If I were a zygote

Hungry after my shift at the grocery store today, I picked up a hot fish sandwich from the deli for $1.99 then agonized over whether to purchase a cold Coke for an additional $1.79. The Coke wasn't strictly necessary; I could drink water just as easily. But there's just something about a Coke to wash down a fish sandwich.

Since it was for my supper, I splurged. 

It was a perfect symbol, I thought, for what my life has become: Painful decisions about trivial matters brought on because I work part time making minimum wage. There isn't a dollar to waste. There is no comfort zone, no savings to fall back should an emergency arise. 

Even if I had a full time job, I would not have enough income to afford my own place to stay, which means I must continue to rely on the kindness of my brother and his family, who allow me to stay in their spare bedroom. If not for them, I would be living in my car or on the street.

I am going to give up liability insurance for my car, even though it's mandatory. I've been driving for more than thirty years and have never had an accident. I will have to take my chances because I can't afford to continue to throw away money on insurance I never use.

Despite a medical condition, I no longer take needed medications because I can't afford them. I'm just asking for trouble, I know, but what to do?

I will soon have to turn my phone off because it's hard to justify spending $100 a month just to have a cell phone. The only reason I have kept my phone is because it allows me to connect to the Internet although my Internet service is very limited and not very good.

Needless to say I don't have cable TV or any of the other bells and whistles of modern American life.  

I buy the Sunday newspaper religiously and immediately turn to the classified section, which consists of two, perhaps three pages. While there's a lot of demand for truck drivers, there are few help-wanted ads for anything else. There are never ads for writer/media types like me, or anything even remotely suitable for my qualifications.

The online job boards are more promising, but most of the companies currently hiring are the big box stores like Dollar General and Lowe's, companies looking for cashiers and customer service clerks at minimum wage.  Almost all are part time, no benefits to speak of.

Complicating matters is the fact that I'm an older worker. Jobs are scarce for older workers. Another complication: I don't go to one of the big churches. I've been told several times that unless you go to one of the big churches, you won't get a decent job because you have to be connected with a church family. Whether that's true or not, I can't say, though I suspect it is. Even if I showed up religiously at the First Baptist Church in downtown Tupelo, what are they going to make of a gay man? That's another problem all by itself. They'd just as soon see me swinging from a magnolia tree.

It's a bleak picture. It's hard to see what sort of future -- if any -- waits for me. 

People have asked me why I don't simply move somewhere else. The answer: I don't have money to relocate somewhere else. At the moment I've got $52 in my bank account. How far is that going to get me? 

I try to be optimistic, but it's hard, and each day it gets harder. I find myself with feelings of increasing desperation. I sometimes think about putting an end to it. I sometimes feel overwhelmed with helplessness and despair. It's embarrassing to not have money enough to pay your bills, to make your own way in the world. It's demeaning, dehumanizing. 

I find it hard to fathom that almost half of all Americans are either at poverty level, where I am, or damn close to it. For three decades our economic policies have favored the wealthy elites, the huge corporations, Wall Street, bankers, stockbrokers, the Mitt Romney types. We were told the wealth would "trickle down." It hasn't. Instead, the middle class has been gutted and millions have been thrown into poverty. 

I'm just one of those millions, one of those hapless statistics, in the wrong place at the wrong time, just one more person for whom the American Dream was only a dream and never anything more.

Poverty is man-made, the natural result of decisions and choices that we, as a society, make. Poverty is the outcome of the economic policies put into place at the state and national levels. Poverty persists because we allow it to do so. As a society, we have decided that we have endless billions to throw away in subsidies for the oil industry, or for war, or for never ending tax relief for the wealthy, but there is no money to help the working poor. 

And so there I was, when my shift ended, agonizing over whether to purchase a Coke for a meager supper. That's what my life has been reduced to. 

I write about it knowing full well there is nothing anyone can do about it, and knowing, too, that others are in far worse shape. 

We are all caught up in America's particularly harsh form of hyper-capitalism of profits at any price, and profits over people. Always profits over people. 

What saddens me is that so many Americans don't realize there are alternatives. Far easier to dismiss me as just one more taker on food stamps than to admit there's something seriously wrong with the way we do business and the way we treat our own.

If I were a zygote, or a corporation, I'd have scads of people passionately caring about my well being. But I'm not a zygote or a corporation, so I'm on my own, as though modern life is nothing more than some half-assed replay of the Wild Wild West. 

