Answering A Basic Question About Costs Vs Earnings

Someone recently asked "how can someone be both hard working and unable to afford the basics?" Here's my answer:

Short version: working hard is not correlated with higher pay, and "basics" cost a lot more than most people realize unless they're handling their budget very actively.

Simply put, there is no objective correlation between the effort needed to complete a job and its monetary value, and thus there is no objective correlation between the effort needed to complete a job and the pay received for completing it.

As a good example: An E-1 in the US Army currently receives approximately $2,319 per month. The job requires being available at all times outside of those specifically allowed by orders and/or memorandum. You don't get guaranteed holidays, you don't really get to choose where you live, you even have sacrificed most of your Constitutional rights in return for what rights are granted under UCMJ. For that pay, you can be required to literally die, not to mention having to maintain military standards of physical fitness, psychological health, appearance, equipment, etc. Most people in the US can agree that it is a very, very difficult job, and that anyone successfully completing it day in and day out for the minimum three years that they're contracted for (four is more common, but some are only for three) can be considered "hard working," but even if you pretend that they're only working for 8 hours a day, it's only about $9.66/hour.

In the private sector, their position would be an entry level security contractor, which starts at $15/hour currently, and generally has set hours, employment protections, and the worst that happens to you if you don't show up to work is that you get fired. I've done both jobs, working private security and as lower enlisted in the Army, specifically 11B (Infantry). I didn't even see the hardest parts of the job in the Army, as I never deployed, and most of my career was in the National Guard, which means I only worked it for a weekend out of the month. I've only had maybe two jobs in my life harder than my service as an infantryman, and both actually paid even less than $9.66/hour. Working entry-level private security is way, way easier, but I made more money doing it, and I wasn't even armed security.

That's the reality of our economy. There's no correlation between being a hard worker and getting paid well. The best paid people in the world at the moment spend more time on social media during work hours than they do performing any measurable labor. And the worst paid people tend to be working 60+ hour weeks between multiple jobs, and they're never easy jobs, or else their higher paid superiors would be doing them. Even it you pretend that food service and customer service jobs are easy, of the top twenty hardest jobs according to a survey done in May of this year, only five break six figures on as an average salary, with those being doctor, lawyer, astronaut, pilot, and air traffic controller, all but one being fairly prestigious careers that tend not to be available to children of the working poor and the last only barely being above $100,000/year on average.

Now, there's the other part to your question; affording basics. The average rent for the USA according to a report by Zillow is $2,000 per month. The average cost of groceries for one person without notable dietary restrictions or requirements beyond the norm is right around $400, little less if you're female, little more if you're male. If you're not working full time at a single job (working full time at one job is required for benefits in most companies, and full times jobs have been replaced by part time positions for years, so most working poor have multiple part time positions), your health insurance costs an average of just over $450 per month. According to JD power, the average cellphone bill is $141/month, but that seems high, so let's call it $100. According to Yahoo Finance, the average American spends a little over $1000/month on transportation, but I think that takes into account people traveling long distances readily, so let's just go with about $50 for a bus pass. So, for a single person, no kids, no mooching roommates, no disabled people they need to take care of, no special dietary needs, and minimal transportation needs, we're at $3000/month. For someone working a single full time job, they'd need to be making $18.75 per hour to just cover that. No gas, no car maintenance, no entertainment, no clothes budget, no repair or replacing of furniture, etc. Just the most basic things possible. Even working 60 hours a week, you need $12.50 per hour, and still are lacking access to those other things. And again, that's for one able-bodied standard person, not for parents who have to cover their kids' needs, not for adults who have to help their own parents, not people with disabilities, etc. For every other person involved, the costs can go up exponentially.

So, that's how you can be a hard worker and still not have enough for basics.

God bless if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise great day.

Kindness, Suffering, And Becoming A Kind Person

 Kindness should be born of kindness. Being kind, showing care, compassion, love, should produce more of the same. And I'm sure it does to some extent.

Anyone can do kind things. I can't think of anyone that hasn't done at least one kind thing in their lifetime. But to be kind, to take the concept into yourself and choose to make it a part of who you are, that's different. I seek to be kind, and if my loved ones are to be believed, I am a kind person.

Kindness should be born of kindness, but kind people are born of cruelty, suffering, pain, anguish, depression, anxiety, stress, and pretty much every other bad thing. Some of us caused those horrible things in our past, I know I did. I was a hateful person; I caused cruelty, suffering, pain, and anguish. But that did not make me kind, it rarely does.

What made me kind was a combination of experiencing those things, and watching others experience them alongside me. I can think of a few very low points in my life, and each one was marked first with pain and suffering, but then with kindness.

