However, such pragmatism is indicative of a deeper reality for these transient participants. Bethany will wait for that better job, Leon will put up with three
167 hundred and eighteen dollars a fortnight, Leon will cook his own meals, and
Gabrielle‟s family will pull together to make ends meet – because they believe their money circumstances will change for the better. In other words, like the middle- income participants, all transient low-income participants are able in some way to talk about their futures, all have expectations for the future and in all cases these expectations are oriented positively in relation to money meanings. Stuart talks openly about his future expectations:
„I‟ve made a choice and one of the reasons I‟m in university [is that] I didn‟t like earning forty-two and half thousand dollars a year. I want to earn eighty thousand dollars a year. And for that you‟ve got to put some time and investment in. And university is that time and investment. I mean I worked it out that after six or seven years - say take university and then working - I would‟ve made as much as I would‟ve earned if I just kept on working for six years, or six or seven years. And then from then on you‟re going to earn
more.‟ (Stuart, 27, Full-time student)
Reynolds and Ross (1998) note that education plays a central role to human well- being because being well-educated mitigates against unemployment and provides greater access to „full-time, high status, rewarding, well paid work‟. As a rule, the well educated also face fewer economic difficulties (Reynolds and Ross 1998: 222). As Stuart demonstrates, when transient low-income participants talk about their hopes beyond low-incomes, the desires and expectations they place in education result in language much the same as found amongst middle-income money orientations:
„I‟d like for [partner] and I to have a really nice home. I certainly do not mean like a massively salubrious mansion. … I‟d really like us to have a home that we actually know is our base; that we always come back to. But we really are both big on travelling. We‟d love to live in other countries for periods of time - like, we‟re talking fantasy now. It‟d be lovely to be like in a position where someone says, you know, we‟ve got six months in Kuala
168 Lumpur, or we need you to go to Kenya for a year or whatever. … You know we could literally just be thinking, „lets go to Cuba for four weeks‟ or whatever it would be. That would be really nice, to be financially
comfortable to be able to do that.‟ (Mondi, 26, Full-Time Student) 44
„But the first thirty years of my life are gonna end up being just purely for me. The next thirty will be my career. And I‟m hoping the thirty after that will be a nice retirement, or semi-retirement.‟
(Leon, 29, Full-Time Student) In part, the transient low-income participants of this study follow middle-income participants‟ orientations towards money as something to be sought or pursued. This is also reflected in how they make sense of their projected futures, and the direction they believe themselves to be headed in their lives. For example, all transient low- income participants in this study describe themselves in terms of the „adaptability‟ model proposed by Brannen and Nilsen (2002). On the whole, these participants consider the future a challenge and are taking active, short term and open ended steps (such as university study) to make sure they have opportunities in the face of
changing circumstances. That is, the meanings they give money fit into shorter -term and open goals that may or may not change (Brannen and Nilsen 2002: 529-30). In other words, whilst experiencing a low-income, these participants live in deference to the dominant money narrative. In terms of thinking about life and future they are oriented towards money as „good‟. Unlike middle-income participants, their immediate experience is framed by the reality of a low-income. However, in their understanding, the low-income is only for now. What they expect and plan for is the dominant money narrative. Recall Charles Taylor‟s assertion that the question of who we are as human beings can only be answered in reference to where we are going and the direction we orient our lives (Taylor 1989: 46). The pragmatic
44
169 response to the question, „what makes a good life‟ by the transient low-income
participants in this study shows broad orientations to the expectations found within a dominant money narrative, and it is according to this they project their futures.
7.4.3.
