The poverty of feeling poor.
Does Wealth Equate to Worth?
By Dorian Benkoil
When you’re poor everything about the world tells you that you are a bad person. — Author Ocean Vuong.
The award-winning author said those words this week, and they got me thinking about myself and about our relative perceived worth. These days, I don’t feel especially well-off, materially. But, that’s mental. Really.
I never lack for necessities — food, water, heat, clothing, Internet, smartphone… — can eat out often, including at nice restaurants. I rent my own office space, have a company that earns at least a little money, am paid to teach and to write.
And, yet, my own sense of self-worth is diminished as my income has declined— even though some of that decline is a choice. Vuong noted that poor people feel less worth because, as one example, they “can’t donate” money to causes. And their world can e limited to a tight routine — work, home, grocery store, government aid office. He mentioned that he had never seen his own mother in a nice local park where he grew up in a Connecticut town, because she was so busy functioning.
I’ve been feeling a little poorer recently. I’ll think twice before spending $100 or more on a meal out. I’ll forego the cocktail to save some money. My charitable donations tend to be in the lower two- and three-figures. I might subscribe to one or two fewer expensive streaming services concurrently than I used to.
I know, I know, bring out the teeny tiny little violins. Woe is me. I don’t have top-tier Apple TV or Netflix right now, because I’m concentrating on what I can get from HBO, and ad-supported streaming I get through a credit card. I have cable TV. And spotify. And subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. And and and.
I have friggin’ credit cards. I am able to pay them off every month. I can rent cars, take planes, buy a new pair of shoes, pay a cross-country skiing trail fee. In America, I’m told, I’m in the top 20% in assets, maybe even the top 10%. In New York City you can feel middle class, but, by wealth, you’re upper middle class in a lot of the rest of the country, and the world.
In New York, especially Manhattan, you’re constantly reminded how much money there is sloshing around. In this place, if you keep your eyes open, you are constantly reminded of class. You walk past well-apportioned restaurants, with well-to-do diners inside. You see high-fashion shops and furniture stores with eye-popping prices. But then you take the subway, and see lots of people who aren’t wearing those fancy clothes, people with paint specs on their boots, inexpensive coats and bags that look beaten up. Vuong was speaking at a New York Public Library branch for free — a few doors down from a high-end sushi restaurant.
Religion, Wealth and Worth
Last week, I was able to spend $5 to attend the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see an exhibit on the work of Man Ray. You can, if you live in the city, spend $.01 and get in. It’s a pay-what-you-wish. That’s anti-poverty there. Yet, walking to the museum, you go past some of those highfalutin’ shops, tony pre-war buildings with uniformed doormen, expensive cars smoothly gliding down Park and 5th avenues. If I don’t have a uniformed doorman (I could), or an expensive car (I’d have to skimp to have that), or the ability to just buy whatever clothes or luggage I feel like — well, that makes me just normal. But here, in the commercial capital of America, it can feel like you yourself are worth less than someone who can afford these other things.
Which says nothing about how that person can afford them. Who knows who s/he cheated or robbed, what ills they might have done to get their wealth? Look at the Sackler family and their role in the opioid epidemic. Does it make any sense that financial managers make many multiples of a school teacher or daycare worker, someone who is literally protecting our most prized “assets” — our children? What is your value as a good parent? Or your worth if you’re not?
A religious leader may have enough. Some have great access to material goods, are waited on hand and foot. Other ministers, live “normal” lives, shop at mid-range chains, make choices at the supermarket about what to spend on. Meanwhile, the the good they bring into the world may be exponentially beyond any monetary value we could assign.
There is a particular conceit, and it feels quite modern American to me, that wealth is seen as equating to worth. Billionaires are of more value than millionaires who are of more value than those with less. If you can donate $1,000 you’re worth more than the person who can donate $10. Money buys status, and entree. And it’s seductive, in a negative way, to let a lack of huge wealth — a feeling that you don’t completely control your destiny or your day-to-day — to influence (infect?) your thinking and your sense of self.
What is the value, though, of being a good person, of helping others, of contributing to the world? Of, say, teaching for less money than I could earn doing some other things? Of, even, just existing and enjoying my days? What is this thing that gnaws at — and I’m sure I’m not alone — making me opine on whether I’m worth less when I’m earning less? I’m not. I know that. I’m trying to believe it. I want us all to do that, too. To believe it. What would Mr. Rogers say?
