I grew up in a family of women who knew how to stretch a dollar and make it last until the next dollar could be found — or earned.
I learned two lessons from that experience:
- Stretching a dollar is smart.
- Stretching a dollar just because you have no other options is tough.
When you stretch a dollar out of fear, it makes for sad & desperate choices.
Today is Blog Action Day, and the goal is to raise awareness of the crushing burden of poverty in America. My goal is to remind you that poverty doesn’t exist if we create an employment marketplace that is fair, competitive, and offers incentives for workers to learn & grow throughout their careers.
If we learned anything from the 80s, we should have learned that ketchup is not a vegetable. How do we make a brighter future for our children when we are boxed into short-term financial thinking due to economic forces beyond our control? When do we stop blaming our workforce for their inability to crawl out of debt and start paying our employees a living wage? When do we change our standards in America so it becomes cheaper and easier to feed our family a diverse and nutritionally complete menu of foods rather than a steady diet of McDonalds and other cheap food-chemicals?
I don’t pretend that my participation in Blog Action Day will help to defeat poverty in America, but my distaste for our government’s inaction against poverty will be recorded forever in Google’s cache. I want to document my unwillingness to tolerate the soft bigotry of low expectations that have been set for our political & corporate leaders in America.
Want to end poverty in America? Work to create a culture of innovation so we can compete in the global marketplace with our products and services. Rethink your relationship with trade unions and chambers of commerce. Pay your workers a competitive wage and build incentives so your employees will be motivated to learn & grow. Become a shareholder activist in large corporations and create a culture of accountability within American companies.
If all else fails, vote on November 4th. Change the world and end poverty at the ballot box.
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Seriously, people, I do not believe that using blogs we can fight something as big as poverty. How on Earth writing about it helps people who starve? Who die because they cannot afford water? Who are scared that the crisis that is upon us will break down their lives?
I just do not understand all that hype
I definitely appreciate this post, Laurie. Particularly for people who live in rural areas with no access to some of the healthier foods many people take for granted, it can be a challenge to find inexpensive healthy alternatives (particularly when working lots of hours with no real time for gardening.) Conversely there are also those in cities without space for growing their own food but surrounded by marked-up grocery stores taking advantage of their clientele.
@ioni Thanks for the comment.
@KellyO I think your comment about food deserts is very accurate. People in big cities have no access to affordable & healthy food. Very sad state of affairs.
I think the biggest single thing that can happen is for employers to establish credible and ethical cultures that do more that value human resources with a mention in the annual report, and as a bullet point on a web site.
There are many companies that do this today. Many are being challeneged by economic circumstances, just like us little dolar stretchers at home.
Rather than seeking groups or organizations that will protect us, we can all make a difference by ….doing the right thing.
As employers.. value your employees, pay them, giv them the benefits you can afford, and make it a commitment of your business culture to do so because employees need this stuff,not just to survive, but to prosper.
Employees can recognize that their commitment to a job (while they are employed) is not just to get a check. Every associate is key to the growth abd survival of the organization you belong to. You aren;t entitled, you are being paid. Produce, act like you care, go the extra inch. At the end of the day, you are serving your own interests as well as those of the organization.
Nobody, individiual, corporation, or labor organization is entitled. Ultimately, they all need the others to survive.
Work together!
What the heck is Ioni talking about? Are you seriously saying that writing and talking about poverty will have no effect? Writing about issues is how things become issues in the first place. If one person can influence a hundred people to action by writing about something then it’s possible that 1,000 bloggers can influence 1 million people to do something. And how can you assume that the bloggers that write about poverty aren’t doing something more proactive as well?
Excellent post, Laurie.
Wow, this is embarassing, but I am gonna have to tag you. I got tagged and I am afraid if I don’t do what the post says then the HR Gods will smite me…
The rules are the same as before:
1. Link to the person who tagged you. (Errr, I am not sure how to do that…)
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
@michael Everyone should go to your blog and read your post. It’s awesome.
@hubris I was going to write a response as a post but you just did it for me. THANK YOU.
@hrU Ach! I did this already.
I know! But I was doing my part of passing it on so I don’t get bad luck! I don’t expect anyone to do it…it’s so last month!
What do you mean ketchup isn’t a vegetable? It was the main ingredient in my mother’s hot dog & onion stew – which I hated about as much as powdered eggs and powdered milk.
@HRU
These things go in waves. I’ll catch it next time.
@Robyn We had powered lipton soup in our eggs when I was a kid. SICK. Who thinks of this stuff?
Ioni, you’re right in that blogging in and of itself does not eliminate a problem. However, the fact of so many posts in Google’s cache raises the awareness of the issue. In addition, by motivating others to act, we can have an impact ourselves. I’ve seen extraordinarily narrow niche blogs who devoted one post to poverty, in the most creative ways imaginable. There are others who, as Laurie does, point out the long-term consequences of our decisions, and that also is valuable; if even one person changes their actions because of our posts, we’ve won a small battle.
And there are all different ways to fight poverty. We can improve the worst conditions. Or we can increase the different kinds of capital: our own real capital, by getting out of debt; human capital, by learning or teaching skills; social capital, by expanding our networks; or cultural capital, by being aware of history and what it has to teach us.
Thank you, Laurie, for taking the time to devote your post today to blog action day. Your approach is both thought-provoking and practical.
@classicalgeek Wow, thanks for the very thoughtful comment. I appreciate it.