Snowed Under
By: Matt Keene
Tags: Poverty, American Exceptionalism, Capitalism, Economics

A friend of mine who works as a prominent immigration lawyer contacted me to ask whether I’d be willing to provide a professional consultation for a client on a problematic visa case. He instructed that this would have to be a paid phone call and asked what I’d charge.

I confess I’ve never done any consulting, so I didn’t have any idea what to tell him. My hourly rate when I left the State Department was somewhere in the neighborhood of $80/hr. So I figured I’d ask for $100. My friend emailed back amused and told me that with my experience in the field, I should be charging five times that.

FIVE TIMES. We agreed on $300.

A couple of takeaways from this: first, I obviously have no appreciation for the value of skills and experience in the private sector. Second, I’m starting to better understand the origins of the massive wealth gap in this country.

It snowed last night, about 12–18 inches. I shoveled my own driveway. At 50, I was pretty pleased to blow out the task as quickly as I did when I was half that age and without destroying my back. But it was hard work.

Minimum wage in Pennsylvania is $7.25/hour. At 40 hours, that’s $290 per week. Not much more than half what my friend told me I should be able to charge for one hour’s work.

I’ll concede a few points here. The first is that I have six years of post-secondary education and 21 years experience in the diplomatic corps. That’s undoubtedly worth a great deal. The second is that shoveling a driveway requires no such training or experience. The third is that entry-level jobs in my area pay closer to $12–13/hr.

Nevertheless, the idea that my labor is worth up to 70 times that of the guy shoveling my driveway is obscene and underscores just how difficult it is to break out the cycle of poverty. It may very well be that the fellow shoveling my snow had opportunities to pursue an education and make something more of himself. It’s possible he grew up in a stable household with parents who instilled in him the virtues of hard work, the value of knowledge, and importance of setting goals.

But we know that most of those in grinding poverty weren’t raised in those conditions.

Let’s say this fellow was born without any of these advantages but is determined to make something out of himself, anyway. These people are out there, and when they succeed, their stories are absolutely extraordinary, like famed brain surgeon Ben Carson who emerged from the inner city to become one of the most gifted doctors in the world. But the fact that these stories are so extraordinary speaks to a cold reality: these individuals succeed against overwhelming odds.

There are at least two primary reasons for this. The first is the American myth of the self-made man. If you aren’t successful, it’s because you aren’t working hard enough. If my snow shoveler would just put in more effort, he wouldn’t find himself breaking his back on my driveway. Because we blame the impoverished for their station in life, we refuse to implement public policies designed to provide avenues for the poor to make something of themselves. Education is expensive even for the middle class. Health care costs are devastating. And, as I mentioned earlier, wages earned by the working class are abysmal.

This leads to the second reason. Let’s be generous and assume the blue-collar worker makes $13 per hour, or $520 per week. After paying for rent, groceries, gas, clothes and school supplies for the kids, after repairs to the car and unavoidable doctor’s visits, what money is left over? Is it any wonder so many Americans wallow in poverty?

But it isn’t even a matter of money. It’s also a matter of time. The less you earn, the more hours you need to work. Even if you could put aside a few dollars for a class at a community college, when would you have time to attend it?

Again, there are individuals out there who overcome odds that seem almost insurmountable, but they are far too few. The American system provides opportunities for advancement primarily to those who are positioned to take advantage of them.

But for those disadvantaged by lack of access to quality schools, adequate health care, good nutrition, and a stable home life, this country is not the “land of opportunity.”