Tonight I would like to write about a forgotten and often ignored class of people. I am referring to those who would most likely have done well professionally if they had reasonable access to post-secondary education. A conversation with a gifted poet today made me think of this, especially given some of the parallels in our life experience. Particularly, he and i share in common the intelligence and creative ability to have done well in the liberal arts and humanities but certain obstacles have made it impossible for us to pursue our vocation. We have done particularly badly professionally, my friend worse than I. I have had the good fortune at least of encountering employment that I still found meaningful, when I spent between twelve and fourteen years as a home support worker. The problem: the work was neither stable nor sustainable and was always underpaid. I have only once been paid a living wage in my work history, when I spent a year as a homeless shelter worker in 2003. It was very meaningful employment but the preponderance of graveyard shifts, horrible co-workers and casual on call shifts were a recipe for disaster and I had to leave. I have otherwise never earned much more than perhaps two or three dollars above the minimum wage and currently I make less than two dollars over the minimum. The trade off is that I love what I do and living in affordable housing makes it possible for me to survive in Vancouver.
I was not able to finish college. I had to work to survive, since my parents', long divorced, were not available to offer continued support. I had a debt of four hundred seventy-five dollars to Canada Student Loan that took me twelve years to pay off with years of hounding from collection agents. Why did it take me so long to pay off such a minor debt? I could only find enough low paid work to cover basic living expenses. At times I could not even afford a phone. And my rent was quite low. I have always been good at budgeting, never had any expensive habits, seldom ate in restaurants, never travelled until recently, now that I am able to do it. And I was never able to save money. The very idea of taking out massive successive student loans amounting to more than twenty thousand dollars not including interest just to complete my bachelor's degree, while subsisting on poor quality food and substandard and unsafe housing combined with the added stress of having to hold down a stressful part time job not only was unappealing, it was simply and purely impossible. Some people thrive on this kind of stress. Because of my background as a survivor of trauma I would have broken down and likely ended up on medications and in hospital, at tremendous cost to the taxpayers. And unable to pay off the debt, given the difficulty of finding employment that would have matched my education.
To those of you naysayers who like to scoff and say that I'm lazy or weak or self-pitying, and that you were able to accomplish everything including your PhD while raising three children single-handedly and working three jobs, even if you are telling the truth (and even you know that you are lying) not everyone is that strong. This suggests that in these times of Neo-Darwinism thanks to Global Capitalism only the strong are privileged to survive, even in their ability to access and complete post secondary education. So then, the most sublimely gifted poets, writers, artists, thinkers and advocates for the less fortunate, lacking the stamina that it takes to stand up to the pressure of the times and remain competitive, must quietly and meekly accept defeat, sink into the margins and into the gutter and quietly die there while the rest of you go on from triumph to victory? Oh, how very Ayn Rand of you and please don't forget how she ended up: mentally and physically ill in her final days surviving by the largess of the very nanny state that she wanted to see dismantled.
The solution should be simple, a veritable no-brainer. All post secondary education up to and including all levels of university education including studying for doctorates is going to have to be made universally available. There is no other option if we are to have fair and equal access to a rapidly changing and evolving workforce as well as for equal access to skilled trades and professions. That's right. Raise taxes, not on the poor and low income. Not on the middle income, but on the rich. There is no other solution to this growing inequality. If we want to prevent and stem this descent into the gutter that our civilization is taking thanks to this massive legitimization of greed aka Global Capitalism, the playing field is going to have to be equalized. Our society as we know it is already unravelling itself and may soon devour itself like the Manichean Serpent if this orgy of greed and selfishness is not brought to an end.
It is so simple. The money that would be saved on the social, health and mental health services that would be needed to pick up the human remains of those who have fallen through the cracks could be instead invested in universal access to university and trades education which in turn would bless us with a healthy, strong and empowered work force. So easy and so simple, this. But, hey, I forgot. Our leaders don't want this, since weakened, exhausted and demoralized voters are much easier to control manipulate and frighten. Silly me. Rise up and fight!
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