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June 05, 2006
My Class Autobiography
Don Boudreaux
Bryan Caplan encourages each of us to write our class autobiography. Here’s mine.
For
as far back as I can see, both sides of my family were (and remain)
working class. My paternal grandfather was the youngest of (I think) a
dozen kids; he was born, in 1900, to a Cajun family in Louisiana’s
swampy Cajun country. He ran away from home at 15 to New Orleans,
where he met and later married Teresa Flanagan. Neither of these
grandparents went to high school. My grandfather drove a street-car,
and later a bus, until he retired in 1965.
One of my fondest memories
as a boy is of riding on “Pa’s” lap as he drove his bus down Elysian
Fields Avenue in New Orleans, past the house where I first lived. (I didn't learn until a few months ago that this house is in the lower Ninth Ward.) I remember Pa's wrinkled hands on the almond-colored,
gigantic steering wheel. I was very proud of him. He lived with us after my grandmother died in 1967 and until his death in 1975. The only time I
heard him speak his native language – French – was when he cussed.
My
dad dropped out of school in sixth grade, but he later earned his GED.
He served a short stint in the Air Force (happily, just after the
Korean war ended). He then drove a bus in New Orleans for a few years (which was his
job when I was born in 1958), but he soon took a job as a
pipefitter/welder/crane-operator at Avondale Shipyards, where he worked
until he retired in January 2001.
My maternal grandparents each
were from families that had been in New Orleans for a few generations.
My maternal grandfather was full-bred German (and looked it); my
maternal grandmother (like my paternal grandmother) was of Irish
descent. My educated guess is that the families of both of my
grandmothers emigrated from Ireland to New Orleans in the 1850s. Both
of my maternal grandparents completed high school, but received no
further formal education. My mom’s dad worked all of his life at
Avondale Shipyard, as a pipefitter and, later, as a foreman in the
pipe department.
Neither of my grandmothers ever worked out of the home, as far as know.
My
mom graduated from high school and, until 1973 when she took a job in
the secretarial pool at Avondale Shipyards, kept house and raised me
and my three siblings. When the shipyard laid her off in 1989, she
became a clerk in a hardware store, where she worked until 2001.
I’m
the only of my siblings to attend college for more than a semester.
That wasn’t my plan. To please my mom, I decided to go to college for
one year and chase women. (Alas, my chases were futile -- until, that is, many years later in law school I chased and finally caught the love of my life.) After this one, fun year of chasing women I
planned to marry my high-school sweetheart and work full-time at Avondale Shipyards
(where I’d worked in high school during the summers). But I found
economics during my second semester of college at Nicholls State
University. It blew me away! Never before had I encountered anything
intellectually stimulating – and supply-and-demand curves were (and
remain) for me analytically sublime. I believe that I took so eagerly
to supply and demand because I grew up in the 1970s and saw all around
me the consequences of price ceilings – which I didn’t understand until
my first economics professor (Dr. Michelle Francois) explained the
economics of price controls.
It didn’t take me long to long for a PhD in economics.
Growing
up, my siblings and I were aware that we weren’t wealthy, but we
thought of ourselves as middle-class. Our home was comfortable
(despite having only one bathroom!) and our family life (dare I say
it?!) normal and loving.
As I look back on my childhood, I
appreciate my parents’ values. Never, not once, did I ever hear my
parents complain of not being rich; never was there any expressed or
felt despair about driving mostly used and often rather decrepit
automobiles; never was there any hints that the economic deck is
stacked against us. Never did I suppose that I was cheated, robbed, or
even unlucky. I know that my parents, and each of my siblings, feels
the same way.
My parents were, and remain, largely apolitical.
I suspect that they vote mostly GOP because they really dislike the
welfare state. They don’t, however, share my deep hatred of
centralized power. My father worries about “too many immigrants”
coming to America. And my mom, although I’m pretty sure that she’d not
endorse a government effort to correct the problem, believes that
professional athletes are paid “way too much money.”
One final
note: even though both of my parents are deeply religious Roman
Catholics, and even though my mom reminds me a great deal of Edith
Bunker, my parents have always had a libertarian streak, of which I’m
sure they aren’t really aware. I’ve often heard my mom say that “it’s
silly to outlaw prostitution; it’s going to happen anyway; and no one’s
really hurt by it.” Ditto for most illegal drugs. Even on abortion my
mom’s views are surprisingly liberal. (Don’t know about my dad, I just
realized.) My mom truly believes abortion to be highly immoral, but she
does not think that government should prohibit it.
A few years ago I wrote this open letter of thanks to my parents.
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Comments
Nice autobiography. My background is quite different. My father's mother was raised on a farm with 15 children, but a few of them managed to go to college including my grandmother. She and my father's father were both professors and so my dad was raised quite middle class, in an educated family and "privilaged." My mother was born into a well educated family, both her parents having attended college and even running a school themselves.
But this inherited "privilage" is not what has given me my views. Because what I left out in the preceding paragraph is the political views of my family in previous generations and my own. My father's mother was a socialist. Not sure about his father who died when he was young. My mother parents, despite negative personal experiences with communism remained socialist. My mother is herself a "Mother Jones" socialist. My father is a post-Keynesian hard-left. My sister leans heavily toward government intervention and egalitarian redistribution. Her "class autobiography" would explain how she ended up preferring such things, while mine, quite identical, would have to explain the opposite.
It was when I realized the economic consequences of the dynamic ("chaotic") marketplace, and the laws of supply and demand that I fell in love with economics and immediately realized why socialism was wrong and free market right.
Posted by: liberty | Jun 5, 2006 3:12:03 PM
Thanks for the autobiography. Out of curiosity, did you live in an area where others had similar economic status? If so, do you think that had an impact on your happiness with what your family had? Or did you know about the wealth and poverty in the world and just feel content with the positive things in your life?
