Making the Chef

$75.26

$75.26. Every pay period, I now have $75.26 being deducted from my take home pay. In the life of a line cook, that's a helluva lotta money. But I'm choosing to let them doing this, and why? So I can have health care.

In this life I have chosen for myself, I sometimes question whether America is truly a land of opportunity. The key factor is that I have chosen it for myself. I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but I did have a lot of advantages given to me. I was insulated from the types of stories from the people that I now have around me. A Mexican who can barely speak English and is trying to provide for his family working as a painter by day, cleaning the restaurant seven days a week at night. The Chinese immigrant that works two jobs seven days a week to make a modest living. The Nigerian immigrant who can barely speak English, yet is one of the most fastidious workers I have ever seen.

It's the same story all across the service industry. Immigrants and the working poor do the low paying jobs, the prep jobs, the cleaning jobs, and whites work management. With the salaries paid to this underclass, how are they able to afford the $75.26 for health insurance, let alone putting away money for retirement?

Because of my background, I tend to keep up on current events. Instead of listening to music on the radio when I work, I listen to NPR and talk radio. Instead of doing the crossword or reading the latest novel, I read business and current events periodicals. What I hear and what I see frightens me.

I see a nation that was once composed mostly of blue collar workers transitioning to a white collar world. I see a nation that used to take care of its blue collar workers with a defined benefit plan (read: pension) shift completely to defined contribution plans (read: 401(k)) - great if you're the company. Your obligation to your employee is significantly reduced, but who takes the risk? The employee, and I don't see a culture being created that reinforces the fact that these employees will be responsible for their own retirement. And the best part? This reduction in risk is packaged with the glossy promise of being able to take control of your own retirement. So companies declare bankruptcy, shift their crippling pension obligations over to the government, and, in the end, the worker who was counting on the nice pension is screwed because 1) the government won't pay out as much in benefits, 2) the company overestimated its ability to make money in the stock market to pay its pension obligations, and 3) most importantly, somebody let them overestimate their ability to gamble in the stock market to fund their pension.

I see a nation unable to provide adequate health care for its citizens. Individuals are taking on more and more of the risk of providing for themselves. Some can't afford it and go without. Many cooks do without, which is absolute shit. Look at the job. We are constantly working in an environment where most of the equipment can do some sort of bodily harm to us. Even with good ventilation, there is the constant grease and dust and soot in the air that we inhale each and every day. I wonder what equivalent of cigarettes I would have to smoke each day in order to produce the same effect. It used to be your employer would pay for your health care. Now, for the people in the most dangerous and debilitating of jobs, you're expected to take care of yourself. Just fucking great.

I read about proposed national tax reforms that provide most of their advantages to investment and derive most of their revenue from salary income. Who does that hurt the most? The person that gets most of their income from working revenue. I doubt that the guy in the laundry room is going to see a whole lot of savings from a capital gains adjustment. I know I'll personally take it in the ass if they get rid of the personal deduction for mortgages. That was the only way I was able to afford my home. And yet home ownership is one of these wonderful forced savings devices that lets me build wealth as I 1) save money that I normally would pay in rent and 2) if the housing market rises, I make a profit for selling my home. It's one savings device that is great for the poor because instead of forking your money over to someone else in rent, you're saving it for yourself. And tell me why we would then make it hard for someone to afford buying a home?

I see America transitioning from a land of opportunity to something quite different. Isn't a land of opportunity a place where you give the ones that need it most the best chance of succeeding? Instead, as recently illustrated on NPR's Hunger in America series, where mother of three Wretha Hankins describes choosing between eating or getting her dental work done. The choice? Her family eats and she does her own dental work by filling her cracked teeth with candle wax. The $150.52 I spend every month for my health insurance is more than she spends for family's entire food budget for a month. I don't know where the opportunity is in that.

I think every person of privilege should spend some part of their lives working a job that only makes you a living, nothing less, nothing more, and learn what it's like to not have health care, to worry about what happens if you become injured, to know the joy that a huge chunk of your paycheck is being withdrawn to pay for a small little peace of mind. $75.26 might change some people's minds.

posted by LindyChef @ 3:30 AM