My Opinion Piece for August 17, 2023

The editor labeled it:

Numbers Don't Tell the Whole Story 

 As a young veteran returning from overseas and with the help of the G.I. Bill, I enrolled in college at Grand Valley State College. (Yes, it was still a small, regional, college and not a university until mid-1980s.)  Not really knowing what I should study, I decided to enroll in business and English classes.  My first class of each was Accounting 101 and Shakespeare.  My accounting class was my largest class in the Seidman School of Business.  There were some 150 students in the lecture hall. 

In those days, apparently too many Grand Valley students wanted to obtain a business major.  So, the Business Department used Accounting 101, required of all business majors, to weed out those who were not serious about business studies.  Some of the first words out of the professor’s mouth my first day of classes were “Fifty percent of you will fail or drop this class.”  I had been tested in the Navy having graduated from Boot Camp at Great Lakes, been initiated as a Shellback when I crossed the equator around the fall of Saigon, been in near typhoon seas in July 1976.  But this was something else.

My initial thought was along the lines: “What in the world am I doing in this class?”  On our first big test in the class, even though I thought I had studied well, I got something like 40 out of a possible 150 points.  I was certain I had failed the test.  To my astonishment, my grade on it was a B+.  

In hindsight during that semester, I foolishly spent too much time studying accounting.   If I remember correctly, I ended up with an A in the class.  Shakespeare ended up being the more challenging but much more enjoyable of my classes.  Or as the court jester says in As You Like It, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wiseman knows himself to be a fool.”

While accounting classes taught me debits and credits, Shakespeare and my other English classes taught me communication skills and about people.  Like most accountants, I am an introvert who needed to learn that people skills are essential to being able to translate numbers into meaningful data for managerial decision makers.  Thus, to this day when I talk with young prospective accountants, I recommend that they study more than just accounting.  It would not have to be English, maybe it’s computers, marketing, a foreign language, or other studies. 

Numbers must tell a deeper story to be meaningful.  For example, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quick Facts, the median household income in Berrien County was $55,893 in 2021.  That is to say, 50 percent of households made more than that, 50 percent made less.  No one would claim that the 50 percent making less than $55,893 are wealthy.   Since Census estimated that there were 152,900 people in Berrien County last summer, that means that 76,000 people more or less in our county have households with modest incomes.  Many of these families are what the United Way might label as ALICE households, Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.  I think ALICE better describes our neighbors’ modest means than simply stating the median income of households is $55,893.

Looking further into the numbers, Census QuickFacts also state that 16.1 percent of our neighbors in the county live in poverty.  That is about 24,600 people living in poverty or almost one in every six residents.  Each one of the 24,600 people has an individual story to tell, a story that we need to hear.  The poverty threshold for a family of four, i.e., the income level at which families at or below are considered poor, in 2021 was $27,740.  The federal agency HUD states that in 2021 the fair market rent in Berrien County for a 2-bedroom apartment was $801 per month or about $9,600 per year.  For a family of four at the poverty threshold if they paid a fair market rent, they would have had to spend some 35 percent of their income on rent.  Yes, many families have subsidized rents, but certainly not all.  For those that do not, what stories could they tell us?

 In another piece of literature, Luke quotes Jesus saying, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”  The author of Luke was apparently listening.  Are we listening to the Beatitudes and importantly to 24,600 individuals in our county.

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