"Economics and art are strangers," Willa Cather wrote, and that's often true in dry-as-dust talking-heads documentaries in which a seemingly endless roster of specialists illustrate some dense, abstract point through the use of statistics. Numbers can indeed be numbing. Which is not to say that there aren't some experts advancing sobering statistics in "Wage Slaves: Nickel and Dimed in America," because there are. The difference is, the numbers here are humanized in a series of gritty and affecting profiles; this is a superbly balanced report on America's "working poor," the one-third of citizens who work full time but earn only $6-7 an hour, that engages our heart as well as mind.
The two-hour program is based on Barbara Ehrenreich's bestseller Nickel and Dimed : On (Not) Getting By in America, in which she researched the problem by herself trying to subsist on income from a series of minimum-wage jobs. This investigation profiles five low-income wage earners, three women and two men, most of whom are single parents. They are among the millions of people who are "disguised by a paycheck" or passed by, as former labor secretary Robert Reich suggests, because most of us don't want to believe that so many Americans earn so little.
Virginia is a 23-year-old single mother who shares a Las Vegas motel room with her parents and 5-year-old son. She works at a dry cleaners, earning $7.65 an hour. Ron, the only married person in the group, earns $6.70 an hour and works about 70 to 75 hours each week (out of his home) to provide for his wife and three children. Sofia, who is a divorced mother from Miami, works as a receptionist for a non-profit organization, where the promise of a paycheck is not always a certainty. In Nevada, former contractor Robert, divorced and raising three children, is a limo driver, taking a cut in income in order to spend more time with his children. And 27-year-old Sandra is a single mother living in Alabama and working two jobs.
Their stories give the documentary its humanity. We can agree or disagree with the opinions of experts as to why the problem exists, but it is wrenching to observe what Ehrenreich calls the "chronic deprivation" of these people. Virginia, who shares the motel room with her family, talks about not even being afforded the simple pleasure of going into a room where she can have time to herself. Robert recalls that after his divorce, he and his children couldn't go to a shelter because they are designed for women and not for men. And there is both hope and anxiety in his voice when he says "I've got to raise these kids, and I've got to do it right."
The experts commenting are, for the most part, sympathetic to the problem, but there are opposing opinions. Columnist Walter Williams, who believes that, "our poor are the most well-off poor in the entire world," says, "these were all personal choices. The person voluntarily dropped out of school. The person voluntarily had more kids than they could support... they made their own situation and they are responsible for it." Donald Boudreau of George Mason University says, "to be poor in America today is not to be in dire straits. Poverty is a relative concept."
Listening to and watching those profiled, however, the question of blame seems beside the point; it's hard not to feel compassion. These subjects can't seem to get a foothold in their lives when all of their time seems to be consumed working two jobs or 70-hour weeks coupled with the anxiety over raising a family alone, often without insurance, and deciding which bills can be paid and which ones will have to wait.
This may not be the most uplifting report you'll watch, but it is provocative. It is a matter of economics and heart. -- William John Ecklund
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