What is labor worth?
Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 07:12:36 AM PDT
This weekend as I carry a pager for my job and have worked at least eight hours dealing with whatever happens when it goes off, we're celebrating Labor Day. I was thinking about work, and my own family's history, and whether or not I am better off than my grandparents were. Specifically my mother's parents, since we were closer to them growing up than to my father's parents.
Superficially I am better off. My spouse and I own a home (with the bank), and we've got a lot more house, in a high cost of living area, than they could have managed at this point in their lives. We have plenty of money to spend after paying our bills, and we're both in high-paying careers- my grandparents were teachers.
Follow me below the fold to read more about them, and more about why I'm not sure I'm better off.
My grandmother and grandfather met in college in the early 1930s at the College of the Pacific in Stockton, CA. Both are native Californians- he was born in Tulare, and she was born in Morgan Hill. His father was a travelling salesman, while she came from a long line of teachers.
When they met, she was a student and he was a Teaching Assistant, working on a graduate degree. They met, fell in love, and married. They had two girls and a boy, though their eldest girl died in childhood. They both taught, she starting once the children were old enough- he taught high school science, and she taught middle and high school history and social studies. They bought a house, raised their children, travelled as a family. Eventually they retired, and continued to travel; they sold their house and bought another one closer to where their children had settled, and lived out their lives in comfort in a home they owned.
They worked hard- he winning awards for teaching rocketry, and she keeping things going at home after a day's teaching. They definitely had the habits that they learned as young adults during the Depression. They would keep clothes for years and years (my grandmother's sewing box was often out when I visited). They would save tin foil, and you never saw anyone be more careful when unwrapping a package at birthdays and the holidays than my grandmother- it became a game to try to get the tape off without damaging the paper underneath.
I can't say that we're that frugal and green as they were, though I don't toss out containers if I can recycle them for other uses, and we do sometimes re-use wrapping paper, because it's now an inside joke my family lovingly shares. I have a sewing basket, and I do mend things when I can, but not to the same extent that my grandmother did.
They travelled the world- from the months long trip to Europe in 1955 with their two teenaged children, to trips to Russia, India, South America, Japan after their retirement, not to mention going all over the country with their trailer in tow. I got the bug from them, and have taken a few trips myself and with my spouse.
They had two children- we don't yet have any, and may never do so. So we haven't had to scrimp so that the children will have music lessons, or go to camp. That may be in our future, for all we know.
One thing they had, and knew they had, was a pension from the teachers' association for their whole lives. It even gave a modest amount to help with funeral expenses, and a token amount to their two children when my grandmother died.
What we have is 401k (with some employee matching) and IRA retirement savings, as well as whatever additional money we can scrape together, and possibly Social Security will be there for us, as it was for them. We should be able to retire comfortably, when we get there, though probably not at 55, as they did.
So we probably are doing as well as they were, by those measures.
Here's the kicker, though- we're both in IT, in good jobs that pay very well. Could we ever hope to do as well if we were both teachers? I don't think two teachers could buy a house anywhere near here nowadays, could travel the way they did, could put two children through college, could retire at 55 and live comfortably for decades and still despite assisted living at the very end for a few years, manage to leave a tidy sum to their children.
It used to be possible to live well and be respected as a teacher, to work until 55 and not worry about health insurance or running out of money, because society supported and valued that. What does society support and value now? I wish I could say that the same things are valued, but I can't see it, and it frustrates me.
As this is a political blog, I will close by saying that we can work to bring those values back, if we work for candidates who share our views.
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