Drowning in the Gap
By Anonymous / Fall 2021
Mama, It’s 1998. You’re 5 months pregnant with your first child: me. You’re leaving Romania. You’re moving to America. NYC, capital of the world. You have high hopes of a beautiful future with a beautiful child and a happy family. The possibilities are endless. Perhaps you will get an education, maybe take up art and sell it on the streets as you see in the movies. A big house, movie nights at the theater, drinks in a pub. Freeways! Oh, the possibility for your life to be, there’s nothing you can’t do.
Fast forward 3 months. Your child is born. Screaming, crying, gasping for air. She is born too early, she is born wrong. Everything’s wrong. They fix it. No more crying. Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Fast forward 3 more years. You’re in line at the immigration office, there is a problem with your green card. You assumed this issue would be quelled years ago, yet you’re still not a citizen. You can’t get a job. Jobs you do get pay you less than minimum wage because you cannot legally work there. Immigration workers raid your work, you are laid off. No job no money. You’re still in debt from your daughter’s hospital bills. Can’t pay everything with this wage. You have to choose. You choose food. Medical debt grows. You pay taxes and do not get to vote. You can’t vote for someone to help you. You can’t afford rent. You’re months behind on bills. The soup kitchen is out of food and the shelters are unsafe. Your child is gone, living with your parents. They do not have much, but they have more than you. You can’t take care of her. You try to go to school to get a better job, so you can give your daughter the beautiful life America promised you.
If you’re in school, you can’t clean as many houses a day. You drop out. You’re screaming. You’re crying. You’re gasping for air. You can’t find it, there is no way out.
Fast forward 10 years. Your father dies, your daughter has to live with you again. They can’t take care of her. You still don’t have a job. Two additional kids, one more on the way. You fall into a depression. You can’t work. You won’t work. You won’t talk, can’t get out of bed. Everything’s wrong. What is this life? What is the point? Why has the hard work I have done kept us barely alive? You have to ask your daughter to get a job. She’s 13. But she is a citizen. She has rights. She is young and has potential. She has an education. She gets a job. She makes more in at her job than you ever have your whole life. It is still not enough. The money from both jobs barely makes ends meet. Your daughter’s school calls, you need to meet. She’s failing all her classes. Why? She is missing many assignments, this isn’t like her. Oh. She seems tired, is everything okay at home? Yes, fine. Everything’s fine. She won’t make it to high school with grades like this. Later that night you hear her get up to help her baby brother. He’s screaming, he’s crying, like he’s gasping for air. You’re paralyzed. You barely get out of bed these days. Postpartum depression they say. No medical insurance to treat help. You hear something else, it’s your daughter. She’s screaming, she’s crying, like she’s gasping for air. It’s like she’s drowning. Well, what can I do...
Fast forward 9 years. She did it. You are so proud. The American Dream, they say, I’ve seen it. We had nothing but dreams, but this country helped us. Your daughter has a good job. She owns our house now. No more rent. She says she can pay the bills; don’t worry about a thing. Her siblings do not work. She says to focus on school. She has a good job now. Servers make a lot of money.
She goes to school. She’s almost done. She wants to be a lawyer. I don’t know how. It’s taking her a long time. Loans. Loans, loans, lots of loans. Financial aid. It’s not enough, but she will be fine. It’s taking her a long time. She has to work too much, drop classes. But she says it’s fine. You can finally breathe, mama. Everything’s fine.
* * *
It’s 2020. I just lost my job. I can’t believe it. Global pandemic. Everything is shut down. What am I going to do? I pay my mom’s bills and my own. How will I put food on the table? How will we survive this? Mom thinks everything has been fine but I’ve barely been cutting it as it is the last few years between jobs. She can’t even get a job. No high school education, no college degree. Even when she does work, it’s not enough money to make a difference. There is no point, her mental health is declining anyway, it’s not worth it. Oh, shit. My insurance. How will I pay for it? What if one of the kids gets COVID? There’s less than $20 in my bank account. I don’t get paid enough. How can I get an education if I can’t even afford food? Rents going up again. Can’t afford to buy a house, I don’t have any savings. How am I supposed to save money when I am living paycheck to paycheck? Get a college degree, it will get me a better paying job, they tell me I’m not working hard enough. I can’t afford to go to city college classes if I’m laid off. What about my education? School, homework, work, work, work, paper, school, paper, test, reading work, work, homework, work, work, work. I can get loans, but I’ll be in debt the rest of my life. Worse position than I am in now. I’m losing my mind. YOU’RE NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH. I’m screaming and crying. I am drowning, and I have been for a long time. I am drowning and I always will be. Time to swim.
