The effects of today's economy

Missy interviews two people who explain their economic situations in today's economy.

The working poor

Avanna created this newsletter on the working poor.

22-year-old single mom working toward upward mobility

22-year-old single mom working toward upward mobility

In this podcast, Shelby interviews a single mom juggling school and raising her 2-year-old son.

Upper class versus working class

Upper class versus working class

Jonathan and Libia discuss the upper class and working class in this podcast.

Single mom works hard to 'make it happen'

Skylar and Tyler interview Pam Keck who had had a variety of jobs throughout the years to raise her son.

Immigrants have a hard time getting jobs, too

Immigrants have a hard time getting jobs, too

In this podcast, Julio and Danny discuss their relatives' difficulty in getting jobs in the United States because they are immigrants.

Working at Home Depot

Christian and Jessie interview a worker at Home Depot.

Hellen's future

Hellen's future
In this podcast, Hellen discusses her hypothetical financial future after she graduates from college.

Two teens give first-hand accounts of working

Two teens give first-hand accounts of working
Eric and Jeffrey discuss their part-time jobs in this podcast.

Hard times with only a high school diploma

Hard times with only a high school diploma
In this podcast, Henry F. and Robert C. interview Christopher, who has a high school diploma and is struggling to find a better-paying job.

The 99%

Jairo Zarate

         There has always been three demographics from which people in the United States are placed upon. The rich, poor, and middle class. Many people come to the United States to follow their dreams, and for a better tomorrow. But as time has past the American Dream has slowly been diminished and seems as though it is unreachable. The middle class is slowly being diminished from existence. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate.        

         Many people risk their lives to come to the United States, only to find that in the United States you must work twice as harder. Sure there is liberty and free of chaos, but when one comes to the United States, its nearly impossible to find a stable job. Especially now since corporations have been hiring people from third world countries that work just for a few dollars all day. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor workers over the last several decades, and the middle class Americans have greatly been impacted.

         Today 99% of all people in the United States, are either poor or in the middle class. And the rest, the 1%  of the United States are rich and manage more money that the 99% of people that work so hard to achieve the American Dream. Working class Americans hardly ever reach the 1%, all we can do is see them bathe in the riches that the working class worked so hard for them to acquire.

          As the middle class once was a stepping stone to get to the riches, now seems impossible to just walk across. One must now work extremely hard to even earn a quarter of what the 1% do. Everyday that passes by the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; eventually the middle class will merely be a memory of what once people thought was a fair living. 

Surviving in the Low Wage World

By Ana Hernandez         
        We live in a society that we need money to have the basic necessities of life: 

food, water, medicine, and shelter. The United States has been in a depression before in the 1930s. and it took a long recovery. Revenue from businesses, banks, etc. have disappeared or a loss in value. The nation has been recovering from a “long-term” recession. In reality, we’ve been in a depression; however, we don’t like saying the word “depression” because it reminds of the economic suffering of the 1930s. 

                Society consists of a social pyramid that is divided into three classes. The top of the pyramid is the rich and the famous. There are the ones who pay little taxes in the nation, have a prestige education (i.e. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.) . The middle class are people who do have a decent education and jobs. They are responsible for paying taxes and voting on upcoming elections. Last but not least, the working poor. It consists of people who are living in poverty, barely making ends meet, and living in minimum wage. The majority of the work requires being strong and work long-hour shifts for low pay.

The working poor are people who live in poor neighborhoods who have little or no government help. In the state of the California, the minimum wage is $8.00; however, when you work for long-shifts, money is deducted away from your pay due to taxes. The total earned for an individual person who is working full-time for minimum wage is $320.00 a week. Less than $20,000 is earned per year. That’s barely enough money to cover for all the expenses for a college student attending a CSU per year. Depending on the person, some could qualify for welfare opportunities.

An average person has to work hard everyday to meet ends meet and have the basic necessities of surviving in American society. High school students work part-time at local restaurants, stores, etc. in order to save money for tuition. Students have to maintain more than two jobs because a family member might be sick or have a work-related injury. From a different perspective, you can see how hard and painful it is to work on minimum wage.

Nowadays, the economy is making housing more difficult to afford. If you live in California, it now depends on the city or neighborhood where you live in. The cheapest apartment to find are not furnished or it’s not required to pay for gas and water. Apartments in the San Fernando Valley are expensive and very small. For a one-bedroom apartment, it can range from $675 and up. If you're lucky, a roommate can share an apartment and split the rent 50/50.

Food has a factor to surviving the real world of minimum-wage person. A family of four spends approximately $100 on groceries that will last about a week, two weeks maximum. Food stamps is a government program that provides a certain amount of money into a card every month that will allow to buy food. (i.e. produce, dairy, meat) The price of food is on the rise, making everything difficult more than it is.

