Conversing With an Alien Who

¶ … conversing with an alien who has been observing Earth for a time, particularly the United States. She has just listened to the same NPR program we have, and is confused about why there are poor in such a rich country.

We begin our explanation by telling the alien that there is a public perception of America and a private perception. The public perception holds that there are few poor, indigent, or disconnected members of society because we take great steps to hide those people from public view. America is, in fact, comprised of quite a number of working poor -- they are working, so they are not listed as part of the unemployment statistics. These people have jobs that pay barely enough to support a family, but do not provide for insurance or other needs. Low paid workers, in fact, make up a large section of certain segments of the marketplace. Minimum wage is theoretically meant to be the minimum it takes a person to live; but now imagine even a $10/minimum wage (very rare), or $400/week, $1,600 per month. In many urban areas, rent can be 1/2 or more of that, transportation another 25%, what is left is food and necessities. Many of America's working poor -- or underemployed, are the result of a loss of manufacturing jobs and the recent recession. Once in this position with little safety net, it is difficult to get out -- if you are making a wage, there is no help with insurance, food, or other items; a medical emergency, car repair issue, etc. Or even so much as a traffic ticket, can throw a budget completely off -- simply no room for error. Then, it is a cycle of never being able to catch up. Thus, for America, there are types of work that are signals for the working poor, demographics (working mothers, undereducated, etc.) and inefficient labor markets (U.S. Department of Labor, 2011).

She responds: "I have been listening to your television and radio broadcasts, monitoring your advertising and shopping issues, and even some of your politician's speeches. I cannot understand why, in some cases, there is a surplus of food, clothing, and other items -- and yet some go hungry or are inadequately clothed. I also cannot understand why some people drive a vehicle that costs more than 4 times the amount of a Fast Food Worker's annual wage, pays a huge amount for gas, and yet others do not have adequate spaces to live and stay warm. You folks will pay thousands of dollars for a hammer, almost a million dollars for a meeting in Hawaii, and millions of dollars for war machines; yet people go hungry and have inadequate housing. You've given me reasons for the working poor's condition, not reasons for the government's reason of not helping to an appropriate degree. It seems like your friends in Europe take better care of that segment of society than you do? (Brady, Fullerton, and Cross, 2010."

Part 2- When I think of child labor, I think of Charles Dickens -- Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and the other novels that showed how in the Victorian Era, only wealthy children had childhoods. And then, in America, I think of the factory mills of the north producing cotton, dangerous places to work, and mines that used children because it was easier for them to be in tunnels. However, in the modern world, I think of not only younger children working in factories, mostly in Asia to make American and Western European sporting outfits, tennis shoes, etc., but of the market for child slaves and prostitutes from Eastern Europe and Asia. As for causes of child labor, it seems to me that it is a function of capitalism and the market -- capitalism requires some sort of cheap labor for certain items that people want. Greed being what it is, there is a part of the world, particularly in overpopulated areas that have a lot of rural poor, in which life does not have the same meaning for some. So, the West wants tennis shoes, for instance, and the exchange dollar means children can be paid $.05/hour for work and will do it. The second reason is more philosophical, and has to do with the way people in other lands who are greedy can separate morality from themselves and then the "other." It will take organizations like the United Nations and the global cooperation of law enforcement and media to stop the exploitation, much as it was finally stopped in most of the first world (Child Labor Public Education Project, 2012).