The Poverty Trap

Let me start this off by saying that I like work. Let me use a more appropriate term — I like to be employed. Now that you know I am not a total bum just looking for a handout, I would like for us to think about how to solve some of the problems facing America.

I was a carpenter for 15 years. I was actually a very good carpenter. I have built entire neighborhoods and even quite a few big custom homes in gated communities. I looked foreward to waking up in the morning and being employed and going to work. I had a job, at the time that put me ahead of a lot of other people unfortunate enough to not have a job.

I usually made more than minimun wage, except that one time in Florida when the employer wanted to pay me minimum wage AND sign a waiver saying I didn’t want insurance. Needless to say I quit that job immediately.

It’s not easy trying to pay the bills and support a wife and children on carpenters wages, but I still had that belief in the ‘American Dream’. You know the one, that dream where you will get rewarded for the long hours and trying to work your way up to the next level. That dream where after you worked and managed to at least keep your bills paid you can go to a bank and ask for a loan so you can start your own business.

It’s nice to be told that as carpenter you can create the most impressive loan application with charts and spread sheets and fancy numbers only to be told that you don’t have any collateral so you will just have to keep slaving away barely able to pay your landlords double mortgage payment.

Then there’s the problems you run into when you can barely pay your bills and feed your children. Your working 40–60 hours a week, you still qualify for food stamps and governmnet benefits and then you get pulled over. Oh man, I could go on for days about how f**** up that system of mandatory ‘car insurance’ poor tax will destroy you even more.

I’m sorry ‘Your Honor’, I just can’t afford to pay insurance — OK great , that will be another $250 bucks, Oh, and because your poor we’re gonna make you pay us another $15/month poor tax on top of the outrageous insurance payments so that we know when you don’t make enough money , then we are going to suspend your ‘priveledge’ to transport yourself — over and over and over.

Great, I will bet most of you don’t even know that in some states it’s a felony to drive with an expired temp tag. That’s right, I almost lost my ‘right’ to vote twice — just because I fucking woke up that morning and drove to work so I could pay my bills.

Then on top of that, there’s this whole ‘Civil Forfeiture’ shit.. Yup, you can’t pay your bills, you can’t pay your fines, you live on welfare — well we’re just gonna take your car so you can’t even get to work anymore — 4 fucking times I had the car that I worked for and labored for just towed away. Not because I am a fucking crack dealer or a bank robber, but because I am just trying to f****** survive.

The American system is so f****** up. It’s like living in World War II Nazi Germany. We have the Nazi SS running around with shiny badges and guns just shooting whoever the fuck they want to. Hell, I am almost scared to leave my house to look for a job. Not for fear of some homegrown terrorist attack, but fear of the police. Yeah, they never fucking protected me from anything. Hell, I would wager to say all these fucking laws to ‘punish’ people living in poverty have been the worst part of my life.

I remember my first eviction. My first son had just been born, he came down with RSV. We were staying at the hospital with him in intensive care. We went to the court with all the hospital paperwork to get a ‘stay’ so we could at least wait until we knew what our sons future was going to be. Well somebody forgot to tell somebody forgot to tell sombody else. So when we come home from the hospital, what was left of our worldly possesions was on the street and the landlord kept all of our other childrens xmas presents and gave them to her grandson. The police told us to leave or go to jail. They wouldn’t even let us salvage what was left of our property on the street.

We can talk about another dirty eviction, one that affected the lives of 65 families. We were living in a (manufactured homes) park at the time. Well I guess the owners for some reason decided to sell the property. The new owners wanted to make some changes and get rid of all the older homes, so they started refusing to accept late payments.. 65 families went to court, many of them had even managed to scrape together the late payments. But the new owners just didn’t care about other human beings, it’s always about the benjamins($$$). So that’s how 65 families lives got changed that summer.

Then there’s the career change. Boy isn’t that fun at 30 something. I have been trying to change my career going on 16 years now, and you know what, it’s still not going so fucking good. I swear I am almost worse off now than I was before I went and borrowed 24k for an education. I mean, once you get trapped with the sitgmata of being a carpenter and wanting a career in computers; employers look at me like I’m fucking nuts.

I graduated with a 3.8 GPA and came out of college with an MCSA, the best thing I could get was tech-support for $10/hr or manufacturing computers(and servers) for $10/hr. I swear to God it’s like I f****** went backwards. It never ceases to amaze me that I made more money as a high-school drop out carpenter than after I went into debt re-educating myself.

Fast forward a few years. My son was hit by a car and almost died. The evil sister-in-law ran a bogus go-fund-me and then took off with the $1600. We stayed at Ronald McDonald House for 4 months while my son recovered enough to come home. We worked with him learning to eat and talk and walk again. And what have I done for the last 2 years of his recovery? I can’t actually spend the time I should with my son working with him to recover becuase I have to worry about $$$. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I sit in front of this computer stressed out because I can’t find a goddamn job that will pay a decent wage and let me have some semblance of a life.

So here I am , living the great American dream. A carpenter with degenerative disc disease, denied disability benefits, trying to care for my 22 year old son recovering from traumatic brain injury and the only thing the rest of the world seems to give a rats ass about is whether somebody can work 80 hours a week for starvation wages only to wind up f****** broke, in debt and probably homeless. Look out world, that will be the next batch of laws getting passed because we all know that the private prisons don’t have enough people in them already.