Pooring Over It

I just finished reading a book called Nickel and Dimed; blah, blah, blah. It's written by Debra I'm-a-liberal-feminist-and-refuse-my-husband's last-name Ehrenreich. Someone's gotta keep 'the man' down. Of course, this is a New York Times best seller, like so many other misanthropic, cynical, atheistic, narcissistic, sardonic, pessimistic books out there.

Thankfully, in this book, the PhD educated author goes undercover to live amongst the poor and to be 'poor'. Now, being someone that has been on the poor side, I'll tell you right now she comes off a little haughty every now-and-then. Take this quote from page 8:

"To state the proposition in reverse, low-wage workers are no more homogeneous in personality or ability than people who write for a living, and no less likely to be funny or bright. Anyone in the educated classes who thinks otherwise ought to broaden their circle of friends."

Oh, so you mean low-wage workers are normal people too? Well, at least she figured that out at age 50. There are a few other times as well. Mostly the book comes off as seemingly negative, by my jaded review at least. It isn't until the last 20 pages that the book becomes decent, spitting out statistics here and there, and then the capstone - poor people will undoubtedly remain poor. Well, despite whatever truism there may be in that, things will certainly get worse considering the global market at this point. But, I've covered that before.

I've learned some things in my medium-aged tenure here on ol' blue-n-green. And it does have to do with being poor or not. It doesn't matter so much whether you are smart or not as to whether you will succeed. And in this case, success means not being within the reach of poverty. But I've seen smart people who are poor. No, smart, dumb, tall, short, fat, thin, poverty gets `em all. Except those with ambition and determination. In my opinion, this is the major reason why lots of people break from being poor. Reject the mentality.

Look at Les Schwab, the high school drop-out from Prineville who recently died on top of a $350 million dollar mountain. He once gave a speech at Prineville High to the graduating class of 1997. He openly criticized getting a high school diploma, because, "I didn't need one..." and obviously he was correct. But he did have ambition and determination to succeed. And thus he did. His name will forever be associated with tires and free beef in February.

Now this is not a call to drop out. Statistically speaking, you're welfare bound if you do. The military won't accept you now, even if you have a "Good Enough Degree" in lieu of a diploma. Still, my resounding point being that his author never gave herself an opportunity to succeed in the book. Most jobs she took lasted less than a month, none over 2 months.

She did cite definitive inequalities within some jobs, but also sided that without this, labor would be too expensive and may negatively impact everyone. She ends with saying that there may be anger and strikes, but we will all be better off in the end when there is equality. Probably a vieled call for socialism or communism. I am sure the 13 million illegal immigrants didn't help move this in the right direction (the fundamentals of this book taking place cica 2000, prior to the massive influx of "undocumented workers").

Anyway, back to education, at least with a diploma from high school, or better, you can make the first important steps off getting out of poverty. And let's face it, secondary education favors the poor with regards to funding. It still isn't a guarranty that you will succeed, but it certainly looks good on paper.

Putting aside this jumbled topic, I've since moved on to reading C.S. Lewis stuff. I find it more enlightening on many levels. I'll probably revisit this topic of poverty once I've mulled over the details a little longer. It still urks me, and probably because I've been there, and now I'm here, and I plan to go elsewhere. Or as I've heard before, "To the moon, Alice!" Maybe that's too far...