Working Towards an Education: Bruce’s Economic Profile
By Jon Robbins
A person's economic status is quite a difficult subject matter for many people to talk about, especially when discussing personal financial details. After numerous failed attempts at setting up various interviews for this project with family friends, I went and did the only think I could. I went out on various weekends and free times I had, going into Portland’s bookstores, coffeehouses, and bakeries, scouting for anyone who would be willing to tell a random stranger about their economic circumstances. It wasn’t easy at all, but eventually, I was able to find my interviewee. On Wednesday, December 29th, at the Washington Square Mall, I found a man named Bruce. Sitting at a table on his own in the food court of the Mall, wearing a black jacket, a black Starbucks logo hat. He agreed to the interview quite easily, once I described that there would be a lot of confidentiality to his responses. Below is an economic profile summary of Bruce.
Bruce is a 28-year old male, who has lived in Beaverton, Oregon for all of his life. His parents reside near Beaverton High School, which is the High School he attended. Up until the age of 24, Bruce had been living with his parents in Beaverton, but when he turned 24, he managed to find an apartment complex in his desired location that gave him freedom from his parents. For four years he has been renting this apartment in Beaverton, and so far he has been able to keep up with the rental payments and also have money left over to cover living expenses. As mentioned previously, Bruce attended Beaverton High School and said that he graduated with decent grades and scores, but due to financial constraints in his family, his parents became concerned with the idea of sending Bruce to university. In Bruce’s family, they had some past trouble with medical expenses that have left the family in times of trouble. However, Bruce mentioned to me that he believes he will eventually get a degree in the field of engineering, once he has saved up enough money to attend a university. Right now, Bruce said he just doesn’t have the time to study at a community college based on his occupation’s time commitment. Bruce is currently employed full-time as a barista at his local Starbucks. He has held this position for a couple years and he hopes that in the near future, he will be promoted to the role of store manager. To help with his financial situation, Bruce also works as an Uber driver, when he is off work from Starbucks. When I asked Bruce about his Uber commitment, he said he tends to do a couple of hours of driving in the night when he has time. Bruce was a bit perplexed when I asked him to share his wages, but eventually he mentioned that working at Starbucks he makes 11.75 per hour with tips no included and for his Uber job, he tends to make 13.85$ per hour. In general, he enjoys his Starbucks job more than his Uber job, as he likes the atmosphere presented in Starbucks and he also values his coworkers at Starbucks. Bruce believes that he can live off his current wages, but he wants to eventually surpass his current economic circumstances. He did note that he believes that he works more than a lot of his friends, but they are getting paid more in other industries for less work time. For his social class standing, he sees himself as part of the higher lower class, but he thinks that if he is able to obtain a degree in the near future, he can move into a middle-class stature. In terms of his status compared to his parents, Bruce see himself as on par with his parents, as both of his parents were always having to work to support their family. The one economic choice that Bruce looks back on with a little bit of sadness was his choice to omit college as he sees kids these days taking on student debt, but after completing their college degrees, they are able to pay it off. He didn’t really look at the government in either a positive or negative connotation, but instead relayed to me that as long as the government is serving the people of the United States in the best manner as possible, he was not bothered with government policy or decisions. One concern for him was that Bruce didn’t seem to be thinking much about retirement funds, but I thought that if I was in his situation, I would be doing the same. His advice for the younger generation was to “Seize the moment! Don’t let any chance you get pass by! If you have an economic dream that you want to achieve the sooner you get started towards it, the more successful you can become”.
Photo that Represents Bruce:
Source: http://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/71596C0D7E5A41BF9B6D41841D069B5B.jpg
Examining the conversation I had with Bruce, in most of the situations Bruce talked about I was thinking about the principles of economic prosperity. The first principle, ‘People choose in a world of scarcity’, relates exactly to his family’s financial struggle, which ultimately did not allow him to attend university. His family was faced with an issue of scarcity for capital and money, which then caused his parents to choose the path of work over education, as they saw the near time sustainability and financial balance a better choice in the situation. The second principle of ‘All choices have costs - opportunity costs’ relates to Bruce’s decision to not go to college. By deciding to go straight into the workforce, Bruce lost the best alternative choice, which was to take a multitude of student loans to be able to continue his education journey. As we see today, the fifth principle of ‘Choices have consequences that lie in the future and reshape what’s possible’ come into the fray, as Bruce looks back on the path he has chosen to pursue, and decides if that path was actually the path he should have actually chosen. We have seen three principles of economic prosperity, being able to correlate to the real life situation for a member of our community. 
Graphs from:
For the two graphs that we have to include in our economic analysis, I chose two graphs that are closely related to Bruce’s story. I chose the housing market graph, to illustrate what the housing market might have looked like during the time that bruce was looking for a place to live. From this chart we see that the amount of new one-family homes sold from 2006 to 2010 have been in rapid decline, presumably due to the problems of the housing bubble burst, but Bruce would probably look for a place to stay by the start of 2014, which from this graph looks like the sales of these homes have stabilised. From this graph, it looks as if the future for homes sold is rising, which may be an indication of lowering prices for homes? For Bruce, at the moment, it seems critical that he obtains a college degree and pursues his career path passion of engineering before he delves into the housing market scene.
The second graph shows the Producer Price Index for Coffee and I chose to place this graph in this analysis, as Bruce deals with coffee on an everyday basis, and I wanted to see how the coffee market has looked over the course of his work at Starbucks. It seems like the coffee industry had a huge demand rise, which caused the Producer Price Index to rapidly increase from 2005 to mid-2011, but from this 2011 point onwards, it seems like the coffee market has been pretty stable with only a few fluctuations happening up to 2016. What this graph inquiries me about is that was Bruce’s hiring at Starbucks, in line with the rise in demand for coffee as during this time, companies like Starbucks, Seattle’s Best Coffee, or any other coffee shop would need more help with serving this greater demand.
Economic inequality is a rising theme of our generation as the gap between social classes keeps widening in size. Bruce’s story plays into the idea of this economic inequality, as he grew up in a financially unstable family. His parents did not attend university as their families before could not be able to afford college for either of them. The correlation I am seeing between this rising economic inequality and Bruce’s family is that the access to education seems to be a major factor that is leading to economic inequality. Earlier in the course, we had the debate on whether attending university was worth the costs. Our debate ended with most of the students in our class agreeing that going to university helps to give the student a safe path into at least a middle-class social class, which was an idea I had pinned in my mind when Bruce was discussing his troubles with finance when he was a student. This is one of many examples that show a correlation between access to education and economic inequality.
Personally, I was struck hard by Bruce’s story, as I know that there are similar stories that occur all over our community. I think that it's hard to really understand why someone, who wants to further educate themselves, is not actually able to. I was surprised by how at home he felt with his current living situations. If I was to be placed in his shoes for a week or two, at the end of it I would be exhausted as he is working day and night to support himself and create a better future for himself. Bruce was an exceptionally kind man for letting me take time out of his busy schedule to be able to interview him, and I am very thankful I had this opportunity to reach out to someone I had not yet met in my community.
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