I remember, after making a lot of bad decisions, I was working a low-wage job just trying to get by, living on my own for the first time, and I didn't budget well, neither my money nor my time. I went to work one day with no lunch, and no money to buy one. It was an 8 hour shift, I could have been just fine, but that wasn't good enough for my coworker. He handed me what cash he had, and took over while I went to buy myself lunch, just a couple burgers from a nearby gas station. After that, I understood that being hungry wasn't a moral failing, and that being kind to the hungry was not enabling them like I'd been taught in school.

I remember during US Army Infantry OSUT, a lot of low points. Two specifically come to mind. One day, I couldn't process conflicting orders, and part of that was because one set of orders came from NCOs with actual authority, and the other set came from the small group of bullies in my platoon that decided they could just force other people to do what they wanted, and my brain couldn't parse the difference between authority and power. So it broke. I had never experienced a panic or anxiety attack up to that point, but I had read about them, and realized, to some extent, that that's what I was experiencing. And I knew that I should just focus on one task at a time, to try to reorder my mind.

The task I chose to focus on was changing my footwear. We were allowed to change out of our boots into our running shoes in the evenings, so that's what I decided to do. But I could also tell I was about to cry, and if there's one thing you don't want to do where bullies can see you, it's cry. So I planned to go into the latrine and just sit on one of the toilets in a stall, change my shoes there, so no one could see me. So I get up, and go around towards the latrine. All the stalls were filled, so I just went into the supply closet and locked the door.

What my fellow trainees saw was someone who was clearly not mentally well in the moment, one of their own, taking shoe laces to an enclosed space and locking himself in there. They panicked. They began pounding on the door, and I had no idea why. Eventually, I could tell the voice of one of them, one that had been kind to me, and let him in. I was completely broken at that moment, the pounding on the door broke my concentration on the task, and I couldn't control my emotions. I was bawling. He sat with me, peeked out to tell the other guys he had it under control and to quiet down, and stayed with me until I could process things again.

The other low point from OSUT was during my final physical fitness test. I hate running, always have. Running two miles sucked ass. And I failed the two mile run over and over up until then, and this was my last chance. If I failed this test, I was going to be removed from service. About a quarter mile from the finish, a red pickup truck had been parked, and it pulled out and drove beside me. My Senior Drill Sergeant, driving his own truck, began shouting at me that I could do this, that I worked too hard to give up, and that gave me just enough motivation to sprint the last hundred yards or so. I passed with mere seconds to spare. That may not sound like kindness to you, but it was to me.

And I can remember low points when no one was there to be kind, or maybe someone was there but they weren't kind. I remember the time a group of people I had considered friends referred to loving me as an obligation, and laughed. Either no one saw my pain, or no one who did cared. I remember both being the bullied kid no one acknowledged, and being one of the people who saw the bullied kid and chose not to acknowledge them. I remember seeking help in school because another student had threatened my life repeatedly, only to be told that I needed to just ignore him.

Eventually, when you see enough cruelty and suffering, you have to make a choice. You can choose to see it and do nothing; I think that's what most people do. I know that's what I did for a good while. You can choose to just not see it, to choose ignorance; I'm pretty sure I did that too, I might still do it. Or you can choose to see it and decide that, as long as you can change it, no one will have to face cruelty and suffering with no one there to show them kindness; if you choose that, your life will definitely get worse. You will see more and more suffering as time goes on, and eventually will be faced with situations where "as long as you can change it" becomes a lot more of a problem than you might think. But there will be times when you can change it; there will be times where your kindness can change a life. And if that only happens once, even with all the extra suffering you will see and endure, maybe that's still worth it.

I used to wonder what I wanted my life to be after I'm gone, what kind of legacy I would want to leave. I already know that I won't be remembered for long; that's not sad to me, that's just the reality of not being famous. Most people are remembered for a few generations max. I don't want a permanent reminder of my existence, no headstone, no memorial plaque in a park somewhere, nothing like that. I'll be gone, if you want a place to go to talk to me, plant a tree; it'll probably last longer than the memory of me.

But what do I really want to leave behind? I want the world to be better for having had me in it, as opposed to not having me at all. I have a lot to make up for; those years of hate spread toxicity in the world that I can never truly clean up, but maybe I can do more good than the bad I did. And in my estimation, even small acts of love, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, etc. make the world better. So I seek to be kind, in all that I do. I fail a lot, but I fail less now than I used to, and given enough time, I might actually become the kind person my loved ones tell me I am. Maybe.

God Bless if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise great day.