K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Small Town & Suburban Poverty

Judith Davidoff:

But Walsh, a lifelong Wisconsin resident whose parents were public school teachers, says she first ran up against the public/private divide when visiting a community in northwestern Wisconsin during the spring of 2008.

She says that a group of loggers, most of whom were self-employed, believed that while schoolteachers may work hard during the year, they have cushy positions. Among the perks: great benefits, health care, summers off and an annual salary of about $50,000 a year. "Nobody in this town makes anywhere near $50,000," says Walsh, paraphrasing comments she heard. "At the lumber mill, they're making $20,000 and losing their fingers!"

Walsh says when she probes further, asking why people see a public employee/private employee divide and not a rich/poor divide, she gets stares of disbelief.

It seems to come down to what is tangible and what can be controlled. Private-sector workers, many of whom are struggling, perceive that a large portion of their taxes are going to pay for the salaries of public workers. A cut to public-employee wages and benefits would, at least in theory, mean lower taxes.

One woman, Diane Windemuller (slide 7), "a former HR executive, lost her job in April 2011 and was very reluctant to look for anything less than a comparable position and salary...". Meanwhile, "the Windemuller family is accessing public safety net services: the family has received rent assistance and goes to food pantries twice a week to shift money they otherwise would spend on food to other important bills." It was, I believe, Ms Windemuller, who experienced her first visit to the local food bank as such a humiliation that she felt it necessary to park where no one she knew would see her car, and to try to sneak in unobserved, disguised by sunglasses and a hat. Yet, for a time, her family's straitened financial circumstances were in part a direct consequence of her refusal to seek jobs she considered in some way beneath her prior executive post, and she took a temporary administrative position only after her unemployment benefits had run out, and her husband (whom she had criticised for not working harder to find a job more in line with his last one) started threatening to leave her.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 3, 2012 3:53 AM
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