5 ms·

This guy could do ok pretty much anywhere else. He wants to be in movies, and take pictures of celebrities, even if those industries aren't willing to compensa

This guy could do ok pretty much anywhere else. He wants to be in movies, and take pictures of celebrities, even if those industries aren't willing to compensate him properly for his time. That is a far cry from flipping burgers.

tomphoolery 11y ago
Right. $30,000 is not a small sum of money in most other places of the world...
- themartorana 11y ago
  Is there really much of the U.S. where $30k is a decent wage? I do live in a city (not NY) and grew up in suburban South Jersey, but I don't know of a place where $30k is enough to live comfortably. Other countries, sure.
  - a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
    Living OK on $2K per month in much of America does not strike me as very hard. It wouldn't be fun, but pulling it off sure wouldn't be complicated.
    - jschwartzi 11y ago
      I lived on 24k for a whole year with no benefits of any sort. It can be done if you only have student loans and you can find a slum close to work. I don't think I could have dated or anything, though. You basically have to avoid socializing.
  - morgante 11y ago
    For most of my childhood, my family lived on less than $30k and we lived just fine (I never even knew how little my parents made until I grew up). Through a combination of cooking at home, living in an area with affordable housing, minimizing entertainment expenses (do you really need $100/m for cable?), and minimizing commuting it's quite manageable.
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      Affordable housing for families isn't really a thing these days. Even the public housing explicitly marked for the purpose is mostly booked-up by now.
      - morgante 11y ago
        There is plenty of affordable housing in small cities and rural housing. The trick is to accept that you don't need to live in a top tier city.
        eli_gottlieb 11y ago
        Ah. So there's plenty of affordable housing. You just need to accept that you won't have a job.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
rwallace 11y ago
How exactly does the economics of getting a job flipping burgers in the U.S. work out these days? Not a rhetorical question, I don't actually know the answer. Are employers willing to employ fifty-year-olds in such a capacity? How does the pay compare with cost of housing in any given area? How far would affordable housing be located from the place of work? After paying for housing, transport and health insurance as well as other living expenses, would outgoing still be less than income?
- a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
  Generally speaking the adults doing that stuff are making use of several welfare benefits. A single woman with two kids flipping burgers is often living a lifestyle that would require an unsupplemented income of $50K.
  - rwallace 11y ago
    Okay, so it sounds like compared to Europe, the U.S. has a thinner safety net such that welfare alone won't keep you afloat, but it will supplement a low-wage job such that the combination will keep you afloat?
    - a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
      Yes, if you're low income there's the earned income tax credit and you get medicaid/chip/snap/ebt and section 8 and a whole bunch of other stuff. It all adds up to a substantial chunk of change. Unlike in some other countries unemployment insurance (the dole) only covers you for a while before they kick you off.
    - alistairSH 11y ago
      Just barely afloat. If you get sick, your car breaks down, or any number of other things, you can very easily sink.
- danielvf 11y ago
  I spent some time helping with an English as a Second Language classes here, hanging out with the students, and helping with job searches. (ESL classes here are mostly 30-60 year old, new immigrants, 90% without a green card.) It's hard to understand at first how cheaply people can actually live. $700 a month for one person is enough for a car, phone, lodging, and food. And emergency rooms are "free" if you are sick. (The car has rust, the phone is prepaid, and the lodging is a spare room in someone's house. But it's way better than the previous life in another country.) McDonald's and Wal-Mart are both actually extremely desired jobs. Both pay much better than the other unskilled labor options, and unavailable unless you are legal. If you can get 20 hrs a week at McDonald's, that's all it takes for a much better life than you have now. In contrast, the baseline "undocumented" jobs here, outside of lawn care, is doing a 2-3 hours a night cleaning businesses through a middleman for below minimum wage. This will keep someone fed and alive, but no car, no phone. However, when I was helping, McDonald's job applications had to be done online. Try helping a 68 year old, who can barely speak English, go through a 500 question multiple choice online McDonald's personality quiz....
ddellacosta 11y ago
He's spent his entire working life in NYC. All of the contacts he's made throughout his career are there. Furthermore, there are not many places as good as NYC for work, in general, and certainly not in his field--and do you think he has much of a chance of starting over in a new career at his age? Or is getting another chance only limited to failed entrepreneurs who have blown through multiple million-dollar rounds of investment--should everyone else be flipping burgers in a small town somewhere as soon as they fail? And let's not forget that presumably the majority of his friends are there, and possibly family, considering that he's from NJ originally. He is, like many Americans, between a rock and a hard place--and in fact faring better than a lot of other people if you put them in his position. I'm rather impressed by this guy in fact. The reality is, we choose the society we want to have, and how we treat the people at the bottom shows us what we have chosen. Whenever talk of the absence of a real social safety net in the U.S. comes up the response is rhetoric about how people's expectations are off and how this kind of social safety net equates to socialism, which is a poison ideology that rots away the motivation to work hard. But when I look at the reality of contemporary America what I see are people at the ends of their ropes, working multiple jobs just to barely stay afloat, being taxed for being poor through fees and fines, and wealth accruing to people who already have the resources to do well. There has to be a better way.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >The reality is, we choose the society we want to have, and how we treat the people at the bottom shows us what we have chosen. Whenever talk of the absence of a real social safety net in the U.S. comes up the response is rhetoric about how people's expectations are off and how this kind of social safety net equates to socialism, which is a poison ideology that rots away the motivation to work hard. But when I look at the reality of contemporary America what I see are people at the ends of their ropes, working multiple jobs just to barely stay afloat, being taxed for being poor through fees and fines, and wealth accruing to people who already have the resources to do well. Well, if you look at the rhetoric, the ideology that's been propagated among the people, what you find is that it's all about how working hard is the true good in life. No limit is stated past which it becomes overwork, nor are any guidelines stated for actually compensating work -- only for ensuring that there is work. Even today we still hear talk about "job creation", or in other words, making more work happen. America let the neoliberal genie out of the bottle: if you make a wish for hard work, don't be surprised to find yourself a peon. Neoliberalism is doing exactly what it has always said it does.

