I’m not going to pretend I lived through the hardships of low pay work like the author, but I have some idea of what they mean when they say their is a mental gap between the people who live a low pay life and those who have never had to experience that kind of existence.
I grew up in a well off household, but my Dad did one thing that in my opinion, made me very different from my brother. My Dad made me work, while my little brother always got to stay home and play video games as long as his grades were good.
My Dad was strict about money and demanded I needed to get a job if I wanted to buy things as a teenager.
My uncle was high up on a golf course and got me a job essentially working under the table for less than minimum wage. He was a nice man, but his kids who helped run the place must not have liked me very much. I got put in janitorial duty cleaning all manner of filth at the pro shop. All the jobs no one else would bother doing, I did it, cause I wasn’t going to make my parents who helped me get the job look bad. Cleaning the toilets was the worst, people do unspeakable things in public restrooms.
When I saw opportunities to get into software development as work instead, I took it. I was working a software job by the time I was 17 and still in high school. I didn’t want to clean up shit anymore.
I say this as context of me doing this low pay job as compared to my brother, who stayed home and was showered with gifts.
At the end of the day, I’m married with my own home, I make good money and provide for my family.
My brother has never worked more than a summer position his entire life, is highly educated, but completely unemployable. He constantly thinks the world is too hard and difficult and that working would be “too much” for his sensibilities.
He’s married to a woman now who does one of the author’s described high turn over jobs that are incredibly stressful/undesirable while he stays at home and lets her care for them both. They have no kids so my brother stays home and plays more and more video games.
People who live the “good life” are completely unaware of the reality many folks live to make ends meet and the troubles they go through for it. In my mind, I got a taste of what life can be like if you’re “nearer” the bottom. The dichotomy between my brother and I is very shocking to me.