This is the harsh and cruel reality of poverty. There are opportunities out there that will guide you to a better success. Having a higher education will take you far. You just have to find the right doors and open it.

         

Relating to Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America"

By Hassan Muhammad

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America was a very good way to portray the living conditions of the working poor. She gave up her good and prosperous lifestyle, although not entirely, just to experience what it would feel like to be a low-wage worker. She was awestruck by how her co-workers cope with such struggle. Many people, such as my friend Mark Burton, can relate to the lifestyle that the book portrayed. The book opened the ears of the people for the unheard voices of the poor and “middle-class.”

Ehrenreich, a journalist and an author, gave up her good and satisfactory lifestyle to feel and experience what it is like to be poor, working at a low-wage job, living in a really small and tight place, and spending money like how a poor person would when trying to save money. I personally know friends and relatives that are struggling in the same situation. My friend’s, Mark Burton, health is at risk because he lives in a small and unsanitary apartment that he pays $300 every month for. He barely has enough money for food and he doesn’t have a car. Ehrenreich did not suffer, however, for her job was simply to write about the life of the low-wage workers and, if needed, she would have used her own money just to keep her good health.

Many of her poor co-workers struggled with low-wage life. They did everything they could just to make ends meet. Many of them worked the living life out of themselves just for very little money, similar to my friend Mark. Despite of all the hardships most of them share a good laugh from time to time and when they do, it does not come unnoticed by Ehrenreich. Mark finds a way to enjoy time with his friends even if it’s just playing basketball or walking at the park. He’s making the best of what he’s got.

            My friend Mark Burton actually read the book before. He really enjoyed and agreed about every single thing that the author talked about. He cried while talking to me and relating to the story, “It’s just sad to get out of the little bubble that you enclosed yourself in to forget about your struggle and realize that the next day you have to chip a nail, get a bruise, get a wound and hurt your back to earn enough money for a single piece of bread.” He felt, oddly enough, happier. Happier because he’s not the only one struggling and that there are a lot of people like him.

            The book opened the ears of the people for the unheard voices of the poor and “middle-class”. She portrayed the low-wage life very well. Her story related to many people that I know. She saw that you could still have a laugh or two while struggling in life. Mark agrees and became really emotional when he tried relating. If it wasn’t for Ehrenreich’s book, we wouldn’t be as informed as we are now and the problem of the working poor would be unheard.

Life after high school the reality of low wage workers

by Brenda Garcia

      

Andrea Garcia, 21, High school graduate working a full time job to help support her family, while saving enough money to go back to college.

“I didn’t plan for this to be my life after high school…,” Andrea says sadly. She remembers the days in high school when she would look forward to the college years and how she would change the world.

Now a days it is beginning to be more common to see college students drop out and get full jobs to pay for living expenses. Living expenses may include phone bills, rent, cable bill, gas, clothes and food. For this reason, many don’t move out of home until there long past 30. If we look at how much we have gotten out of the recession we can easily see that not a cent has changed on the minimum wage. The possibility of getting ahead while earning minimum wage has gotten dimmer. If you would calculate how much it cost to pay rent and living expenses at a cheap apartment you could still come out short over 100. For a single person the opportunity to find the money to afford a higher education comes down to not affording to lose a job to take courses.

“I plan to save enough money to go back to school and get an associate’s degree in finance, I know how ironic,” Andrea says with an optimistic perspective on the future.  She believes that if she sets some goals and with the help of her family she will achieve her dream to become an accountant.

She is working currently at burger king and Cinnabon. She works as a cashier and works 40 hours a week at minimum wage. Her hours vary as do most of the fast food restaurants jobs, which can make one paycheck’s pay good and the next not so great. She attended college at mission community college for a semester then was forced to drop out due to financial problems in her family. Her dad lost his job in jan 2010 just in enough time to let her finish her semester and have her drop out without missing deadlines. Her mom also working at burger king challenged herself by taking three jobs to support her family but with minimum wage jobs she had to ask Andrea to help out with the rent and other stuff around the house. Having two little sisters Andrea refused to just stand aside while her mother killed herself with so much work and have her continue to pay tuition.

