“We're Not In It For the Money?”
Personal Note: This is the first post I've made in 3 weeks. There's a short list of reasons for that, including a bout of brochitis and culture/travel fatigue from our Guatemala trip, between August 25 and September 17. And then having to catch up with my job for the last couple weeks. Buit mostly I've just been kind of numb, for whatever reason, and content to just read and veg for a couple weeks. Only in the last couple days have I started to feel like writing. So … I'm back, till the next furlough.
It’s not uncommon for me to read something by some reporter or blogster that rings my intellectual bell. In fact, it happens at least several times per week. I’ll read something that makes me say to myself, “Wow, that’s a great articulation, an insightful framing, of an idea that I’ve already arrived at. And now I can say or think more clearly about a truth I’ve already realized.
What’s somewhat less common is that I read something meaningful that rings my experiential bell. Something that makes me say, “Wow. This is a direct commentary about my own life.”
A great example of this kind of this kind of personal reference to my life is a blogpost I read yesterday, by Jessica Wildfire, entitled “Sorry,You Matter Too Much to Make a Living Wage.”
If you’re not familiar with this blog, “OK, Doomers,” Jessica is a teacher … at some college, I think. I’m not sure what she teaches, but it must be some sort of social science? Relating to medical data, perhaps? Anyway, Jessica herself, or at least the persona who writes her blog, is a breathless Doomer – a person who thinks we’re well on the way to the end times … whatever that looks like. Social dissolution of human organizational systems and breakdown of the natural world leading to much higher mortality rates among humans, if not extinction … and the end of the natural world as we know it.
Jessica sometimes writes a little too histrionically for my tastes, but entertainingly enough that I usually read her regular emails and blogs. In general, I think of myself as a Doomer too, so I agree with her dire eschatological assessments, and enjoy the way she articulates my four-alarm fear of the future.
Anyway, in the case of the post I read yesterday, the subject is not so much about the end of the world as about a social fact, which is that almost all people involved in the “helping vocations” … most workers at non-profit organizations and agencies of all types, teachers, and, relevant to me in particular, social workers, are considered ‘valuable’ and even ‘essential’ workers, but are not paid as such. Jessica does an admirable job of stating the straightforward truth here, and I think it’s very much worth reading and sharing.
One thing that bothers me a little, though, is that ‘nurses’ are thrown in with daycare workers, admin assistants, and EMTs and babysitters, and a few others who really, at least in terms of salary, are not quite in the same league. I won’t push this too much, because nurses have lots of other stuff to complain about, and definitely should get paid more. But still, the average salary for a nurse, according to a quick search, is about $40 per hour. To be sure, that’s NOT rich. But it IS a much more ‘survivable salary’ than most of the other vocations/occupations listed. It should be pointed out that there are various nursing credentials, but the RNs I know are doing OK in terms of ‘surviving,’ whereas a lot of ‘teachers’ I know are struggling with salaries south of $30 p/h. And in my own field of social work, salaries are considerably lower, with less well credentialed professionals starting in the $20 range.
It’s also important to understand that the underlying problem is enormous and utterly unjust disparity of wealth and income between a miniscule executive sector and the hired help. I don’t fault Jessical for chasing this rabbit down the hole. But still, it’s critical to realize that there’s no chance of providing a just wage without redistributing a lot more of the money received and hoarded by the very richest participants in our economy. Until we can get the median income tax levels for the wealthiest people back up to north of 70%, as they were during this nation’s most prodigious growth between the late 1940s and early 1970s … and until we can end a system of school districts depending on local property taxes … there’s no real chance of raising salaries to appropriate and just levels for anybody whose paycheck depends on taxation.
But … one can’t talk about everything in a single blog post, and the sentiment here is correct, and the message is important.
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A final comment … I recommend the okdoomer blog in general. It's not paygated, although “cups of coffee” donations are solicited. As mentioned, Jessica is kind of breathless and histrionic sometimes … a kind of sensationalism that I think is strategic, but also is appropriate to eschatological musings. But even when I just don't care for a post, there's always something both thoughtful and provocative there. In another recent post, meanwhile, Wildfire waxed on about the catharctic and therapeutic effect of horror shows, stating her belief that they provided relief from her ongoing symptoms of childhood trauma. As a victim of childhood trauma myself, and as an older social worker, of sorts, involved in trying to understand and treat trauma and mental illness of children and youth every day, I didn't buy into the therapeutic value of horror shows at all. I commented on my disagreement with, and dismissal of that particular post to a friend who also reads the blog, and she said she felt the same way … BUT, she said, she shared it with a close friend of hers who suffered trauma similar to Wildfire's, and that person loved it, and responded that she, too, used horror shows in what she described as a kind of easily accessible personal therapy. So each to their own.