Big P.S. to yesterday’s rant. As my blahggy friends Margaret and Tonya have reminded me in the comments, there are plenty of people who ARE EMPLOYED and still need SNAP, etc. to make ends meet.

In my first post-college job, I was terribly underpaid. It was a tech job and I had NO EXPERIENCE with computers. I had been a flute major. One of my main tasks at that job was to pull people’s printouts off a Data 100 printer, separate them, and put them into cubbies to pass out to people through the “Operations window”. I went to college for this? It’s okay. I took to computer work and parlayed that inauspicious start into a pretty good career overall. But not everyone has that kind of opportunity.

I get that entry level salaries should be less than what more experienced employees get paid. But why can’t we pay all employed people a LIVING WAGE? Mine was not exactly a living wage. And no, that’s not socialism. It’s Corporate America (and billionaires) valuing their employees enough to pay them enough to afford decent housing and food so they don’t have to apply for goverment aid. I could barely manage on the ridiculous salary I was being paid ($8,000). I probably didn’t qualify for food stamps (and was too proud to apply for them). But I had some bootstraps in the form of parents who could and would have helped me if I’d needed help.

But what educated adult wants to ask their parents for financial help? And I didn’t ask although there were little ways they did help. It was a common practice in my nuclear family that the older (richer) generation paid for restaurant meals. When we were up at the moominbeach, The Commander paid for groceries if we were shopping together. I paid them for them if I was alone with the beach urchins in tow. We kept that up until the last few years of The Comm’s life and at that point, everything flipped and I paid for restaurants and groceries. Not because she couldn’t afford to. Just because it was time for me to step in. I carry those financial traditions on with my own adult children.

Oh, yeah, my parents did buy me a car once. A new 1979 Ford Fiesta. 4-speed manual tranny. $5,000. That humble car was a bootstrap a lot of people don’t have.

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