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Hey, remember that annoying piece in the New York Times last week — you know, the one about a single mom who worked a child care center, who struggled to scrape by and support three kids with poorly paid job? The piece was so exasperating because it implicitly endorsed the sexist and patronizing frame that if only the woman featured in the article — clearly a very hard-working woman named Jessica Schairer — would catch herself a man, everything in her life would fall into place. But it’s not just the sexism that made this article infuriating, it’s its wholesale denial of the hostile economic reality that Jessica and the majority of the American work force are dealing with today. Katha Pollitt did such a fine job putting paid to the piece that I didn’t think I’d have anything more to add.
That is, not until I heard, via Chris Hayes’ TV show, that Mitt Romney had mentioned the piece at a campaign appearance earlier this week. Here is what he said:
“I don’t know whether you read the story over the weekend there was a story that described a couple of women working in a daycare center. One is a single mom, she has three kids. One full-time job and three kids does not make a comfortable life. Being middle class in America is getting tougher and tougher. This president’s economy is not working for the American people even for those that are employed.”
Just when I think the Mittster has plumbed the depths of his own phoniness, he has a way of astonishing me by reaching new levels of complete fakery.
The faux sympathy is galling enough: “One full-time job and three kids does make a comfortable life. Being middle class in America is getting tougher and tougher.”
First of all — riiiiiiight. Like he could even imagine not having a “comfortable life.”
Secondly, there’s that bit about how “being middle class in America is getting tougher and tougher.” Hmmm, I wonder why that is?
Let’s look at the facts. Why shouldn’t one full-time job be enough to support a modestly comfortable life for oneself and one’s family? Certainly, by all accounts, Jessica, the woman featured in the piece, is a hard worker. She has an associate’s degree, which means she is better educated that most American adults. Moreover, has been working for the same employer for six years, and she is a manager.
And yet, she is only making $12.35 an hour. And it’s not that she has an especially bad or low-paying job, either. Jessica is a child care worker, and workers in that sector are notoriously poorly paid. (Care work and female-dominated professions, which often amount to the same thing, often carry a huge wage penalty).
Mitt Romney, of course, does not say a word about how he would actually try to help people like Jessica. Not only that, in his corporate career, there are many instances in which he has enriched himself at the expense of thousands of workers just like Jessica.
As Bloomberg News reported earlier this year, while Romney was at Bain Capital, many of the business the firm helped to fund, and which Romney personally profited from enormously, were low-wage employers. One of the ones that Romney was specifically involved in early on is Bright Horizons, a national child care chain not unlike Jessica Schairer’s employer. According to glassdoor.com, average salaries for teachers at Bright Horizons are about the same as Jessica’s — they range from $12.25 to $12.94 per hour.
By contrast, according to the Huffington Post, during his time at Bain, Mitt Romney’s hourly wage was a cool $6,400.
There’s a reason why this economy is not working for so many people like Jessica. But has precious little to do with government allegedly giving people free stuff (another Romney instant classic) — and everything to do with obscenely greedy CEO’s like Romney who enrich themselves at the expense of their workers, who in many cases, are just barely scraping by.
I would say that Romney should be ashamed of himself for exploiting this Jessica Schairer’s hardscrabble life for his own political benefit. But as he has shown countless times, Mitt Romney has a near-sociopathic lack of concern for the workers he’s made a career out of exploiting. So it doesn’t exactly come as a shock that he’s doing so once again.
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tcinaz on July 21, 2012 6:46 PM:
Mitt has always been a little tone deaf. Witness his "America the Beautiful" So it's not a surprise that he thinks a job paying $12.35 an hour is the product of the economy caused by Obama policies. After all, through no job and hard work he made $45 million in only two of those Obama-bad years. If he can show a net income increase in a declining economy, anyone can. Right?
PTate in MN on July 21, 2012 7:23 PM:
Just keep reminding yourself that until 1980, productivity gains and average income were in sync. Since then, 80% of the productivity, the wealth, created in this country has gone to the top 1%. Someone calculated that had incomes kept up with growth in GPA, the average income would be $40,000 higher.
