Water + Wealth + Wanting
For many people, a dollar makes all the difference | Opinion Columns | vtcng.com
For many people, a dollar makes all the difference | Opinion Columns | vtcng.com
There’s this television program that chronicles the lives of women who reside in a much fancier zip code than I. It’s a world of extravagant designer wardrobes, closets devoted to equally exotic footwear, multiple garages housing unpronounceable sports cars and conversations containing more salutations about their looks and lives — deserved or not — than I can find in my thesaurus.
I am somewhat embarrassed to admit this to you, but it’s true; I have developed a peculiar addiction to this show and have found no 12-step program to wean me from it. Why? Because I have found myself, by contrast, appreciating what I have and with whom I wish to share my modest acquisitions. Trust me. I don’t own any Louis Vuitton handbags, but I do have a rake you can borrow and a casserole dish I’ll lend.
The only person I trust to talk with about the extravagant lifestyles of the rich-and-reality-show-famous is my friend, Sebastian, who, at one time in his storied life, while living and working in New York City, dressed women whose lives were similarly privileged as the reality TV stars referenced above. It’s one thing to bag someone’s purchases from the clearance aisle at TJ Maxx, or better yet, the ReStore. It’s another to hold exclusive appointments for people like Sigourney Weaver and Jacqueline Onassis as they ready for a movie premiere, or a State dinner with the Ambassador to Italy.
But I digress.
The title of this month’s essay came to me when I found myself at a convenience store in Burlington earlier last month. The Quik Stop has been in business for more than 50 years. Same downtown location, same fast, cheap food, same clientele — Burlington’s poor population. It was also the place where underage teens could easily buy beer back when the drinking age was 18. Don’t ask me how I know this.
So, there I was, on my way to an appointment when I realized I needed to make change for a $20. The Quik Stop was the logical place to go. I thought, I’ll just buy a small bottle of water to make change. The problem: That small bottle of water cost $2.50.
Mind you, a bottle of water can be found in a gallon jug at the Yankee One Dollar in Morrisville for $1.25. No quibbling over the fact that the dollar store is now the dollar-and-a-quarter store.
But back to my $2.50, 8-ounce bottle of Quik Store water. I didn’t purchase it. I left empty-handed, without the exact change I would need when I stopped to pick up an order that required exact payment. I felt sad. A single, small bottle of water? $2.50?! Come on, now!
Poverty exacts a high price from all of us.
And then I thought: Why is it that the most disadvantaged neighborhoods with the least services and goods include businesses that demand higher prices from the poorest among us when someone just a mile or so up the road can get the same item for less than half the price? The people who live near the Quik Stop are mostly poor. The closest major grocery store is four miles away. Many of Burlington’s inner-city residents don’t drive. To me, knowing most of these people have nowhere else to go when they need to shop is unconscionable. Being on a bus line offers little consolation.
So, how does this prejudice lead to generational poverty?
Jump back about 10 years to a conference I attended at the recommendation of my sister, a champion of higher education, particularly for first generation college-aspiring students. The conference was one that provided insight into what being poor looks like, how it’s formed and shapes our perceptions, and how it foments bias in ways that keep people cemented to lesser social classes, no matter how much they might aspire to a more privileged life or ever have the ability to arrive there. Consider the topics that define discussions about poverty, social class and quality of life. They include housing and health care costs; food insecurity; low pay/cost of living; and last, but truly not least, access to education.
If you are “born to the manor,” you have an instant advantage. It continues through the opportunities afforded to those whose worlds include private nannies, exclusive summer camps, ivy league college admissions, villas in France and zip codes where the rich and famous live behind gates that require passcodes to enter.
Not so with the rest of us great unwashed. Google any number of studies on poverty and the same factors appear — unemployment or underemployment; environmental exploitation and degradation; lack of infrastructure; political and economic favoritism; social exclusion and discrimination; lack of education.
So, places like the Quik Stop become anchored in areas where there are few, if any, alternatives for residents to choose. There is no mobility here. According to the Vermont Community Action Partnership, more than 10.3% of Vermonters — just shy of 64,000 people — live in poverty. That’s not “poorer than;” that’s “poverty,” which is determined to be below $33,000 annually for a family of four. Can you imagine living on $33,000 a year? In Vermont? As a family of four?
To lift oneself out of poverty in Vermont, according to a study by MIT, (livingwage.mit.edu/states/50), a family of four with two wage earners in the household must have each earn a minimum of $33.70/hour, on average. That’s a combined $140,000 per year required to adequately cover the cost of food, child care, health care, housing, transportation, taxes and miscellaneous expenses.
Wages in 12 of Vermont’s 14 counties fall below the state average, which is somewhere around $82,000 annually per household, calculated at slightly less than three people. But let’s not overlook the fact that $140,000 is a hugely greater income than $33,000 or even $82,000. Nobody in these less affluent Vermont households buys bottles of water for $2.50.
I left the store without the water and drove on to my scheduled meeting with a Facebook Marketplace reseller. So that she wouldn’t have to make change, I gave the woman a $20 bill, up a few dollars from the agreed upon $16 we had negotiated for the item I purchased from her: yarn. She lived just a few blocks up from the Quik Stop but I doubt that she will be using the extra couple of bucks to buy a bottle of water there.
Oh, and about those customers with whom my friend Sebastian is well acquainted. Do you remember the scene in the film “Love Actually” where the character played by Rowan Atkinson carefully boxes a gift purchased by actor Alan Rickman? He places the necklace in a box, wraps it in a bow, tucks it into a designer bag surrounded by tissue and sprinkles all with a gently crushed sprig of lavender.
Should you find yourself obsessed with the same reality TV show as I, but continue to necessarily live within more modest means, no matter where you shop or what you purchase, you can always add a sprig of crushed mint to your reusable shopping bag yourself. Mint grows abundantly in this neck of the woods. And it’s free.
Poverty exacts a high price from all of us. Still, the metaphorical version of this statement is easier to swallow than a $2.50 bottle of water.
It certainly does.
Sadly