The Freedom to be Poor

I've been thinking quite a bit about money. Not the least of course because I'm a millennial who is a first-generation immigrant, working in journalism, with student loans to pay back. If there was a recipe for someone who doesn't have money, that would be it. Luckily, I don't eat very much and I haven't outgrown any piece of clothing since puberty.

Lately though, I've also been thinking about privilege. Or rather, the things that allow people like artists and journalists to do what it is that we do. I was reading this article in the New York Times titled: "The No-Limits Job," about how young people in the creative class are taking steadily lower paying jobs but are working longer hours despite that.

“We need to hire a 22-22-22,” one new-media manager was overheard saying recently, meaning a 22-year-old willing to work 22-hour days for $22,000 a year. Perhaps the middle figure is an exaggeration, but its bookends certainly aren’t. According to a 2011 Pew report, the median net worth for householders under 35 dropped by 68 percent from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662. Lest you think that’s a mere side effect of the economic downturn, for those over 65, it rose 42 percent to $170,494 (largely because of an overall gain in property values). Hence 1.2 million more 25-to-34-year-olds lived with their parents in 2011 than did four years earlier. 

I have a job where I can do that thing I got a degree for, journalism. But it's cost me. How much? Let's just say it's between $50,000 to $90,000. And why did I do this? Because I wanted to be a journalist and my parents were immigrants who came to this country in 1990 with very little money. I remember my dad had a bin in the backyard for collecting cans so he could sell them on the weekends.

Despite growing up poor, making money didn't matter to me. I just wanted to write for a living. And the only way I could step into the industry was to build connections. So I went to graduate school to get those connections and to find a way into the citadel known as professional journalism. I was having doughnuts with an older writer earlier this week and I told him that before journalism school, I couldn't even get the "Orange County Register" (the newspaper located only 10 minutes away from my house in Anaheim) to look at my clips.

And I would not have gotten the job at "American Theatre" if I had not gone to graduate school and known an alumni who had interned at the magazine.

But would I have had the freedom to pursue such a financially unstable career if I had been an only child? Would I have been able to take the unpaid internships, which I needed to build my portfolio? Journalism requires that new writers produce content for free in order to build clout. The clips that got me my job, I produced them for free.

What if I had been the oldest child in my family and had siblings to help care for? I have three older sisters who are lawyers, pharmacists and accountants. When they entered college, my parents had less money than they did when I started UCLA. And when I moved to New York City, I knew that even if I did not find a job, I would have my family to support me. I would never go hungry. But would a kid whose family was living hand-to-mouth be given that same type of privilege?

Why do so many people drop out of college when the costs become too much? Perhaps it's also why most first-generation immigrants pursue practical careers like doctors, lawyers or pharmacists. It's not following money instead of passion. It's practicality, and the ability to take care of your family because they can't do it themselves, and the need to push away from poverty and living on the street. In those cases, doing what you love like singing or getting an education is a luxury that is unaffordable.

Perhaps low-paying careers contain another kind of privilege. The people who pursue them have the privilege to be poor. After all, who can afford to take a non-paying internship? Or work at a part-time job while pursuing an acting career? Or live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn while living as a journalist? Or work for free in order to build up exposure?

The answer is those that have the security blanket of a family, a financially supportive family. Very few can actively make the choice be poor. Those that do occupy a certain social class of people, those who can afford to not have money. And that's an unsettling fact, especially for industries that pride themselves on talent and merit. I wonder if it will make the homogeneity of places like entertainment and journalism better, or worst. I'm going for the latter.

Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is more painful when there's no financial cushion to fall back on.