What is Sylvia going to do?

Posted at 5:47 PM on February 13, 2009 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

I drove up -- and back -- to Moorhead today, which gave me plenty of time to listen to Minnesota Public Radio along the way. In between, I heard details of an estimated 14-percent budget cut at the University of Minnesota Morris. It's amazing, really, how every moment of my day these days is somehow consumed with the economy. I find it difficult to end the day with the same hope with which I start it. How about you?

Some excerpts from MPR's broadcast day are worth considering:

KEEP HOPE ALIVE

The first is the Midday rebroadcast of the Commonwealth Club speech by journalist and former Clinton administration adviser Matt Miller. He discussed his new book "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity."

What got me yelling back at the radio was his claim that we have overemphasized -- or at least overvalued -- the power of the individual to change his or her life; that the "you can grow up to be whatever you want to be if you work hard enough" mantra is dead or dying.

I come from New England with an overdose of the Protestant work ethic so it's virtually impossible for me -- DNA wise -- to accept the premise, although I find it an intriguing one worthy of discussion.

But it requires the dissolution of hope and I, personally, can't let that be an early casualty of this economy. I'm not talking about the black, former drug-using, kid who grows up to be president, I'm talking about the people I've met on the News Cut on Campus tour. To accept Miller's premise is to say the very heart of those kids' endeavors -- and there's a lot of heart involved -- is a charade.

WHAT HOPE?

And that idea lasted me from Pelican Rapids to Maple Grove, and then I heard the story of Silvia Martinez on All Things Considered. I tried to get at the emotional toll of the economy earlier this week in this post. And Brandt Williams gave it a similar go.

But nothing that's been said about the economy for the last year anywhere put a human face on the desperation like her story did. She loved her job. She was the sole provider for her family, and she got laid off. She was too ashamed to tell her children. She not only feels unemployed; she feels worthless.

"I would start thinking about it and my heart would start racing and I would start sweating and [having] chest pains," she says. "And, of course, at that point I would try to hide, because I didn't want my children to know what was going on with me. So I would go to the bathroom and just stay in there. Just go through it in the bathroom."

In the three months since she was let go, this sense of panic and fear has not improved.

"I apply for jobs and apply for jobs and no one calls. Nobody. I've even gone as far as applying at fast-food places; I've applied at Wal-Mart, at Kmart, at Target," she says.

Be sure you listen to the audio.

I thought to myself, "someone with a job will hear this story and offer her a job," but I quickly realized those days are probably gone, too.

During the drive out, I listened to two state senators talk about transportation and the best way to jumpstart the economy. They disagreed on most things. Lots of talk about numbers and each uttered the usual talking points of their party, but they never really talked about what it's like for people who don't have a guaranteed job through at least November 2010.

On the drive back, I heard the House approved a stimulus bill and heard our local delegation arguing about whether it was too much.

But there's something I didn't hear from any of the politicians: What is Sylvia -- and no doubt, the tens of thousands just like her -- going to do? Where is she going to live? How is she going to take care of her children? Now that her kids can't go to community college, how are they better off?

I don't have an answer, either. But after listening to her story "just work harder" seems insulting.

What would you do?

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Comments (8)

Gee Bob, now you know what my life is like! I listen to MPR day in and day out! Welcome to the world of MPR listeners!!!! Not to mention, most of us are also contributors. Ok, now I feel like an enabler.

Posted by Bonnie | February 13, 2009 10:07 PM

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Hope is all well and good, and so is whistling in the dark. But they don't change the fact that a lot of what goes on life is beyond our control. To paraphrase Buddha, "Life is uncertain."

Matt Miller is right on, but what he calls dead ideas I call Big Lies (or, if that's too harsh, try Goofy Notions). The idea that anyone can be whatever they want to be -- which implies that we have, or can somehow acquire, total control over life's myriad vicissitudes -- is clearly one of these.

