Do you remember what your life was like at 12 years old? At a workshop on class cultures in activist work that I co-led in mid-September with national author Betsy Leondar-Wright and local activist Anita Morales, we did an exercise: We sorted ourselves on a continuum of class privilege based on our social class when we were 12. The idea behind the exercise is that while our class trajectory may change in life, our class backgrounds are formative and color the way we see the world.
This exercise often challenges people’s assumptions about themselves and others. This time was no different. Two Real Change vendors, Susan and Sharon, participated, but despite their current situation, neither self-identified as coming from a “low-income/chronic poverty” background. Both had experienced downward class mobility when circumstances forced them into poverty. For Susan, it started with her parents’ divorce that left her and her mom struggling to make ends meet while her dad and brothers enjoyed the fruits of middle-class life. For Sharon, it was the fall into a spiral of drugs and alcohol.
A week after this workshop, I went to hear former U.S. Labor SecretaryRobert Reich speak at Town Hall. Reich talked about some of the common myths contributing to economic stagnation and widening inequality like “You can’t raise the minimum wage without people losing jobs,” or “The rich and corporations are job creators, and they need tax cuts.” This was hardly news to the generally liberal audience, particularthose involved with the recent $15-perhour minimum wage campaign. But the last myth that Reich referenced touched a nerve for me: that people are paid what they are worth.
Buried deep in this myth is a distorted and insipid moral claim: that if you are not paid very much, you are not worth very much. It suggests that people doing important and honorable work — teachers, childcare workers, home care aides and, yes, Real Change vendors — have less social worth than the moneyed elite. I know how insane this is because I am a product of that elite. Growing up with the advantages of race, class and gender, I followed a path to success that was there for the taking.
I went to elite private schools and got a business degree. I took unpaid internships, made social connections and had the financial support of my family when I was ready to buy a home. Many of my childhood friends had the same advantages, and now work in investment banking or run hedge funds. I don’t judge them for it, but I sure don’t think of them (or myself) as having the least bit more social worth than the people who are providing elderly care to my aging dad, the preschool teachers at my twins’ school or hardworking Real Change vendors like Sharon and Susan.
The myth that correlates worth with financial success is beyond preposterous: It’s offensive and degrading. Sharon and Susan have worked hard to rise above their circumstances. Susan was a concrete mason until a car accident led her to lose her trade and pushed her into homelessness for six years.
Sharon moved to Seattle for a fresh start and has worked two or three jobs for most of the past 40 years. She recently got trained to become a phlebotomist assistant, though she has been unable to land a job in the field. Both not only sell Real Change regularly to pay their bills, but also volunteer in our advocacy work to try to improve the lot of other vulnerable people.
According to Reich, 95 percent of the economic gains since the 2008 financial crisis have gone to the top 1 percent of the population.
When all the spoils go to the moneyed elite, it undermines the political system and ruptures our social fabric. Central to repairing that fabric is calling bullshit on the myth that correlates what we are paid with what we are worth.
It will take those of us who are paid more to understand and acknowledge we’ve benefited from a constellation of inherited advantages and are no more deserving than Sharon, Susan and the thousands of poor and working class people toiling to make ends meet.