Economic Falsity in Adventures From Prison

So I was the first to get the annual Fall season cold. I woke up last Saturday feeling fine, developed a nasty headache after lunch, took a nap for two hours and woke up sick as a dog. I pretty much spent all week sleeping and reading. It was definitely much easier to deal with this year since I wasn’t working 40 hours a week. I got tons of down time these days.
Staying in the unit for much of the afternoon is a big change for me. I’m now exposed to an entirely different caliber of criminal. Until now most of the men I’ve encountered around the compound have all held real jobs at some point in their lives. They have no issue grabbing a mop, a wrench, a mower for a few hours just for the sake of feeling productive. They know that to get anywhere you have to often start on the bottom.
The guys who spend the majority of their time in the unit tend to have a very different attitude. Most feel that they are too important or above a simple job. They will just refuse to show up until they are fired and then convince the counselor to give them a sign in position. (We have more inmates than jobs, so many guys literally check in with their boss and are done for the day) I overheard one of these guys talking to his friends the other night.
“Man, when I gets outta here I’m gonna keep it simple,” he said. “No more of The Game I’m gonna go straight.”
“Whatcha planning?” he buddy asked.
“Well we keeping it real. So I’ll tell ya I ain’t going to work at no McDonald’s or factory or nothin. I mean I’m 45, minimum wage is just not worth my time.”
“True dat.”
“Naw, see I’m gonna keep it real witchu, I’m going to open a Used Car Lot.”
“Dat’ll do.”
“Yeah see, I figure as long as I can bring home about $30 thousand a month for my wife and kids I can keep up the lifestyle I want. Any more I earn I’m going to put back into my bidness.”
“$30k a month?” his friend asked with surprise. “How you gonna live on so little?”
I lay on my bunk listening to this in stunned amazement. Those guys were 100% serious. They honestly believe that without selling drugs they will find a job that pays them $360k a year - net. And they aren’t alone in thinking this. When I taught GED classes my students would often laugh at me for earning only $42K a year in my early adulthood. These were guys without any high school education.
I really think that this sort of unaddressed false thinking is a huge reason that there is so much recitivism for drug dealers. They have no concept about the real value of an earned dollar and that, more than anything, will keep them from doing the right thing and finding legitimate work. I asked one of these guys once what he thought the average working salary was in the U.S. for a single man. The answer was $60-$100 thousand a year.
“Do you really believe that’s what a normal guy makes?” I asked.
“Well yeah, how could you live on less?”
I actually had to pull out the Almanac to show him he’s about $25k off. Thinking he’s from New York or California where things are skewed slightly, I ask where he’s from.
“Des Moines, Iowa,” he told me.