The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

by Sarah Kendzior

  On November 15, thousands of people in San Francisco worked together to make an ailing child's wish come true. Miles Scott, a five-year-old boy recovering from leukemia, dreamed of becoming "Batkid". At the behest of the Make-a-Wish Foundation, a charity which grants the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses, San Franciscans staged an elaborate series of events for Scott and his family. He rode in the Batmobile, rescued a damsel in distress, and received national press coverage and a personal message from President Barack Obama.

  The public effort for Scott shows what a difference kindness and compassion can make for a family in need. But one of the reasons the Batkid outreach was so moving is that it is such a rare occurrence.

  In an era where bad luck is mistaken for bad character, the plight of those worse off tends to be ignored or portrayed as a perverse form of retribution. Poverty becomes both a crime and its own punishment, even for children. In many US schools, a child who cannot come up with lunch money is expected to go hungry. In Texas, a 12-year-old's lunch was thrown in the trash because he could not come up with 30 cents.

  The outreach for Batkid was celebrated as a triumph of the human spirit. But what it demonstrated is how much better society could be if generosity were consistently applied towards all, instead of concentrated into brief celebratory affairs.

  "Charity is no substitute for justice withheld," Saint Augustine once declared. This is painfully clear in San Francisco and its surrounding area, home to some of the highest income inequality in the country.

  "San Francisco itself is turning into a private, exclusive club," noted Anisse Gross in The New Yorker. "The city, long reputed as a haven for provocateurs and cultural innovators, has quickly transformed into a playground for the rich, where tech money sends rental prices soaring as the less fortunate tenants battle it out with the rent board."

  As journalist Alyssa Rosenberg argues, Batkid was supported by the tech community, who saw the event as a way to indulge in their own superhero fantasies. Yet the broader message of the tech community is that most children do not deserve to be saved. Silicon Valley is a region of "masters and servants", where homelessness has increased 8 percent, as salaries skyrocket. A proposal for Silicon Valley to secede and therefore deny taxpayer money to social programs benefiting low-income residents, including children, was met by many with approval.

  Charity as a substitute

  Charity, as a supplement to justice, should be applauded. But charity as a substitute for justice is neither charity nor justice. It is cruelty.

  The same week that the nation cheered a charitable effort to make one child's wish come true, the largest employer in the US held a charity drive for some of its own workers. Wal-Mart, whose six heirs to the company fortune have as much wealth as the bottom 42 percent of Americans, pays its workers salaries so low that many qualify for food stamps.

  The costs are then transferred to taxpayers. A report by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce estimated that one Wal-Mart Supercenter employing 300 workers could cost taxpayers at least $904,000 annually.

  Yet instead of raising salaries to allow employees to live above the dole, Wal-Mart encourages charity - a common panacea to social plight. Universities employing adjunct professors, who are also paid below poverty wages, have held similar food drives for their employees.

  In September, Margaret Mary Vojtko, a Duquesne University professor, who had worked at the school for 25 years, died in abject poverty with an annual salary of less than $10,000. Responding to accusations of callousness, Duquesne noted that they had offered Vojtko charity, such as an offer to fix her furnace. A Slate article promising the "real story" of Vojtko argued that she brought her troubles upon herself by refusing Duquesne's gifts while working with a growing movement of adjuncts attempting to unionize.

  In other words, Vojtko refused charity while pursuing justice. This is not a position to condemn.

  Fiscal stability that relies on gifts is not stability. It is a guarantee of insecurity: income based not on work but on whim. Capricious generosity is not a replacement for a living wage, nor is it a basis for a functioning society. Charity is no substitute for justice.

  Living on a gamble

  In rural Missouri, there is a store called Nick's Gun and Pawn. Locals can trade their weapons for household items, or vice versa. It is one of many examples of one of the most overlooked stories in the great recession: the explosion of pawn shops and payday loan outlets throughout the US. Between 2009 and 2011, the rate of Americans using high-cost nonbank credit soared to 14 percent, and included a rise in population segments once considered economically advantaged, but now unable to afford daily needs.

  Pawn shops and payday loans are the flip side of the US' turn to charity over justice. Both phenomena speak to a seemingly permanent impermanence: The replacement of a reliable salary for hard work, with high-cost gambles and unpredictable donations.

  In much of the US, possessions are not things you own. They are disaster protection, what you trade to survive. The consequences are not only material but psychological. When you are constantly gambling, the future comes to look like a bad bet.

  Journalist Gillian Tett notes that poorer Americans, living check to check, are "more likely to perceive the future as a chaotic series of short-term cycles". When people are expected to work unpaid for the promise of work, the advantage goes to those immune from the hustle: the owners over the renters, the salaried over the contingent. Attempts to ensure stability and independence for citizens - such as affordable healthcare - are decried as government "charity" while corporate charity is proffered as a substitute for a living wage.

  "We don't plan long-term because if we do, we'll just get our hearts broken," wrote Linda Walther Tirado, a blogger who described her own struggle with poverty in a much circulated essay. "It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it."

