What a Difference 50 Years Make

by Jim Ramsay

Last night my grandmother was reminiscing about events that happened when she was a young mother.

She told me about a young man who I will call H. He was a large man with learning disabilities, although they did not call it that at the time. She said he was never able to read or write and did not attend school. His family, however, taught this young man to work. When he got older, his mother went to a local refinery and made the case for her son to get a job. She explained how good he was at cleaning. She made the case again and again until finally H was offered a job. The manager later said he offered him the job so that the mother would stop coming into the plant.

H started sweeping floors for a low wage. However, the manager soon found it was as H’s mother stated: H was a good worker. In time, H was given new duties, first cleaning in the cafeteria and later more of the plant. Eventually, he learned to clean the tanks in the refinery earning a decent wage by providing an essential service to the business. When he needed a home, my grandfather taught him, and he built his own home. She told stories of the mistakes H made in the construction that grandpa had to help him fix. H married and had a daughter. He lived a good life and finally retired from the refinery.

Her story reminded me of a young man I will call P. Like H, P has learning disabilities, but is at a higher level of functionality than H. He can read and is a hard worker. P attended all the way through high school but did not graduate. He was enrolled in Head Start and participated in multiple enrichment and job training programs over the years. He applied for and was hired occasionally for minimum wage jobs. Despite his hard work, he had difficulty living up to the requirements even for these entry level jobs. He lived in public housing and had to deal with the crime there. In time, he married and had a child. Due to his utter lack of consistent income, he applied for and received Social Security disability benefits. The family moved from rundown rental trailer to rundown rental house all with government subsidies. He now spends his days playing video games and smoking.

The lessons these scenarios teach give some insight into the role and effect of government in our lives.

P was given significantly more training and had a higher level of functionality than H. Despite this disparity why was H given an opportunity? The answer can be found in simple economics. Businesses can only pay the value of the work being performed: if they consistently pay more, in time, they will cease to exist. With taxes, unemployment insurance, etc. the actual pay for an employee is much higher then the wage the employee receives. Those expenses were much lower in H’s time. Sweeping brought value to the business, but it was a very low value. In my grandmother’s time, a business was allowed to pay the value of the work. In P’s time, there was an arbitrary minimum wage which can also be seen as the minimum value of the work being performed. The company in H’s time could pay him for the value of his work, but the companies in P’s time were forbidden by law from doing so. Therefore, H was able to remain employed and increase his value to the company. P was repeatedly given opportunities, but even with the higher skill set and training, he was unable to consistently produce the value required to earn even the minimum wage. With lifelong employment, H had the dignity of knowing he provided for his family through his efforts and exchanged value for value. With lifelong unemployment, P had low self confidence and escaped into games and addiction.

When the question of housing is reviewed, it is safe to assume that H built a house which would not meet today’s building codes, but it sheltered his family well for a lifetime and the only help he received was the voluntary guidance of a man with good carpentry skills. This further built his confidence and helped him do more in life. For P, the nature of the government housing aggregated men and women idled by government who were provided government funds with which to purchase drugs and alcohol. The result was violence, vandalism, and theft. Later, when he was able to get out of the housing project, he moved into rent assisted housing in a rusty mobile home first and later into a shoddily built home. Having spoken with P, he feels trapped and hopeless.

In the final analysis, we see the invisible hand in the life of H. He was a good man whom my grandmother remembered fondly decades later. He provided value to his employer and produced a family. His daughter graduated high school. He lived with dignity and improved society in many ways. In the life of P, we see the hand of the nanny state. He is a good man who nevertheless brings sorrow to mind when I think of his situation. He has been barred from providing value to an employer or developing the dignity of work. The labor he is capable of performing will forever be denied our society. Moreover, the federal and state dollars spent on him have gone through the inefficient bureaucracies and been diluted. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of dollars shackled P, stole his self-respect, and denied society his skills. And thus we again see where this well intentioned road leads.