Underemployed? Not getting ahead in this economy? Guess what, it's your fault.

[MadHound]

Apparently if you're underemployed, getting paid a crappy wage, it's your fault, because you're now addicted to being poor.

"Can't earn enough dough to pay the rent? A tiny but growing fellowship of New Yorkers might suggest that the problem isn't the economy. The problem is you. You may have a disease—a compulsive addiction to low-paying work. And they have a 12-step program to help you recover: Underearners Anonymous.

At a recent meeting, two-dozen men and women gathered in a windowless, rented room, squeezing themselves into a tight circle around a faded oriental carpet. After saying a prayer and introducing themselves ("Hello, my name is Mary, and I'm an underearner"), they discussed the symptoms of their condition: frittering away time, undercharging for services and neglecting to follow through on new opportunities. Moreover, they say they're powerless to control these destructive, compulsive behaviors. They need help from a higher power that can restore them to sanity."

<http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/111383/a-program-for-poor-aholics?mod=career-salary_negotiation>

This is beyond vile, beyond evil. This is abusive, blaming the people for their lack of success. Just astounding what our society has become, and where it is going.

[HughBeaumont]

1. Yahoo Finance . . . fitting title.

This was also a response to some pearls of wisdom from a victim-blaming Yahoo Finance article written about 3 years ago.

[somone]

2. Yeah, pray harder and change your ways

Isn't it God's will, though? :sarcasm:

[RainDog]

3. sounds like an Onion article. oi. n/t

[KillCapitalism]

4. Ahh yes, being poor is like a party everyday.

WTF?

Yeah, not knowing where your next meal is coming from, or getting your gas/electricity cut off in the winter is such fun. :crazy:

These people who write this shit should be committed.

[Octafish]

5. When Wall Street needed a bailout because of their, eh, practices they needed a scapegoat .

The poor, who hoodwinked America's banks into fraudulent loans.

That GOP lie was repeated and repeated and repeated on-air and in-print to where it achieved a critical mass of idiocy.

[LiberalEsto]

6. I admit it: it's my fault I'm 58 years old.

Hardly anyone wants to hire people my age. Probably because they think we'll be a drain on healthcare benefits.

Shame on me. My bad.

I should have dropped dead when I turned 55.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

7. This must be

what George W. Bush described as the "ownership society"- which is code as far as I'm concerned for the "on your own" society. Demands for personal responsibility from people whom haven't been responsible a day in their lives and wouldn't know it if it came up and bit them in the rear end.
:mad:

[YOY]

8. Anne Kadet needs to lose her job to test that theory.

n.t.

[raccoon]

9. I saw that dumbass article, and almost posted it. I agree, it is totally horseshit.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, over the last few decades there have been fewer and fewer decent paying job with benefits, and more and more part-time, no benes jobs.

I totally agree; this lying nonsense makes me want to :puke:

[raccoon]

10. Gee, maybe they just oughta read "The Secret!" :sarcasm: nt

[area51]

11. OMFG

That is insane.

As another poster said upthread, at first glance I thought it was an Onion article. :mad:

[MadHound]

12. Yeah, it was a rude shock to me

I just love being addicted to unemployment/underemployed.

Calvinism run rampant.

[raccoon]

13. Kick. nt

[NutmegYankee]

14. WTF!

[Tsiyu]

15. The last job I took paid $7.50

or whatever minimum is. (I made $12 the last time I did the same work and asked for as much. Not much but fine for me.) I was laughed at for wanting more.

Then, a few weeks on the job, the guy started yelling, throwing things and insulting everyone...

He apologized, said the meds made him too lethargic, but after his second episode that was that.


Next and latest pursuit: Offered $10.50 to collect specimens from Oxy and Hydro addicts. Passed...


I have a few clients I do office-type work for a few days a week. I'm selling some scrap metal to pay the utilities. I may have to apply for Food Stamps. I'll keep trying, but hard work isn't the issue; neither is some inability to ask for a living wage. They may not pay it but I act as if I expect it.

I think the scenery is gone for the most part. We have to build our own scenery. Try working hard at something better, instead of spinning our wheels while they hold down our wagons.

Lots of smart people out there with plenty of time on their hands need to re-think commerce, form Boards of Directors now and worry about capital down the road....if you ran the company, how would it be run? Get Green corporations in place now.


There is still a market out there, but people will be buying items to help them be frugal and sustainable: rain catchment systems, raised bed material, insulation, solar components, chicken tractors, clotheslines, plants, fencing, tools......for those of you newly poor, you can sell scrap metal and aluminum cans (nothing wrong with poverty leading lots of folks I know to suddenly collect cans!)

Of course they are going to blame us; narcissists do that. Give them the finger while you form your own system. Their chief weakness is that they think you need them.

[newspeak]

16. why, I think that was used in the great depression

It was the workers fault, it was the immigrants fault--but oh no, it wasn't the robber barons fault. Yep, it seems that history does actually repeat.