Posted by: Jeff | Jun 5, 2006 4:34:30 PM
Jeff,
All of the people in the neigborhood where I grew up (on the Westbank of New Orleans) were working-class, much like my famiily. Indeed, I believe that the single largest employer of the fathers of the folks in my neighborhood -- and of my K-12 classmates -- was Avondale Shipyards, Inc. Of course I knew about wealth and poverty. (My parents loved to take Sunday drives down St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans and admire the beautiful mansions along that stately boulevard.) And not far from our home was a neighborhood whose residents were much poorer than us.
Posted by: Don Boudreaux | Jun 5, 2006 4:44:33 PM
I'll never forget the All in the Family episode where Edith and Archie visited Gloria and 'Meathead' out in California. Edith was distraught over the fact the Gloria and Meathead's neighbors were so poor that they had to share a bathtub -- a Jacuzzi -- and a single cigarette [well, let's just say it wasn't filled with tobacco].
Ahh, those were the days.
By the way, I really enjoyed the blog entry and it causes me to feel better of you that you were not born into privilege; it must be some lingering class envy emotion that I have yet to fully (and properly) eradicate.
Posted by: LowcountryJoe | Jun 5, 2006 9:53:34 PM
Prof Boudreaux,
Your blog entry was refreshing. This is not in comparison to your other entries (or Prof Roberts's entries), just an observation vis-a-vis the other, less... human?... documents I've been reading all day. Thank you.
hamilton
Posted by: hamilton | Jun 5, 2006 11:00:20 PM
Don,
I enjoyed this post.
Class differences may be more apparent in smaller cities than in larger ones such as New Orleans. Lake Charles, where I grew up, was not so large that blue collar families could be separated from families of professionals and business owners. From elementary school through high school, children of our lower middle class were exposed to what we saw as privileges of wealth. For me, that exposure just fueled the fires of ambition. But for one brother, it led to a lifetime of resentment.
Do you think your perspective on wealth might have been different if you grew up with the sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers, and business owners? I think that occasional visual contact with the wealthy class is not the same as noticing daily the better school clothes they wear and hearing each fall of their vacations abroad.
FYI, my ticket out of that class was a computer science degree from McNeese State and later an MBA from Wharton. Now, at 55, I've finally realized those class differences were just not so important after all.
Posted by: John Dewey | Jun 6, 2006 10:47:04 AM
Wonderful post. Very uplifting.
I won't bore you with mine, but two things stand out that are relevant to this blog:
1) the only time my father really stressed out was at tax time. Since he assembled helicopters (and mom stayed home), I'm not sure how much tax he could've owed, but it's worth remembering that the working class, who supposedly benefit from progressive taxation, often despise it.
2) his job was unionized. I remember him sitting down with the calculator when I strike was looming. He'd say: "If we strike for 8 weeks the loss in pay will completely negate the the gain (what the union wanted over what the company offered) for the next three years. What crap!"
He'd talk it up with fellow workers and they'd all agree...until some bigwhig from the union showed up in his caddy and gave the stump speech about the working man. Then they'd all vote to strike and my dad would come home shaking his head in disapointment. He only had a highschool education, but he had a great intuitive, logical sense about things.
My mom wanted him to run for union rep, but he wasn't a Mason so that was impossible.
I got from him my hatred of taxes, my suspicion of organizations who know what's best for you, and my dislike of personal debt (he and my mom had too much debt).
Posted by: Paul Pennyfeather | Jun 6, 2006 12:35:16 PM
Paul Pennyfeather,
My dad was a local union leader. I asked him after a long strike if the wage gain wasn't offset by the loss during the strike. He explained that company leaders had to believe the strike threat was real. He believed the single long strike improved the company's offer the next round and the one after that.
Of course, if the union strikes every time, the company is forced to adjust its tactics, and everyone likely loses.
Posted by: John Dewey | Jun 6, 2006 12:45:23 PM
I'm just wondering what the comment about your mother being a Catholic has anything to do with her having or not having a libertarian streak. Being a Catholic myself, I can safely say my views are a bit more than just a streak, and I am far from alone in this belief set. Was your implication that some aspect of the faith requires endorsement of strong centralized government? What religions (if any) would you instead believe to adequately cohere with a libertarian outlook?
Posted by: ABS | Jun 7, 2006 2:32:55 AM
Funny that I should read this post today. Fox News had done a story about the biggest fear of the "wealthy" beings whether their children will wind up lazy rich kids (a la the Kennedys---indulge my never-ending joy in picking on them).
I was thinking this morning how I am now a solidly middle-aged professional with moderate means. Yet, the one facet of my life that tends to impress people (and myself looking back) were my 5 years as a Rhode Island dock-hand and part-time commercial fisherman. Both jobs entailed incredibly tiring manual labor, dangerous work conditions, appearing for work on time (though not necessarily sober) and decidedly unintellectual taks. For me it was fun and paid the bills and bar tabs. I did this from the formative years---21 to 26. Then I began law school.
To my land-lubber cohorts who are mostly lawyers or businessmen, it is this romantic background that they lack, having gone right from college to post-grad studies, that they seem to envy.
I know this portion of my life turned me into a morning person, someone who could get up and do the work when it was required despite a lack of sleep, energy, health or a clear head. I spent time with real men and inculcated a firm conviction that the measure of a man is in his production, cooperation, recognition of heirarchy, bravery and integrity. In some ways it was my military boot camp.
So what do I do with my kids? They are living in a level of luxury that I never experienced. How do I ensure they do not become mini-Kennedys.
Posted by: Neal Phenes | Jun 7, 2006 11:01:32 AM
Posted by: laptop battery | Oct 12, 2008 11:43:14 PM
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