Forget the American Dream – millions of working Americans still can’t afford food and rent
AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee
Jeffrey Kucik, University of Arizona and Don Leonard, The Ohio State University
The Biden administration is likely celebrating a better-than-expected jobs report, which showed surging employment and wages. However, for millions of working Americans, being employed doesn’t guarantee a living income.
As scholars interested in the well-being of workers, we believe that the economy runs better when people aren’t forced to choose between paying rent, buying food or getting medicine. Yet too many are compelled to do just that.
Determining just how many workers struggle to make ends meet is a complicated task. A worker’s minimum survival budget can vary considerably based on where the person lives and how many people are in the family.
Take Rochester, New York. It has a cost of living that’s closest to the national average across 509 U.S. metropolitan areas, according to the City Cost of Living Index compiled by the research firm AdvisorSmith.
MIT’s living wage calculator shows that a single adult living in Rochester needs at least US$30,000 a year to cover the cost of housing, food, transportation and other basic needs.
But in San Francisco, which AdvisorSmith data indicate is the U.S. city with the highest cost of living, affording just the basics costs $47,587, mainly due to significantly higher taxes and rents.
The city with the lowest cost of living is Beckley, West Virginia. Even there, a childless worker still needs to earn about $28,200 to make essential ends meet. Again, the average American city has a cost of living of around $30,000 a year for a single person.
Of course, costs add up quickly for households with more than one person. Two adults in Rochester need over $48,000 a year, while a single parent with one child needs more than $63,000. In San Francisco, a single parent would need to earn $101,000 a year just to scrape by.
So that’s what it takes to survive in today’s America. About $30,000 a year for a single person without dependents in the average city – a little less in some cities, and much, much more for families and anyone who lives in a major city like San Francisco or New York.
But we estimate that at least 27 million U.S. workers don’t earn enough to hit that very low threshold of $30,000, based on the latest occupation wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a government agency, from May 2020. We believe this is a conservative estimate and that the number of people with jobs who earn less than what’s necessary to afford the necessities of life is likely much higher.
Low-income occupations encompass a wide range of jobs, from bus drivers to cleaners to administrative assistants. However, the majority of those 27 million workers are concentrated in two industries: retail trade and leisure and hospitality. These two industries are among America’s largest employers and pay the lowest average wages.
For example, the median salary for cashiers was $28,850 in early 2020, with 2.5 million of the nation’s 5 million cashiers earning less than that. Or take retail sales. There, 75% of workers – about 1.8 million – were earning less than $27,080 a year.
It’s the same story for leisure and hospitality, the industry that took the hardest hit from the COVID-19 pandemic, hemorrhaging 6 million jobs in April 2020 as much of the U.S. economy shut down. At the time, close to a million waiters and waitresses were earning less than the median income of $23,740.
Of course, millions of those jobs have returned, and wages have been surging this year – though only slightly more than inflation. But that doesn’t change the basic math that roughly 1 in 6 workers is making less than what’s necessary for an adult with no kids to survive.
That’s why it’s hardly surprising that 40% of U.S. households reported in 2018 that they couldn’t afford an emergency $400 expense.
To us, these figures should cause policymakers to redefine who counts among the “working poor.” A 2021 Bureau of Labor Statistics report estimated that in 2019 about 6.3 million workers earned less than the poverty rate.
But this situation drastically understates the scope of the working poor because the federal poverty line is unrealistically low – only $12,880 for an individual. The official poverty line was created to determine eligibility for Medicaid and other government benefits that support low-income people, not to indicate how much a person needs to actually get by.
Writer James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “The American Dream” in 1931 to describe a society in which he hoped anyone could attain the “fullest stature of which they are innately capable.” That depended on having a good job that paid a living wage.
Unfortunately, for many millions of hard-working Americans, the “better and richer and fuller” life Adams wrote about remains just a dream.
[Like what you’ve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter.]Jeffrey Kucik, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona and Don Leonard, Assistant Professor of Practice in City and Regional Planning, The Ohio State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The disturbing history of how conservatorships were used to exploit, swindle Native Americans
The Osage Nation were once among the wealthiest people in the world.
FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Andrea Seielstad, University of Dayton
Pop singer Britney Spears’ quest to end the conservatorship that handed control over her finances and health care to her father demonstrates the double-edged sword of putting people under the legal care and control of another person.
A judge may at times deem it necessary to appoint a guardian or conservator to protect a vulnerable person from abuse and trickery by others, or to protect them from poor decision-making regarding their own health and safety. But when put into the hands of self-serving or otherwise unscrupulous conservators, however, it can lead to exploitation and abuse.
Celebrities like Spears may be particularly susceptible to exploitation due to their capacity for generating wealth, but they are far from the only people at risk. As a lawyer with decades of experience representing poor and marginalized people and a scholar of tribal and federal Indian law, I can attest to the way systemic inequalities within local legal practices may exacerbate these potentially exploitative situations, especially with respect to women and people of color.
Perhaps nowhere has the impact been so grave than with respect to Native Americans, who were put into a status of guardianship due to a system of federal and local policies developed in the early 1900s purportedly aimed at protecting Native Americans receiving allotted land from the government. Members of the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma – Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations – were particularly impacted by these practices due to the discovery of oil and gas under their lands.
Swindled by ‘friendly white lawyers’
A conservatorship, or a related designation called a guardianship, takes away decision-making autonomy from a person, called a “ward.” Although the conservator is supposed to act in the interest of the ward, the system can be open to exploitation especially when vast sums of money are involved.
This was the case between 1908 and 1934, when guardianships became a vehicle for the swindling of Native communities out of their lands and royalties.
By that time, federal policy had forced the removal of the Five Civilized Tribes from eastern and southern locations in the United States to what is presently Oklahoma. Subsequent federal policy converted large tracts of tribally held land into individual allotments that could be transferred or sold without federal oversight – a move that fractured communal land. Land deemed to be “surplus to Indian needs” was sold off to white settlers or businesses, and Native allotment holders could likewise sell their plots after a 25-year trust period ended or otherwise have them taken through tax assessments and other administrative actions. Through this process Indian land holdings diminished from “138 million acres in 1887 to 48 million acres by 1934 when allotment ended,” according to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation.
During the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation and of the Five Civilized Tribes were deemed to be among the richest people per capita in the world due to the discovery of oil and gas underneath their lands.
However, this discovery turned them into the victims of predatory schemes that left many penniless or even dead.
Reflecting on this period in the 1973 book “One Hundred Million Acres,” Kirke Kickingbird, a lawyer and member of the Kiowa Tribe, and former Bureau of Indian Affairs special assistant Karen Ducheneaux wrote that members of the Osage Nation “began to disappear mysteriously.” On death, their estates were left “not to their families, but to their friendly white lawyers, who gathered to usher them into the Happy Hunting Ground,” Kickingbird and Ducheneaux added.
Lawyers and conservators stole lands and funds before death as well, by getting themselves appointed as guardians and conservators with full authority to spend their wards’ money or lease and sell their land.
Congress created the initial conditions for this widespread graft and abuse through the Act of May 27, 1908. That Act transferred jurisdiction over land, persons and property of Indian “minors and incompetents” from the Interior Department, to local county probate courts in Oklahoma. Related legislation also enabled the the Interior Department to put land in or out of trust protection based on its assessment of the competency of Native American allottees and their heirs.
Unfettered by federal supervisory authority, local probate courts and attorneys seized the opportunity to use guardianships to steal Native Americans estates and lands. As described in 1924 by Zitkála-Šá, a prominent Native American activist commissioned by the Secretary of Interior to study the issue, “When oil is ‘struck’ on an Indian’s property, it is usually considered prima facie evidence that he is incompetent, and in the appointment of a guardian for him, his wishes in the matter are rarely considered.”
Activist and writer Zitkála-Šá.
