I’ve dated a billionaire and lived on minimum wage. This is the one, radical solution to the inequalities I’ve seen

Posted on November 12, 2024 in Equality Debates

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Contributors
Nov. 12, 2024.   By Julie Mannell

A high school friend tells me about her promotion to sales leader at a retail store in St. Catharines. She thought she’d hit the big time making 30 cents more than minimum wage — until her car broke down. Transit was delayed due to bad weather and the hourly bus drove right by. The cab cost half her earnings on a four-hour shift.

To live off minimum wage is to continually patch up your straw house and hope the wind doesn’t blow. Arbitrary events become insurmountable obstacles. For me, it was the time I was late on a credit card payment because all my shoes fell apart at once, moments before my shift, an incident so dumb and random that still haunts my credit rating to this day.

Minimum-wage-living is sneaking leftovers from a stranger’s plate after they leave the restaurant. It’s being unable to move from a violent housing situation. It’s the inability to say no, to leave, to choose: your sexual partners, to have a family, how to spend your time or pursue a dream, to even have a dream, to have any say at all on the trajectory of your life, to be a true participant in the world. When there isn’t enough to live, you are forced to submit to life as it happens to you.

In October, the minimum wage in Ontario increased by 65 cents, to a total of $17.60 an hour. Minimum wage is not a living wage. This discrepancy is important. Living on minimum wage means trying to forge a coherent existence out of an incoherent system. According to the Ontario Living Wage Network, in order to live, simply exist, in the cheapest regions of Ontario, the hourly wage must be at least $18.65. For the GTA, you need at least $25.05 hourly. That’s to live a life without student loans, retirement savings or a small cushion for emergencies like a broken car or disintegrated shoes.

The working class can be broadly defined as those who must work to live. It is comprised of the 80 per cent who collectively make less than the top 0.02 per cent. Still, it’s difficult to convince the owner of a successful construction company that he shares a common struggle with an artist waiting tables. Just as it is difficult to convince the back-broken roofer to stop bemoaning the panhandler with a cellphone. The closer to the bottom floor, the more a single dollar is imbued with significance and meaning. As a result, we police each other: instead of blaming corporate monopolies for the downfall of small businesses, we blame unions, activists, newcomers and minimum wage increases.

Our economic system was born of the false premise that if the wealthy are prioritized in government policies, their wealth will trickle down to the poor. Since 2020, the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes. Recently, the CBC reported that “income inequality in Canada (had) hit the highest level ever recorded.”

I first met billionaires after moving to Toronto. I was struck by their humanity: three wrote poetry, two were funny. I even had a romantic affair with one — playing footsie in bed before I rushed off to nanny. Their reasons for hoarding wealth were startlingly prosaic: family legacy, pride, status. It was a role they were groomed into and believed themselves too intimately entangled with to transcend. Yet, the burden of their money made them miserable and sick. They often described themselves as trapped. As difficult as it was to empathize, I do believe they authentically perceived themselves as trapped.

But they aren’t trapped. Minimum wage workers are trapped, stuck in an incoherent cycle, performing as exceptional employees, never revealing burn out or illness, even as they struggle to meet their most basic needs.

Minimum wage increases have little impact in a system that enables and perpetuates kleptocracy. Kleptocracy is an illness. Like addiction, a phantom need justifies the abhorrent. For billionaires, the meaning and significance of a dollar is at its farthest remove. They cannot contextualize their emotions in relation to their power: it manifests in the suffering of the world. They also won’t stop unless we force them to. The only solution, for both us and them, is to take their money away.

Julie Mannell is a Canadian prose and poetry author, editor and professor of creative writing, originally from Fonthill, Ontario.

Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/ive-dated-a-billionaire-and-lived-on-minimum-wage-this-is-the-one-radical-solution/article_a9bc6206-a04f-11ef-a807-e79e326fc427.html?source=newsletter&utm_content=a10&utm_source=ts_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_email=0C810E7AE4E7C3CEB3816076F6F9881B&utm_campaign=top_5244

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