Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Column: ‘New Poor’ need to buck up, face facts
By Monica Sanford
Daily Nebraskan, U. Nebraska
June 21, 2009

Finally, someone has said it. There is a name for this recent phenomenon. New York Times columnist Barbara Ehrenreich calls them the Nouveau Poor.

I call them “poor babies” with the level of sarcasm depending on how much compassion I can muster that day. I can usually find a great deal of empathy for someone who just lost their job of 30 years, watched their retirement funds dry up, and is about to be evicted from their two-bedroom trailer. For someone who took a pay cut of their six-figure salary and now has to make do with supermarket groceries rather than gourmet takeout, I don’t have a single tear.

To those I say, “Yes, the recession sucks. Get over it.”

I’ve been officially poor for years now. For me, a monthly paycheck with a comma in it is worth celebrating and a five-digit annual income is a very good year indeed.

I have it easy. As a college student, I’m voluntarily poor, and I receive financial aid to supplement my income (or lack thereof).

There are millions of people in America who don’t have that luxury. Ehrenreich introduced us to them in her 2001 book “Nickel and Dimed,” and she visited with a few about the current economic crisis.

“We were poor,” one lady told her cheerfully, “and we’re still poor.” That lady was cheerful because she still had a steady job, even if it was a low-paying one. Not everyone is so lucky.

For them, it is a situation gone from bad to worse as blue-collar workers already struggling to hold down two or three part-time, low-wage, no-benefits jobs see livelihoods evaporating. Ehrenreich reports that the most common way of coping with lost income is to move in with relatives, doubling up to two four-member families in a two-bedroom apartment. Or more.

“Catholic Charities is reporting a spike in domestic violence in many parts of the country, which Candy Hill (vice president of Catholic Charities USA) attributes to the combination of unemployment and overcrowding,” she writes. “Comfortable people have long imagined that American poverty is far more luxurious than the third world variety, but the difference is rapidly narrowing.”

While Ehrenreich is detailing the mounting problems being faced by this country’s pre-existing working poor, Pete Wells in the New York Times Magazine (the same Sunday edition as Ehrenreich’s column) is bemoaning a world of new “hard” choices, like giving up $35 whole raw chickens and $14 gallons of milk (both farmer’s market organic). For comparison, you or I can get a rotisserie whole chicken from Russ’s Market for $5.49 and a gallon of milk for about $3.50.

Excuse me if I have no sympathy for Wells and his family of three if they have to scrape by spending only $200 on generic groceries every other week (and splurging the rest of the time). That’s my grocery budget for the entire month, including the organic produce and baked goods I get at the farmer’s market on Saturdays.

The media is filled with tales of middle and upper-middle class woe – the stressed family of three who had to give up their brand new 3,500 square foot McMansion and move into an older 2,000 square foot split-level. Oh, and isn’t it sad how they had to sell their Escalade forcing Mommy to drive a Prius to her white-collar job fifty miles away?

Hell no! Are you kidding?

Americans have become appalling spoiled, myself included. I have a beat-up, ten-year old Hyundai with over 100,000 miles on it, but it’s paid off. I could sell it if I needed to. I live in a one-bedroom apartment, but honestly, even the studios in my 1927 building are bigger than most dorm rooms, and I still wouldn’t have to share. I even have family I could move in with, no overcrowding necessary.

It’s time to get over ourselves and realize that no matter how “bad” it gets for us, there are still a lot of people out there who need help far more than we do. This is why it’s important, even though our own budgets have downsized, that we continue to give to charity, donate to food banks and support our local shelters. After all, if things ever get really bad, that’s the bottom of the barrel we’re going to be scraping along with everyone else – and those supports will be there to help us, too.

The media need to stop ignoring the true face of poverty in America, the one that was here long before anyone heard of Bernie Madoff or toxic assets.

In the meantime, those of us who have made a fine art out of shoestring living (I survived on $25 a week for food for nine months not too long ago) can give a few tips to newcomers to the sport. But don’t expect sympathy. We’re saving that for a rainy day.

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