Since when does being in the middle class mean growing debt, stress and insecurity?
During the first recession in recent memory, in the early 1990s, I was fresh out of college with a master's degree. I landed a job at a coffee shop.
Then I joined the Peace Corps, and came back with a wife.
I wanted to share America with my new bride. But I soon realized there was not much to share, for I had left with nothing, and now we both came back with nothing. I did have some "allowance" from my volunteer experience, which was enough for one month's rent, and a very old car.
My wife wanted to enroll in a community college. Not having much money, our first stop was the financial aid office; the woman behind the counter said, "By the looks of your application, it seems your wife does not qualify for aid based on your incomes."
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Incomes? We'd just landed temp jobs at $6 an hour. It's all a blur now, but the office seemed to have based our "wealth" on my middle class status — on my being educated, my Peace Corps experience, and the "support" the Peace Corps gave me.
In short, the financial aid officials did not help us because I had the "ability to help myself."
Sure, we Americans pride ourselves on our "pull ourselves up by the bootstraps" mentality. But I think this belief is backfiring on us.
My wife and I did make it; she got her college degree while working full time at a low-paying job.
Like many responsible, hardworking middle class folks, we chose to wait to have children; we waited to save enough money. Maybe we'd have just have one child, and give him or her the best.
Our first child was born in 2001; we both had full-time jobs, and now desperately needed to keep them.
Two working people need "maximum" daycare hours. Hands down, our choice came to a center that offers 12-hour care. Our daughter proudly completed four years of daycare, for a grand total of some $50,000.
Once we had paid this cost down, we thought we could afford to have maybe one more.
So, in 2007 we had "one more." But surprise: twins. My wife cried when she found out. At first I thought they were tears of joy.
We brought our two new lives into our home, and now we were a family of five. Then the recession hit: Our wages went down, costs went up, our mortgage went under water, medical costs increased as one of the twins had health problems. Now we faced a growing debt, stress and insecurity about the future.
We are responsible. We've never owned cell phones, nor had cable TV; we own a small car and live in a modest house in a poor, inner-city neighborhood. I bike to work to save money.
Our daycare costs are more than $25,000 a year. We've spent our children's college fund on daycare.
We were just making our bills before. Now, this extra daycare cost sits on our credit card. I keep calling our credit card company to ask it to extend our credit limit. The person on the other end says, "Sir, do you know it is risky carrying this much unsecured debt?" Yeah. Having kids is risky too.
If having children feels like such a burden, then something in our society is out of balance.
The burden is the cost, compared to our ability to pay. So, should my pay stay the same, and costs go down? I don't see that happening anytime soon. We have a similar conundrum with health care costs.
Should my pay go up, so I can pay these costs? I don't see that happening either, unless corporations decide they're willing to pay higher wages.
Should the government provide the middle class with tax breaks? I don't see that happening either, because the wealthy are already in line for that. We in the middle class are always at the end of the line.
If we ever get to the head of the line I would like to see daycare costs be made 100 percent tax deductible. This past April I was only able to claim one-fifth of my daycare costs. Even if we had hired a nanny for our daycare, we'd have to pay taxes for the labor.
The assumption has always been that the middle class has the ability to pay. I feel, and many feel, that we lost that ability a long time ago. Who then can pay? Maybe the wealthy — that upper 1 percent out there.
When help is truly needed, there are never any resources left for the middle class. The wealthy have already gotten the biggest break, and the poor are always in need of more assistance.
It reminds me of a lyric from the Grateful Dead: "We can share what we got of yours, 'cause we done shared all of mine."
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Roy Murphy, from St. Paul, works in economic development. He is a source in MPR's Public Insight Network.
