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Raul update. So I'm a labor economist, and I study crime, which in English means I know absolutely nothing about the real world when it comes either labor or crime! It's part of the job. So, I just spoke with Raul. Remember, last week Raul's employer messed up payroll 1/n
This is a corporation. I don't if it's franchised or what, but all of you and me have eaten at this restaurant maybe your entire life. It's a restaurant you usually go to when your driving on the highway, maybe in town, okay so it's like some mom and pop thing. 2/n
So we used the bucket of money people donated for his GED completion to get him over that last week, with the understanding that this week there would be TWO weeks of payments coming into him, not just one. I was frustrated with this firm and learned about "wage theft". 3/n
So, Raul has been stressed out, bc he's been nickel and diming to get to this moment. And I was being hard about it for two reasons. 1) this money has got to something productive, or it will get wasted. To me, that's the GED, that's how I've decided to be a steward of gifts 4/n
And 2) Raul has absolutely got to start getting some financial habits about cash flow. He just has to, because this guy is so good natured, so outgoing, such a sweet kid and he blows money on everything -- I'm not talking about drugs. It's spending what he doesn't have 5/n
So I have been trying to impose a real budget constraint because I know if you just simply shift out the budget constraint, particularly for a myopic impoverished kid who already has spending and savings problems, they'll just expand consumption to that higher curve. 6/n
And that's bad because once this money is out, I'm not going to adopt Raul. I want Raul to be at the next rung of the ladder, which is GED completion, and then I gotta come up with a new plan, bc I cannot have a fourth kid! So, I have been holding fast using money for class 7/n
So, he was getting paid today. Two weeks payments from this large freaking company. Last week, nobody got paid bc they screwed up payroll whatever that means. But guess what happened today? Somehow they made an error on a few employees, and Raul was one of them! 8/n
They apologized profusely, but he won't get paid this week and he is 7 days late on rent! He's got basic life sustenance living to do, like eat food and not be homeless. And they apologized apparently profusely, but won't give him a loan bc its against policy. 9/n
I had to call Raul on the phone. WE were texting, and it just sounded impossible. Like there is no way this is actually happening. No way! But I spoke to him, and I can tell -- this is what happened. He had too specific a story, too much weird business accounting junk. 10/n
I am so disillusioned right now. To get out of poverty, not only does he need a constant flow of transfer *over* his current wage during a recession pandemic. Not only does he need a neighborhood that isn't surrounding him with crime and drugs. Not only does need transportation
Not only does he need like a dozen other things I can't even think of right now. He also needs basic contracts to be met by his employer and when they aren't, the employer does the decent thing of loaning this guy part of his paycheck that they owe him already! 11/n
I feel like most of my more liberal friends who think about poverty are like "duh. Where have you been? What kind of labor economist lives in such a weird silo that they are so oblivious to the fucked up way American labor markets work for poor and minorities?" 12/n
And I don't know what to say that. I heard workers were paid the value of their marginal product in competitive fucking markets and then markdowns in monoposony markets, or I heard about "search frictions" and the minimum wage and the EITC and all this garbage. 13/n
I did know that a company that is probably publicly traded for all I know can apologize for not paying their employees two weeks in a row because of their administrative mistakes and not actually spot the kid some money to cover rent and food! 14/n
I just am so upset right now. And i asked Raul, "Look, let me go up there with you and we just talk to these people and I get a handle on what's going on and I can help you." And he said no, because he thinks they will fire him. And he is looking for another job. 15/n
He -- a black kid, poor, high school drop out, covered in tattoos during a damn pandemic recession wherein another lockdown could be coming is looking for "another job". It's surreal. I just want to cry I'm so angry. Because here's the deal. 16/n
I'm not going to let Raul get evicted, or whatever. I'm not worried about him -- he'll get his check, and all that shit. That's not the point. Raul is a representative agent for who knows how many people just like him who DONT have help. 17/n
I am so myopically focused on schooling, I mean that is in my mind where everything starts. He has to get that GED, and then has to go to tech or community college. I just don't see how a young minority kid high school dropout is going to escape these problems without it. 18/n
But the obstacles -- they are everywhere. They are inside him, they are "in society" structurally, they are in his family, they are in his neighbors, they are even in the labor markets with established firms with "good national reputations". 19/n
None of this stuff will be coming at any share holder's meeting. And they aren't punished by competition either, because frankly, it probably lowers their variable costs making them more competitive. And there's no union, so there's worker bargaining power. 20/n
And ultimately, the only labor market for Raul is the low end one in Waco. It doesn't matter what's happening somewhere else; all labor markets at this part of the income distribution are *local*. He isn't going to some other city to get a job like you and me might. 21/n
Last few years, my whole political orientation has shifted on healthcare and labor because of my own personal experiences to be honest, and not even one thing I have read in an article or a textbook. We do not care for the mentally ill remotely like we should. 22/n
We do not care for our neighbors who are poor. We do not care in fundamental deep ways about the -- for lack of a better word -- structural obstacles and constant frictions in minority's lives such that escaping hard circumstances is likely, maybe even possible. 23/n
Anyway, I told Raul -- look, I'm steward of the gifts. I decide how they're distributed. For now, I'm using them to pay for stuff that is late. You work out with your landlord rent stuff to get you to Monday, which is when he gets an unemployment check. I still want constraints
The only possibility in all this nonsense is Raul is pulling my leg. But I personally don't believe it anymore. I think he is getting screwed over, not by some monolithic America, but by a specific firm in town with specific managers and accountants who made specific errors
