Monday, March 3, 2008

Working Poor


When I worked as document reviewer/temporary attorney I was always surrounded by hip young attorney's. At one point I pulled out my cassette Walkman and my coworkers nearly fell on the floor laughing. These were guys with the latest MP3 players and Blackberries so my old Panasonic technology made me look like a club wielding caveman. Not so at the new job, with government workers being as poor as they are no one looks at me cross for having museum worthy audio equipment. I look around at the office and people have radio cassette players on their desks. Some listen to disc players with enormous headphones and the one person with an MP3 player is the head attorney and his unit is a cheap ass model made by Coby that you could probably get at a bargain bin at Target or Toys R Us. I feel right at home, no need to keep up with the Joneses. The other day I had a conversation with someone about LP's, but not because I was talking to some pretentious Williamsburg hipster, but simply because we both never had enough faith or money to make the complete format switch.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now that I work for the state, I understand why drugstores sell food and who buys there.

Even the haircuts, it is like stepping in to a timewarp, especially since these are lifetime positions.

Like someone herded a bunch of working class people in the 80s/early 90s into a room and never let them out.

Anonymous said...

Their cheapness extends to interpersonal relationships.
Two of my coworkers have borrowed small amounts of money to me and not given it back. In both cases it was a petty scam involving breaking a five or change for a single. A dollar is worth giving up knowing I won't have anything to do with them monetarily anymore.
One retard doesnt have a bank account, but he eventually stopped asking me for money after I refused enough times.

Vlad said...

so true, I use to think their conservative dress had to do with their values and lack of flashiness, now I realize they are just poor. This is rather upsetting to me. I also now realize why Brian never takes a vacation, not because he doesn't want to go anywhere, but on his civil servant salary, he can't!! I understand, I finally get it.

Anonymous said...

Cassettes Rule !! They stand the test of time - and they are for the most part industructable. As for records... I also really held back as long as I could before making the switch - not because I was anti new technology - but because I knew the CD's would sound inferior to my vinyl collection and time has proven me right on this...

Anonymous said...

good point about the vacations.
no wonder there are so many awards given out for perfect attendance here. actually, they also allow people to buy back their vacation time.
the ny post ran an article yesterday about how so many pa employees are making over $100K and, gasp, the executive director makes $225. dude, that's not much in nyc, considering he manages 8,000 employees and the transportation infrastructure of hundreds of millions of passenger trips. its a wonder they could find anyone to take that position.
we are supposed to be managing our city's airports, yet the majority of people working here cannot afford to fly anywhere.

Vlad said...

I now see that I must define my terminology. I mean it's all relative. What's rich to me may be jus ho hum to you. I recal working on one of my first document review assignments with this little rich kid named David from Oyster Bay Long Island. We were looking at Google maps together and he showed me his neighborhood. I was floored. Mansions lining the water with boat ramps, but to him the greatest discovery was finding his next door neighbors had a much bigger pool then his family. He was like "Man, can you see how rich they must be?" Like I said, it's all relative. So let me difine my terms.

Poor: To me a poor person is someone who has to worry about everything. A man who can't go out on Friday night without fearing the financial reprocussions of paying his rent at the end of the month.

Middle Class: A man who goes out with his family to the (reasonable) restaurant and doesn't have to spend the entire meal thinking about making a choice between the mortgage and car payments.

Rich: Why worry at all?

Well having made the distinctions I know see that I and the rest of middle America is actually quite poor. I'm sorry, that's the way I see it. If the average salary is $40K then what do you come home with? About $500 a week? How the hell are you paying for $1000 rents or $2000 mortgages? Frankly, I'm at a loss. Folks, the economic indicators are bad the way that I see it. Toll hikes, transit hikes and the price of food and gasoline has gone haywire.

Anonymous said...

my coworker's diet chocolate fudge soda cans exploded all over my stuff in the communcal refrigerator. i've seen my boss drink RC Cola, but where can you even get these products? i suppose in some dirty, dingy c-town where they gates at the entrance serve to deter shopping cart theft.

Anonymous said...

I used to consider myself comfortable but now with the cost of living going up way faster than my wages... I have to worry where extra funds are going to come from as well. $65 K in this state is poverty level. I was just told today how Big Oil's invester's are the one's driving up the prices - one of my co-workers who invest's in Big Oil said if you invest $100 today at the end of the year it will be worth $400 - they are projecting a 300% profit this year from the extra high price of fuel. Nice... huh ??? My advice to all is to rent - don't buy - rent - and even better - live at home if at all possible... I'm actually looking forwards to moving back home once my parents get older - it will be a huge relief to me - plus I'll be older and my mind won't be where it's at today - as far as still being somewhat involved with music... all that equipment will be long gone by then... I just hope it will still be worth something

Vlad said...

by my most modest of calculations for a person to live somewhat in comfort in New York City at current price levels one must make 100K. That's bare minimum by my calculations. To have a little better life one must make that much after taxes which means 200K.

Then again as someone pointed out to me this week there is a passage in the Bible of all things that reads something along the lines "An elephant will pass through the eye of a needle before a rich man inherits the kingdom of heaven".

Vlad said...

on the C Town note, I noticed a marked difference in the people going to work and coming home at different times. In the morning pretty much every one is the same. They all have to get to work around 9. So you have the pretty girls along with the not so attractive ones squeezing in on the trains. On the way home I noticed the later it gets, the more pathetic the people look. Can this be? Maybe it's me, maybe I feel like a louse coming home at 6:30, but there are no pretty girls at that time. Same thing at the DMV, when was the last time you saw a pretty girl standing on line at that office?

Anonymous said...

100K is bare minimum in NYC ??

Whoa !! I mean I'm scraping by at what I make out here at 62K but that's it... my utility bills have trippled over the past few years while my salary has been stagnant. Property Taxes go up... and you are right about what the bible teaches us... my game plan is actually to be completely destitute once I am old - so the system will have to take care of me. I've learned that doing thing's the right way ( working hard ) in fact gets you no-where. How about Nancy Pelosi wanting to tax everyone's supposed tax free retirement accounts ?? Something's not kosher there...

Vlad said...

George,

As someone who has worked with old people I can without hesitation tell you that's a bad idea. I mean, if you can time it out to die just as your last penny is spent then that's OK I guess but the people I knew living in state funded group homes did not look all that pleased to me. The happiest ones were the people who still maintained some level of independence at their own homes, apartments or even living with family.

Juan said...

Well things are no better in New Jersey with the highest home owner taxes, the highest car insurance rates and one of the most corrupt governments in the nation, where Louisiana folk might laugh at. Also let's not forget the Governor was almost assassinated and was then covered up quickly.....

As per the Wall Street Journal;

WSJ has some details about the 2007 returns of the high income earners and it is pretty interesting.
 Tax payers in the top 1% earned a AGI of at least $364,657 and taxpayers in the top 5% earned at least $145,283 and taxpayers in the top 10% earned at least $103,912.
The top 400 earners received an average annual income of $213.9 million.

Median after-tax income is $55,900

So in reality the pool of qualified purchasers of middle class NJ houses are in the top 10% of earners, trade up house buyers are in the top 5% of earners and the purchasers of most over a million houses are in the top 1% of income.

Hmmm, who the hell was buying $800,000 homes then. Oh, yes the 90% who lied on their mortgage applications!

I was at the Mall yesterday and I have never seen clothing so cheap, we are talking 70% sales! Also there were almost no one there shopping. We are only experiencing the worst.....Good Luck everyone!