Wikimedia Commons
The county courts generally declared Native Americans incompetent to handle more than a very limited sum of money without any finding of mental incapacity. Zitkála-Šá’s report and Congressional testimony documented numerous examples of abuse. Breaches of trust were documented in which attorneys or others appointed conservators took money or lands from Nation members for their own businesses, personal expenses or investments. Others schemed with friends and business associates to deprive “wards.”
‘Plums to be distributed’
One such woman in Zitkála-Šá’s report was Munnie Bear, a “young, shrewd full-blood Creek woman … [who] ran a farm which she inherited from her aunt, her own allotment being leased.” Munnie saved enough money to buy a Ford truck and livestock for her farm, with savings remaining in a bank account. Once oil was discovered, however, the court appointed a guardian, who appointed a co-guardian and retained a lawyer, each of whom deducted monthly fees that depleted Bear’s funds. During the period of her guardianship, she was unable to spend any money or make any decisions about her farm or livestock, nor did she control her bank investment.
Zitkála-Šá’s report displays the extent of this practice:
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Wards were often kept below subsistence levels by their conservators while their funds and lands were depleted by the charging of excessive guardian and attorneys’ fees and administrative costs, along with actual abuse through graft, negligence and deception.
Reports like that of Zitkála-Šá’s resulted in Congress enacting the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. This put the Indian land that had not fallen into non-Indian hands during the federal policy of allotting plots back into tribal ownership and secured it in the trust of the United States. It also ended the potential for theft through guardianship.
But the lands and funds lost as a result of guardianships were not restored nor did descendants of those swindled ever enjoy the benefit of their relatives’ lands and monies either.
Andrea Seielstad, Professor of Law, University of Dayton
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Forget the American Dream – millions of working Americans still can’t afford food and rent
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Chain Burger Restaurants Ranked From Worst To Best
Chain Burger Restaurants Ranked From Worst To Best
Chain Burger Restaurants Ranked From Worst To Best. While hamburgers might have been invented in Germany, America has mastered the burger. Along with a bevy of spectacular burgers from coast to coast, there are burger-shaped debacles you’d be wise to dodge. Here’s our ranking of chain burger restaurants in order, starting with the absolute worst. A trip to Sonic Drive-In is not a waste of time. They have many yummy items on their menu, from their iconic Cherry Limeade to their fantastic hot dogs. Other great choices include their onion rings and their spicy yet delectable Ched ‘R’ Peppers. However, if you’re headed to Sonic for a burger, you will have a bad time. Sonic’s burgers are so bland and so forgettable that you will be completely underwhelmed. By the final bite of your burger, you will be angry that you spent your hard-earned dough on something that wasn’t any tastier than the mass-produced burger found at the closest elementary school. If you’re visiting Sonic, stick to their famous slushes, their scrumptious ice cream, or simple snack food like the aforementioned hot dogs and onion rings. If you’re serious about acquiring a top-of-the-line burger, Sonic is clearly not the place to go. If you visited Fuddruckers as a child, you likely have extremely fond memories. Remember submerging your burger with so much liquid cheese from their cheese pump that your mom got embarrassed? Remember all the games, all the televisions, and the comfortable atmosphere that so enthralled you when you were young? Yeah, those were some fun times. Keep watching the video to see all the chain burger restaurants ranked from worst to best. #BurgerChains #FastFood #FastFoodRanked
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Sonic Drive-In | 0:00
Fuddruckers | 1:07
Dairy Queen | 1:54
White Castle | 2:24
A&W | 3:04
McDonald’s | 3:53
Rally’s/Checkers | 4:54
Johnny Rockets | 5:38
Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s | 6:33
Jack in the Box | 7:10
Red Robin | 7:59
Burger King | 8:58
Fatburger | 9:43
Steak ‘n Shake | 10:30
BurgerFi | 11:20
Smashburger | 12:07
Wendy’s | 12:50
Shake Shack | 13:33
Whataburger | 14:27
Five Guys | 15:13
In-N-Out Burger | 16:01
Culver’s | 16:45
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Forget the American Dream – millions of working Americans still can’t afford food and rent
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