The new nameless, faceless me

At work today, as a never-ending stream of groceries flowed over the conveyor belt and through my scanner, and onto another conveyor belt to be ferried down to the bagger, I realized that I am literally a cog in a giant, impersonal, uncaring machine.

I always knew that, of course. Knew it intellectually. Knew it theoretically. But today, at work, I suddenly knew it in my gut, in my bones, in my feelings, in my heart. 

I am nothing but a cog in a machine, of no more importance than a bolt in an engine, a staple in a stapler, a piece of carpet in a giant condo. Nameless, faceless, impersonal, I am easily substitutable,  easily replaced, no more important in the grand scheme of things than a shopping cart or a roll of paper towels. 

As the groceries poured down the conveyor belt, it occurred to me that they were the end product of many other conveyor belts in all the many factories and distributions and warehouses they have traveled to get to my line. How many nameless, faceless hands had touched these products, had manufactured them, had labored over them in silence? How many miles had they traveled to wind up in Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of Elvis? 

Perhaps words aren't enough to explain the horror I felt. As a writer and journalist, I had been safe from this nameless, faceless world of the poorly paid worker. As the editor of a newspaper, I was not easily replaceable at a moment's notice. As the author of murder mystery novels, I was used to having a sense of identity and purpose and meaning. 

Now, in my old age, I am reduced to running your purchases through a scanner and telling you how much money you owe the nameless, faceless corporation that I represent.

A great weight despair and helplessness has settled over me. I fight it, of course. As an American, I was always taught -- and I always believed -- that if you were willing to work hard, you would get ahead. Now I see that's not always true. Now I see that so many people work very hard indeed, and barely tread water. They certainly never get ahead. How can they?

Regular customers are starting to use my name, having read it from my name badge. It annoys me, to be honest. These customers don't know me. We're not on a first name basis. I am a servant. I am paid to be polite. When you use my first name, I feel slightly patronized. You don't know me. When you look at me and read my name off my name badge, you are reminding me that I am not a person: I am a thing. An easily interchangeable thing. We have an entire raft of cashiers who can replace me at a moment's notice. You would not know the difference, You would not care. 

As a cog in the machine, I am expected to serve a purpose, and I do. I am standing at my register at all times. I am not allowed to chew gum, or drink water, or eat anything, or engage in personal conversations with my fellow employees. I cannot answer my phone if it rings. I cannot rest no matter how much my back or legs might be hurting. 

Every minute is accounted for. If I work a four-hour shift, I get precisely fifteen minutes to take a break -- and no more. Every other minute I am standing there, ready to go, running your purchases through my machine, serving, constantly in motion like a fan belt in an engine. I cannot stop. I cannot pause to use the bathroom. I cannot pause to get a drink. I'm being paid the mighty sum of $7.35 an hour, and the company wants its $7.35 worth. 

After I got off my shift today, I sat in my car for many minutes, smoking a cigarette, somewhat dazed. I am not used to be treated so impersonally. It feels brutal, harsh. I am not used to being a cog in a machine. I feel like I lose something of myself each time I work a shift. I come away feeling less than what I used to be, less of a person, less of an individual.

I sat in my car today and wondered what the future could hold. Am I to be yet one more American with a college degree and professional skills who is now "underemployed"? Am I stuck in the world of low-income workers who have no hope for the future? 

When the company puts $131 dollars in my bank account like it did this past week, which of those $131 dollars am I supposed to save for my retirement? What am I going to do about health care, which I don't have? What am I going to do if I get sick? What am I going to do if my brother kicks me out of his home and I have nowhere to live except my beat-up car?

How is it that so many millions of Americans have, like me, fallen into this abyss? At forty-nine years of age, am I expected to go back to college and get another degree? Do I need to leave Tupelo, Mississippi, and my family and friends, and seek my fortune elsewhere? 

I am a writer. That's what I do. That's what I know. There's not many jobs for writers. My dumb luck, I guess. 

