Please Advise! The New Living Wage Is Making Me Feel Dead

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

The latest report from CCPA-BC and Living Wage for Families BC says that a living wage in Vancouver is $20.52 per hour. For a 40-hour work week, that amounts to approximately $3,300 per month.

That’s a lot of money for some folks, especially me! Halp!

Signed,

Wage Slave

Dear WS,

It’s certainly a disturbing report. Looking at that living wage estimate, it would seem that Dr. Steve has been dead for many years. Dr. Steve can still see his own reflection in the mirror, which is reassuring. He also does not have a zombie-like craving for brains, except perhaps to donate to the Alberta government or whoever is in charge of the Canucks’ power play. It would appear that Dr. Steve is indeed alive, somehow, albeit gazing up at that lofty “living wage” as though standing at the base of the Grouse Grind in a housecoat and slippers.

The cost of living in Vancouver was recently highlighted by the posting of a $50,000 per annum dishwashing gig at Handi Grill in Kits, raising questions about just how much Vancouver small businesses will have to pay to attract and keep workers, and whether they will be able to sustain themselves at that level. For many a freelance writer though, the story was a reminder that being a good speller who can define “penury” may not provide important strategic advantages in the current labour market. Plenty of others face their own versions of the financial quandary that tends to be part and parcel of Vancouver life.

Luckily, a “living wage” is an abstract concept. One must first define “living.” Does it involve regular injections of fresh sushi? If so, some of us do indeed dwell in a twilit afterlife.

Dr. Steve has some advantages for a Vancouver existence. He is the sort of person who sees A Christmas Carol as a tragedy in which Ebenezer Scrooge is bullied out of his sensible habits by a gang of malicious supernatural busybodies. Dr. Steve is a notorious cheapskate. Early on, he took to heart another Dickens quote: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Over time Dr. Steve has conquered or avoided the bad habits of drinking, smoking and procreation. As such, he has managed to bank savings despite years of what some would consider relative poverty. That’s an undeniable advantage over many local residents. There are plenty for whom monthly shortfalls mean possible eviction. Dr. Steve is grateful he does not face this prospect in the foreseeable future. But if, as Dickens prescribes, the key to financial security is to live within one’s means, for Dr. Steve it means living like a kitten in a fiscal egg carton.

Dr. Steve’s strategies to keep out of a Dickensian debtor’s prison might leave some appalled. He knows that expiry dates bear no relation to the immutable laws of physics. No frittering away money on lottery tickets — he would rather gamble that a pot of yogurt is still perfectly fine a week after its scheduled meeting with the bacterial Grim Reaper. Dr. Steve has eaten dumpster asparagus and lived to tell.

Dr. Steve grieves that Safeway no longer sells off blocks of mouldy cheddar at mark-down prices. He shops for produce and cheese at Vancouver’s Sunrise Market on the corner of Powell Street and Gore Avenue, a.k.a. the Second-Hand Vegetable Store (merely a teasing nickname — in fact there’s plenty of excellent produce to be had there at great prices, especially once one becomes more adept at gauging the true state of a discounted avocado).

It is important to note that all this is to some extent the result of personal choice. As a long-in-the-tooth media mongrel, Dr. Steve is not some tyro eagerly scanning the want ads for lucrative employment opportunities. He is content to restrict spending rather than seek out high-paying work as, say, a gigolo or ninja assassin. Working (it happens) from home also makes it easier to get by with a bicycle and two feet. News stories about gas prices are Dr. Steve’s favourite form of reality TV.

And yet financial uncertainty always looms. For anyone who seeks to maintain a fingernail grip on a Vancouver address, there is an unavoidable fear of the future. Vancouver real estate prices fluctuate somewhat, but rents do not — they only climb. Gauzy retirement ads featuring tropical locales be damned — a lot of us have made the humbling realization that our fondest hopes for the future are simply to stay where we are. Way down here below the living wage, Vancouver life is its own reward.