  "Taking what you can get" is also the path pursued by corporations and people who prefer cheap acts of charity to long-term investments in justice. It is a path that encourages citizens to depend on arbitrary generosity while decrying stable programs that help people through tough times. It trades in racial stereotypes, portraying the poor as lazy, violent and "undeserving" of either assistance or the benefit of the doubt.

  On November 23, East Saint Louis, an impoverished city with a high rate of gun violence, offered a trade to city residents: bring in your gun and receive a $100 gift certificate at a local grocery store. At 9 am, a long line had formed of residents with guns in hands. Within ten minutes, $10,000 of grocery store gift cards had been given away.

  Some were surprised by the outcome. They should not have been. Ours is an economy of survival. Violence is often the last resort for people out of options. When presented with options, they chose food.

  Charity, for the giver, is the trade of cash for a moral fix. As the Make-a-Wish showed, charity can be beautiful. But it is an investment in the present, not the future. If you value the future - if you value a society where people can imagine their future - work for justice.

  Originally published December 6, 2013

  The unaffordable baby boomer dream

  On February 12, President Obama declared that his administration was taking steps to address a crisis in American higher education: the sky-rocketing cost of tuition coupled with the significant unemployment rate for recent college graduates. He announced the creation of a College Scorecard that would rate schools based on "simple criteria: where you can get the most bang for your educational buck".

  Released online the next day, the College Scorecard drew criticism from education experts. Most noted that it was missing important information on employment rates and income levels for graduates of particular schools. But Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust had a different critique. After stating that the point of a college degree was not a "first job" but "a lifetime of citizenship, opportunity, growth and change", she recounted her own experience.

  She w
rote in a letter to the New York Times:

  I graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1968, and my first job was working for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. My starting salary was low, but I was inspired by the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty to regard public service as an important calling. I went on to graduate school, joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and ultimately became the president of Harvard University. Should Bryn Mawr have been judged based on what I was paid in my first year at HUD?

  Faust's is an inspiring tale - and one beyond the comprehension of most young graduates in America today. "Don't trust the boomers!" warned Paul Campos in a 2012 article on the misguided advice the elder generation peddles to their underemployed, debt-ridden progeny - including gems like "higher education is always worth the price" and "internships lead to jobs" - and Faust's rebuke proves him right.

  What is most remarkable about Faust's career is not its culmination in the Harvard presidency, but the system of accessibility and opportunity that allowed her to pursue it. Her life story is a eulogy for an America long since past.

  Unpaid labour

  Let's review what life was like for an American of Faust's generation. In 1968, when Faust graduated from Bryn Mawr, tuition and board at a four-year private university cost an average of $2,545. As the scion of a wealthy political family, it is doubtful Faust had to worry about affording tuition, but neither did most members of her generation, since the cost of attending college was relatively low. Today, Bryn Mawr costs $53,040 per year - more than the American median household income.

  In 1968, $2,545 was about the most you could expect to pay for college - most schools cost half as much, and many public universities were still free. Faust's generation graduated with little to no debt, unlike today's university graduate, who owes an average of $27,000. After graduating, Faust decided to pursue a life of public service and got a job - an actual, paying job, right out of college - with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

  The hippie movement reached its height in 1968, but it is perhaps difficult for the modern mind to comprehend the desire to "turn on, tune in and drop out" when such a novel option as post-college employment was available. Today's graduate seeking a career in government often winds up in an internship, where they work full-time for little to no pay.

  In her article, "The Age of the Permanent Intern", journalist Hannah Seligson describes Jessica, a full-time intern at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre who was paid $4.35 an hour during her 10-month tenure. Despite simultaneously shelling out $50,000 per year for a graduate degree at American University, Jessica says she felt lucky, because without internships and an MA she had no chance at an entry-level job. Seligson reflects: "Talking to her, I wonder: When did 'lucky' become working for below minimum wage for months on end?"

  Seligson is right: luck does not have much to do with it. In order to work the internship that is a requirement for entry in many fields, a young graduate requires substantial financial support as well as previous unpaid experience. "Almost none of the kids I meet in Washington these days even had boring menial high-school jobs working in a drugstore or waiting tables; they were doing 'enriching' internships or academic programs," writes pundit Megan McArdle.

  Participation in these programs and internships is often dependent on personal wealth, resulting in a system of privilege that replicates itself over generations. McArdle compares America's eroded meritocracy to imperial China, noting that "the people entering journalism, or finance, or consulting, or any other 'elite' profession, are increasingly the children of the children of those who rocketed to prosperity through the post-war education system. A window that opened is closing".

  'Currency' counts

  But for Faust's baby boomer generation, the window was open, the opportunities there. Following the paid position she took after her four years of inexpensive college, Faust went on to get a PhD. She graduated in 1975, a year when over half of history PhDs could expect to find a job in their chosen field, and immediately landed a teaching position at the same university where she studied.