Money ambivalences
Nonetheless, transient low-income participants in this study living with the
complexities of reduced incomes do face challenges that middle-income participants only talk about avoiding. This is evidenced, as shown above, through the higher levels of ambivalence and conflicts these participants describe in relation to money, and the broad range of their descriptions. For the transient low-income participants, these ambivalences take a specific form: they question the extent to which values other than money – such as happiness, time, job satisfaction or security – should have to compete with the „good‟ of money:
„I guess you do need to know that you‟ve got money coming in. But I
honestly think I can have plenty of money coming in and still not feel secure. You know what I mean? That‟s not what does it. But you‟ve got to know
that you‟re happy.‟ (Leon, 29, Full-Time Student)
„I just don‟t know why other people [are] sort of locked into stuff that just doesn‟t inspire them, and excite them. If you can‟t go „yes! I‟m going to work‟ then you‟re killing yourself, you know. What are you doing it for? But then, I think that‟s one of the good things about being kind of poor all your life, is that you don‟t need a lot of money to have a good time.‟
(Gabrielle, 36, Part-time Musician) Thus in Gabrielle‟s case, who also aspires to be financially upwardly mobile45
, she also engages with her experience of being poor to challenge the idea that earning
45
Gabrielle notes that „I don‟t have small dreams, I have big ones‟, and this includes business
propositions that will hopefully make her family far more financially well-off. For example, she states her desire to have bought property in the mountains by next year, „with a studio‟.
170 money is more important than being happy. For these participants, the experience of living on low-incomes is itself a challenge to the culturally preferred dominant money narrative. Consequently, as much as they may aspire to this narrative in the future, their present frugal earnings and the strong level of pragmatism that accompanies the downplaying of their money meanings in the present opens space for ambivalence about the single-mindedness of the dominant money narrative as a singular aspiration for their lives.
7.4.4.
Public money orientations
Thus personal money orientations of the transient low-income participant group are characterised by both similarities and differences to the middle-income group. The same is true of their public money orientations. The differences are subtle, but important to outline. First, transient low-income participants express a much narrower range of political and moral dilemmas in comparison to middle-income participants. Participants did make some specific political comments, such as identifying problems associated with the government as distributor of wealth, the refugee crisis, or the misuse of the welfare system. Some comments were also expressed positively, such as being satisfied with the government‟s role as an economic manager of Australia, or even just in relation to the „necessity‟ of the government‟s role:
„I guess it is just so you haven‟t got starvation and all that kind of stuff at a mass level - just keeping it ticking along. I think we‟ve got a pretty good welfare system. The health system‟s probably struggling a little bit, but you can‟t work miracles; you can‟t just make money appear. So I guess it‟s just getting the distribution of money…not necessarily even, but just where it
needs to be distributed.‟ (Leon, 29, Full-Time Student)
Furthermore, the only clear social problem identified by the majority of participants (expressed both in political and moral terms) is a scathing attack on those with too much wealth. Whether it is politicians, CEO‟s, „greedy‟ people, tatslotto winners, or those who simply earn a lot, the transient low-income group had little patience for their financial excesses:
171 „I started to stop and realise just the wealth of the Catholic Church. The hypocrisy of their plea to the rest of the world to help the poor and to feed the hungry, and yet they‟re sitting there like they‟re rich fat cats, and they‟ve got gold plates in Vatican City, and the Pope wears a ring on his finger
that‟s worth more than most houses.‟ (Virgil, 30, Full-Time Student)
A significant difference between middle-income and transient low-income participants is the extent to which they talk about possible solutions to social problems related to money. While the middle-income group tended to find social solutions to social problems (e.g. re-distribution of government funding), the majority of the low-income group approached answers with idealistic stories. In most cases they also place themselves in the picture:
„Another little pet dream that I‟ve had is to actually be able to get enough money behind myself so that I can go into some third world country … and build a town from the ground level. And put in water sources and
everything, and then just invite people to come and live in it and leave. And give them a town set up in the same development situation that we have in the rest of the developed world. Because I think something like that could directly influence ten thousand, twenty thousand, hundred thousand people. You know you could make a real difference in the world with something like that. And I hope that if one person started something like that, that others might follow suit. You might start to see corporations picking up on the idea and thinking, well, we could get good PR out of this, so we‟ll go in and set up a city to help. You know, things might steamroll.‟
(Virgil, 30, Full-Time Student) On this issue, the transient low-income participants provide an interesting contrast to the middle-income participants. It is clear that the middle-income group are far more constrained in their „solutions‟ to money-related social (political/moral) problems. First, they rarely suggest their own involvement, and second they draw on existing social structural possibilities as reference points for change (e.g. governments, welfare agencies, or corporations). On the other hand, the transient low-income participants are given to large-scale dreaming involving both themselves (as
172 her plans to market a product/idea that in the future will be a necessity for all human beings in much the same way as air. Stuart feels strongly about wealthy people opening a fund to re-direct their money to the poor. Mondi calls herself a „greenie- left-wing-socialist‟ who wants to work for the charity arm of her local bank and „bring the bank down from the inside‟.
