£1? A fiver? My salary? My life insurance? A lottery ticket? The entire expenditure of the thirty-something years of my life?
How much am I worth?
Karl Marx‘s vitriolic writing brought capitalism to realisation. He described an era when populations moved from the farms to the cities, in hope of a better life. They wanted to be free from toiling the land, from being a slave to the seasons, and enjoy the cultural offerings of the city. But it brought about another set of problems: poor sanitation, long working hours, and low pay. It created a hierarchy from the very poor to the very rich.
My family were immigrant Jews from the Pale of Settlement and very poor tailors. They lived in the Leyland district of Leeds, now gladly razed to the ground and replaced with garages. On the other side, I come from a family of Welsh miners in Pontypridd. Both trades are right at the bottom of the economic tree. So, my ancestry is not worth, fiscally, that much at all.
To a medical doctor, I am worth £60k. It is the cost of a child’s operation and maintenance of a cochlear implant for their entire life. To a sign language interpreter, I am worth £30k per year, which I will require irrespective of whether I have a cochlear implant or not. I am still biologically deaf and still culturally Deaf! That would only be money in the pocket of the Doctor, so I won’t bother with that.
At work, I have brought £500k into my University for the development of Deaf Studies over the last 5 years, minus my salary of course. The outcomes of my work has enabled community-driven activities that is worth £100k, mostly given in-kind.
Even though I presented the facts here, the perceptions of my worthiness is very different from the outside. Philip Davies MP thinks I am worth less than the minimum wage, which is under £5.93 per hour. He has underestimated the true cost because the enforced lower working class would give rise to more persecution in the workplace, increase in tribunal costs and compensation. Mr Davies hasn’t done his maths but he still managed to spend £171k worth of expenses, in 2008/9, as a Member of Parliament. If I was a voter in Shipley, I would pass a vote of no confidence, especially when he is encouraging parliament to breach the Equality Act to get disabled people into underpaid work.
Our Prime Minister, David Cameron, thinks I am worth £1k too much and will convert Disability Living Allowance into a more personalised Personal Independence Plan. In the assessment, I am supposed to be directed to possible aids that will supposedly take me out of the need for benefits. I hope the GP doesn’t persuade me to go for the £60k operation in order to save the Government £1k per year. I would need to live until I am 99 years old before they get their money back.
But there is hope. The Sayce independent report quotes that for every £1 spent on Access to Work, the Government receives £1.48 back. That is brilliant because less disabled people will be on benefits and more will be paying taxes. Hopefully Government will take heed to this report and invest in AtW.
So far I have written about worthiness in terms of money, the notes and coins in my pocket or the total in my bank account. There are other types of worthiness. My social network has a value of roughly 500 Facebook friends, 50 in Linkedin, 100 in Twitter and a few here because I have just started blogging. I have about 200 phone numbers in my mobile phone. I have invested in a good Macbook and an iPhone to stay in touch with them all. The resources I develop can reach the people I know and their networks too.
There is one other worthiness I have revelled in since 1989. It was the day that I entered the Deaf community. I came from a life that my hearing parents gave me, which exposed me to the nuances of a ‘hearing people’. In 1989, it was Madonna and ‘Like a Prayer‘, and in 2011, it is Lady Gaga and ‘Born this Way’. Deja vu? Anyway, I discovered that I could only lipread for a maximum of one hour, assisted with hearing aids before nodding off whereas using sign language, I could last a full day and go to bed at the appropriate time. Deaf culture afforded me a better quality of life and better resources to nurture, develop and express who I am. If I didn’t, there would have been a greater chance of mental health problems and lifelong payments for counselling – so that’s money saved there.
I mustn’t underestimate the worth of my job title, my qualifications, awards and membership of professional bodies. I remember my Scout Master reminding me the importance of my well-earned badges; “if you ever feel you are unable to practice the skill you have earned, you must remove the badge from your shirt.” So I must behave responsibly and bravely, most of the time, in order to retain respect for what I can do.
Phew. So, what am I worth? What is my capital? My perceived capital is most probably far lower than my true capital, because people outside of my life could never fully appreciate my worth. Many are prescribing my worth: including parents of newly born deaf children, organisations representing deaf people, lawmakers and geneticists. The generalist statements of ‘vulnerable adult’, ‘disabled’ and the recent ‘benefit scrounger’ is placing my worth out of proportion.
So I get up, and brush my shoulders so the labels peel off and fall to the ground. It is true: I am worth the £1 tip, the fiver I owe, the hopeful lottery ticket and reassuring life insurance. I remind myself of Bourdieu’s work, including Economic Capital, Social Capital, Cultural Capital and Symbolic Capital; I realise I am worth loads. But no one will ever know what I am truly worth, <wink>.
Photo by Eric J. Gustafson