Americans like to pride themselves on their "exceptionalism."And we are indeed exceptional. We're the richest country in the world, and yet we have homeless people on our streets, and millions of nameless, faceless working poor barely getting by so that stockholders and CEOs can wallow in unimaginable wealth. We have millions of kids who are "food insecure." We have politicians who mock the poor, who dismiss them as takers, who sneer at their bitterness and anger and call it "the politics of envy."  We have prominent Christian leaders who care more about zygotes than actual human beings, who have firmly aligned themselves with our heartless form of survival-of-the-fittest capitalism.

Billions of dollars are spent on war - but we can't raise the minimum wage.

Billions of dollars are wasted on subsidies for the oil industry - but we can't raise minimum wage.  

Billions of dollars wind up in the hands of folks like the Walton family, owners of Walmart - but we can't raise minimum wage.

From Occupy Democrats

We have a political party that can't seem to lick the boots of the job creators enough and who have passed legislation over the past thirty years that have left the wealthy a whole lot wealthier than they used to be, and the poor a whole lot poorer. This same political party tells us we can't raise minimum wage even as it wonders why it lost the presidential election so badly. 

We are exceptional, all right. In any other country in the civilized world, there would be riots in the streets. Only Americans would allow themselves to be trampled in this fashion, and we only do so because the wealthy elites have poured millions of dollars into advertising campaigns to convince us that the system is just and fair and more than we deserve. We are like dogs happy for the scraps thrown from the table.

I don't think much about the future now, because there is no future for me, and there's no future for the millions like me stuck in dead-end, low-wage jobs. 

If America were truly exceptional, it would find a way to do better than this. 

Welcome to the world of the working poor

From Occupy Seattle.

I use the self-checkout terminal at the grocery store where I work to pay for my own purchases because I don't want fellow employees to know that I use food stamps. At the self-checkout terminal, you can discreetly swipe your EBT card with no one the wiser.

I suspect I am not alone, though I have seen a fair number of my fellow workers go through my line and use an EBT card, even full-time employees who have worked for years at this company.

They, like me, are the working poor.

How poor do you have to be to be eligible for "SNAP benefits" in the state of Mississippi? You need to be at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty level.

For a single person, your monthly income cannot exceed $1,211 (the amount before taxes and deductions are taken out, usually about 15 percent, which means this figure is actually $1,028).

A single person receives $189 in food stamps monthly. That's amounts to $47.25 weekly. For a grown man to survive on that is not impossible, though weight loss is guaranteed (and indeed, I have been losing weight, an unintended benefit).

For a mom and dad with a child, your combined income cannot exceed $2,069 per month.  For a single mom with three kids, income cannot be more than $2,498 monthly. If you're a single mom living with your parents, you're not eligible until you're 24 years old.

I don't think I've ever met a single mom with three kids making $2,498 dollars a month, but that's another story.

To receive food stamps here, you must provide the following:

1. Proof of residency in the state of Mississippi.
2. Proof of American citizenship (birth certificate, driver's license, social security card).
3. US Citizenship and Immigration Service document if you are not a citizen. 
4. Notice from out-of-state-agency if you have received assistance in another state. 

At the food stamp office where I went, I was greeted by this sign:

A request for assistance in the state of Mississippi is a request for a job. 

Some facts and figures.

The federal poverty level is $11,490 yearly, roughly $950 per month. Take 15 percent off the top for taxes and you're talking real income of $807, about $200 weekly. 

A minimum wage yearly salary is $15,080, roughly $1,250 per month, at $7.25 an hour. Take 15 percent for taxes and you're talking $1,062, or $265 per week.

Out of these figures come all the usual expenses: Rent or mortgage payment, car payment, insurance, utilities including heat, water and the like, gasoline for the vehicle, haircuts, clothing, medical bills, what to speak of luxuries like cable television, Internet access, cell phone payments, dining out, going to the movies, etc. 

For a minimum wage worker bringing home $1,062 dollars per month, how are these expenses to be met? 

There's another report in the news today about how the CEOs of fast food companies make more in one day than their workers do all year. There have been many such reports. The CEO of Walmart is said to make more in one hour than his employees do all year. Some CEOs make more in one minute than their employees do all year. 

The Walton family, who own Walmart and Sam's Club, are valued at $93 billion dollars. Clearly someone is making a profit at Walmart, but it's not the one million workers that Walmart employs, whose wages are so pitiful that many rely on food stamps and Medicare.

We need to consider this very carefully. A person working full time at Walmart is still so poor they have to rely on government assistance to get by. Who pays for that government assistance? Taxpayers, of course. While the CEOs and the stockholders and share-owners are doing very well, thank you, the government must subsidize Walmart because it pays its employees so poorly. 

