CBO: Health-care law will mean 2 million fewer workers

[davidthegnome]

14. I'm a low wage worker...

The thing is, it doesn't matter whether or not I quit my job. I still won't be able to get health insurance. My state's republican governor is eagerly cutting Medicaid and Mainecare (our state health insurance program) and will likely continue to do so for some time. Unless we manage to vote him out of office in the upcoming elections... which is a good possibility, but not a certainty.

The ACA does not qualify me for insurance - I make too little income to qualify for the programs and subsidies, so my solution would be to apply for Medicaid, or Mainecare - both of which are unavailable to me because I'm not disabled enough and my household income (my parents make a living wage, imagine that) is too high.

It really sucks being a low wage worker. It's not just the exhaustion of working ridiculous shifts and putting up with tyrannical, cruel and selfish management, but it's also the simple knowledge that there are hundreds of people who are ready to take your place. Does it make you mad that you don't get breaks? There's the door. Does it bother you when your employer cusses you out, or cusses out your fellow employees? Again, there's the door. Are you unhappy that you're earning slave wages? Hey, feel free to go find another job, they're growing on trees and shit.

I'm debating putting in my resignation if I get enough in my income tax return to make my car payment for a few months. This is because I'm exhausted, and because my job is little better than a gilded prison. Maybe I'll try to become a successful writer, maybe I'll go live out in the woods like a hermit. Maybe I'll join a cult. I don't know. There have to be better options than being working poor forever.

Every month, more effort, more work, more hours are demanded of me. I give them, yet the wage does not go up, benefits do not become available. Every month now, employees at my place of business are simply not showing up. They don't call in to offer a reason for it, they just don't go. Some quit, some are fired... but what it comes down to is that the life of the working poor is nightmarish, shitty beyond belief for those who have not lived it.

What I'd love to do one day, is have my own land - learn how to farm, how to sustain myself and my family through simple hard work. No matter how hard I work for these rich bastards, it's never going to be enough to earn me that.