What a Trash Picker and USC Students Tell Us About Inequality

A formerly homeless veteran ekes out just enough to live by picking through the trash of billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg on the streets of San Francisco and selling the designer jeans and high-end housewares he finds.

USC students jet to Bali for spring break, while some of their classmates work overnight shifts to pay for books.

Recently, my colleagues Thomas Fuller and Jennifer Medina wrote articles about the symptoms of California’s vast and growing economic inequality.

That’s a major, vexing topic in the state, though hardly unexplored.

Still, they seemed to strike a particular chord with readers — hundreds of whom emailed, tweeted and commented on each.

Many applauded Jake Orta, the Air Force veteran and Texas native whom Fuller followed around the rain-slicked streets of the Mission this winter.

“Hats off to Mr. Orta,” one commenter, hotGumption, wrote. “He’s entrepreneurial, a survivor and — as I see it — a distant cousin to the trend called ‘shabby chic’ where canny designers take what used to be yard sale junk and make millions by renaming it.”

Others were outraged by his story, not because they saw his actions as wrong but because of what his lifestyle signified.

“The profile speaks to the utter absence of care America provides its veterans,” Mike Frank wrote. “Wake up call to Mr. Zuckerberg: look out your front window, use your vast wealth and make Facebook a morally conscious leader with a commitment to the veterans who have served us and will continue to do so.”

And some thought the story focused too much on the extremes.

“Characterizing our country as a Dickensian Tale of Two Cities is a lot more fun than realizing it’s instead a Tale of Three Cities, with the overwhelming majority doing just fine,” wrote another commenter, bigoil.

More readers shared their experiences of being somewhere in the middle of the income spectrum at elite universities — and how the exposure to different ways of life was itself an education.

“At Stanford, my freshman roommate got $100 for each A she earned. I had to earn spending money by serving food in the dining halls,” wrote Alice, whose son is now a freshman at USC. “I realized being rich did not necessarily mean one was a snob. She realized she had grown up in a bubble. I encourage my son to embrace both the haves and the have-nots at SC.”

Others said that the piece depicted experiences similar to their own.

“I got a great education at USC and was not resentful, but the idea of any sort of ‘even playing field’ at the school is simply untrue, and the gap in money and social stature was nearly impossible to close,” wrote Christine, who said she was the first person in her working-class family to attend college.

Still others said inequality is what you make of it.

“Wealthy people and celebrities send their kids here, they always have, but this narrative only works to devalue the education that many middle and lower middle class students care deeply about,” wrote Virginia, who said she’s a current USC undergrad. “I don’t care about the Corvette, as long as it doesn’t hit me when I’m jaywalking to class.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.