The reason people like Jessica are struggling is because of people like Mitt Romney and the policies that he embraces. It would be considerably easier to live a middle-class life style is Jessica were earning $80 or 90K a year.
Ron Byers on July 21, 2012 7:34 PM:
The problem is that productivity rewards are tied to capital and not labor. It is only going to get worse as robots take over. Of course, without a strong middle class there is nobody to buy the stuff the robots make so, despite what outsourcing pioneers like Mitt Romney and the boobs running the Harvard Business School might think, allowing the middle class to decline is counter productive to long term wealth creation for the elites. As a society we have to find a better way to share the wealth. I am sure socialism isn't the way, but I am equally sure what we are doing now isn't working. How about figuring out how to give labor a bigger piece of the equity pie? We tried IRAs and 401Ks but they haven't worked. What's next?
g on July 21, 2012 7:55 PM:
The argument is pointless on its face. If she has been employed throughout the President's term, then what from his economic policies has made her life worse? Mitt's criticizing Obama specifically for unemployment - but she's been employed. Does Mitt think maybe the minimum wage should be raised? But he's against that. Does he think maybe her health insurance should be cheaper? But he wants to repeal the ACA. Does he think maybe her housing, gas and food prices should be lower? But he believes banks should take away homes under default, and he doesn't believe in global warming which is making our food prices rise. What the hell is he talking about and how is Obama responsible for it?
TCinLA on July 21, 2012 8:05 PM:
The only way the word "shame" can be used in a sentence that includes the words "Mitt Romney" is if it becomes "shameless"/
exlibra on July 21, 2012 8:30 PM:
One full-time job and three kids does not make a comfortable life. -- Mitt R-money
Really? You guys had *five* kids, not three, to support on a single full-time (or any-time; I well remember the flap about Ann never having worked outside the home) job, and you managed, somehow, to live your life in *considerable* comfort. Perhaps it depends on what kind of job, and how well/poorly paid it is?
When they made the Mittbot on that far-away planet, they missed more than just "compassion" circuits. They forgot to install the "imagination" circuits, too.
bleh on July 21, 2012 8:33 PM:
The problem is that you are a librul elitist who has never worked hard to make a payroll and hates America's Job Creators (TM) and wants our great country turned into a Marxist Socialist Fascist Communist hellhole, full of lazy mooching welfare queens and anchor babies crowding our schools and hospitals.
Oh ... what was your point again?
james on July 21, 2012 8:58 PM:
Perhaps Mr. Romney was suggesting she should have terminated the pregnancies. If she didn't have those three kids to support, she might be able to make it, you know.
thebewilderness on July 21, 2012 9:23 PM:
I am rather taken with the idea that twelve dollars an hour and food stamps puts a woman with three children in the "middle class". The math says she is right at the poverty level.
Another Inego Montoya moment brought to us by the Rmoney Republican.
Oldskool on July 21, 2012 10:00 PM:
Excellent article. The more I see of Mittens, the more I want to throw verbal elbows at him.
c00p on July 21, 2012 10:31 PM:
I just love repeating Gingrich's description of Mitt: breathtakingly dishonest.
g on July 22, 2012 12:04 AM:
Other than the fact that Jessica is more educated, I don't see a whole lot of difference between the choices she made and the one that Bristol Palin made.
c u n d gulag on July 22, 2012 6:22 AM:
Mitt's kind of like the Inspector Clouseau of politicians - only even MORE clue-free, and nowhere near as funny.
The only humor I find in this situation, is to watch Conservatives, particularly their base, twist themselves into flesh pretzels trying to make this effete, elite, rich, out-of-touch, trust fund baby, Corporate Cannibal Capitalist, and flip-flopping politician, into someone who they can relate to, and vote for.
Oh well - no one ever said Bubba and Bubbette ever had any brains or hearts.
Only that they're stupid, ignorant, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and/or homophobic, and are willing to economically cut-off their noses to spite their faces. "R-money 2012!!!"
