I have been hearing the words "Occupy Wall Street" for the past month or so, but I haven't really paid much attention to it. I know I should; as a hard working, responsible American, I should be paying attention to what these people are doing. I came across this article and the accompanying comments tonight. The comments really, really pissed me off.
First off, according to this calculator, our family is at the 70% mark based on our gross income. That means we're better off than 70% of the people in this great country of ours.
I don't feel like it.
My husband and I both work forty hours a week. I have all of our bills budgeted out, week by week, through the end of 2012. Once we pay our fixed bills, we still don't have enough to pay for food and gas, let alone pay for anything extra. Sure, we could probably cut some non-necessities like cable and cell phones, but we don't have a home phone and cable is pretty much our only form of entertainment. We don't go out and do anything. By time we pay our mortgage, utilities, student loans, car loans, insurance, and minimum payments on credit cards...
Anyway, I was reading the comments on the link above and all of these people with a lot of money were deriding people that don't make more money because they're clearly not working hard enough. A lot of my family makes significantly less than I do, even less than my husband does. It actually seems to me that the less people make, the harder they work. They work hard physically. They work long hours, some of them at multiple jobs, just to make ends meet. It's not about not working hard, its about not having opportunities beyond retail and fast food. It's hard to get out of a rut of once you get in a line of work. It's hard to get promoted without experience, and you can't get experience without the opportunity.
The 1% say "Go out and get a college degree to succeed. Take out loans to do it."
NO!
Students are basically indentured students to financial institutions after finishing college. I was a 3.94 student, top of my class, high SAT scores in high school. My family was also dirt poor. Do you know what that got me in the way of financial aid? $50,000+ in student loans. I will be paying off student loans until my kids are in college. I would love to go back and get my Masters degree, because my manager and previous AVP have both said that I need to get it if I want to go any further in the company. So basically, to spend another $50-$100k to get a degree to make another $10k in salary a year.
I was lucky to land a job after college. I ended up with my current company through a temp agency, and I have been fortunate to get promoted three times since then. I know three people that have been laid off from different companies in the past month; two of them in healthcare, which was supposed to be the untouchable industry.
College is supposed to provide people with an education to give them a better opportunity. Instead, colleges have become money making institutions that constantly raise tuition ceilings so they can require more money out of students for less education. Many companies won't hire individuals without a college education. Given that I will be paying my college education off until my kids are in college, there isn't really any money for me to save for my kids college educations so they will follow the same vicious cycle.
There is no way for people in the middle class to get ahead. There is certainly no way for people in the lower class to get ahead. While a select few may get a lucky break and find some way to make it, most will not.
It makes me angry to see people say "Just work hard and you'll be rich too." If it was that easy, then there wouldn't be a 1%. There wouldn't be the disparity between the rich and the poor. Most of these people say they started with nothing. I sincerely doubt many of them really know what it is to "start with nothing."
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