tomphoolery 11y ago

Right. $30,000 is not a small sum of money in most other places of the world...

themartorana 11y ago
Is there really much of the U.S. where $30k is a decent wage? I do live in a city (not NY) and grew up in suburban South Jersey, but I don't know of a place where $30k is enough to live comfortably. Other countries, sure.
- a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
  Living OK on $2K per month in much of America does not strike me as very hard. It wouldn't be fun, but pulling it off sure wouldn't be complicated.
  - jschwartzi 11y ago
    I lived on 24k for a whole year with no benefits of any sort. It can be done if you only have student loans and you can find a slum close to work. I don't think I could have dated or anything, though. You basically have to avoid socializing.
- morgante 11y ago
  For most of my childhood, my family lived on less than $30k and we lived just fine (I never even knew how little my parents made until I grew up). Through a combination of cooking at home, living in an area with affordable housing, minimizing entertainment expenses (do you really need $100/m for cable?), and minimizing commuting it's quite manageable.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    Affordable housing for families isn't really a thing these days. Even the public housing explicitly marked for the purpose is mostly booked-up by now.
    - morgante 11y ago
      There is plenty of affordable housing in small cities and rural housing. The trick is to accept that you don't need to live in a top tier city.
      - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
        Ah. So there's plenty of affordable housing. You just need to accept that you won't have a job.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

rwallace 11y ago

How exactly does the economics of getting a job flipping burgers in the U.S. work out these days? Not a rhetorical question, I don't actually know the answer. Are employers willing to employ fifty-year-olds in such a capacity? How does the pay compare with cost of housing in any given area? How far would affordable housing be located from the place of work? After paying for housing, transport and health insurance as well as other living expenses, would outgoing still be less than income?

