I worked for a small general contractor as a receptionist. I made slightly more than minimum wage, was a single mother, and the person who got to talk to all the angry subcontractors that we weren’t paying. When the company went bankrupt, the owner had to sell off his SIX jets. Six. Private. Jets. Like do you leave one at each airport you might be visiting or…?
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At least the UK has government healthcare. We have a patchwork of systems that in some ways is made worse by Obamacare (even tho’ I think it is the right thing to do.)
Short of revolution (which the poor usually end up getting screwed then too) during the Clinton years, employment was so high that companies had to start recruiting in poorer neighborhoods. And I think smart social programs and public schools can make a difference. But my belief the the modern US government can solve any problem that doesn’t include a multi-billion dollar contract to Bechtel is beginning to wane.
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WOW. Couldn’t have sold one of those jets to keep the company afloat?
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Pro tips:
Pay for your studies in cash - you’ll save thousands in interest!
Make sure you get a good education and live in the right area. The experience and connections will pay off later!
Get full health coverage - medical bills can be costly!
Don’t worry about having a high income - if you make sure most of your gains come from interest, you’ll save money on taxes!
If you are a little tight, make sure it’s one of your corporations that goes bankrupt!
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For now. Labour/Conservative/LibDem/Ukip seem to think that the (old!) US system is better despite all evidence to the contrary. They just disagree on how fast the change should happen.
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The NHS will outlast the LibDems, at any rate.
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I hope this book is better than Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed”. The fact that she has written the foreword is not a selling point, to me. For those of us who have actually lived the life she tried to replicate, her choices appeared to be more about maintaining middle class values and expectations than refocusing and really understanding what your mindset has to be to survive in the U.S. as part of the working poor.
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She writes exactly the kinds of things that I’ve known for years. Yes it’s actually cheaper in the long run to buy in bulk. If you spend $1.29 and get the large bag of rice that has 12 meals’ worth of rice in it, that is cheaper in the long run than buying the small bag that contains 8 meals for $0.98. But when you only have $1.01 in your pocket, the big bag is NOT an option. And I know exactly what she means by being unable to actually save money because something always happens. I don’t know how many times I would scrimp and save and after 3 or 4 months I’d have an extra $58 dollars in the bank, and then the old beatermobile that was the only car I could afford would lunch its alternator, and it would cost me $60 to get a new alternator.
That was really the worst part of seeing the savings disappear - it seemed like the crisis that ate the savings always required more money than I had in savings. So most of the time I’d not only lose the savings, I’d also have to scoop money out of the bowl I used to collect quarters for the laundromat. And then I’d wind up having to stay up late washing stuff in the bathroom sink because I didn’t have money to put in the slots of the washer.
The overwhelming majority of the people who write books on how to save and manage money have NEVER lived at that level where the price of replacing a blown tire is a major financial crisis. They should be required to live on nothing but their paycheck at minimum wage jobs before they open their mouths.
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I used to work jobs where I was the only person in the group who didn’t have a credit card. I had to quit talking to anyone about my previous life, because all of them had always made a lot more money than I had, and they just could not understand being unable to buy things. Once we were talking about stereos, and a guy asked me what kind I had. I said I didn’t; before this job, I made so little money I couldn’t afford to buy one. It took me a couple of minutes to get him to understand that I had actually worked for wages so low I couldn’t afford a stereo. Then he asked why didn’t I just put it on my credit card. This pampered blowdried schmuck literally could not understand how it was possible to not have a credt card.
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Been there, done that too. I used to work for AMD as an hourly wage worker. The company needed desperately to save money so they mandated that everyone in the company work half-time the last month of the year. End of the year. The time of year when the Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year holidays already reduced the number of hours I worked and got paid for. Essentialy, I spent November and December on half pay. Then I got laid off at the end of January.
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[quote=“ChickieD, post:16, topic:47848”]
Really the ethics in corporate America is terrifying.
[/quote]This is not a uniquely American thing by a long shot, and people tossing “America” onto corporate talk almost like an intensifier is putting blinders up to the quickest corporate gains in the world.
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I guess he really needed them?
It was a pretty horrible company in general, so the owner’s style was just par for the course. We built shoddy housing developments that had problems the moment you moved in. Pretty much every homeowner’s association was suing us for something. The “customer service line” was a phone in an empty closet that only went to voice mail; you would never ever get a customer service rep because they did not exist. Our guy in charge of investors was caught with an underage boy in a motel room. The owner and the manager are both under investigation now for defrauding said investors.
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I think you mean the job creators are both under investigation…
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I think I’ve seen a documentary about this company. Family owned?
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hey but he probably brought value to the investors, right? and that is what it’s all about!
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John Rogers in his blog Kung Fu Monkey.
This is one of the best quotes of all time IMHO.
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So is the person who wrote a kick ass blog post about being poor and then ran a great Kickstarter/GoFundMe thing where it went way past goal in order to write the book?
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Isn’t that the point of the book? Who are you arguing with?
Thank you for the attribution !!! Not knowing the authors identity has, quite literally, bugged me for years, as it’s among my favorites as well.
It’s one of those morsels that is so crunchy, so soul-satisfying, that I wish I could claim credit for it. But of course, such a claim would mark the beginning of a soul-rendering descent into an amoral elective schizophrenia, just like one John Rogers cautions about.
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We’ve got a LibDem councillor in my ward in Newcastle; he comes round and puts their poxy newsletter through the door on a regular basis, though I have yet to catch him at it and harangue him. One day…
