The Fear Of Wages*

I was fourteen and attending a school for dunces,
when in the real world more children left school
than there were jobs and training for them to do.
Adult male unemployment kept rising, too.
Such that the government was rather shy
about sharing it's workings out the sums 
it had to do to explain unemployment.

They were even shier about explaining
to parents that their children were staying
in school two years longer, even though
there was nothing more for them to learn.    

Meanwhile in the classroom my maths teacher,
Mr Jackson, decided to teach me subtraction,
which I already knew how to do. ,

He wanted to ready me for the subject,
as an exam style question, a 'real life' example.
'If a man earns £20 a week and his deductions
are £18 then what does he have left?'
I wanted to say 'An inept government',
but we were never taught civics as a subject.

I was reminded of my dad,
the only working man I knew,
thinking that £18 was his deductions
and £2 was his wage I felt frightened
-at what point would he decline
to pay for the household expenses?
When would he disown his children? Me.

With a wage and deductions like that
I was the one subtracted from my family.
I forget how the discussion with Mr Jackson ended.

*This phrase was first used as the title of an episode
of the surreal comedy radio programme 'The Goon Show',
find a link to the programme here first broadcast Mar 1956.
That title was itself a reversal of the 1953 film title
'The Wages of Fear', which was itself an adaption
of St Paul's phrase 'For the wages of sin is death' (Romans Ch 6 V 23).