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15 February 2001 Edition

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Built on a dream, founded on a myth

The plight of America's working poor

BY JUSTIN MORAN

Obie Butlere follows the American Dream. The dream says that if you work hard, do the right thing, obey the law, success is inevitable. Obie Butlere works hard nights as a janitor in a hospital in Texas and works day labour jobs when he can get them. He is a veteran of service with the US military and has never been in trouble with the law, and yet Obie Butlere bleeds to support his family. The $18-$21 he makes from selling his blood every couple of months makes a big difference for him and his three daughters. Obie Butlere is one of America's 13 million working poor.

One out of every five American children lives in poverty and three-quarters of them are the children of America's working poor. The richest and most powerful nation on Earth ranks 16th among industrialised nations in efforts to lift children out of poverty. No matter how closely you listened, neither George W Bush nor Al Gore said a thing about it despite, or perhaps because, their home states rank 48th and 38th, respectively, on the basis of which states are best in which to raise a child.

These horrific statistics were not, despite the best efforts of fringe candidate Ralph Nader, even an issue in the campaign. This blindness was the result not just of political expediency or the style over substance format of American elections; it was the result of the writings of an obscure 19th century novelist whose beliefs even now pervade the American consciousness.

Horatio Alger is not a name that would be easily recognised, even in the United States, but more than any other individual he is responsible for what many call the `American Dream', more cynically described as the `Alger Myth'.

Alger's novels told everyone, no matter how poor, orphaned or powerless, that if they persevere, if they do their best, if they always try to do the right thing, they can succeed. Success was earned by hard work and right action. Alger trumpeted the doctrine of achieving success through self-reliance, self-discipline, decency, and honesty.

On the face of it this seems a fairly benign idea and perhaps that is how Alger meant it, but there is another side to the Alger myth. If one follows the Alger myth, works hard and does the right thing then success will follow naturally because, after all, this is America, the world's first `classless society'. But if people do not succeed it is not due to bad luck or lack of education or a poverty stricken upbringing; it is because they are not working hard enough. If success is open to all who work hard, then those who do not succeed must, logically, be lazy.

There is little space in the Alger Myth for people like Maggie Segura. Profiled at length in the American liberal political magazine George, Segura, 24, works over 50 hours a week holding down two jobs, one as a waitress and another as a full-time civil servant in the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services. She and her two-year-old daughter still barely eke out an existence on the poverty line. Segura does not live an expensive lifestyle but without medical insurance for herself and her child she is hard hit by the high cost of American healthcare. She works hard, even labouring for months with a volunteer organisation, Habitat for Humanity, to allow her to obtain cheap housing.

For the successful, predominantly white middle classes, the idea that one can work hard and yet be poor is a difficult one to grasp but it is an idea that is being brought home to some of them in a very personal manner. Under the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), backed by both Gore and Bush, American corporations can now receive federal funding to help them take their factories out of the United States to set them up in countries with lower wage costs like Mexico or Honduras, leaving thousands of Americans jobless. The move from a manufacturing-based industry to a service-based one has left many skilled factory workers scrambling for minimum wage jobs.

In Gore's home state of Tennessee, the Oshkosh B'Gosh Company employed 1,200 people at a wage of $14 an hour in the manufacture of textiles. With the manufacturing now moved to Mexico, skilled workers have suffered huge cuts in their salaries, moving from £14 an hour to minimum wage jobs, often only part-time so that their employer can easily refuse them benefits. And this at a time when the minimum wage's purchasing ability is at a 40-year low. According to the US Department of Labour, 10,000 workers in Gore's home state have been similarly affected by NAFTA.

Ironically, it is America's booming economy that has contributed to the plight of the American working poor. Growing apace with the economy has been the price of housing and of rented accommodation. According to a Housing and Urban Development report, 5.4 million households put half or more of their income towards rent. And what basic accommodation is available is often out of the reach of many Americans working in the minimum wage services industry.

A report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows that to afford a basic two-bedroom apartment, ``workers must earn $12.33 per hour in Nashville (Capital of Al Gore's home state); $15.75 in Austin (Capital of George W Bush's home state); and $28.06 in San Francisco, the nation's most expensive housing market. The federal minimum wage is $5.15.'' Like Segura, some workers find themselves working for Habitat for Humanity. By helping to construct other people's houses, they can earn enough `points' to have a house built for themselves at a low mortgage rate. As rent increases outstrip wages, more and more Americans find themselves unable to live in the cities and are forced to move out to more rural parts of the country.

According to Second Harvest, America's largest domestic hunger relief organisation, 39% of households that receive emergency food aid have at least one adult working and in the last ten years the amount of food supplied by Second Harvest has more than doubled from 476 million pounds in 1990 to more than a billion in 1999.

America is also a nation without any national health system. 43 million Americans have no health insurance, even in an emergency. According to Second Harvest, 29% of households receiving food from them delay medical treatment or filling a prescription in order to buy food. During the recent election in the United States, several candidates running in the Northern states bordering Canada were elected on a healthcare reform platform. Canada's heavily subsidised and efficient healthcare service is far ahead of America's and even Cuba's healthcare system, struggling as it is under the American blockade, is cheaper and more efficient than America's.

The statistics cited by the Clinton administration hide the reality of life for America's working poor. Gore claims, with some justification, that NAFTA has been responsible for nearly 19 million new jobs under the Clinton administration. What he omitted to mention is that many of those jobs are part-time or minimum wage and that some of America's poor are working two or three jobs in order to survive, where before one was enough. The Clinton administration also points to the fact that from a high of 5.5% in the early 1990s the number of Americans claiming welfare has dropped to 2.4%. Again, the administration ignores that the 1996 Welfare Reform package has more to do with this than a rise in the standard of living for the poor. It also ignores that the bulk of America's poor have always worked and yet still live below the poverty line.

Poverty, especially the poverty of those who work, is not something Americans like to talk about. Those who are not in denial find it best to ignore the problem and those who, in theory, should be doing something about it are deaf to the cries of those who do not vote or make campaign contributions. Tellingly, Bush's three leading domestic policy advisors were unable to tell a reporter what the federal minimum wage was. To Americans, the poor have only themselves to blame. The fact that there are people living in the United States in conditions that bring to mind the developing African or Caribbean nations is swept aside.

The proverbial beggars at the feast are ignored not because Americans are an inherently immoral people, but simply because they are not able to understand how it is possible for someone to work hard and not succeed. To question such a deeply held article of faith is to question the foundations of American society, to ask oneself whether this really is the land of opportunity or merely a country built on a dream and founded on a myth that leaves many of its people on the margins of society.

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