Economics 101 Read online

Economics 101

  Copyright 2014 Steve Kenny

  Cover Art Copyright 2014 Steve Kenny

  Steve Kenny

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  Economics 101

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  Table Of Contents

  The Bread Winners

  Halloween

  Don't Let Me Down

  Worth.

  Thanksgiving

  On the Verge Of Obsolescence

  Why Ten Bucks An Hour Ain't Enough

  Let's Keep The New Gas Tax Off Our Backs!

  Words.

  The House That Greed Built

  Notes Nailed To A Door, Vols. 5 & 15.

  The Rape of the New Sabine

  This New Colossus

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  The Bread Winners

  When we used to live at the old house, we used to sit on the front step, in the evening, and talk. Back then, she was working as a clerk at a thrift store in the next town, and I was still getting some work as a floor installer. A little earlier in the relationship, when we'd begun to date, I was making more money than she was. But then a time came when we both saw that her paycheck was regularly more than mine. The realization astonished me. I remember, as we sat on that step one night, a moment came when I looked at her and confessed that I had never thought much of those in the work force who settled for low paying jobs such as hers. I told her that we, the working class, had a responsibility to ourselves to seek out the very highest paying job we could find. She just smiled proudly, modestly; she, a high school dropout with a steady job and a healthy sense that her economic future will be there for her, and I, an overreaching underemployed floor installer with a few community college credits and holding no such hope for the future.

  I said that I would never have settled for a minimum wage job, like she did, and had always thought that I had taken the income-earning high road, which would set me up in good financial shape at an early age. But even as those words passed my lips, and even as the soft breezes that night moved through her hair night like reassuring, gentle waves of love, I knew that sometime, somewhere, overnight, instantly and yet slowly, the times had changed, and I, even with my decades-long resume of highly paid blue collar experience and my uncrushable self-confidence, had become a working class obsolescence, and she, a simple woman with an entry-level minimum wage job that offered no insurance and no unemployment benefits, had become my wage-earning better.

  I suggested she consider going for her GED. She just smiled and brushed that idea off, like so much dandruff.

  "I don't need a GED. I already have a job." She said. As I listened, the wisdom of her thinking somehow revealed itself to me as an irrevocable new reality, a new truth about the world; a truth that had just arrived, with her.

  "I have a job, a car, my bills are paid, I don't owe anybody any money, and I can pay my bills, and that's good enough for me." She said.

  She was forty five at the time, and had only had her licence for three years. I wanted to ask her about what she planned to do for a pension, and for health insurance, and for making enough to start a savings account, but as I looked at her that night, I could see that she was proud, and happy. She had come so far, after trying so hard, and struggling for twenty six years, through two failed marriages and two abusive husbands, and through a life of depending on, and being dominated by, men. Who was I to burst that bubble? I understood her pride and respected it. But as we sat there, in the moonlight on that little front porch step, the truly softly ironic moment came when, as I sat there, gazing out and realizing her superiority, she looked at me, as if she were looking for permission from me to stand up to go get me another beer. I caught her glance and quickly set her right.

  "What you looking at me for? You're a grown woman. You don't need my permission, nor any man's, to do anything, anymore. You do what you want, but don't worry about me. I can get my own beer. The old days are gone. You're free to be happy; and I never get in the way of anyone's happiness."

  She has grown a lot since that day, and is much inclined to try to hang a lot of credit on me for her new life, but I never let her get away with it. Whatever she has, she's earned. Whatever she's learned while we've been together, she's sought out. In one way, she's happier than she's ever been. And that hard-earned and only lately realized and newly acquired happiness is hers to keep now. Wherever she goes, whatever the future holds, for her, for me, for us, no one, no one,can ever take that away from her.

  -

  Halloween

  The porch light is off but she is home. Her baby is sleeping in her arms in her frontroom. The cold light of the moon comes in and blends with the yellow warmth of the old-fashioned kitchen pantry light. She counts the food in her mind: twenty-four packs of ramen noodles; one can of formula. ten dollars' worth of baby food. She is sitting in the two-dollar Salvation Army armchair she'd bought back when she had money, and is watching a DVD with the sound on low, which she'd also bought back when she had money.

  Had money? What does that mean? I had money? When? You mean, I thought I had money back when I was making three hundred dollars a week? Two-fifty after taxes, and the rent was four hundred dollars a month, and the power bill two hundred, and the car insurance...what car insurance? I couldn't afford car insurance. Damn. I thought I had money. But every fucking week I was broke. Borrowing here and there.

  Halloween. Fuck Halloween. I don't have it.

  She rocks in her chair gently, quietly contemplating where she's been and how far she will need to walk again, and thinks about the high cost of everything. WIC will not cover her baby's needs for the month, and her Link card will run short. She's hoping for other assistance. The food pantry. Help with her power bill.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  "Trick or treat!"

  She sinks down low in her chair and holds her baby tight, against the chill. The furnace kicks on. She wonders if it will last the night or get shut off before morning. Through black silhouettes of arched-back cats with yellow eyes, flying witches and fat flat orange pumpkins taped to her windows, she sees the silhouettes of the barren trees outside, in the night in the light of the dead-eyed moon. Through a lens of fear and uncertainty, she weighs her chances of survival, while the leaves rustle in the wind, and something scrapes against her door.

  She recalls what her landlord had said, and rocks her baby.

  -

  Don't Let Me Down

  She drives on, through the night, in the old car with the bad brakes.

  She has taken the Interstate because it is faster; the two-lane roads might have been safer, but that is no longer something she allows herself to think about.

  Her two children, one asleep in the passenger seat and one asleep in the carseat in the back, have not been given an explanation for the long night journey.

  Mama is leaving town.

  Self-deportation is not an option.

  Not for her or her children.

  She is hoping to make it far enough north that she has a chance, yet she still has 400 miles to go to get to Illinois.

  Gang violence. Two dead brothers. Illegal aliens. Pride and love. Hope. Strength. Determination. The overpasses, the exit signs, the milemarkers.

  Back to Mexico?

  She doesn't even speak Spanish.

  The truth is, she would have become an American citizen long ago if she had just been given the chance. Her domestic employers never paid her in anything other than cash, and always, with that smile...

  Six dollars an hour, cash. Six bucks an hour. As bad as that is, she is not going.

  She is not going to go to Mexico.

  She is going to become a Citizen of the United States of America.

  And her children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren? Who knows? Maybe one day
one might become President, and shall praise her, and hold her up, and look to her example as the guiding light that shone for them, not as or on a City On A Hill, but only, and alone, in a dirty car plagued by bad brakes, on a midnight run to freedom.

  Drive on, sister. Drive on. This trouble, this shit, too, shall pass.

  -

  Worth.

  I just talked to my little sister [all four of my sisters are my 'little sisters'] last night on the phone for an hour and a half [we have great, long conversations; have had for years]. She's coming off a twenty-year run in the medical field as a CNA, phlebotomist, and home health care worker, and having worked in psych wards, special-care hospitals, and in the homes of countless physically and/or mentally challeged folks of all ages, income levels, religious persuasions, and financial means, she has seen more, done more than probably, anyone her age. She's tough as nails, with the insight of an old soul, and, as one talks to her, comes across as having had her eyes wide open all along...

  In the course of our streaming, meandering, everything's important conversation, we came to a moment - as she looked back on her career - when money and empathy collided. She was trying to articulate what