When we talk about "the government," we're talking about American taxpayers. It's the taxpayers who subsidize Walmart, who make it possible for this company to pay its employees so poorly. 

An interesting dynamic, don't you think? 

From Wal*Mart 1 Percent

You can join the workforce, work forty hours a week or more, and still be so poor that you need food stamps and government-supplied health care to survive. 

Walmart apparently provides health care insurance for its full time employees, but it's so expensive that many employees can't afford it. 

Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan reduced it all down for us with his "makers and takers" dichotomy. The Walmarts of the world are the makers, the job creators; Walmart employees who need food stamps are takers, even though they work full time. 

Another very interesting dynamic, to work every day of your life and not be able to pay your bills, to be a "taker" sucking off the government's tits because your corporate masters are so cheap they won't pay you a living wage even while their CEO and executives and stockholders have so much wealth they can't possibly spend it all. 

There are many calls these days to raise minimum wage. It should be a no-brainer, but our Republican friends are aghast and have vowed to torpedo any efforts to raise it. 

Let me make sure I get this straight. The party that routinely demonizes the poor, whose vice-presidential candidate dismissed the poor as "takers" (even those working full time), is firmly against raising the minimum wage because it would "hurt" the job creators like the Walton family sitting on their $93 billion dollars. 

This party would rather encourage government dependence, in the form of food stamps and Medicare, than ask job creators to pay people fairly and decently. To add insult to injury, they then heckle President Obama and call him the "food stamp president," as if he's to blame that so many working poor have to rely on the social safety net.

Mississippi is a solidly Red State, and our folks in Congress routinely vomit up the Fox News talking points for the day like the faithful lapdogs they are. If Republican economic policies are so wonderful, why is Mississippi the poorest state in the Union? Why is Mississippi drowning in the working poor? Why are we the largest beneficiary of federal largess, the hugest drain on federal tax dollars? Why is the rest of the country subsidizing us? 

I long for the day when Mississippians begin to make the connection between policy and reality, between the policies put forward by the Republican party and the disastrous reality all around us. Are we not the fattest, the poorest, the least educated? Do we not have the highest number of teen pregnancies? Are we not the height of mismanagement and stupidity when it comes to our public policies? Have we not earned our place at the bottom by constantly voting for the wrong people? 

When will Mississippians realize that other states do well because they're smarter and they elect officials who work hard to improve the quality of life for residents in their state? 

The answer, of course, is that when Senator Roger Wicker, or Congressman Alan Nunnelee, go off to Washington, they don't much care about people like me. They don't care that I furtively use the self check-out lane so that my fellow employees don't know I'm on food stamps. They don't care about the problems of the working poor because there's no future in it for them. 

The working poor cannot afford to hire high-priced lobbyists who dump mountains of cash in their campaign coffers in exchange for their support of policies that favor the Walmarts of the world over the working poor who live in their states and whose interests they are supposed to be representing. 

To make up for their disregard for our economic well being, they throw out red meat for the masses in Mississippi -- asides about abortion, gay rights, veiled racism directed at a black president. They offer up a governor hell bent on shutting the state's only abortion clinic. They shudder at the thought that gays in Mississippi might get married.  They fear-monger about socialism and federal intrusion into the "sovereignty" of the Magnolia state. They accidentally hoist the Confederate flag at a court house. As if any of that will help the working poor, or get folks off the food stamp roll, or help kids graduate from high school. As if any of that will solve the "fattest, dumbest, poorest" thing.

Eventually Mississippians will get mad enough to start demanding more of their elected officials. 

Are there no prisons?

The Associated Press

I received my paycheck the other day and it turns out that working a part-time minimum wage job is not particularly profitable. I knew it was going to be a painful moment of truth. I was not disappointed. Twenty-two hours at $7.35 ... well, you do the math.

I take comfort in the fact that I'm not alone. Indeed, according to a widely-circulated figure, about half of Americans are either at and very close to the poverty level. Report after report and figure after figure show that while the wealthy have indeed gotten much wealthier over the past three decades, the poor have gotten much poorer. The chart to the right is just one of many showing this trend.

