Built on a dream, founded on a myth
The plight of America's working poor
BY JUSTIN MORAN
Obie Butlere follows the American Dream. The dream says that if
you work hard, do the right thing, obey the law, success is
inevitable. Obie Butlere works hard nights as a janitor in a
hospital in Texas and works day labour jobs when he can get them.
He is a veteran of service with the US military and has never
been in trouble with the law, and yet Obie Butlere bleeds to
support his family. The $18-$21 he makes from selling his blood
every couple of months makes a big difference for him and his
three daughters. Obie Butlere is one of America's 13 million
working poor.
One out of every five American children lives in poverty and
three-quarters of them are the children of America's working
poor. The richest and most powerful nation on Earth ranks 16th
among industrialised nations in efforts to lift children out of
poverty. No matter how closely you listened, neither George W
Bush nor Al Gore said a thing about it despite, or perhaps
because, their home states rank 48th and 38th, respectively, on
the basis of which states are best in which to raise a child.
These horrific statistics were not, despite the best efforts of
fringe candidate Ralph Nader, even an issue in the campaign. This
blindness was the result not just of political expediency or the
style over substance format of American elections; it was the
result of the writings of an obscure 19th century novelist whose
beliefs even now pervade the American consciousness.
Horatio Alger is not a name that would be easily recognised, even
in the United States, but more than any other individual he is
responsible for what many call the `American Dream', more
cynically described as the `Alger Myth'.
Alger's novels told everyone, no matter how poor, orphaned or
powerless, that if they persevere, if they do their best, if they
always try to do the right thing, they can succeed. Success was
earned by hard work and right action. Alger trumpeted the
doctrine of achieving success through self-reliance,
self-discipline, decency, and honesty.
On the face of it this seems a fairly benign idea and perhaps
that is how Alger meant it, but there is another side to the
Alger myth. If one follows the Alger myth, works hard and does
the right thing then success will follow naturally because, after
all, this is America, the world's first `classless society'. But
if people do not succeed it is not due to bad luck or lack of
education or a poverty stricken upbringing; it is because they
are not working hard enough. If success is open to all who work
hard, then those who do not succeed must, logically, be lazy.
There is little space in the Alger Myth for people like Maggie
Segura. Profiled at length in the American liberal political
magazine George, Segura, 24, works over 50 hours a week holding
down two jobs, one as a waitress and another as a full-time civil
servant in the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory
Services. She and her two-year-old daughter still barely eke out
an existence on the poverty line. Segura does not live an
expensive lifestyle but without medical insurance for herself and
her child she is hard hit by the high cost of American
healthcare. She works hard, even labouring for months with a
volunteer organisation, Habitat for Humanity, to allow her to
obtain cheap housing.
For the successful, predominantly white middle classes, the idea
that one can work hard and yet be poor is a difficult one to
grasp but it is an idea that is being brought home to some of
them in a very personal manner. Under the North Atlantic Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), backed by both Gore and Bush, American
corporations can now receive federal funding to help them take
their factories out of the United States to set them up in
countries with lower wage costs like Mexico or Honduras, leaving
thousands of Americans jobless. The move from a
manufacturing-based industry to a service-based one has left many
skilled factory workers scrambling for minimum wage jobs.
In Gore's home state of Tennessee, the Oshkosh B'Gosh Company
employed 1,200 people at a wage of $14 an hour in the manufacture
of textiles. With the manufacturing now moved to Mexico, skilled
workers have suffered huge cuts in their salaries, moving from
£14 an hour to minimum wage jobs, often only part-time so that
their employer can easily refuse them benefits. And this at a
time when the minimum wage's purchasing ability is at a 40-year
low. According to the US Department of Labour, 10,000 workers in
Gore's home state have been similarly affected by NAFTA.
Ironically, it is America's booming economy that has contributed
to the plight of the American working poor. Growing apace with
the economy has been the price of housing and of rented
accommodation. According to a Housing and Urban Development
report, 5.4 million households put half or more of their income
towards rent. And what basic accommodation is available is often
out of the reach of many Americans working in the minimum wage
services industry.
A report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows that
to afford a basic two-bedroom apartment, ``workers must earn
$12.33 per hour in Nashville (Capital of Al Gore's home state);
$15.75 in Austin (Capital of George W Bush's home state); and
$28.06 in San Francisco, the nation's most expensive housing
market. The federal minimum wage is $5.15.'' Like Segura, some
workers find themselves working for Habitat for Humanity. By
helping to construct other people's houses, they can earn enough
`points' to have a house built for themselves at a low mortgage
rate. As rent increases outstrip wages, more and more Americans
find themselves unable to live in the cities and are forced to
move out to more rural parts of the country.
According to Second Harvest, America's largest domestic hunger
relief organisation, 39% of households that receive emergency
food aid have at least one adult working and in the last ten
years the amount of food supplied by Second Harvest has more than
doubled from 476 million pounds in 1990 to more than a billion in
1999.
America is also a nation without any national health system. 43
million Americans have no health insurance, even in an emergency.
According to Second Harvest, 29% of households receiving food
from them delay medical treatment or filling a prescription in
order to buy food. During the recent election in the United
States, several candidates running in the Northern states
bordering Canada were elected on a healthcare reform platform.
Canada's heavily subsidised and efficient healthcare service is
far ahead of America's and even Cuba's healthcare system,
struggling as it is under the American blockade, is cheaper and
more efficient than America's.
The statistics cited by the Clinton administration hide the
reality of life for America's working poor. Gore claims, with
some justification, that NAFTA has been responsible for nearly 19
million new jobs under the Clinton administration. What he
omitted to mention is that many of those jobs are part-time or
minimum wage and that some of America's poor are working two or
three jobs in order to survive, where before one was enough. The
Clinton administration also points to the fact that from a high
of 5.5% in the early 1990s the number of Americans claiming
welfare has dropped to 2.4%. Again, the administration ignores
that the 1996 Welfare Reform package has more to do with this
than a rise in the standard of living for the poor. It also
ignores that the bulk of America's poor have always worked and
yet still live below the poverty line.
Poverty, especially the poverty of those who work, is not
something Americans like to talk about. Those who are not in
denial find it best to ignore the problem and those who, in
theory, should be doing something about it are deaf to the cries
of those who do not vote or make campaign contributions.
Tellingly, Bush's three leading domestic policy advisors were
unable to tell a reporter what the federal minimum wage was. To
Americans, the poor have only themselves to blame. The fact that
there are people living in the United States in conditions that
bring to mind the developing African or Caribbean nations is
swept aside.
The proverbial beggars at the feast are ignored not because
Americans are an inherently immoral people, but simply because
they are not able to understand how it is possible for someone to
work hard and not succeed. To question such a deeply held article
of faith is to question the foundations of American society, to
ask oneself whether this really is the land of opportunity or
merely a country built on a dream and founded on a myth that
leaves many of its people on the margins of society.
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