Stier argues that „the task of universities is, among other things, to „foster‟ citizens that adhere to an emancipatory outlook on the world‟ (Stier 2004: 88). It appears that for participants in this study, the ability to „dream‟ about social change in a manner involving large sums of money and themselves is the prerogative of transient low- income participants undergoing education. In contrast, it will be shown in the next section that those on a static low-income have no such idealism. And as already shown, middle-income participants are far more constrained in their ideas, limiting them to the realm of social structural activity and social monies. As shown in the previous chapter, middle-income participants are limited in the language of
articulating how money relates to the „self‟ outside the personal sphere. Interestingly, although the transient low-income group aspire to the „good‟ of personal money in the same way as middle-income participants, the transient nature of their current personal income constraints allow for a different view of the future possibilities that earning/acquiring money may enable. In this case, their ideal money situation for the future relates both to improved personal and social outcomes.
However, transient low-income participants are similar to middle-income participants when asked about involvement beyond personal interests - they are socially and politically uninvolved. Some participants (Fred, Leon and Bethany) feel no need to explain their lack of involvement, while others do. For example, Virgil, who wants to build cities in developing countries, will not contribute to funds such as World Vision because their administrative costs (e.g. CEO‟s salaries) are too great. Stuart simply remains uninspired to do so:
I: „Are you involved in any other non-political, community organizations, or associations, or anything like that?‟
P: „No. Not at the moment. No. Not even – I don‟t do Red Cross, I don‟t do…community things. My mum does enough for all our family!'
173
I: „She‟s a bit of an activist is she?‟
P: „Oh, labor, local government, Aboriginals. She‟s huge in that, god help me. You know, that‟s her, and good on her for having a go, because she‟s doing a good thing. But you don‟t have to be your mother so I‟m not going
to.‟ (Stuart, 27, Full-Time Student)
In this sense, the monetary aspirations of transient low-income participants towards better social outcomes are just that: aspirations. This tension is not lost on Stier (2004), who argues that instrumentalist ideologies contrary to „emancipation‟ are also at work in national education systems. That is, higher education is also a means through which students are taught economic ideologies, to „maximise profit‟ and „ensure economic growth‟ (Stier 2004: 91). These are ideals strongly at odds with aspirations towards better social outcomes, and as we have seen with the middle- income participants, given toward a focus on personal outcomes rather than social ones.
Whether or not the expected transition of entering into paid employment and middle- incomes for these participants will also facilitate the shift from idealistic social solutions to actual ones remains to be seen. However, if the middle-income group serve as an example of typical orientations found following this transition, then it is doubtful that the transient low-income participants will continue to develop a specific language in which their increased personal money is utilised for social change.
7.4.5.
Summary
In summary, transient low-income participants of this study also share the middle- income orientation in which personal money is „good‟. While their low-incomes encourage a pragmatic attitude to money as something to be „downplayed‟ in its everyday description, their future expectations for work and higher earnings imbue their present circumstance with a sense of transience - as a necessary and (particularly for students) socially validated low-income period of time that will pass. However, the reality of their low-income does challenge the culturally preferred ideal of aspirations towards higher incomes. In this space they are able question many of its assumptions, such as whether other values like time are of equal worth to money, or
174 whether too much money is a moral problem. One of the assumptions they do reject is that personal money does not extend to the good of social outcomes: their
philanthropic ideals are evidence of this. However, with no real social involvement themselves, their ideals remain in the realm of dreaming about wealthier days.