The giants of capitalism tremble and moan, and this is utterly lost on Arthur. We leave his last name out of the newspaper because he doesn’t have billions to lose like those geniuses on Wall Street, only his job as journeyman meat-cutter that pays $19.75 an hour.
Simple math says this is almost $800 a week for a 40-hour week, and therefore $40,000 a year, except the math is never that simple in modern America. Arthur works for one of the big grocery chains, where almost nobody gets the full 40-hour week. No 40 hours, no medical benefits, and certainly no extra money to be invested on the whims of Wall Street fluctuations.
On a good week, such as this summer, he gets 35 hours of work. In a slow week, such as lately, he gets about 25 hours. It’s a long way from the enormous salaries, and the enormous bonuses, pocketed by those brilliant people now losing their shirts on Wall Street.
They ran everything into the ground, and now they send ripples of anxiety all the way to places such as this shopping center parking lot in northwest Baltimore County, where Arthur hangs up his apron deep into the evening and prepares to head home.
He lives about 15 miles from here. This, too, produces anxiety at the current price of maybe $3.70 for a gallon of gas. When he arrives home, the monthly rental payment awaits. It is $820. His fiancee lives there, too. She works as a school crossing guard, at minimum wage.
How do they do make ends meet?
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. He flicked away the last ashes of a cigarette. “I don’t know.”
A cashier from the grocery store stood nearby and nodded her head in agreement. She makes less than Arthur, and has the same deal: no 40 hours, no medical benefits.
“And a little girl at home,” she said. “You just hope she never gets sick.”
“You hear the latest on the economy?” they were asked.
“Bad?” Arthur answered.
This was Wednesday, when the market fell 450 points, added to Monday’s loss of 504 points. Unemployment was now north of 6 percent, and the number of home foreclosures continued to stagger everyone.
“Real bad,” he was told. “You feel sorry for those Wall Street people?”
“Nah,” he said. “When I hear problems like that, it doesn’t bother me much. But, when I hear people losing their homes, that’s when I feel their pain. I was there once.”
“Homeless?”
“Eight months,” he said. “Slept at a shelter on Central Avenue, around the corner from Lombard Street. I know what it’s like for those people getting their homes foreclosed. But I’ve been blessed. I’m back on my feet.”
He is 49 years old, and went straight from Edmondson High School to a job at Mash’s Ham, where he first worked as a meat-cutter. Life was pretty good. By the late ‘80s he was making $11.36 an hour. He bought new cars for his wife and himself. He imagined clear sailing ahead.
Six months later, the Mash family sold the business. And a letter was Federal Expressed to all company employees. Your job is now gone. You may come back to work if you wish. The job will now pay $5.25 an hour.
So much for security in the American workplace. He worked for a while for a buddy’s sprinkler system company. Sometimes he worked two jobs at a time: hotel cleaning crew, country club cook. Nothing with real security or real money.
He and his wife had a child. Their debts grew, the marriage teetered. Arthur bounced from job to job, never for much pay. The marriage collapsed under the strain, the cars were lost, and so was the apartment.
And he found himself homeless, and stunned. What happened? He worked hard, he played by the rules, he’d believed in the American dream.
He kept working, kept punching time clocks. Slowly struggled back to his feet. Finally, about a year ago, he hooked on with the big grocery chain. The old meat-cutting skills saved him. He’s getting $19.75 an hour now, and hoping for enough hours to pay the rent and save what little is left to buy some happiness.
The billions lost on Wall Street this week exist on some other planet. He is a journeyman meat-cutter. The car needs gas at $3.70 a gallon, and the food bills keep going up. No, he says, he doesn’t think about those poor folks on Wall Street. He has his own concerns.
