I have a self-employed part-time housekeeper.  She works 4 hours per week for me and charges $20/hour.   Her rate is high and that seems to keep her trade down.  She has three other people she works for but they negotiate.  All the others get her for about $14/hour. 

 

I guess they feel that housework is not very technical, so she is regarded as unskilled labor. Maybe they are right but I don’t care.  Her health is as much a technical challenge to the physician she sometimes sees as anyone else’s.   Her need to pay bills is as technical a challenge as mine is. 

 

But she amazes and infuriates me.  In 2004, she supported George Bush for president and she will vote for McCain in 2008.   The demagoguery of the Republican machine has overwhelmed her.  She is concerned about the threats to her security from terrorist forces more than she is about how she will make ends meet.   She honestly believes only the Republicans can keep her safe. 

 

To make ends meet, she sells her blood plasma twice monthly although at her age this is not wise.  She has no pension and can never retire.  She will work and sell until she dies. 

 

 I will now take a chance and tell you something that may destroy your sympathy for her.  Like so many other super poor people, she squanders her money.  She asked me how much money I’d be willing to pay for a good seat to a Barbra Streisand concert and I said $25.  She said she would spend $60 – and has.  Her other three employers use her every other week so the $60 is almost two weeks worth of salary from them.   She buys lottery tickets.  So do I.  It is fun to dream.  I buy about one per month and she buys about two or three per week.  She is not mathematically incompetent and has genuine bookkeeping skills but she thinks she is really raising her chances of winning by spending the extra dollars.   I tried explaining to her that if she bought one million tickets each week, chances are that she would not ever win.   She doesn’t like to hear that. 

 

The plight of the poor is very real and, in part, is self-induced.  Like Thomas Jefferson, I tremble for my country, when I think there is no way out for people like her.