When Scott , Kale, and I started this blog site, our intention was to blog about things we were passionate about and do so in our own unique styles. Mine tends towards the pedantic, obsessive researcher style, with lots of supporting documents and pretentious quoting.
This post, however, is going to be 99% opinion. Maybe more. I have a lot of opinions. So hang onto your bustles, kiddies….
So, this post was supposed to be finished MONTHS AGO. Being a person of many moods, I let this drop off my radar. But here it is, finally – my rebuttal to Scott’s empty gas tank & infrastructure post:
For the sake of argument, lets say I did let the gas tank get low because I was hunting for cheap gas. I come from driving people, trooping people, people who take pride in how good they are at finding deals. Add that to my general desire to put off filling the oddly finicky gas tank on our shared vehicle and you get a wonderful excuse to not fill it. Despite this, I’m also pretty certain, though, that the gas gage works, and is accurate enough that someone sitting in the driver’s seat could, in fact, see at a glance that the gas tank was not as full as one might like, and thereby prompt that someone to get gas in a less inconvenient part of town.
Just sayin’.
But infrastructure, now, that’s an interesting topic. There are a lot of good reasons to worry about infrastructure these days. Scott’s post got me thinking about infrastructure and how to get people to get excited or invested in it.
For the deniers among the bytegeist, just suspend your disbelief for a bit and pretend that global climate change is really a thing. I’m not going to talk about whether or not humanity is responsible, or can do anything, or even if it’s just a cyclical process that the global climate just… DOES. Instead, let’s all just agree that it’s getting weird out there and talk about how that relates to infrastructure.
In a 2013 article, The Atlantic discussed a study that found that poverty had a negative impact on people’s ability to make decisions or plan for the future.[1] The assertion was that poverty had a similar effect to losing 13 IQ points. This study, “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function,” combined a laboratory experiment with a field study and focused on the effects of poverty-related concerns on adult cognitive functions.[2] This gives us insight of a kind into what happens when adults are not paid what is commonly referred to as “a living wage.”[3] A living wage is defined as the minimum amount needed to pay for the basic costs of living in a given area without government or poverty assistance. This amount changes according to the location, as it is more expensive to live in New York City than it is in rural Kansas, so the living wage in each of those places is very different. Minimum wage, in most cases, is far below the local living wage, and this can, as the research shows, severely impede the ability of people to make decisions.[4]
According to Economicshelp.org, economic growth can reduce poverty, but only if the minimum wage is tied to average earnings.[5] As average earnings increase, so should the minimum wage, which would also decrease the gap between the poorest and the richest. Economists who follow the school of trickle-down economics often say that a rising tide will lift all boats, but the fact is that the bigger boats will always be lifted higher, and will swamp the smaller ones.[6] The idea is that the wealthiest quintiles will create stable jobs that pay more than a living wage, which will in turn lift the poorest quintiles out of poverty.
![Somebody's boat is rising... [7]](https://politicallyskewed.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/david-horsey-cartoon20100526.jpg)
Author Robert A. Heinlein’s character Lazarus Long said, “People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy half a slug who must tighten his belt.” When the 1% “go broke,” they have ways of getting out. There are safety nets and schemes that allow them to recover. When the poor lose a job or have their wages or assistance lowered, they don’t have those things to help them. They go hungry. Sometimes that hunger isn’t physical, sometimes it is spiritual or psychological, where they feel defeated, depressed, as if they are less than human. When we discuss minimum wage and social assistance programs from our places of modest privilege, those of us who are above the poverty line absolutely must remember how close we are to crossing that line in the wrong direction. We must learn to empathize, not just sympathize, and to remember that a society where all members have full bellies and safe places to sleep is a society with less crime and more happiness. The pursuit of happiness shouldn’t be selfish one, it should be an inclusive one.
[1] Derek Thompson, “Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions,” The Atlantic, November 22, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-brain-on-poverty-why-poor-people-seem-to-make-bad-decisions/281780/.
[2] Anandi Mani, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, and Jiaying Zhao, “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function,” Science, August 30, 2013, 341 [DOI:10.1126/science.1238041].
[3] “What’s a Living Wage?,” Living Wage Action Coalition, Accessed May 19, 2015, http://www.livingwageaction.org/resources_lw.htm.
[4] Anandi et al., Poverty…
[5] Pettinger, Tejvan R. “Poverty, Income Inequality and Economic Growth.” Economics Help. April 6, 2011. Accessed May 25, 2015. http://www.economicshelp.org/macroeconomics/inequality/poverty-inequality-economic-growth/.
[6] Haushofer, Johannes, and Ernst Fehr. “On the psychology of poverty.” Science 344, no. 6186 (May 23, 2014): 862-67.
[7] Horsey, David. “The Rising Economic Tide.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 30, 2005. http://www.seattlepi.com/davidhorsey/slideshow/David-Horsey-cartoons-August-2005-14730/photo-978746.php.
[8] Plumer, Brad. “How the recession turned middle-class jobs into low-wage jobs.” The Washington Post, February 28, 2013.
[9] Folbre, Nancy. “When a Commodity Is Not Exactly a Commodity.” Science 319 (March 28, 2008): 1769-70.
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