Published April 29, 2007 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
We've all heard of the American Dream. Some think the dream means owning a house or making a certain salary. That’s not true. The American Dream means having financial security and freedom to pursue your calling. You can own that house or earn that salary long before you achieve freedom or security, if you ever do. That’s the trap so many families have fallen into, by choice or hazard of birth. We think it’s about having the house when it’s really about having a plan and a means to achieve independence.
We also know that the dollar number we wrote down on our tax returns last month was much lower than the dollar number that actually passed through our wallets in 2006. Some choose to blame the tax man, others blame HMOs. Well, they both take their bite. So, too, does the rising cost of living, housing expenses and – for parents – day care and a public school system that has subtly moved from meritocracy to a gentle but dangerous caste system. If you exclude health care, transportation and educational expenses, your take home pay is a tiny percentage of your income.
The American Dream – real or idealized – is central to the Iron Range and all of Northeastern Minnesota. The powerful people have always been “out east” and, more recently, in Finland, Japan, China or, soon, India. The people here have always worked for the people “out there.” They’ve toiled, lived and died, in pursuit of a dream. That dream usually wasn’t as specific as a house or car. Usually it had to do with the sense of relief and pride in being able to choose your livelihood and daily endeavors. That’s why we see engineers, doctors, governors and artists whose family, perhaps only one or two generations earlier, could only find work in the mines. That is the story of the Iron Range. That’s my story.
So if independence and upward mobility is the goal, we should not revel too long in the record-breaking stock market prices or in the continued stability of our employment and consumer indexes. Those are good things, but there’s more to the equation. We are learning – through the stagnant housing market, struggling auto market and massive increases in consumer debt – that houses, cars and spending don’t necessarily lead to the American Dream of financial freedom and security.
The St. Paul-based Jobs Now Coalition released a study last week indicating that 42 percent of jobs in Northeastern Minnesota, including here in St. Louis and Itasca counties, do not pay enough money to support a family. This was detailed in a March 23 story by Jane Brissett in the Duluth News-Tribune. According to the story, a single worker must earn $20,414 to make it in Northeastern Minnesota. A two-worker family with two kids must earn more than $42,000 to cover costs, which would include child care. Professionals with a college education and a stable family situation might not blink at those thresholds. But almost half of the people you meet in our region struggle with these numbers every day, often because they have neither college nor social connections.
Remember, we’re talking about working families here, people who work as hard as the powerful titans of Washington and Wall Street. We should try to do well by these folks – and that means investing in education through a fourth tier in the income tax, building infrastructure and keeping property taxes and fees as low as possible. Doing this will make our economy both strong and fair.
So, don’t be overly influenced by the happy chirping of the stock market report each evening. Instead, ask yourself how working families are doing in your town or county. If you want to know what kind of economy you have, you’ll find your answer there. Like a tree, our economy is either growing or dying. Woe to the tree whose branches grow faster than its roots.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.