Posted by Bob | February 14, 2009 10:58 AM

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The one "dead idea" that he wouldn't concede, however, was this one: Our children will have better lives than us.

I find that relatively inconsistent with the rest of the speech and seemed to be because he didn't want to tell that to his kids, which of course destroys the scholarly nature of his presentation.

By the way, there is a significant inconsistency in some of the opposition to the stimulus bill (and for the record, I'm not saying it's valid or invalid, only that the underlying philosophy is inconsistent). I heard Sen. Ortmann (and others) say the stimulus package is too big and would burden "our children" with the pricetag.

But that brings me back to Sylvia and also the students who can't go to college or are burdened with tens of thousands of student loans as the governor and others make higher ed students targets of budget cuts.

Presumably the logic holds up under questioning but one of the problems is there's no questioning... or at least not THIS question: Which is a bigger burden on our kids -- the cost of the stimulus or the lack of an education that would provide them the means to pay it?

Posted by Bob Collins | February 14, 2009 11:06 AM

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I'm clicked through on the link to the story about the suicide hotlines, and I'm struck that for many, like Sylvia, the job loss is not just an economic crisis, but a source of misplaced shame. Objectively speaking, there is no shame in being laid off in an economic crisis; she didn't lose her job because she did it badly. But her emotional response, and that of many, is conditioned by the rhetoric that says that if you don't have a job, it's YOUR fault, that there is something wrong with YOU. After years of this blame-the-poor rhetoric, it's no wonder that so many people turn their fear and anger inward instead of making common cause with others in their situation to seek change.
While ideas of hard work and individual responsibility are not to be thrown out, the myths that the only reason people are poor is because they are lazy, etc, have been very effective at getting people to scapegoat those in need rather than turn their empathy into political action.
During the presidential campaign, all we heard was "the middle class"--who talk about the poor? now the middle class is imploding as the U.S. experiences the same kind of "structural adjustment" that has already happened in Latin America and other parts of the world.
who is winning at capitalism these days?

Posted by Joanna | February 14, 2009 11:10 AM

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I stumbled upon this site, in an attempt to find a way to frame things for myself and for assistance in engaging others. I'm going to spend some time with it.
http://www.governmentisgood.com/index.php

Posted by Bonnie | February 14, 2009 5:58 PM

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I would like the government take $85 B and devide to all of the public 18yrs. and over, about 200M people. This would give each person about$425 thousnad dollars. They could set a special 30%, flat tax, on everyone, about $25.5 B dollars. This would leave everyone about $295 thousand dollars. With this money the pay down on their homes,credit cards cars, school loans, food on the table, put some aside for the future. This would help keep the ecconimy going. The banks would be getting the payments on loans,cards,homes. People would be able to shop, less but still shop, keeping stores and factories open. This might also help people get their jobs back. This is alot of money, but just a drop in the bucket of money being given out by the govenment.

Posted by Donna Meredith | February 15, 2009 12:19 AM

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Check my math, but I get $425 if you take 85 billion and divide it 200 million ways.

85,000,000,000 / 200,000,000

I have seen a national columnist float the notion that the entire bailout package would give each man, woman, and child a ridiculous sum of money. But I believe she did the math incorrectly. It's closer to something like $5-6 thousand, I believe.

Somewhat related: Last year, my wife and I got something like $1,300 back for a stimulus. You know what we did with it? We paid (part of) our $1,500 federal income tax bill that was due April 15 (our youngest son had gone off and become his own dependent).

Posted by Bob Collins | February 15, 2009 8:30 AM

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Thanks Bob. It is nice to see that people that have historically held on to the belief of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" and "you can be anything you want to be if you work hard," are softening a bit. Many people in our community have never had a boot or a strap. Others work really hard for $5/hour - you can't buy a good pair of boots, can't make a living or be anything you want at that wage - especially if you are supporting a family.

Posted by Sandra | February 15, 2009 9:38 AM

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