A Mother's Struggle

By Mario Vega

     When I was about 3 years old I remember my mom fighting with my dad about financial problems, I witnessed that till I was about 14 and when I was in 5^th grade I promised myself to become so rich that my mom would never have to work or lift a finger the rest of her life. I wanted to know more about how hard she has worked and what she has done so I interviewed her… After interviewing my mom I found out some very interesting things about my mom, me and my family, things I didn’t know before like how my mom worked 2 jobs until 1 week before I was born. I thought interviewing my mom would be the pest example of the working poor; I’ve seen my mom bust her but for her family all my life and sustaining a family of migrant and low wage jobs. My mom came to the United States 3 years before I was born and her first jobs were working at a burger king where my uncle got her a job and sewing with the people she met on the way to the United States.

     I started off with a few simple question to get the flow of the interview started, when I asked her what jobs she had when she just got here she told me “it was very hard to get a job at first, your uncle got me the job at the burger king and I had to tell people to reference me as a nanny or a masseuse, all for $4 or $5 an hour”.

     Coming from Mexico studying as a nurse my mom had to leave to escape an abusive husband and find more money for her 2 children. After awhile in the U.S my mom found it tough trying to get by on the jobs she had and feeding and clothing my brother and sister as my mom quoted “you guys never asked for anything cheap, it always had to be the highest quality stuff but I did it and I was proud to do it”. But she could continue the light prosperity of living in America, her husband followed her into the U.S and when he confronted her he accepted him into our home because he had no where to go and he helped with the kids for awhile.

     After asking her about her jobs I asked her how they were and if they were tough, she didn’t hesitate to tell me how tough they were. She took a huge breath and lightly massaged her fingers as she told me, “the thing that was the toughest was communicating with others, they would get so mad at me when I couldn’t understand something or do something right, it was a scary feeling cause I was certain I would get fired”. She did get fired from the burger king but kept her jobs as a masseuse and a nanny; my mother took with her, her studies of becoming a nurse in Mexico.

The part of her describing her jobs for me took the longest she told me how her jobs have worn her out. She told how picky and needy the people she went to massage were and how they asked her to do extra thing like putting more pressure in certain spot that were naturally tough for her. She told me how sewing for 14 hours a day would work her hands to the finger nails then coming home and cooking for 4 people.

     Eventually the last things I asked her were about how life was when I was born and I was surprised at what I learned. When my mom was pregnant with me she was ecstatic it’s like she got a huge boost of energy, she got another job and a better one too. She started working in a factory were she got some benefits through connections and got paid a higher salary, also my abusive father quit drinking and he actually supported my mom for awhile, everything was good until I was born. After I was born my father stopped supporting my mom and started drinking again, so my mom basically had to support a new born, a 12 year old, a teenager and a grown man. She sacrificed so much of her own life; she never bought her self any new clothes or went out to go eat all her money went to us.

     My mom eventually told me it was really hard and that’s how life is, she told me that that’s why she gets so mad at me when I get really lazy sometimes, that she hates knowing that she sacrificed for me the most because I was the only one born in the U.S and she pushed me hard and worked hard herself so I can have a way better life then her.

Life of a low wage worker

By Jerry Reyes   

            Lately it’s been hard to find work in California. It’s even harder for immigrants to find work. Their lack of knowledge of this country and inexperience of many businesses forces them to look for low-wage work. Unfortunately a young man named Tomas Reyes, had to learn to live with these conditions.

            Tomas came here from a small town in Mexico with his brother Erasto. Their first few days didn’t go so well because they were lost for many hours with no food or rest. When they finally found their way to their friend’s apartment they found out that his apartment was more crowded than they thought. The small, two bedroom apartment housed an old lady named Dona Amelia, three of her sons (all over 30), and two of Tomas’s sisters. It was really crowded and many of the people had to sleep in the living room.

            After a couple days of rest, Tomas set out to find work. Unfortunately he didn’t find any work for two months. He did not have any papers so he couldn’t ask for work in places that required them. He was forced to wait in street corners with his brother and wait for work to come to him. Eventually an old white man came asking for help on finishing tiling his roof. Many of the people there ran at the opportunity for work. To Tomas’s surprise his brother and he were chosen to work. The man brought them to his house and explained what they needed to do. They worked for three days for five hours each day. The man fed them and gave them drinks each day that they worked for him. He paid Tomas and his brother $175 each.  This was his first pay in the United States.

            After a while he got tired of waiting for work to come to him, so he started looking for work somewhere else. He found a small laundry mat owned by an Asian lady. He was hired almost immediately. The work was simple and straightforward. All he had to do is iron suits but he to iron 25 of them every hour. He soon learned to hate the job, especially because the owner exploited him because he didn’t have any papers. He was only paid $3 an hour and was forced to do extra work for no pay. He decided to quit and look for another job with his brother.