While wages have stagnated, everything else has gone up - rent, utilities, phone bills, the price of milk, a can of pop, a hair cut, health care, gasoline. Up, up and up. Which means that low income folks  have far less money for the basic necessities than they used to have.

There's a reason why the rich and huge corporations keep getting richer. It takes money to hire an army of lawyers and lobbyists to send to Washington to relentlessly campaign for their interests. It takes money to constantly fight attempts to raise the minimum wage and give workers a living wage. It takes money to get all those tax loopholes and sweetheart deals.

It also takes a lot of money to convince poor people that voting for a certain party is in their own best interests, when it clearly is not. This past election saw a flurry of reports on the subject. Why do the poor keep voting for the Republican Party when its policies are so clearly aligned with the wealthy at the expense of the poor?

One reason, perhaps the major reason, is the culture wars over abortion and gay rights. Since the time of Reagan, Republicans have seized on these divisive issues, promising "change" if elected. This has helped fuel a steady supply of Christian and conservative votes. That Roe vs Wade still stands and gay rights are much farther along than ever does not seem to matter. As long as the wealthy can continue to keep the masses up in arms over these issues, and angry enough to turn out reliably at the polls, that's all that seems to matter.

Along with those culture war issues are a slate of more anger-inducing claims and paranoid whatnot: That the Democrats are Socialists. That Obamacare is socialism. That the president is not even a US citizen. That the "government" is going to take away all our guns. On and on with a tide of nonsense that is never factually based which low-information voters suck it up as Gospel truth - and, most importantly, vote accordingly.

We face an onslaught of spurious reports about how Social Security is going bankrupt, how it's an "entitlement" that needs to be curbed or perhaps even ended.  Unions are the problem. Union workers are thugs who need to be taken down a notch.

An entire war against the poor was rolled out last year by Republicans. Newt Gingrich went around calling Obama the "foodstamp president." The poor were demonized. We were told that people on foodstamps are what's wrong with this country. Point out that 26 cents of every federal tax dollar is spent on defense while a mere .52 cents is spent on "welfare" - well, these folks never let facts get in the way of a self-righteous diatribe.

Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan reduced it all down to "makers and takers." Ryan, poster boy for both Ayn Rand (an atheist) and supposedly a devout Catholic, introduced a budget that professors at a Catholic University felt compelled to denounce as "immoral" for its attacks on the poor. Mitt Romney called the Ryan Budget "marvelous."

In the eyes of folks like Paul Ryan, I'm a taker. Since my pay last week was $137, I'm more than eligible for food stamps, which I use to help make ends meet. To Paul Ryan, I am the problem. Not minimum wage. Not the fact that so many jobs being created by the "job creators" are minimum wage, part-time jobs that do not allow a person to pay their bills. Not the fact that the defense budget eats up the vast share of each federal tax dollar. No. The problem is folks like me.

from Time magazine

Folks like me. No house. No savings. No health insurance. No future. I'm the problem. I'm the taker who's draining the poor taxpayer and impeding economic recovery.

I wonder what Paul Ryan suggests I do? Commit suicide? Live on the street? Does he imagine that good-paying jobs are just throwing themselves at folks like me down in the Magnolia State and that we're just too lazy to go out and grab one?

Like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, I can hear Ryan's response:

Are there no workhouses? 

Are the prisons full?  

And here's the rub, the final kick of sand in the eyes: Paul Ryan's father died while Ryan was a teenager and his mother collected government checks to help them survive. The government also generously helped Paul Ryan get an education. But now that he's a maker and not a taker, well, all bets are suddenly off.

Again, don't let facts get in the way of a self-righteous diatribe against the poor. Paul Ryan wasn't the problem. The single mother and her hungry kids down the street sucking up foodstamps was the problem.

Me, I'll take my $7.35 and do the best I can. If I'm unable to save for retirement, I hope Ryan understands.

If you work hard, will you get ahead?

I've just finished my third day as a cashier at a very busy grocery store in downtown Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of Elvis. My legs are killing me, the pay is lousy, but I have a curious feeling of gratitude to finally have a job.

Any job.

It's an interesting bit of psychology. After applying for numerous jobs and being overqualified, or lacking the right experience, after searching a job market that relies heavily on the good old boy network to find workers, after being too liberal and uncomfortable with in-your-face religion in a firmly Red State where people have signs in their yards declaring that Jesus is King, after indicating my willingness to work any shift, any day, anytime, for any wage at all, desperation had me grasping at straws.