a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
Generally speaking the adults doing that stuff are making use of several welfare benefits. A single woman with two kids flipping burgers is often living a lifestyle that would require an unsupplemented income of $50K.
- rwallace 11y ago
  Okay, so it sounds like compared to Europe, the U.S. has a thinner safety net such that welfare alone won't keep you afloat, but it will supplement a low-wage job such that the combination will keep you afloat?
  - a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
    Yes, if you're low income there's the earned income tax credit and you get medicaid/chip/snap/ebt and section 8 and a whole bunch of other stuff. It all adds up to a substantial chunk of change. Unlike in some other countries unemployment insurance (the dole) only covers you for a while before they kick you off.
  - alistairSH 11y ago
    Just barely afloat. If you get sick, your car breaks down, or any number of other things, you can very easily sink.
danielvf 11y ago
I spent some time helping with an English as a Second Language classes here, hanging out with the students, and helping with job searches. (ESL classes here are mostly 30-60 year old, new immigrants, 90% without a green card.) It's hard to understand at first how cheaply people can actually live. $700 a month for one person is enough for a car, phone, lodging, and food. And emergency rooms are "free" if you are sick. (The car has rust, the phone is prepaid, and the lodging is a spare room in someone's house. But it's way better than the previous life in another country.) McDonald's and Wal-Mart are both actually extremely desired jobs. Both pay much better than the other unskilled labor options, and unavailable unless you are legal. If you can get 20 hrs a week at McDonald's, that's all it takes for a much better life than you have now. In contrast, the baseline "undocumented" jobs here, outside of lawn care, is doing a 2-3 hours a night cleaning businesses through a middleman for below minimum wage. This will keep someone fed and alive, but no car, no phone. However, when I was helping, McDonald's job applications had to be done online. Try helping a 68 year old, who can barely speak English, go through a 500 question multiple choice online McDonald's personality quiz....

ddellacosta 11y ago

He's spent his entire working life in NYC. All of the contacts he's made throughout his career are there. Furthermore, there are not many places as good as NYC for work, in general, and certainly not in his field--and do you think he has much of a chance of starting over in a new career at his age? Or is getting another chance only limited to failed entrepreneurs who have blown through multiple million-dollar rounds of investment--should everyone else be flipping burgers in a small town somewhere as soon as they fail? And let's not forget that presumably the majority of his friends are there, and possibly family, considering that he's from NJ originally. He is, like many Americans, between a rock and a hard place--and in fact faring better than a lot of other people if you put them in his position. I'm rather impressed by this guy in fact. The reality is, we choose the society we want to have, and how we treat the people at the bottom shows us what we have chosen. Whenever talk of the absence of a real social safety net in the U.S. comes up the response is rhetoric about how people's expectations are off and how this kind of social safety net equates to socialism, which is a poison ideology that rots away the motivation to work hard. But when I look at the reality of contemporary America what I see are people at the ends of their ropes, working multiple jobs just to barely stay afloat, being taxed for being poor through fees and fines, and wealth accruing to people who already have the resources to do well. There has to be a better way.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
>The reality is, we choose the society we want to have, and how we treat the people at the bottom shows us what we have chosen. Whenever talk of the absence of a real social safety net in the U.S. comes up the response is rhetoric about how people's expectations are off and how this kind of social safety net equates to socialism, which is a poison ideology that rots away the motivation to work hard. But when I look at the reality of contemporary America what I see are people at the ends of their ropes, working multiple jobs just to barely stay afloat, being taxed for being poor through fees and fines, and wealth accruing to people who already have the resources to do well. Well, if you look at the rhetoric, the ideology that's been propagated among the people, what you find is that it's all about how working hard is the true good in life. No limit is stated past which it becomes overwork, nor are any guidelines stated for actually compensating work -- only for ensuring that there is work. Even today we still hear talk about "job creation", or in other words, making more work happen. America let the neoliberal genie out of the bottle: if you make a wish for hard work, don't be surprised to find yourself a peon. Neoliberalism is doing exactly what it has always said it does.