Fortunately his brother had already made friends with a man who owned an auto shop and he convinced the owner to hire Tomas. Tomas was the new car painter’s assistant, but Tomas didn’t know the first thing about painting cars. This soon got on the others’ nerves and they began to dislike Tomas. Tomas did eventually learn the basics of car painting but that didn’t change the fact that his co-workers disliked him. Tomas was soon fired after his brother went back to Mexico.

Tomas didn’t find what he wanted in the United States so he returned to Mexico. He wasn’t ready to quit though. He vowed to himself that he would return soon.

Stealing From the Poor

By Ivan Guerrero

            Being poor is difficult. Having to live life from paycheck to paycheck with an unsteady job. especially in today’s economy where the unemployment rate is in an obscenely high state. The working poor have been targeted as a business by people whose intent is to become wealthy at the expense of those less fortunate.  With the invention of the payday loan, rent to own and other clever hidden taxes. It has become very expensive to stay broke.

Corporations created poverty taxes in which thousands of dollars can be made in extra fees. There are about twenty million Americans without bank accounts today, to cash their checks, they are force to attend small businesses and pay eight to three percent of their paycheck in the exchange. These people have ruined their credit by writing checks without funds. As a result, banks denied them checking accounts or loans. This created an opportunity for small businesses to increase their revenue by taking advantage of the lower class. It is like stealing from the poor.

Another way corporations steal from the poor is rent to own. Rent to own is an advertise scam that claims to be a great opportunity to buy commodities above your social status. It works by allowing people to take home big flat screen TV’s or Lazy Boy furniture as you pay it in small amounts over a few months. However, you end up paying $1,800 in weekly installments for the same television you could have bought for $900 if only you had a credit card. Cant afforded a TV? No problem, the rent to own store has many types from wide to flat screen, but you will end up paying an extra $900 for it.  

A small solution is to persuading people to save a small amount of money every week and wait until they saved enough to pay for the item they want in full. In this manner, they would save hundreds of dollars from interest. But ours is a fast-paced society that wants everything in a hurry and is unwilling to weight for it. That is great news for the rent to own businesses and for the payday lenders.

The payday lenders is a large business that is into making large and expensive loans against a person’s next social security check, unemployment check, and if employed paycheck. According to the LA Times people in Tennessee and Kentucky are charge “400 percent interest, but lenders in Missouri are allowed to charge a rate of 652 percent interest on the money they loan out. “ Currently there are not laws setting limits to the amount of interest they are allowed to charge. If a single mother of two kids takes out a loan of $1,000 she will be required to pay $5,000 back, four times more amount she borrowed.

When our founding fathers imagined this country, they did not imagine big corporations designing scams to rob money from the less fortunately. They imagined fairness and equality for all Americans. Payday loan, rent to own, and hidden taxes, are tools corporation used to rob money from poor people, who are not fully awarded they are being robed. On the other hand, they believed these options are convenient and helpful.  

Living in California with low paying jobs

By:Jonathan Valdivia

Aremy Magana a college student, worker, and takes care of her baby she struggles to find a low rent apartment and time to take care of the baby.

Her job is working at Melody’s. I asked her if her job was stressful at times. At times the job here can get stressful because of the customers complaining about their order but it can teach you how to deal with people in any other job.

How do you have time for college? While she goes to college she leaves the baby with her mom until she returns. Her mom is a big help when it comes down to the baby and to her daughter Aremy’s success in going to college and becoming a nurse.

When do things get difficult for you? Things only get difficult when she has homework and the baby. But luckily she has her mom to take the baby while she finishes off her homework. She gets complete concentrated in her work and when she is done she plays with her baby and takes care of it.

If the baby is sick what do you do? She puts all her attention to him and comforts him till he is better. She doesn’t leave his side till she sees him feeling better. With all the time she spends with him she got used to being patient even during the most difficult times.

            How did the baby change your life? The baby changed her life because it brought more responsibilities and she stopped going out with her friends. She still spends time with her friend but not like before, now she takes care of a baby while being with her friends. Although it doesn’t feel the same her friends enjoy him, and sometimes even come over when it’s been a long day just to take care of him so she could get some rest.

            While Aremy works and goes to college she has a baby she loves coming to every day and spending time him. She goes to college and her family supports her and can’t wait till she graduates and finds a better job that will pay her good amount of money to keep surviving. Even though she has school, a baby, and works there are many obstacles in life and some you can’t avoid but just keep going forward and see were life takes you.

Making It By

 By; Kevin Pichinte

                                                  

        

                     Working a job as a high school student is fun but challenging sometimes. Keeping balance of the both things takes some responsibility because you have to manage to be at work at the time you have to be there and still have the energy to go to school and manage getting good grades. But sometimes I struggle with both things because it’s pretty hard to maintain good grades and getting to work and getting out late and being tired the next day. But the pay is pretty good for a high school student making fourteen dollars an hour four times a week for five hours a day is pretty awesome. But what about for the people who have to pay monthly bills and have a family to maintain and make days end meet. Doing the math this really isn’t anything a month. The typical person would have to have more than one job.

