Income requires labor. Unless you are willing to sacrifice capital, every added expense demands a corresponding increase in labor, which begs the question: would you rather spend less or work more?
Income – Expenses = Capital
Despite the enormous advantages of capital, our culture leads us to celebrate spending as opposed to saving and we soon find ourselves chasing an expanding income in order to support our capital goals despite our growing expenses. This environment creates a national culture (here in the States) in which we are willing to sacrifice, more than any other industrialized nation, the majority of our lives to labor; an exchange that leaves little room for the contrasting sphere of leisure (namely, that of socialization and the family).
It’s been a century since Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism hypothesized that a nation’s economics are propelled by religious impulses. While controversial, his text remains canon on the basis that, at the very least, philosophy and the economy have something to do with one another.
“a more laborious life solves social problems”
Is it not strange then that little of our national discourse or artistic expression weighs labor in a real, philosophical sense? These days, it’s far more common to hear sermons on dating and the family than labor, which is strange considering labor so dominates our time. Similarly, most conversations we have on labor conclude with some pseudo-moralistic appeal that we should all work more and work harder; that a more laborious life solves social problems, can solve our own personal crises, and, if nothing else, will likely improve our character.
I don’t think it’s a wild claim to state that we moralize capital in believing income > expenses = good, but there is a slippery slope from this reasoning when we begin to apply our moralization of an economic situation to the individual in that situation.
What happens when the assumption becomes low capital = low morals? What happens when we begin with the assumption that there are more living wage jobs than citizens and conclude that poverty is therefore a result of either poor work ethic or wild spending; when we arrive at the conclusion that financial poverty correlates with moral poverty?
“bad systems, bad decisions, and bad breaks”
Recently, I overhead a peer describe poverty as a potent combination of bad systems, bad decisions, and bad breaks. These correspond nicely with the three agents in social work: society itself, the individual, and the safety net. Much sophistry obscures this simple reality. It is much simpler to critique or to sell the safety net than to solve the societal problems that require it. And this is the contention that has instigated this blog.
As a society, we are well aware that all labor is not created equal; that $7.25 / hour in retail does not produce the income that $250 / hour in technology or law does. Why then, do we assume in our rhetoric that an increase in labor will resolve inequality?
Similarly, we are well aware that there is a bottom threshold for expenses; that you cannot reasonably subsist in our nation without housing and that housing is not an inalienable right but a cost of living.
$7.25 x 160 hours (under the ludicrous assumption that minimum wage employers typically deliver full time employment) earns a rough monthly income of $1,160. Let’s do some simple math.
Income – Expenses = Capital
The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Texas is $1,020. That, of course, is impossible for our minimum-wage employee and so we must use a more workable (though statistically incorrect) $600 / month. That leaves our imaginary client $560 / month to split between food, clothing, healthcare, car expenses. Oh, but we have forgotten taxes. Subtract 10% of $1,160 from our $560 and we actually have a budget of $454 to work with. Assuming our client is a person of faith, we must subtract another 10% in tithes, which leaves us with a monthly budget of $338.
“our hypothetical client absolutely must earn more than $7.25 or work more than 40 hours per week in order to simply subsist”
As you can see, capital development in this context would be a small miracle, which means that our hypothetical client absolutely must earn more than $7.25 or work more than 40 hours per week in order to simply subsist without crashing into the safety net. I think it’s a fair argument that more labor is no real solution.
Forgive the apparent digression, but this situation is merely an anecdote aimed at highlighting a dilemma faced by our moralization of labor.
“who do we, as a society, judge as lazy and incompetent?”
Consider this man in relation to a peer who makes a more reasonable salary (by reasonable, I mean somewhere near the median).
Client A works 60 hours / week at minimum wage to provide for a family of four, earning below the poverty line of $22,000. He has the “moral distinction” of working hard and keeping expenses to a medium, but is never home and has no space in his life for leisure.
Client B works 40 hours / week and earns the median income of $56,500. He also has the “moral distinction” of working hard and keeping expenses to a minimum, and is able to spend a reasonable amount of time in leisure at home.
It’s worth pointing out that Client B earns 200% more AND spends 50% less time at work each week than Client A. I’m sure you can extrapolate up to our hypothetical Client C, whose upper-class wealth gap has accelerated in the past decade. Perhaps Client C owns the company Client B works for; (client C’s “labor” might not even require coming into the office.) Perhaps Client B takes his lunch break at a fast-food establishment Client A works at, etc, etc. This is all, of course, a red herring in the larger conversation of labor and whether it has been moralized in our cultural context.
“you better have a good reason for sharing your opinion [on poverty]”
The first question I want to goad is this: who do we, as a society, judge as lazy and incompetent? Is it the man who shows up to his kids’ extra-curricular or the man who drinks himself to sleep Saturday and sleeps through church Sunday morning? Whose tithe do we honor? Who is represented at the PTA or at the city council meeting? Who most contributes to the community? Who receives a return on that social capital?
Poverty is not new, nor has it yet “been solved” in the history of humanity, but the last question I must ask is this: what is motivating you to try? And this a warning: you better have a good reason for sharing your opinion and branding yourself as it’s champion. Your talk better be evidenced by your actions if you are to leverage social responsibility for your own personal brand. But if you do, know you will be held accountable for the effects of your words and the policies they inspire.
LABOUR THOUGHT 