A friend of mine is moving this weekend from a place in a large city to a cheaper place with a roommate in an adjoining suburb. An attorney on the wrong side of the economic equation, she represents people without money sitting in prisons (without charges in a lot of cases) for long periods of time, and is paid by a nonprofit at a fraction of the rate of the comparable work in private practice.
In other words, there's not an intrinsic, paying market for those offering fair and just representation to the most vulnerable among us in our occasional democracy, so she and others work in a world funded by grants and private donations by people who are apparently in the market for supporting justice, partially subsidized by cut-rate salaries by people afflicted with an unfortunate sense of compassion and fealty to justice. We should be grateful for such afflictions.
Some might argue the market is working as it should--people will accept low pay to do what they want to do, and society is fine with massive caseloads and inadequate representation, especially for undocumented immigrants. And why should they have rights, anyway--except that it's settled law, despite the hateful rhetoric of the right during the recent election.
This flight to affordability isn't a new flow--it happens all the time in large cities: they become unaffordable to a lot of people who prefer to live there but eventually can't because their income doesn't match the pace of a particular urban inflation, or their values change, or etc. Urban natives face gentrification, which is a long, related, but separate topic.
Today's topic is about how we view pay today and pay less than a month from now when there's a new president without much of a sense for how tough it is to work two jobs and still not be able to afford living expenses.
The new administration's attitude toward work will be much different than the current one, as foreshadowed by the incoming Labor Secretary's classy quote: "let them eat shit."