Suburban/Urbanist http://blog.brianpdx.net Dispatches from the Portland Area Fri, 07 Oct 2011 05:30:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The 99% http://blog.brianpdx.net/2011/10/the-99/ http://blog.brianpdx.net/2011/10/the-99/#comments Fri, 07 Oct 2011 05:30:35 +0000 Brian http://blog.brianpdx.net/?p=21 This may destroy my liberal credibility, but I honestly haven’t been paying much attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Today, though, I spent some time with some of the 99%.  I wasn’t at Occupy Portland – I was reviewing job applications for a position at work.

Fact: 9.6% of Oregonians were unemployed in August [...]]]> This may destroy my liberal credibility, but I honestly haven’t been paying much attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Today, though, I spent some time with some of the 99%.  I wasn’t at Occupy Portland – I was reviewing job applications for a position at work.

Fact: 9.6% of Oregonians were unemployed in August 2011

The position is in the construction/project management area and we received a lot of applications.  It was incredibly sad – a lot of the applicants had good jobs up until 2008 or 2009.  And they haven’t worked since.  These are people who managed large, complex projects and were cut loose at the peak of their careers.  It seemed like every applicant reported leaving their previous job due to “a lack of work” or the “company going bankrupt.”

Fact: In 2008, the US lost nearly 2.6 million jobs.  That was the worst year for job losses since 1945.

I’ve had the chance to sit on several interview panels in the last couple of years.  There have been a couple interviews that were downright tragic.  One man had worked his entire career (20+ years) for a northwest airline.  It was crystal clear that he had loved that job and poured all of himself into it.  Getting laid off had broken his heart and he was scrambling to try to find something else.  Another man had devoted his entire career to a local restaurant chain.  His passion for that business was incredible – and he was unceremoniously let go.  He is one of the lucky ones – he landed on his feet.

Fact: The poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1%.  That number represents over 46 million people in the US living in poverty.

I actually hadn’t heard of the “We Are the 99 Percent” website before today.  Some of the criticism I read was that many of the people had made some bad choices (i.e. taken on too many student loans in unmarketable fields) and now wanted a financial do over.  I read one where someone had spent over $100,000 getting undergraduate and graduate degrees in women’s studies.  That was an investment probably unlikely to pay off financially.  But here’s the reality – we have a nearly 10% unemployment rate in this county.  Even if that woman had studied engineering, there’s still a good chance she’d be unemployed.  There are more workers than there are jobs.

Fact: In 2009, the richest 1% of Americans controlled 35.6% of the nation’s private wealth.  That is more than the bottom 90% combined.

The truth is that poverty is a reality for a growing number of Americans.  For many of those people, no amount of “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” is going to change that.  There simply aren’t jobs for them.  And many of the jobs that are out there aren’t going to pay a living wage.  That lack of a living wage or health insurance or retirement benefits isn’t the worker’s fault.  It’s the result of a fundamental economic shift that hasn’t been good for most of us.

Fact: China, India and Russia all have less income inequality than the United States.

The poor aren’t poor by choice.  The unemployed aren’t unemployed because they’re lazy.  Our economy is broken.  Until we face that truth, not much will change.

]]> http://blog.brianpdx.net/2011/10/the-99/feed/ 0 Living in Public http://blog.brianpdx.net/2011/04/living-in-public/ http://blog.brianpdx.net/2011/04/living-in-public/#comments Wed, 20 Apr 2011 05:18:05 +0000 Brian http://blog.brianpdx.net/?p=18 I’m on the train a lot these days.  Most days my commute is about an hour each way.  When I first started my job, the long commute was a pain.  But in the six months I’ve been doing it, I’ve come to appreciate some aspects.  I get a lot of time to read, I avoid [...]]]> I’m on the train a lot these days.  Most days my commute is about an hour each way.  When I first started my job, the long commute was a pain.  But in the six months I’ve been doing it, I’ve come to appreciate some aspects.  I get a lot of time to read, I avoid the stress of traffic, and I overhear some outrageously funny conversations between other riders.