When an offer came along for a part-time job offering $7.35 an hour, it was like winning the lottery.

But isn't that exactly the way Big Business wants us to feel? Never mind my thirty years of work experience. Never mind my college degree. Never mind my management and supervisory stints. Never mind the maturity that comes with age, that doesn't have to be told to show up on time, to dress cleanly and properly, to treat customers with respect. Never mind all that. Just be glad someone offered you a chance to make $7.35 an hour.

So, even as I'm quite happy to rejoin the workforce, even as I tell myself that I work for a large corporation and there will be opportunities for advancement after my pay my dues, I'm still left with the reality that I won't make enough money to pay the bills. I still have to contend with the fact that Big Business has me over a barrel -- has so many of us over that same barrel. And while they take home tremendous profits, the workers don't share in those profits. The workers are anonymous, faceless worker bees who are used up and all too easily replaced with a never-ending stream of desperate job-seekers to choose from.

Like many of my co-workers, I will now have to look for a second minimum-wage job in the hopes that two of them will be enough to pay for a small apartment. Until then, I'm still at 130 percent of poverty level, so I can continue to use food stamps to supplement my income.

I'm not ashamed of my new job. I believe very much in the dignity of both work and workers, and like so many of society's cast-offs and those who have been left behind in America's brutal form of Capitalism, I would much prefer to work -- any sort of work -- than to remain idle.

That I've fallen on hard times does not anger me. Look at the numbers. About half of Americans are either living in poverty or very close to it. I'm just one more, just another casualty of economic policies that are "business friendly" and not worker-friendly, policies that ensure vast profits for the elite at the expense of the poor.

My books are full of the riff-raff of society -- the poor, the marginalized, hookers, murderers, drug addicts, folks who have been washed out by life because they can't keep up, or don't fit in, or can't find a place at the table.

The writer part of me looks very carefully at my current situation, trying to piece it together, puzzle it out, connect the dots. How did I arrive at this juncture in my life? Should I remain at a job that I don't like just for the security of it? Was a wrong to "follow my dreams" and try for something better? And if this current situation in my life simply preparing me for something much better? Will it open doors to opportunities I have never considered?

How do any of us arrive at this situation? Why do we support, with our votes, economic policies that make this a reality? Why is it that so few people know that minimum wage in France is $11 an hour, and $15 an hour in Australia? Why is it so difficult to persuade American workers that we deserve better? Why have we allowed Big Business to convince us that minimum wage cannot and must not be raised? Why do we so willingly participate in a system that is so obviously not in our best interests?

I am getting glimpses of the answers in the faces of some of my co-workers and customers. Tired. So many people look so tired. Like the woman who came late in the evening to shop for groceries, kids trailing behind her, looking frazzled and harried, shyly swiping her EBT card, exhausted on her feet no doubt from working all day and now coping with kids and food and dinner and the whole business of life. She asked me to total her order item by item because she only had $63 left on her card. She was tired. Too tired to care about what goes on in Jackson or Washington.

I also see a lot of grandparents taking care of their grand kids. Where's mom and dad? Who knows? Perhaps living at home because they can't afford anything else. Perhaps they've run off and left the kids behind. Perhaps they're working two or three jobs and don't have time for their kids.

Some of my younger co-workers stand at the register all day then leave for evening classes at the community college.

Tired.

Restless, busy, on your feet all day, running from one thing to the next, pinching pennies, using coupons, relying on mom and dad, or food stamps, forcing a smile for customers -- it's a strange world that I've landed in.

I've said it often: I've never seen people work as hard as they do in Mississippi. Say what you want about Mississippi being a redneck Red State, the fattest, the least educated, the poorest - say what you want, but the people work hard. The politicians they send down to Jackson or over to Washington have failed them miserably, over and over, decade after decade. Mississippians are fiercely independent and proud. They don't want food stamps. They want jobs. They want a governor who will bring jobs, not spend all his time trying to close down the one remaining abortion clinic.

As a writer, I want to know all about this world. I want to explain it to myself, and to my readers. And although I worry a great deal about my future - what sort of future can I have working at a minimum wage job? - I remain an optimist.

There is a basic promise in America: If you work hard, you will get ahead.

Are those just words?

Stay tuned.