The Rich and the Poor

I once had a roommate who did not understand money. Truth be told, with how many ended up owing me for back bills, you would think I would say that in plural. But one stands out.

She was actually a roommate’s girlfriend. She was a Jersey girl, who grew up in a wealthy town. Her parents were both doctors. They put her through Smith, her sister through up to grad school, and her brother through a specialized high school, all out-of-pocket, and according to her “we don’t have any money, we’re straight up middle class.”

When she had to support herself, working a night-shift job making only a little more than minimum wage, she balked at the spending restrictions. Her boyfriend treated her to things, because she demanded him to. She would splurge on higher-end groceries from Whole Foods, then claim that our other roommate was cheating her at bills.

What’s sad is that this lack of understanding is common. Credit card debt rates at the moment are less than fair judges of that due to unemployment, with living by any means while there is hope to get back up is a common trope. Prior to this economic crash, though, the rates were not as far off.

See, money is something we get, we are worth, we hold or view as symbols on an atm screen, but we do not feel. When you have none, money comes with anxiety and desperation, the “how am I going to hold on to this as long as possible?” With only a little, it comes with a blind optimism that tells of all the things denied. With more than needed, it comes with entitlement, the “I deserve more than you” reaction. The actual value of a dollar is replaced at our fear, anxiety, hope, dreaming, demanding as its value. Look at the average arrogant jackass who wants to look more important -- it isn’t the emulation of taste that gives that impression, it is the emulation of the entitlement.

In a week and a half I go back to teaching. My students, on average, will have grown up comparable or in more dire straits to me, economically -- my father was a teacher as well, and my mother a homemaker until we were old enough to go to school, in the interest that someone would always be around for us. Many of them will be on government subsidy. Many of them will have no healthcare, no homes of any stability, no hope for college (but some wearing hundred-dollar shoes or using cellphones or ipods regardless of these at-home facts). Every year, I doubt my chosen career for numerous reasons, the most vocal in my head being that I would like to provide for my family – that if I were making what I could in another field, we could be buying a house and my wife could finish her degree and we could look toward children. Then I teach other people’s children, about a third conceived outside of marriage or the means of supporting them.

The very people who suffer at the hands of big business, at capitalism unchecked, are the people without enough monetary power or education to do anything about it. The very people who benefit most when the government feels responsible for its people and not its businesses, but instead due to misinformation or poor education or religious influences are more inclined to fear and hate that which would help them and vote for those without their best interests at heart.

To do what I can for these children’s best interests, I have to give up the things I want. Not because I am on a mission, not because I have a martyr complex, but because I love my job when the jackasses don’t ruin it for me, and because I know I can make it work eventually. That I am, year nine, making less than many of my contemporaries with comparable degrees started at (by five digits, for some), implies that there are benefits, or expected sacrifices in this job. That we are expected to go on less because we are such great people.

No wonder it is so hard to keep first year teachers. Either we burn out fast, trying to do the things we feel are expected, we are treated with such disrespect that the money-ideas start weighing on us, or we read the fine print and realize that we cannot make these sacrifices. Or, we just don’t understand money, in which case we end up in far worse places than the rest.