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Getting a state job in 1986 ended a few of the common problems I'd experienced as a member of the Working Poor™️. The biggest one was finally having health insurance. Except for military doctors, I hadn't gotten health care since I was a teenager. My birth of my two children, like roughly half the kids in the US, was paid for by Medicaid. After that ran out, we were on our own. I also became eligible for paid sick and vacation leave, an absolute luxury. Few hourly jobs in my region offered such benefits, at least among those who worked in the trades. If rain or snow canceled a day's work, a day's pay was also canceled.

One thing working for the state didn't alleviate was low wages. In 1986 as a married man with two children, I barely made $15K. There's a long list of issues that come with not making much money. Not being able to save meant that any unexpected expense had the potential to become a catastrophe. For years, I owned a succession of high-mileage, low-end, thousand-dollar cars. Any attempt at taking a long trip was always a gamble. I owned cars where the windows wouldn't work and a car that burned two quarts of oil every day. I was well into my thirties before I ever bought four new tires at one time. I bought a great many used ones for $25 apiece, though.

These days, I like to look back on my decision not to have cable television during my kid's formative years as a moral choice to keep their minds from becoming polluted, but the reality is, I just could not afford it. I was more fortunate than many, since my mom had herself graduated from Working Poor™️ status into the professional ranks. An extreme generous soul, she bought lots of school clothes and shoes for my kids through the years.

Even after a miracle happened, and we were able to get a mortgage on a home, I quickly learned about the challenges that posed when my water heater died. There was no landlord to call to get it fixed. I was lucky enough to pick up a couple of timely computer-side jobs to pay for a replacement, or else we'd have all been taking cold showers for a while. I'm not too proud to admit that I even had to borrow money from my high school-aged son, who worked a fast food job until the next payday when our refrigerator died unexpectedly.

I finally escaped that cycle through longevity and promotions at work. Of course, marrying Wonder Woman who makes pretty good dough, was also a big factor. She's a CPA, and ever since we got married I've just turned my paycheck over to her, and like magic, the bills get paid, my debit card never gets rejected and the holidays aren't a ball of financial stress. It's magic, I tell you.

My personal experience informs my feelings for the people who are still members of the Working Poortm™️. I saw the teacher's assistants, custodians, and cafeteria workers from my public school paying the same amount for their family health insurance as the highest compensated administrators. I've been to plenty of restaurants in the summer where my waitress was a schoolteacher working a second job. I've had the same experience at the grocery store, watching a high school business teacher ring up my groceries. I've seen the legislature go years without raising teacher pay, cutting benefits, and taking away paid incentives for graduate degrees. All this happens because we have a state law forbidding collective bargaining for public employees.

You'll notice that I haven't even touched on the criminal refusal of the ruling class to raise the wages of our lowest paid workers at the same time they created the economic system that foisted Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg on us.

No warfare but class warfare. Workers of the world, unite.

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