My low wage life

I have been fortunate enough to have never worked a low wage job. However, I spent the majority of my child hood raised by foreign nannies. I am one of four children with two parents who worked when I was a child. We had about 10 full-time, live-in nannies/housekeepers who took care of my siblings and me and cleaned the house. We paid them a meager wage weekly, plus provided them with a place to live and a car. Additionally though, all of our nannies were illegally living in the United States, which brings up a bigger topic. We were facilitating illegal immigrants and providing them with under the table wages with no tax. They worked week after week for us even though my siblings and I were huge brats. Everything they earned they earned to send back home to their children, so that they too could come to the United States one day and live the American dream. In Shipler’s novel “The Working Poor” he discusses how many people of the working poor are motivated by the exception who break free from poverty and live the “American dream”. He states, “When an exception breaks this cycle of failure, it is called the fulfillment of the American Dream”. While we did house illegal immigrants and pay them low wages, we provided them with an in between place: a place where they could have their own room with running water and electricity. They never had to worry about paying heating and electricity bills on time like most of the people in Shipler’s novel did.

Another aspect of the low wage life that I have experienced is the work that I have done throughout high school. I did not by any means experience low wage work but just the opposite. I babysat all through high school making about 10-12 dollars and hour in my younger years, and as much as 20 dollars an hour an a high school upper-classmen who drives. Reading “the working poor” made me feel incredibly fortunate to have the background and upbringing that I did that allowed me to receive wages that people 30 years older than me are struggling to make. I had the soft skills of “clarity of purpose, courageous self-esteem, a lack of substantial debt, the freedom from illness or addiction, a functional family, a network of upstanding friends” that many people in the low wage work force do. I had the skills as a 13 year old that 40 year olds do not just solely because of the family I was born into.