                       The reason why I work is to help out and just to have some spare money in my pocket. But for me being a youngster this is plenty of money. But after reading “nickel and dime” my opinion really changed on how these really isn’t anything. Over the summer working just four days a week for four weeks a month I make enough to supply all my needs. But seeing all the expenses that my family has and what we have to pay monthly really is garbage. Just with paying monthly rent I would practically be left with nothing. I see why people really struggle when they make minimum wage because in reality they have so many expenses and sometimes the amount of money they make just isn’t enough even though they are working two to three jobs.

                       And going to the laundry at least once a week and spending thirty dollars every time means you’re spending at least one hundred and twenty dollars a month in pure laundry. Then comes all of your personal needs like cell phones, gel, shampoo, clothes etc. With this you really end up with nothing a month. For a cell phone these days the minimum that you’re at least paying is around fifty dollars. Then in clothes you spend at least one hundred dollars and that’s if you don’t have a family to supply.

                      And what about with groceries. The minimum the typical person would pay a month would be around one hundred twenty dollars just for food. And if you get sick how expensive is it to go see the doctor every time or just to go to the pharmacy and buy some medicine. Just to get over the counter medicine can range from two dollars to twenty dollars and that’s not even talking about your prescribed medicine and having to make co payments every time. In reality with all of these expenses id rather stay in school because I would have too many expenses and not be able to support myself. I would be spending more money than what I would be making.

             My point is that I would not be able to pay my monthly bills. I would spend all my money and still need to pay more bills and not have enough to pay them. Which in the long run this would lead to being poor and on the streets. So the money I make is awesome for a teen but if I were an adult like Barbara Ehrenrich in nickel and dime I would be in low poverty or even be poor. So no, what I make would never be enough and I would be a bum on the street or I would have to work at least three jobs just to make end days meet.

The Working Poor

Young Sun

The Working Poor

           

           I used to think that being poor was when my dad told me we couldn’t afford to spend more money on my wardrobe. Now I see that that is not even remotely close to the definition of being poor. That is considered lucky and those of us, who are lucky enough, to afford what we think of as basic necessities, should be grateful for what we have. There are families out there with kids that are the same age as us but can’t afford ANY kinds of clothes or shoes or even school supplies (when we’re busy being picky about which brand our clothes or even notebooks or binders are from) because they have to save up for REAL basic necessities in life such as food, shelter, etc.. Some of them have to start working hard at an early age so that they can provide for their siblings or even their own parents on top of going to school, like 21-year-old, Laura Hernandez, who has worked since she was17 years old to help her mother provide for her and her little brother after her father passed away.

           

           Studies and reports in 2008 showed that families with children and families that were led by women were more likely to live in poverty or would be considered as the working poor. This has been true for Laura Hernandez whose mom had to start providing for her and her little brother after her dad passed away in the year 2008 when she was 17 years old. Her little brother was only 9 years old. She was able to graduate high school but couldn’t afford to go to college with the rest of her graduating class because she knew she had to help her mom. Even when Laura’s dad was alive, she wasn’t able to spend her teen years as any other normal teenager because she always had to stay in and take care of her dad when she wasn’t at school. She started working in any place that would hire her as soon as her dad was gone, not even really having time to grieve over her loss. She worked at places like Food4less and McDonald’s while her mom was a waitress in a Korean restaurant.

           

           After about a year of working to support her family without going to school, she decided that she wanted to be something more in the future, even if she wasn’t going to be a millionaire living in Beverly Hills she wanted to do more for her brother and her mother who have both done as much as they could without any complaints. So she enrolled into a community college and is now juggling both school and work. She is now a retail sales associate at a shoe store and is now getting paid $9.30 an hour.

          

          Laura Hernandez is much like Colleen, a single mother of two children, who is mentioned in “Nickel and Dimed”(p.118-119), in that they are both grateful in what they have now and although they would want a better life for their family, they’re not greedy about it. For example, when asked about how they felt about barely getting by while others had so much, Colleen’s response was, “’ I don’t mind really, because I guess I’m a simple person, and I don’t want what they have. I mean,, it’s nothing to me. But what I would like is to be able to take a day off now and then… if I had to... and still be able to buy groceries the next day.” In my personal opinion, I feel as though most of those who are considered to be the working poor have stronger moral values and are more thankful for whatever they are given and make the most out of what they have.