There is poverty in Fort Collins, one of America's best places to live. It might not be visible from SoPro (South of Prospect Road), but the thousands of people working - one or two or three jobs - at minimum wage in our fair city are barely getting by.
Best-selling author Barbara Ehrenreich also wants you to know there's nothing "wrong" with poor people, no character flaw or genetic defect that causes poverty.
"What causes poverty is a shortage of money," she told about 450 people at the Northside Aztlan Commmunity Center on Feb. 23. "And what causes a shortage of money is people not being paid enough for the work they do."
Ehrenreich was in town for the first Beet Street program, 40 events in six weeks organized around the theme of Life on a Shoestring: Perspectives on Stepping Out of Poverty. The community-wide collaborative effort continues through March 22, including a production at Lincoln Center of "Nickel and Dimed," a play by Joan Holden based on Ehrenreich's 2001 book of the same title.
"Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America" grew out of a magazine assignment that had Ehrenreich go "undercover" to work minimum-wage jobs she found through the want ads without using any of her education - she holds a Ph.D. in biology from Rockefeller University - or experience.
"That wasn't a problem," she said. "I never saw any ads for political essayists, especially sarcastic, feminist, political essayists."
Ehrenreich followed the million-selling "Nickel and Dimed" with "Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream" in 2005.
"It occurred to me that there was an omission in 'Nickel and Dimed,' and that made it seem that poverty was concentrated among 'unskilled' workers," she told the luncheon audience, which included city council members past and present, state legislators, educators, local philanthropists and social activists as well as students and others.
"But through layoffs and outsourcing, I met a chemical engineer living in a homeless shelter. Can we really afford to throw away our chemical engineers? She had made all the 'right' choices and was working as a janitor. So, the traditional path up and out of poverty - education - no longer works reliably."
Career options
But it's still a powerful tool. Front Range Community College, another participant in the Life of a Shoestring project, employs a full-time adviser to assist students whose jobs have been shipped overseas - literally.
"I spent about two weeks crating and boxing up my office equipment to ship to China," said Jason Delaney, a computer engineer for 17 years who attended the luncheon. He originally came to Fort Collins from Oklahoma City when Seagate Technologies failed and the alternative to moving was unemployment. "Other people in my department are spending two years in Thailand training their replacements."
Delaney is now taking classes at FRCC to explore career options, "something I should have done 10 years ago."
John Mandley, one of Delaney's instructors, said that in addition to involuntary career-switchers, FRCC's students are likely to work full-time or more than one part-time job, at minimum-wage or slightly above, and many have families to support as well.
"'Nickel and Dimed' is required reading in our first-year common reading program, where students are exposed to ideas in multiple disciplines," he explained. "They really related to the book personally in class discussions. They see the importance of education in combating poverty-level wages, despite the cynicism that arises when they see jobs outsourced."
FRCC's biggest program is Career Connections, which includes a database of local employers who advertise jobs directly to students, and monthly on-campus Employer Days. These mini-job fairs are open to any employer, whether they are actively hiring or just want to let FRCC students know about their business.
Easy credit culprit
Even though Colorado is one of 29 states that has raised its minimum wage above the federal level - the state's per-hour rate is indexed for inflation and rose to $7.02 on Jan. 1 while the federal rate is set to rise to $6.55 in July, then $7.25 in 2009 - it's still about half of what research suggests is a living wage, according to Ehrenreich. She calls the government's official estimate of Americans living below the poverty level -12 percent - "meaningless," with the real numbers gathered by independent researchers closer to 25 percent or 30 percent.
"What has masked this situation for the past decade has been easy credit," she said. "Credit cards and subprime lending have been our economy's substitute for decent wages, and by August of 2007, the poor couldn't keep up with the debt anymore."
That's when mortgage payments ballooned upward and defaults started to cascade into foreclosures, and why a December CNN poll showed 57 percent of Americans thought the economy was already in a recession, even though the Federal Reserve and local economists continue to debate the point.
"Their depressed consumption could result in a worldwide recession, caused by America's unique problem of the working poor," she said. "But lots of people in this country have been in a personal recession for a long, long time."
A personal recession can start early. Mary Ellen Keen, a teacher of English as a Second Language for the Poudre School District, spends part of her time at Putnam Elementary School, where 44 students are currently homeless and 80 percent of those enrolled receive free or reduced-cost lunches based on family income.
"I just read some research that said we shouldn't expect to see any improvement in schools where the percentage is over 40 percent," she said before Ehrenreich spoke. "It was like a gut-punch - they've written the kids off before they even start. That's why I came today, to hear some new ideas."
Ehrenreich's prescription for addressing the country's unsustainable economic extremes included:
- Generating jobs - whether in the private or public sector - that pay enough to live on;
- Extending unemployment benefits to allow laid-off workers more time to find a decent job;
- Increasing food-stamp allotments above the current average of $1 per meal;
- Providing universal health insurance - to which an audience member added "health care, not insurance";
- And pay for it all by ending the war in Iraq.
© 2008 Northern Colorado Business Report
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