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Smartphones Are a New Tax on the Poor
I finally broke down and bought a smartphone two years ago. It was an outdated iPhone. I have Tracfone service. I pay less than $100 per year to keep it up and running.
JULIA TICONA | IDEAS | 12.16.2021 09:00 AM
Smartphones Are a New Tax on the Poor
The expectation of connectivity now extends to low-wage workers—and the consequences go far beyond gig economy jobs.
DAMON, WHO WORKS full-time at an upscale hotel and part-time at a burger joint in Washington, DC, gets his weekly schedules through texts from his managers, often with last-minute requests to come in to cover for missing coworkers. To make sure he can receive these messages, Damon juggles two basically broken low-end smartphones, one with a shattered screen and another that turns on and off unpredictably when he tries to use it. “I’m waiting on my next check so I can get another phone,” he told me. Meanwhile, he’s using stagnant wages to purchase a phone that’s functionally a workplace requirement, all just to keep the jobs he has now.
Science fiction author William Gibson famously said that the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed. Smartphones and on-the-go internet access have made many of our working lives more efficient and flexible. But the requirement for constant connectivity isn’t only a fact of white-collar work—it has spread to workers up and down the income ladder. And while the requirement has spread, the resources that workers need to maintain it are not evenly distributed. Today, more than a quarter of low-income Americans depend solely on their phones for internet access. Amid historic levels of income inequality, phones and data plans have become an increasingly costly burden on those who have the least to spare.
Through interviews with precarious workers across the country, I’ve found that connectivity to the internet is increasingly required to manage many different types of jobs in parts of low-wage labor markets far beyond “gig economy” apps like Uber and Postmates. In ignoring these hidden kinds of connectivity, we don’t see their mounting costs, and the consequences for marginalized people. The requirement to maintain their connectivity constitutes a kind of new tax on low-wage workers. And well-meaning interventions focused on closing the digital divide haven’t addressed the powerful interests at work keeping it open.
THE HIGH COSTS of connectivity represent an increasingly large slice of household incomes for low-wage workers. Even though maintaining these connections has become necessary for many low-wage workers, their incomes have not kept pace. According to 2020 numbers from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, those in the lowest 20 percent of income earners spent $150 more a year on their cell phones than they did in 2016. The cost of connectivity represents more than half of what these households spent on electricity, and nearly 80 percent of what they paid for gas. As a proportion of household income, the lowest earners spent four times more on phones than high earners. With inflation looming, these issues are likely to get worse before they get better.
{snip}
Smartphones Are a New Tax on the Poor
The expectation of connectivity now extends to low-wage workers—and the consequences go far beyond gig economy jobs.
DAMON, WHO WORKS full-time at an upscale hotel and part-time at a burger joint in Washington, DC, gets his weekly schedules through texts from his managers, often with last-minute requests to come in to cover for missing coworkers. To make sure he can receive these messages, Damon juggles two basically broken low-end smartphones, one with a shattered screen and another that turns on and off unpredictably when he tries to use it. “I’m waiting on my next check so I can get another phone,” he told me. Meanwhile, he’s using stagnant wages to purchase a phone that’s functionally a workplace requirement, all just to keep the jobs he has now.
Science fiction author William Gibson famously said that the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed. Smartphones and on-the-go internet access have made many of our working lives more efficient and flexible. But the requirement for constant connectivity isn’t only a fact of white-collar work—it has spread to workers up and down the income ladder. And while the requirement has spread, the resources that workers need to maintain it are not evenly distributed. Today, more than a quarter of low-income Americans depend solely on their phones for internet access. Amid historic levels of income inequality, phones and data plans have become an increasingly costly burden on those who have the least to spare.
Through interviews with precarious workers across the country, I’ve found that connectivity to the internet is increasingly required to manage many different types of jobs in parts of low-wage labor markets far beyond “gig economy” apps like Uber and Postmates. In ignoring these hidden kinds of connectivity, we don’t see their mounting costs, and the consequences for marginalized people. The requirement to maintain their connectivity constitutes a kind of new tax on low-wage workers. And well-meaning interventions focused on closing the digital divide haven’t addressed the powerful interests at work keeping it open.
THE HIGH COSTS of connectivity represent an increasingly large slice of household incomes for low-wage workers. Even though maintaining these connections has become necessary for many low-wage workers, their incomes have not kept pace. According to 2020 numbers from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, those in the lowest 20 percent of income earners spent $150 more a year on their cell phones than they did in 2016. The cost of connectivity represents more than half of what these households spent on electricity, and nearly 80 percent of what they paid for gas. As a proportion of household income, the lowest earners spent four times more on phones than high earners. With inflation looming, these issues are likely to get worse before they get better.
{snip}
10 replies
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with minimum-wage health care workers who were required to wear uniforms. Since they couldn't afford uniforms on a minimum-wage salary, employers were required to give them a uniform allowance. Maybe employers should be required to furnish smartphones to their employees who make minimum wages.
