What's a living wage?

Jack Deatherage

(11/2019) So I's looking at The United Way's ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed ) statistics from 2016. Emmitsburg is listed as having 14% of its 1,053 households living at, or below the federal poverty level. 50% of our households fall below the ALICE category- meaning we're paying our bills each month, but we're a missed paycheck away from requiring charitable assistance either through private organizations or government programs. At the October town meeting, Commissioner Buckman mentioned in her farewell speech that 68% of the town's households are now living below the ALICE level of income. As the former commish has her ear closer to the heartbeat of those serving the poor, I'm going to assume she has access to ALICE numbers that better mirror reality than those compiled three years ago. And I's thinking, sort of, that changing these stats for the worst is easy enough, but how do we change them for the better?

Tattoo Don- pillar of the community, and I debate this frequently. He argues that low skills jobs are gone, never to return, and "mom & pop" shops have been killed off by the Internet. When I ask what he thinks could work as a business in town he waves a hand to encompass his shop. "Things you can't get off the Internet."

Unfortunately such shops, individually, employ very few people so every other house in town would likely have to become a unique shop to employ those needing jobs.

Even if someone came up with dozens of viable businesses they'd have to be destination businesses because the townsfolk wouldn't likely be able to support them with the current levels of poverty we're experiencing. So where would outsiders park their vehicles?

Worse, and I don't want to chase down the insane state laws that require a minimum wage and restrict children's ability to earn an income, and the federal laws that dictate crippling health insurance requirements, but what altruistically minded business owner would hire unqualified and inexperienced people to fill any job when governments mandate forced expenses on an employer beyond the dollar value of raw employees?

Nope. Something else needs doing to get the under-educated/unskilled people into an income stream- if only a modest one.

Every journey begins with a first step. Discussions I used to have with farmers and various tradesmen slowly percolate out of the rubbish heap my mind has become.

"I keep a bunch of cash streams flowing on this farm. Milk, beef, eggs, calves, straw, hay, puppies, used car and equipment parts all get sold for cash that we live on while the main farm crop sales get reported to the IRS so they stay off our backs. I make about $14,000 a year just selling puppies." One farmer told me.

"We use drop-points to buy and sell moonshine." A tradesman claimed. "Sometimes for cash, sometimes for barter. The Feds don't like our trading in hard liquor, but they tend to ignore our making and selling beer and wine- so long as we don't get too bold about it."

Pot and cocaine dealers, those few who didn't inhale all their profits, told me their biggest troubles came from having to launder the cash. Cash only dry-goods traders had a similar problem, but less worry about the illegality of that aspect of their mostly legal operations. Spreading the untaxed cash among relatives and close friends was one of several ways they use to invest the unreported profits. Grateful family and friends often come to the rescue when times get hard.

My father in-law used to speak of a day he spent bartering. He'd leave the factory with $45 dollars worth of some material he had no use for and come back with an industrial sewing machine, several hides of leather, a few rolls of stamping foil and $200 in cash! Not a bad day's effort back in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

Even the DW tells me of her childhood friend who gathered the black walnuts that littered the local roadways and yards each fall. The mother of a pack of hungry kids would shell out the walnut meat during the winter, pick out the whole meats and bag them separately from the broken pieces. She'd sell the nutmeats at a little country store where she also sold pies and cookies she made, as well as quilts she sewed during the long winter evenings. Surely the woman qualified for welfare, but the thought never entered her head while her hands were capable of earning even a meager income.

In my own bobble-headed meanderings I've studied the methods of turning a backyard into a factory for producing plants for landscapers: flowering bulbs, ornamental shrubs, a wide variety of trees and annual flowers can all be propagated at little cost beyond acquiring the parent plants. The libraries have plenty of books on the subject and there are even a few business models one can purchase that include marketing techniques alongside the ones for propagation. (Care must also be taken in this enterprise as some plants are copyrighted and the USDA can get downright nasty if one were to become too big in a horticultural business without a government stamp of approval.)

Of course, few people are interested in small cash streams these days. Among the local movers and shakers I occasionally listen to all I hear is "Get a formal education" and "Find a job that pays a living wage". Never have I heard "Start small." "Learn as you go." "Apprentice (at little or no wage) with a master who can teach you a life long skill." "Trade and barter." And why would any 'Merican bother with such uncomfortable methods of improving their lot in life? Hell, the poor around the world see the American poor as living in luxury.

I used to laugh at people who begged me to build and sell bread, egg noodles and mead to them when I had an actual job to occupy my waking hours. Now? Yes. I give some thought to poking a few sticks into the fire and wondering which would take off if I were of a mind to make a few extra bucks each week.

Yeah, maybe what Emmitsburg needs is an informal "cottage industry" co-op to jump-start it's economic heart again. Too bad I've lost touch with most of my pagan friends. Some of them were kitchen witches known to put together rather effective ointments and tinctures to treat whatever small discomforts ailed a body. Though perhaps a communal bakery might work- a gathering of diverse enthusiasts- each bringing a specialty interest to a county inspected kitchen that none could afford individually, but a group could manage? Hopefully, better minds than mine can ponder such ideas. In the meanwhile, I'm already building several types of bread, variations of banana cake, and yolk rich egg noodles- which I'm sharing when gifting is required (holy days and b-days) and trading for Russian flours, fresh herbs and local farm eggs. Nor do I turn down the occasional bit of folding money, or scoff at the suggestion I begin building mead again.