That quotation is my favorite piece of uninformed rhetoric in the CNBC piece about the recent push to raise the minimum wage--for fast food employees in particular. It beautifully demonstrates the blatant disregard for facts and evidence that dominates political discussion of late.
These pundits' assumption is shared by many of their ideology: only kids work minimum wage jobs, and why don't they just make something of themselves if they want to make more money. That's what I did! I mean, this is America! Everyone has the same opportunities. We all attend the same public schools, have access to the same resources. I just tried hard and cared. That's all anyone has to do. It's a fact!
Except, it's not.
Let's take two kids--one wealthier, upper middle-class and one poorer, lower middle-class--who attend the exact same school. In reality, these two kids very different opportunities and resources even though they live in the same community. The poorer kid most likely won't have adequate time to study because she has to work to help feed her family. She may not have access to a car or other "staples" because her family can't afford to provide them. She may fall asleep in class because she had to work until midnight the day before.
The poorer student is statistically more likely to come from a home where abuse is present, which handicaps her mental and emotional abilities. This combined with her schedule means that she is actually less likely to excel alongside the wealthier student and will probably not be in advanced classes. (If she were, she would be an absolute superhero for overcoming her severe circumstances.)
Fast forward to graduation for this young lady: when it comes to competing with the wealthier kid who had ample time for academic achievement and resources for extracurricular activities (clubs, sports, etc.), the poorer kid, who may be just as, if not more, intelligent, will be ill-equipped to compete into for college entry with the kid with the filled-out resume, much less prepared to afford the rising cost of tuition and living that comes with it. This means she's less likely to choose college, even if she has the opportunity to choose it.
Where is the place for this young woman, who has made rational decisions for her circumstances and is now ill positioned in our "capitalist" economy.
And let's take a look at two kids with learning disabilities: one whose parents are wealthy and the other whose parents are not. The wealthy kid's parents have the means to hire tutors or send their child to private schools with smaller class sizes and specially trained teachers. Or if we want to get really honest and dirty about it, make sure the right people are influenced so his disability limits has a disproportionately low influence on his achievement. The poor kid's parents, on the other hand, must rely just on the resources available through the local public school. And they probably still need him to work and help in the ways that our student above does. So our already-disadvantaged student looses ground ground with every day, month, and year to his wealthy, better-resourced counterpart.
Where is the place for this young man who never had access to the resources to overcome his disability so he could compete on a basic level with his peers?
Or here's the one we really don't want to talk about: the poor kid in a poor school district who deals with a deficit of resources at home and at school. This child is more likely to deal with abuse and violence of all kinds inside and outside of the home. She is more likely to not know where her next meal will come from, not to mention how she'll get clothes to wear to school next year. How is she expected to stay in school much less excel and succeed in this inflexible and rigid economic system that only believes certain kinds of jobs should merit a living wage. (Oops. There I go using that term again.)
I haven't even broached mental and emotional illness and how they correlate and perpetuate poverty. Or how the US's education system is internationally notorious due to the great inequality of resources and quality based purely on the wealth (or lack thereof) of the school's community.
Somehow, according to these conservative algorithms that are based entirely on theory, these kids' position are"equal" to any other kid's and they just have to get some gumption and education to get a good paying job of the right kind, right?
But there's no just about it.
Studies upon studies (by people who know things... these people who have earned the higher education that these supposedly worthless people lack) have shown that intelligent children whose abilities aren't nurtured are more likely to be demotivated and apathetic, even when compared with the kid with average or below-average intelligence. And children with learning disabilities and no resources or attention are likely to give up on education altogether. It takes little imagination or work to see how fewer resources early on stunt an individual's intellectual and economic success.
There's plenty of evidence out there that reflect the correlation
between poverty and all of the mitigating factors that limit opportunity and
stagnate economic and educational growth. Here is a recent one to consider: How Money Worries Can Scramble Your Thinking and the study report itself.
