Being Poor: Does The Arrogance Of The Wealthy Inhibit The Growth of The Poor?

What if the wealthy college students were required to work low wage jobs? How would that affect their perspective? Would it be a long lasting effect?

The lower to mid class view of the rich is generally not a good one. Walking around with a sense of entitlement as if the world owes them something. The rich or more so the children of the rich don’t understand what it means to struggle. Where money is readily available with seemingly limitless amounts, money loses all real value.

Tending to separate ourselves from people different from us, we become ignorant to them. We are all human beings and can relate to someone if we make an effort to understand them.

Even though we may view the rich in an unfavorable way. Many of the richest men in the world had very humble beginnings. Knowing someone’s start changes our interpretation of how they got there, and we may find more common ground with someone that had to suffer, than someone with that sense of prerogative. And often times by respecting each other’s outlook we are better as a community, learning and growing from one another’s experiences.

Undercover Bosses, a TV show where each episode features a high-ranking executive or the owner of a corporation, going undercover as an entry-level employee in his or her own company.  They change their appearance and go under a fake name, to convince the people they work with. The following results varied from person to person, but generally they had a better idea and respect of how it is to work in an uncomfortable, low wage environment.

Broadening our perspective is often difficult, because it is difficult to want to put ourselves out there to change.

Is It Even Worth the Effort?

Sawsene Nejjar, a student at L’Ecole de Gouvernance et d’Economie, has prepared for a strange aspect of her schooling. The school, in the capital of Morocco, requires students to do an internship at low wage jobs. Her internship is at a store similar to Ikea, called KITEA.

Sawsene describes her experiences: “I had my nail polish, my hair done, my makeup done. I felt good, but everyone was looking at me like, ‘Who’s this bourgeoisie coming here? Why is she talking in French every time she’s talking on the phone? Why is she always smiling?” Her co-workers were unlike her. Mostly middle class, they attended public schools, if they attended post-secondary school at all. They didn’t speak to each other in French. They spoke in the Moroccan Arabic dialect and even still; the way they spoke was different.

“Sometimes when I talked in Moroccan dialect at first they were laughing because it’s this strange accent for them,” Nejjar said.

Nejjar described herself as “foreign” when she first began her internship because she felt like she had nothing in common with her co-workers. Feeling different not only in her language, but also in her way of thinking. Her new colleagues tended to be more religious while she had adopted a more secular opinion.

“I wasn’t allowed to show my shoulders, legs, even my feet,” Nejjar said . . . “I wasn’t allowed to put on a lot of makeup.” all quotes from theatlantic.com.

The Moroccan people are generally Muslim.  In general, the more prosperous parts of the city, women tend to wear less traditional clothing. Head scarfs become less common, and they tend to wear more modern style clothing, with the occasional shorts and skirt.

The idea is to not separate them but to instill an understanding for those with a different socioeconomic background.  And worked exactly as planned. This is done to give them a vital understanding of how leadership is organized in corporations. Internships such as this, are not unique to L'Ecole de Gouvernance et d’Economie, and are common among economics students in Morocco.

L'Ecole de Gouvernance et d’Economie is a small private school that costs 8,400 US dollars, a year to attend. (Public schools, on the other hand, are free.) The school has roughly 200 students that spend the first three years as undergraduates, and it is mandatory they spend their third year abroad. They return for their fourth and fifth years to specify as master’s students, in preparation to be leaders in government, diplomacy, academia and non-governmental organizations.

Several skeptics have arose as this new trend starts to spread to other countries. The more common view among skeptics is, that spending so little time really isn’t any kind of preparation for something that takes years to understand. Other skeptics believe that it belittles the real workers. Taking jobs from those that actually need it, to fill a void in their moral fiber.

Despite these skepticisms one can only imagine the good this would have in the U.S.  Would Walmart host a food drive, if its board members spent a month stocking the stores shelves? Would Wendy’s suggest its full-time employees apply for food stamps to make ends meet, if its frontrunners spent a month flipping burgers? Minimum wage might keep up with inflation if our congressmen and senators did janitorial work in public schools.