The Lie that Data is Scarce Costs the Working Poor a Fourth of Their Working Lives
How much is your cellphone bill?
My basic bill for Verizon Wireless is $65 a month. This is the cheapest plan. No fringes. No extra data. I, like most of you, rely on data everyday — for mapping directions, to look up phone numbers, to send email. Every day. Without fail.
I rely on it the same way I rely on water or fuel. I need it to interact in a world where now everyone uses data to communicate.
How much does this basic utility cost?
I asked Twitter.
According to most estimates, in fact, these are low-ball:
At the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, people have to basically give up one month’s paycheck a year to a wireless data company just to pay their basic cellphone bill.
Now these are just the cellphone plans for single people. I’m not even including the billing estimates of single people with dependents (aging parents, children) who pay even more as more people on a plan presumably need more data.
And what about internet?
It’s the same story.
If you earn minimum wage in America, you will work more than two months a year just to pay for basic data expenses.
“Oh, but libraries have internet — they could…” No. You…you shut the fuck up. Right now. I’m done with you “what if” people with your crunchdown logic. You want to argue that the poor should suffer more for the poverty, go join a white nationalist group. They’ll love to have you.
Let’s be honest — internet and cellphones are basic utilities now. I brook no argument that data is somehow less essential to our well-being than water, shelter or heat. Late-stage capitalism has made sure that we are all cripplingly dependent on privatized data services. You could not find a pay-phone if you needed one. Doubtful you even remember vital phone numbers you need at this point, so used to carrying a rolodex in your pocket. Your employers hire you with the assumption that you’re available to connect 24/7. Your children’s teachers expect them to have nightly access to a laptop.
Our daily need for data far exceeds what can be performed within a half-hour block at computer terminal at the public library. These are 24/7 necessities for our basic way of life.
And for these basic utilities, workers are expected to give up three working months a year. The working poor are giving up one fourth of their working lives to pay for data .
Why is data so expensive?
While there are a lot of reasons, the biggest can be summed up in a single word: lobbyism.
You may not think an extra $20 a month amounts to much of anything. But it amounts to $240 a year. Or 33 hours of minimum-wage labor. Or four extra days of work a year per minimum-wage employee.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are about 3 million people who earn the Federal Minimum wage of $7.25 or less. So 3 million multiplied by 4 days means 12 million productive work days a year lost to that extra $20 a month.
Before I go anywhere else with this rant, let me ask you: What could America build with an extra 12 million days a year?
But forget it. We give the collective productivity of 12 million work days a year to cable and wireless companies in exchange for a few hours of lobbyism and some campaign donations.
I realize we tend not to think about the actual costs of lobbyism this way. We have been raised to think, instead, that prices are elastic to demand. We’ve been taught to think if the poor need something they can’t afford (data, daycare, dental, surgery, psychiatric medication, housing, LOL WHATEVER), they should either suffer the market price or suffer without.
We’ve been taught by decades of shitty Econ 101 professors that being an asshole is sound economics.
So conditioned to absolve ourselves of the hard questions, few of us ask ourselves, Hey, what if the market price is artificially high not because of market competition but because of internal protectionism? The kind of protectionism that allows data companies to charge extra fees and inflate their prices because they lobby the government to inhibit competition?
Because that’s what’s happening not only with data, but everything.
What if drug companies benefit because they can lobby the government not to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices? Because hospitals — even non-profit hospitals — lobby to keep prices opaque and their services absurdly profitable.
So instead of paying $12 copays, patients for some necessary medications can expect to pay $50, $100, $150 extra a month for drugs.
Or — let’s say you (Ok, me) go to the ER for a painful, fist-sized lump in your thigh that appeared mysteriously overnight. The Internet fear-machine says, “Holy shit, Holly, go to the emergency room right now because that could be a blood clot and will kill you if it ruptures.” So you go to the hospital. Where they run some tests. Send you home. A bruise! A bruise.
A month later, your insurance sends you a bill telling you to that your 8-hour day in the hospital cost them $8,000. That’s $1,000 for every hour it took to tell me I had a giant bruise on my leg.
Which for me is fine because I had insurance, but what if I didn’t? What if I was one of the 44 million Americans who doesn’t have insurance?
Because let me break down what an $8,000 Emergency Room visit costs someone making minimum wage:
At $7.25 an hour, an $8,000 medical bill would take 1,103 hours of work, or 153 days, or 7 months of full-time work.
For a fucking bruise.
Because when we talk about poverty, these are the numbers that matter. These are human lives we allow to be wasted because we refuse to stand up against this absurdity. We refuse to recognize this as a political problem.
Consider the working poor the next time you leave a tip, because these are their working margins.
Hillary may win today’s election, but you better be damn sure I’m going to fight for the people she doesn’t give a damn about for the next four.
