The Desperate Hustle as a Way of Life

[n2doc]

BY EDWARD ERICSON JR.

Here is the future: nobody gets any job security. Nobody gets a fair wage while they have a job. Nobody gets a retirement fund or even any guarantee they’ll be able to eat tomorrow. And almost everyone is doing everything they can just to get by—and paying some substantial portion of their earnings to a pimp or “platform” which controls the business they are in. And ain’t life a grand adventure? Isn’t it all so fun?

Welcome to the Sharing Economy.

This is the model of the new economy, where anyone with a car ought to be a Lyft contractor (your fare pays what he or she thinks is right but the company is tweeting out “we’ve slashed prices 20 percent”) and anyone with a house or apartment is renting it out on Air BnB and crashing at their boyfriend’s parents’ place.

All of this came about by design. The world is arranged according to the people who arrange things—the people who make money by this arrangement. We’re in our fourth decade of this. The Times reported this week that the American middle class has been surpassed by Canada’s.

And it’s much worse than the New York Times imagines. As Dean Baker points out, the middle classes in most other countries have increased their incomes while getting longer vacations. In the U.S.A.? Not so much.

more

http://blogs.citypaper.com/index.php/the-news-hole/desperate-hustle-way-life/

[Helen Borg]

1. This also encourages

Widespread dishonesty, simply to stay alive. Can you imagine anything like disinterested friendship in such a world? No, there is no place for that in a distributed neoliberal economy. Everything has a clear price, and if you do not squeeze all you can out of your assets, you simply die.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

3. yep.

I'll have to charge people to sit at my campfire.

[Dawson Leery]

2. k/r

[mopinko]

4. i hate lyft.

a few of these poor innocents get their heads blown off by armed robbers who picked them because of their cute little mustaches, and i predict this enterprise will sink.
it is tough enough to be a cabbie. and to take cabs, never knowing who you will be riding with.
unregulated cabs? yeesh.

[bvar22]

5. I'm OLD,

and remember another time when voting FOR The Democrat
was voting FOR the following Values:

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be[font size=3] established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.[/font]

Among these are:

*The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

*The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

*The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

*The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

*The right of every family to a decent home;

*The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

*The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

*The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

[font size=3]America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens.[/font]

Please note that the above are stipulated as Basic Human RIGHTS to be protected by our government,
and NOT as COMMODITIES to be SOLD to Americans by For Profit Corporations.


My donations in 2014, and my vote in 2016
WILL go to whoever BEST embodies the above Traditional Democratic Party Values.
I am too old and tired to again support the Least of the Worst.
Let the chips fall where they may.


[font color=firebrick][center]"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans.
I want a party that will STAND UP for Working Americans."
---Paul Wellstone [/font][/center] [center] [/font]
[font size=1]photo by bvar22
Shortly before Sen Wellstone was killed[/center][/font]

[truedelphi]

10. Well, these days, Bvar, when you vote for Democrats, you still vote

For most of the things that you listed above, with some necesary alterations.

For instance, you still are voting for
*The right of the upper four percent to a useful and remunerative job MANAGING industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

*The right of the UPPER ONE PERCENT to earn enough to provide gourmet food for themselves and their families. Ditto designer clothing and ultimate (think Extreme Sports) recreation, for yourself and your succeeding 349 generations;

*The right of the Big Gm Pesticide and Genetic Seed Adulterators to raise and sell these products (including the patent protected right to seize those farmlands where the Gm crops have contaminated the conventionally grown crops) ;

*The right of every businessman, large and larger and largest, to trade in an atmosphere that guarantees total domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

*The right of every extremely rich family to a decent home, and a second home, and a third, fourth and fifth home, all staffed by servants from foreign lands who will be most worshipful, otherwise they will be shipped out on their ears;

*The right to design medical care so that continual medications are needed, rather than attacking disease at the source and curing it; and the opportunity to achieve wealth and great health at the expense of everyone else's health;

*The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, as many rich elderly people will live far beyond the survival years now considered the norm. A truly bionic population of rich elderly has been conceived of, and already promised to the One Percent;

*The right to a huge profit margin, if you design and own the online eduction centers that are now springing up everywhere, and that require about ten times as much tuition money as the education undertaken at the community college level..

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. It's the same old rat race without the flimsy security of the race track.

[hopemountain]

7. yup.

but, there are other ways to make a life for oneself and loved ones. it is up to us and future generations to create / shift the paradigm

[WillyT]

8. A High-Tech Pottersville...

& Rec !!!

[truedelphi]

9. Very nicely stated.

That is a brilliant comparison.

And of course, the folks who are employed by the high tech firms are for the most part, quite smart about technology and quite dumb about almost everything else.

Including not being all that insightful that some twenty years after they land that first important job, 85% of them are considered obsolete by the very industry that so highly lauded them when they were young..

[WillyT]

11. Also Well Stated... And Depressing As Hell...

...85% of them are considered obsolete by the very industry that so highly lauded them when they were young..

So true...