  Today, only 42.6 percent of history PhDs are employed upon graduation, and few in academia. Those who find jobs in higher education often work as low-paid adjuncts - a category that was miniscule in 1975, but now makes up roughly 70 percent of American faculty. Like internships, adjunct positions are often necessary to advance professionally - but only the well-off can afford to work them without living in poverty or debt. The result is a professoriate of an increasingly uniform class background, much like the policy, finance and journalism circles McArdle describes. Mobility is but a memory. "The life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in almost any other advanced country for which there is data," writes economist Joseph E Stiglitz in an editorial aptly titled "Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth".

  To understand the repercussions of the current system, it is worth taking a look at another woman born in 1947, the same year as Faust. A few weeks ago, a meme began circulating on Facebook: "Hillary Clinton wrote to NASA as a child inquiring how to be an astronaut," it said. "NASA replied that girls could not be astronauts. So she became Secretary of State."

  The meme served as a reminder that opportunities in the 1960s were far more limited for minorities and women than now - a point Faust, Harvard's first female president, has noted. It also meant to serve as inspiration for those told their dreams are denied. But while barriers based on race and gender have eased - to a degree, with still a long way to go - economic strictures have tightened, denying the dreams of a new generation.

  One can argue that today the path to becoming an astronaut - one of the most notoriously difficult professions to enter - is more meritocratic for an individual of Clinton's middle-class background than the path to jobs in policy and other fields relying on upfront costs and nepotistic connections. Astronauts do not labor unpaid for years; the children of astronauts do not automatically become astronauts.

  This is not to say that hard-working elites do not deserve their success, but that the greatest barrier to entry in many professions is financial, not intellectual. The ambition, hard work and idealism of women like the young Hillary Clinton have no currency in today's system, because only one type of currency - hard currency - counts.

  One wonders how many future politicians, journalists, academics and leaders we are losing because they never have the chance to try. How many people from Hillary Clinton's middle-class background - or, for that matter, from Bill Clinton's rural poverty - can afford to tread the path of debt and unpaid labor required to succeed?

  The "lifetime of citizenship, opportunity, growth and change" Drew Gilpin Faust extolled is something most Americans desire. But it is affordable only for a select few: the baby boomers who can buy their children opportunities as the system they created screws the rest.

  --Originally published February 26, 2013

  The millennial parent

  I have a friend who was the first in his family to go to college. He grew up poor in the rural Midwest and earned his BA from a top school in the region. But when the recession hit in the early 2000s, he could not find a job. He decided he needed more training and applied to graduate school. When Harvard accepted him, he was thrilled. Within one generation, his family's highest level of education went from a high school diploma to an Ivy League degree.

  A Harvard education was supposed to provide opportunity. But with the degree came debt. Now in his early 30s with children of his own, my friend's social mobility has stalled. He wants his sons to have the same quality of education he did, and the professional advantages that came with it. But he does not see how this is possible. When his sons are old enough for college, he will still be paying back his own student loans. With wages stagnant and tuition fees well outpacing inflation, there is little chance he will be able to afford their education. His children will be back where he started. Mobility was a mirage.


  "It kind of sickens me to think I might have to say to my kids, 'Hey, I went to Harvard but you can't'," he said. "The whole thing is turned inside out. People imagine that you are supposed to build legacies around things like that, and instead they can't go there because I did." My friend is part of the so-called millennial generation: young adults born roughly between the late 1970s and the late 1990s. While the start and end dates of the millennial generation are up for debate - and the idea of inherent generational traits is dubious - people of this age group share an important quality. They have no adult experience in a functional economy.

  Millennials are a favorite target of the media, who portray their economic plight as a character flaw. In a recent cover story, "The Me Me Me Generation", TIME declared millennials "lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents". While generational trolling spares no cohort, there was something particularly callous about TIME's depiction of young adults facing the worst economy since the Great Depression.

  "Have you seen your intern on Rich Kids of Instagram?" Atlantic's Elspeth Reeve writes, noting that the TIME portrayal seems modelled on privileged interns able to work for free. "If so, he or she is probably not the best guide to crafting the composite personality of a generation that fought three wars for you."

  "Adults still living with their parents" is the classic millennial trope. What is forgotten is how many millennials are parents themselves. As of 2010, 34 percent of US residents aged 18-29 had children, according to one poll. Fewer than one-third of people in this age group have a full-time job. They have minimal savings and the highest student loan debt in recorded history. Most cannot afford cars, homes, health insurance or other material goods once considered basic elements of life in the US. A generation that can barely stand on its feet is in charge of another generation's welfare.

  Lack of options

  Being a responsible parent means planning for the future. But when many millennial parents look into the future, they see a void. Financial journalist Gillian Tett notes how economic polarization creates different cognitive maps. "If you were to ask wealthy Americans to visualize the future, they might well describe it as a carefully calibrated road along which they expect to travel," she writes. "But if you ask poorer Americans, who are scrambling from pay cheque to pay cheque, they are more likely to perceive the future as a chaotic series of short-term cycles."