November 29, 2007 Issue

I have always been pretty good with numbers. I actually enjoyed mathematics as a child. While my memory of calculus and trigonometry is hazy, 30 years in the restaurant business has kept me fairly sharp with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. But lately there are some numbers that I just can’t understand. There are numbers I cannot make work.

I have been thinking about a working family in our country and how they make it through life. I am familiar with costs in our area and as hard as I try, I can’t figure out how people make ends meet these days.

Take a young couple, two 18-year-old kids out of high school. They get married. Both of them go to work at above minimum wage jobs. They start out at $7 an hour, well above the minimum wage, 10 years ago. Let’s say they get a 10 percent raise every year. That is far more than the annual 3 percent cost of living increase. After 10 years they are both making $14 an hour. That is more than twice the current minimum wage of $6.67. Working full time, they make $560 a week. They earn $29,120 per year. Together they make almost $60,000. And together, along the way, they’ve had two children.

Somehow, years ago, let’s assume that this couple was able to make a down payment on a home. After all, owning your own home is part of the American dream. They owe $100,000 on their small house. I’ve tried to picture this couple sitting at the kitchen table after a long workweek trying to the make numbers work.

They have payments of $1000 a month on their home, if they’re lucky. Their utilities (power, water and sewer, gas, garbage pick-up, telephone and cable TV) run $500 a month. Their taxes are $1500 a year and their insurance is $2500 a year. Their home, without repairs or yard work or any maintenance, costs them $22,000 a year. Their payroll taxes (withholding, social security, and Medicare) total $250 a week, or $13,000 a year.

They have two automobiles to get to and from work and to pick up their children from daycare. They each drive 50 miles a day, a short distance considering there is little affordable housing in Destin. Gasoline costs them $20 daily or $7,000 a year. Insurance is $3000 a year. †Wear and tear on their older cars costs $.20 a mile or $7300 a year. Day care, at the cheapest day care facility in our area, costs $125 per child, per week. It’s the only way both parents can work a full time job. It costs $6500 per child, $13,000 a year. Food for a family of four, with two growing children, costs $5 per day, per person. That’s only $140 a week to feed a family of four. There’s no room for even a fast food meal on Saturday night. Food costs $7280 a year.

Before this couple can begin budgeting for extra items, like clothes, they are $12,580 in debt. They pray every night their children stay healthy and that no one in their family will ever need legal help. Prescription drugs, visits to the doctor, cell phones, video games, DVDs, iPod, and toys are totally out of the question. Movies and ball games, vacations and fishing trips are not even thought of. College educations are for other people. These people understand that Disney World really is a fantasyland.

What have we come to in America?

Budgets are easier for people without money. Many things that wealthy families deal with like trust funds and investments don’t concern people who are broke. Yet, while the gap between the haves and the have-nots in our country grows, rich people aren’t as mysterious as they once were.
Today, children can see on television what is available to people with money. Expensive automobiles, luxury vacations, video games and $200 sneakers are advertised incessantly. I know that it can be confusing and frustrating to children who don’t understand why these things aren’t available to them. Do people rise above these hardships and somehow make it when the odds are stacked against them? Sure they do. Occasionally you hear of a child born in the ghetto who makes it to Harvard. But not nearly often enough.

The key factor that makes America different from emerging third-world countries is a middle class. Today, people are falling out of the middle class like never before. The American dream of owning a home and providing for a family is out of reach for an increasing part of our population. Credit card debt is soaring. People will rob convenience stores if their children are lacking food. What do you think they do when they receive new credit card offers in the mail every month?
These are desperate times in our country. When people are denied access to a dream, they lose hope. And when they lose hope, when they’ve tried to make the numbers work and they just won’t add up, when they’ve worked long hours, when they have sacrificed everything they can for the sake of their children and there’s nothing left to sacrifice; they are not the only ones who have given up on the American dream.
We all have.

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