3 more jobs on top of that $10 job that will pay maybe a dollar or more an hour but that’s it. If you wind up being laid off and forced to look for other work. If you live in a small town or rural hamlet with little to no jobs or a mid-sized city with jobs that require 2 years of experience you never had and a degree that would take 4 years to attain. If is a word, really a mindset, that working class people know too well. Plenty they don’t know-not really. They’ve never had plenty of money, plenty of good job positions, plenty of great neighborhoods to choose to live in. Plenty is what the well-to-do have.

The Right Wing and Rich believe in a world of endless possibilities because they come from such a world. What has always been strange in this country is that anyone from any class bracket is encouraged to think this way. One real estate guru once said in a video on you tube that I saw once that one has to think like they are rich before they become rich. I laughed. Only a person who hasn’t had to worry about money for many years can afford to think this way.

The reality of being working class is a world of limited possibilities: of living in neighborhoods where there are fast food restaurants but not health food restaurants, where there are no Whole Food outlets but local grocery stores without much in the way of fresh fruit and vegetables, where there are check-cashing places but no credit unions.

Being poor is far worse because possibility likely isn’t in your vocabulary. That word disappeared a long time ago as did money, jobs, maybe a spouse or two. For truly impoverished there are only tents on street corners to live on and memories of better times in the past to conjure up.

Economic Inequality was a talking point and and issue debated in last year’s election but for the working class, economic inequality is not a point of order not a line in a speech but a description of the disorder in their lives. They need more than talk, much more than rhetoric.

Linda Tirado, author of the book “Hand To Mouth”, perhaps provides one of the best textual examinations of working class life and its frustrations I have seen over the years.

In an excerpt from her book on the website Slate in Dec 2014, Tirado noted in her tome that “It is amazing what things are absolute crises for me and simple annoyances for people with money.”

“I was working two jobs at the time, both were part-time, neither paid a hundred bucks a week, much less two” Tirado noted of her working class life at one point.

Tirado notes of perceptions of the poor that “because our lives seem so unstable, poor people are often seen as being basically incompetent at managing their lives.”

“That is, its assumed that we’re not unstable because we’re poor, we’re poor because we’re unstable” added Tirado.

The advice that some individuals and even books offer in terms of saving money don’t work at all for the poor according to Tirado. She observes that “money advice is geared only toward people who actually have money in the first place” and “it actually costs money to save money.”

“Here’s the thing: we know the value of money. We work for ours. if we’re at 10 bucks an hour, we earn 83 cents before taxes, every five minutes” wrote Tirado “ we know exactly what a dollar’s worth;its counted in how many more times you have duck and bend sideways out of the drive through window or how many times you vacuum or how many boxes you can fill.”

In many respects, being working class and poor is like being in a traffic jam. Surrounded by all sides by other cars and unable to move. Progress occurs at times at a snail’s pace. You can only go somewhere if the cars ahead of you move thus your immediate environment-meaning the other cars ahead of you- has to change.

If American society is like this traffic jam than many working class and poor Americans have no choice to remain in their cars and wait. In extending this simile, the right wing and conservatives may argue that one at least has a car-unlike many in other nations-and can drive wherever they want. The conservatives don’t factor in the cost of gas (wages), the condition of the car (housing), even other passengers (family) and of course, what might happened if one ends up in a traffic jam. This is why such arguments end up abandoned on the highway by logical people.

In the final analysis, working class and poor people are often forced to remain in their conditions by the fact that their lives are all about limits. As Tirado states powerfully in her book “Its impossible to win unless you are very lucky.”

Albert Lanier was a freelance writer and journalist for 22 years. Before he retired this year, he wrote for a variety of publications including Honolulu Weekly, Pacific Business News, Hawaii Magazine, Asianweek and Edible Hawaiian Islands. He can be found on Twitter (@criticinc) and Facebook

Albert Lanier

Written by

Writer. Retired freelancer and journalist. Bylines : Pacific Business News, Honolulu Weekly, Edible Hawaiian Islands, Hawaii, Asian week. Twitter (@Criticinc)

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