* * *
My story, along with my mother and many others, reveals the reality of capitalism’s effects on the working class. When my mother came to America, she was promised a land full of opportunity and success. With enough hard work, she could do anything she wanted. When she realized that this wasn’t true, she clung to the promise that I could. With the right choices, hard work, and good opportunities, I could save us. Instead, I was launched into the never-ending cycle of the working class. People will read this story and say, “well, your mom should have worked harder to get a degree,” or “if she had done it the right way, she would be a citizen,” perhaps even “if she wanted to, she could.” There is some misconstrued idea that America offers a chance at wealth and that the systems in place support this ideology. America was once prized for its upward mobility, but now is the leader of downward mobility amongst all of the first-world countries. Children of the working class are left in an even more precarious financial situation than their parents. Unable to afford an education, a home, a family... all of the things that are supposed to help us surpass the hardships our parents faced. And as inflation increases, and the rich get richer, the financial insecurity of the working class grows dimmer each passing year. Many then theorize, that perhaps capitalism isn’t working. Unfortunately, it is. Exactly how it’s supposed to, at the expense of us.
This is a reality for many Americans. Details change, but the outcome does not. The United States promises us a life of liberty, freedom, and happiness. We are nailed into submission by being told from a young age that if you work hard enough, anything is possible. Yet, in the age of 2021, the federal minimum wage still sits years behind inflation. Poverty rates only continue to rise, the middle class is disappearing. The rich get richer, and the poor are getting poorer. Amidst a global pandemic, where so many people’s lives have been left in shambles, we see history’s first billionaires arise. Anyone can do it if you work hard enough. That’s what they say to us. Yet, I have been working every day of my life since I was 13 years old. I know people that work 20 hours a day and can still not afford the luxury of life. If hard work was all it took, what is this? The rich use phrases like these to pit us against each other, “if they want a better life they should get a better job,” “minimum wage jobs are for kids in high school,” “get a college degree and some training, then you’ll get paid more and work your way up to the top.” All of these sentiments are things I hear and see online or in conversation almost every day. The reality is, that capitalism thrives on this level of exploitation, and they perpetuate that exploitation by instilling that we are the reason that we are poor. And to quell the issue, they tell us that there is hope: if you just work hard enough, get the right degree, meet the right people, spend enough time.
Behind all of these shallow observations of the wage problem in America, is a very real story about how the system we are living in thrives off of this type of exploitation. And the system is not broken, it is working exactly as it should. If the poor succeed, how will the rich prevail? Enter the ideologies of the famous philosopher, Karl Marx. A study into Karl Marx’s base-superstructure model reveals the legality of capitalism, and how it affects the working class. Marx believes that the economy is the basis of law, and since (in capitalism) the economy is ruled by the capitalist class, that they control the law. Here, we begin to unravel the causes of the impending destruction of the working class. If the law is controlled by the rich, we can assume that they are often finding ways to exploit the working class. Capitalism separates us into two classes, the proletariat, and the bourgeoisie. Due to their disproportionate reliance on one another, as capitalism develops, their relationship becomes combative, class warfare arises. Capitalism produces an ever-widening division between the classes, leaving the working class no chance to catch up with the 1%. While GDP and inflation rise, worker earnings remain stable, those who own production within our economic framework continue to prosper. An examination of current capitalist society demonstrates this, as we often observe how the impacts of our economic system have influenced the laws enacted by those who would benefit from them, the affluent and powerful, the bourgeoisie. Marx's theory of the construction of law is predicated on the premise that the more capitalism flourishes, the more exploitation accrues to the working class. This provides a simple, but accurate explanation of what we see happening to the working class today, and a cause of the rising downward mobility of citizens born into the working class of America.
To provide an even deeper understanding of the roots of the problem of wage disparity, we look at the study of vagrancy laws presented by sociologist William Chambliss. Traveling all the way back to the end of feudalism in Europe, we see the emergence of capitalism begin to take shape in developed countries. The end of feudalism signaled a shift in rights for the working class, to make their own money and live their own lives, not to be dictated by the rich. But not within years of doing so, those in power realized that this wasn’t going to work for them. Workers would not work for cheap, and certainly not for free, but the new laws allowing them their financial freedoms was hurting the owners of production who needed free to cheap labor in order to turn a heavy profit. Here, we see the emergence of vagrancy laws, disguised as laws meant to keep ‘thieves off the streets.’ In reality, vagrancy laws served as a way “to force laborers (whether personally free or unfree) to accept employment at a low wage in order to insure the landowner an adequate supply of labor at a price he could afford to pay” (Chambliss, 69). Thus, we see a pattern of laws outlawing unemployment, leading to an acceptance of low wages, despite it not matching the costs of living. But it doesn’t end there... Since the rich hold the power of the law, these vagrancy laws shifted with the needs of the 1%. In today’s age, it takes the shape of criminalizing the poor, who were only rendered poor by the rising class division generated by capitalism. Laws against homelessness, debt collectors, threats against unionizing, evictions, laws for qualifications for housing arise. All of this, to support the rich, at the expense of the poor. Like we saw in Grapes of Wrath, which uses the farm as a metaphor for our country. Those who owned the farm dictated the lives of the farmworkers and sharecroppers, and when they decided to sell, left their tenants with absolutely nothing. This parallel is an important one because though we often look at landowners, landlords, managers, and business owners as the enemy, they have to answer to capitalism as well. They are also at the will of the real enemy, the real rich: the 1%. And as that top-class grows, the middle class of America disappears into thin air. Some join the top, but most fall through the cracks, and as long as the economy favors profit over people, it will continue on that way. Everyone is at the mercy of those who own our country.