Patango on July 22, 2012 8:16 AM:
Mit came to iowa a 2 months ago and his news releases lead you to his web site , it is all full of liberal talking points about how low wages are so terrible , lack of good medical coverage for workers , high costs of college , it read like obamas web sight , as is being pointed out in the op here , I have yet to here one msm talking head call his campaign on this , even the more liberals ones , I could have missed it of course , but I do not see anyone pointing this out to his surrogates when they bring up the economy endlessly , or pointing out that everything romney has to offer is just gw bush economic policies , wall st and romney are the ones who have created this scenario the last 30 years , low wages and no bennies , because we are shippiong all your jobs over seas
But by god they are all cackling about how if you raise taxes at all , to pay down the debt and for 2 wars , it will tank the economy by god
MuddyLee on July 22, 2012 8:48 AM:
Remember that Mitt, as bad as he is, isn't loved by a lot of the modern republicans because he ISN'T CONSERVATIVE ENOUGH (ie, not crazy enough). Mitt has to be defeated, along with the rest of the repubs. Obama, like Clinton, is vastly superior to the repub opposition. It's not even close. We have to stop demanding perfection from democrats when we are not even demanding sanity from the repubs. If Romney wins the Koch Brothers win - Rush Limbaugh wins - Krauthamer wins - Newt, Cain, Bachmann, Palin, McConnell, Boehner, Trump, Murdoch all win. We can't let Romney win.
sparrow on July 22, 2012 8:59 AM:
G,
Mitt's not trying to bring you into the fold. He's trying to get unthinking fools to buy his snake oil.
SYSPROG on July 22, 2012 9:17 AM:
Aside from the obvious sexism and cluelessness, my question is how ANYONE would think a woman making $12.35/hr and supporting three kids would be considered 'middle class'? REALLY?
Skip on July 22, 2012 9:42 AM:
Child support?
PTate in MN on July 22, 2012 11:46 AM:
Ron Byers: "The problem is that productivity rewards are tied to capital and not labor. It is only going to get worse as robots take over....As a society we have to find a better way to share the wealth."
Note that the divergence between productivity and income has only happened since 1980, the year of the conservative takeover of the USA. Is the divergence something structural or further evidence that Republican economic policies are The Problem, not that productivity rewards are tied to capital. I conclude that a better way to share the wealth may be to return to pre-1980, pre-Reagan era, tax rates on capital.
Anonymous on July 22, 2012 12:07 PM:
C.U.N.D. Gulag wrote:
"[the] are willing to economically cut-off their noses to spite their faces."
It's even worse than that... they're willing to economically cut off their noses to spite OUR (lib / dem) faces!
KarenJG on July 22, 2012 12:09 PM:
Oops. That was me above. And it was supposed to be [they], not [the].
Joe Friday on July 22, 2012 12:22 PM:
"Mitt Romney, of course, does not say a word about how he would actually try to help people like Jessica."
Oh, but he does.
Willard says he will bestow upon the "job creators", massive tax cuts, while instituting massive deregulation, and the resulting countenance will then lift Jessica up in a rising tide of economic rejuvenation.
Of course, first everyone must drink the Purple Kool-Aid.
Rick B on July 22, 2012 12:31 PM:
When improved "productivity" is tied to capital the big winners will always be banks rather than factories that produce real goods.
Modern economists study the flows of money and from those flows attempt to infer what is happening in the real world. Unfortunately, most of us live in that real world which is getting short shrift as the capitalists take over.
Not that it's just economists who get it wrong. Top managers in large firms similarly manage money rather than reality. They spend all their time arguing and manipulating budgets rather than the details of products.
Patango on July 22, 2012 10:51 PM:
Joe Friday
"Willard says he will bestow upon the "job creators", massive tax cuts,"
When romney was in florida he was complaining about how many under water homes there was there , his solution , he said this on the news in front of god and everyone , give him and him pals more tax cuts , too help all these poor people who are losing their homes , not an exact quote of course , but that is what he laid out
That the gop voting house owners will swallow that crap , from a person who pays at 1/2 the rate they do already , just floors me
SNAKEOIL WALL ST ROMNEY might make a good bumper sticker