Yesterday, I posted a funny snippet of conversation two ladies behind me were having about how smoking marijuana makes you tired.  I was a little disappointed when they got off the train because I was sure they were going to provide loads of comic material.  But after they left, I was able to hear another conversation between two men.

They were sitting behind me and I couldn’t see either of them.  I didn’t want to turn around and look, so I just kept looking ahead.  It was obvious that they didn’t know each other, but they were having a pretty engaged conversation.  The younger man was asking the older man a lot of questions about his life and seemed genuinely interested in his answers.  It turns out the older man had been drafted into the military at some point, raised his children (by himself), had at least one grandchild, was now homeless and living downtown, and spent his monthly social security check on alcohol.

Younger man: “You’ve got a lot of good years ahead of you.  You could get work at Goodwill and it wouldn’t affect your Social Security.”

Older man: “Man, if I need money for wine, I’ll just find a corner and put out a sign.  I can make $20-30 a day doing that.”

Younger man: “But it’s a shame to let your life slip away like this!”

Older man: “But I’m an alcoholic.  We’re all alcoholics out here.”

Most commuters on MAX from the westside only ride as far as downtown.  There is a mass exodus of mostly middle class white people at the downtown stops and then the train continues to the east side of the Willamette River.  Before we reach the river though, the train goes under the Burnside Bridge and stops at Skidmore Fountain.  Burnside is home to the Union Gospel Mission and a slew of other social service agencies.  The homeless are very visible in this part of town.

In the winter, many homeless ride the train in the “Free Rail Zone” to stay warm and dry.  Honestly, I usually cringe when we stop at Skidmore Fountain.  The people who board the train are frequently dirty, smelly, loud and generally just completely unlike the mostly professional class that make up the average commuter on MAX.  This portion of the ride is frequently an eye-opener as there are not many opportunities in my mostly suburban life to be confronted with this type of poverty.  Like most everyone else in America, I know about the seemingly intractable homeless problem, but I don’t have to face it on a daily basis.

Back when I worked in land use planning, I remember some planning guru arguing that most Americans live their lives in three boxes: house, car, and workplace.  His argument was that we were limiting our connections to our community in the way we structure where we live, where we work, and how we get to and from those places.  I’m not doing his argument justice here, but I think there is some truth in that.  But not only do we try to keep the physical aspects of our lives neatly compartmentalized; we also try to box our successes and failures, and our grief and our joy.

If you spend any time on public transit, you’ll quickly realize that there is a portion of the population that isn’t boxed up in the same way.  It might be the woman arguing loudly with the debt collector, the man talking about his struggles to find a job, or the guy trying to explain to his girlfriend why he was late.  They easily let these sometimes ugly and painful parts of their lives out into the open for everyone to see.

I think there are two categories of public transit users – those who use it because they want to, and those who have no choice.  For those who choose public transit, I think we often try to keep the same compartmentalization that we have in the rest of our lives.  For me, my book and my headphones keep me separate.  I suspect that for a lot of those who use public transit because they don’t have another alternative, their lives are already less boxed up.  They probably aren’t living in a single family, detached house with only their immediate family.  Their work situation may be less formal than the average professional.  All of that probably contributes to their willingness to let their life play out in public in a way that makes many of the rest of us uncomfortable.

The conversation I was eavesdropping on wrapped up shortly after I started listening in.  The younger man was trying to convince the older man that he should be involved in his grandchild’s life.

Younger man: “Do you know how much college is going to cost in 20 years?  It’ll be almost $300,000!”

Older man: “Holy sh$t!”

Younger man: “If you get yourself some work, you could put some money away for that grandchild.”

Older man: “I already screwed it up with my kids.  I raised them by myself, but I ruined it.”

Younger man: “But you could save money, and help them go to school.”

Older man: “I’d just spend it on wine.”

Then they both got off the train and went their separate ways – undoubtedly to continue living in public.

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