Maria Svat and Richard Reeves bring a more modern view to how capitalism has progressed, pointing out that “exploitation is not a bug in the system, but a key feature.” Their article “Capitalism isn't 'broken'. It's working all too well - and we're the worse for it,” serves as a reminder that capitalism is not inherently flawed. It is operating much too effectively, concentrating money in the hands of a small number of people while exploiting the labor of a large number of others. They explain the progression of downward mobility, by reiterating the notion that hundreds of years of capitalism have led to a divide that separates us into classes we cannot escape, just as Marx predicted. We hide behind this illusion that if we work harder or meet the right people, it can all change, without realizing that the entirety of the system you’re at will to is built against you.
Like we read in Edward O’Donnell’s “Are We Living in the Gilded Age 2.0?” we see that this promise of opportunity that America portrays is but a fallacy. Like a cheap piece of jewelry, shiny on the outside, and full of junk when you sand it down. These systems and institutions, run by the rich offer no other choice to those not born into the 1%. To other countries, our GDP boasts numbers worthy of praise, but we fail to remember that the top 1% of people in this country hold more money than the entirety of the rest of us. And as O’Donnell mentions, efforts to close this obscene gap are squashed by politicians, who are all in the pockets of the rich. Much like the first Gilded Age, we find ourselves in an intense period of political polarization in desperate cries from the working class to correct this inhumane economy and way of life. However, little headway has been made, as even the working class has been fooled by the hope that they too, can escape these financial barriers.
While the root of these issues seems dire, there is hope for change. But desperate times call for radical measures. Though this is a dramatic take, it rings true: capitalism needs to be overturned. Not fixed, not repaired, not altered. It needs to be gone. Capitalism breeds exploitation and feeds off of it, and if we want to be a country worthy of calling ourselves equal, it simply cannot exist here. Right now, power lays in the hands of a few, when it should be in the hands of many. FDR’s second bill of rights was a step in the right direction: Everyone deserves “a job, an adequate wage and decent living, a decent home, medical care, economic protection, and a good education.” As we had previously discussed, FDR’s Second Bill of Rights comes at the tail end of a progressive sweep of the nation, much like we are seeing now. But, both waves have been unsuccessful for one simple fact: capitalism will not allow it. After conducting research into the origins and intentions of the system, the only way to make substantial progress is to remove the system altogether. We see this already coming to fruition as younger generations take a stand against traditional economic momentum. Post COVID-19, we have seen a social shift in working-class protest. Workers are refusing to work for low wages after being made to slaves during a global pandemic, driving companies who won’t adapt to the demands of raising wages out of business. We have also seen a large push for more federal support and welfare, resulting in stimulus checks and unemployment insurance benefit extensions. With each small step in the right direction, capitalism dies, and humans win. Less drastic steps to fight these wage disparities also include strikes, protests, boycotts, and unionizing. Threatening those who own production by withdrawing our means of production will hit them hard, and force institutions to value human life and wellness before the profit margins. But most importantly, humanity needs to be restored. Peace among the classes is essential if people want to see real change, and that will be the hardest part. For hundreds of years, the 1% has pitted us against each other, convincing us that your neighbor is the enemy, not the billionaires who control the market, not the rich who dictate your financial future by lobbying with parties who want to see the exploitation of the poor continue, not the wealthy who monopolize production. At the end of the day, more of us are closer to complete financial ruin than we are to ever be part of that 1%, and because of that alone, we need to build back our sense of community that was robbed from us.
While it is easy to see this problem as a problem of a few, it is imperative to remember that this is a problem for us all. The wider the wage gap grows, the more of us fall to the bottom, scrambling the rest of our lives to try and reach that top that will never be attainable. And whether it directly affects you or not, it affects someone you know. Someone you love. Someone you work with, your father, maybe your sister, maybe your friend. Humanity plays a large role in ensuring that we will be able to move forward and right these wrongs against humanity, so that once and for all, we may all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...
I implore you to look into resources that can help you or your community, find them here at:
7 Actions that Could Shrink the Gender Wage gap
Equal Pay Counts: What Companies Can Do
You can also donate to or join “The Fight for $15,” a movement to help minimum wage follow the rate of inflation in these tough times.
Works Cited
Svat, Maria, and Richard Reeves. “Capitalism Isn't 'Broken'. It's Working All Too Well - and We're the Worse for It | Maria Svart.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 12 June 2019.
O'Donnell, Edward T. “Are We Living in the Gilded Age 2.0?” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 15 June 2018.
Chambliss, William J. “A Sociological Analysis of the Law of Vagrancy.” Social Problems, vol. 12, no. 1, [Oxford University Press, Society for the Study of Social Problems], 1964, pp. 67–77.
Marx, Karl. “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.” Economic Manuscripts: Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx Engels Archive, 8 June 2009.
Roosevelt, Franklin D. “Franklin Roosevelt, Second Bill of Rights, 1944.” Bill of Rights Institute, 11 Jan. 1944.
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/activities/franklin-roosevelt-second-bill-of-rights-1944. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. The Viking Press, 1939.