“The rich are different from you and me,” F. Scott Fitzgerald told his colleague/rival writer Ernest Hemingway. “Yes, they have more money,” Hemingway replied.

That’s the legend. The actual exchange was a lot wordier but came down to the same thing. Rich people are different from you and me. More important, though, is that poor people are different from you and me.

And it costs a lot to be poor. Let me explain.

In the early 2000s, Maine’s minimum wage separated from the federal minimum and rose to $6.25 an hour from $5.15. At the time, I was hiring farm and slaughterhouse hands at $7.50.

Let’s figure I hired someone who lived 10 or 20 miles away but didn’t have a car. That worker had to pay a friend to drive him here and to pick him up if he didn’t snag a cheaper or even a free ride home after work. So, a good chunk of the day’s pay goes for transportation.

In fact, I did hire a man in that circumstance, and his friend wanted $5 each way. (Remember, this was 20 years ago.) But after taxes, my employee was taking home about $50 for the day, so he was paying 10% or 20% of his earnings for a ride.

People who earn a lot more than that have better transportation arrangements and don’t have to hire a friend. They spend far less than 10% or 20% of a day’s wages on commuting.

Here’s another example. A woman with two children is receiving AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), as federal assistance was called until 1997. She couldn’t afford a phone, so she walked half a mile to a pay phone to call employers to learn work dates.

Each call was inexpensive, usually a dime, but the time to walk to and from the store and on some days to place several calls added up. Not horribly expensive in dollars (or dimes) but costly in time that could be used for other important things, such as taking care of her children.

That, too, was a real example of someone working on our farm. To ease the burden on her, I sometimes drove to her apartment and left a note telling our next work days. She could work a few days a month without losing AFDC, but couldn’t get enough work to get off the system entirely.

Although we are near the end of a three-year cycle of inflation, we aren’t near the end of inflation’s effect on people, especially those with low incomes. Let’s look at some more general numbers, where the inflation has hit low-income people hardest.

We all must buy food, clothing, shelter and transportation. But we don’t pay equal shares of our income. Here are numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, taken from The Washington Post.

At the height of the recent inflation (early 2022), the lowest one-fifth of earners spent 27% of their income on housing while the highest one fifth spent 18%. So, a $20,000 earner paid $5,400 for rent. A $200,000 earner paid $36,000. Easy to see who has more money left after rent is paid.

Or food. The lowest fifth spent 11% on groceries — this doesn’t include prepared meals — and the highest fifth spent 7%. Or, $2,200 for low-income and $14,000 for high-income.

Third set of numbers. For heating fuel and utilities, the lowest fifth of earners spent nearly 10% of their income on utilities, the highest fifth 5%. So far, the lowest fifth has spent 43% of its income, the highest fifth, 30%.

We still haven’t accounted for clothing, health care (including prescriptions), gasoline and car costs (for those who have cars), but you’ve probably looked at enough numbers to get the idea.

And even as inflation is easing, it remains highest in necessities, which hurts the poor more.

Roots of this inflation have been parsed in this column and lots of other places. Greed-flation, when corporations charge what the market will bear rather than competitively. Pepsico is Exhibit A. Labor shortage caused by 2 million more people retiring during the pandemic than would have in normal times. Not to mention federal spending to boost the post-pandemic middle class.

If inflation has a bright side, it’s wages. Low-wage earners have seen more increases, percentage-wise, than middle and upper earners. Recent wage growth in such areas as food and hospitality has outpaced inflation, so the balance finally favors folks who struggle the most.

None of this accounts for other costs that low-wage earners face disproportionately. A recent in-depth study in The Post showed that people whose work requires standing nearly a full shift are heavily represented in low-paying jobs such as food, cleaning and some machine-tending.

Standing all day can lead to higher medical costs because most of those workers are standing or walking on concrete floors. My two sons frequently have bad backs after years of food service and retail sales. All on concrete. No wonder that, in another study by the feds, people in the lowest-paying jobs expressed the most work-related stress.

In researching this column, Bob Neal found this tidbit in The Washington Post: Locksmiths need nearly twice the training time (6.11 months) of chief executive officers (3.31 months). Go figure. Neal can be reached at bobneal@myfairpoint.net.

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