5 ms·
This article makes plain that she, and everyone she knows are, economically speaking, dead-men walking. And there is a certain dignity offering someone a smoke
by javajosh 9y ago
This article makes plain that she, and everyone she knows are, economically speaking, dead-men walking. And there is a certain dignity offering someone a smoke before they accept their doom.
The question that plagues me is: can I give her a job? What could this woman do, online or off, that would be valuable to society? Is Mechanical Turk, marketed to the rural poor, a solution?
- amigoingtodie 9y agoHow would she connecto to the internet? Super expensive LTE or satellite connection, or overpriced Shentel cablemodem, or DSL, where upload will be less than 1Mbps.
- emperorcezar 9y agoYou assume they have the resources to do online work, like an internet connection capable of doing so and the capital to get that connection before doing the work. Also a computer or phone capable of doing the work.
- javajosh 9y agoNot sure why you got a downvote, because those are excellent points. However, I'm assuming the hopeful case where we can think of something valuable, in which case the capital cost of equipment and operational cost of connectivity would be an easy sell. For example, would you accept this woman as a remote personal digital assistance, willing to pay for her phone, internet, and an extra $100/mo to do stuff for you? What is the quality of the work you might expect? What sorts of work would she do? Answer the phone? Argue with your credit card company? Keep an eye on your projects? Are people that capable really hiding in the countryside?
- reaperducer 9y agoThis is why West Virginia, North Dakota, Nevada, and other low-education states are magnets for call centers coming back onshore. They may be dumb as a brick in American terms, but they're able to function at a higher level than the average Indian call center employee, at a comparable salary, and they have the right accents.
- amigoingtodie 9y agoNeed AFFORDABLE internet connections first.
- thehardsphere 9y agoThe call center can afford an internet connection; it's cheaper than the people they'd be hiring.
- amigoingtodie 9y agoReally? A T-1 around that area is almost $700/mo. A 100Mbps symmetric connection is several thousand dollars per month.
- reaperducer 9y agoA call center will spend $700/month on toilet paper. It's no big deal.
- amigoingtodie 9y agoOn 24 employees?
- reaperducer 9y agoIn spite of hold times, most call centers are hundreds and hundreds of people, operating 24 hours a day. Not sure where you get 24 people.
- bzbarsky 9y agoMinumum wage in the US is $7.25/hr. In West Virginia specifically it's $8.75/hr. That means that a full-time minimum-wage employee in West Virginia costs about $1460/month (assuming they get paid for 50 weeks a year and take 2 weeks of unpaid vacation; if they get paid for 40 hours every week, that's $1517/month). That's just for their salary. Employers also have to pay half of the FICA tax (7.65%), unemployment taxes (several percent, typically; no idea what it's like in West Virginia), provide the actual space to work, etc. So you can get 2 T-1 lines easily for the cost of a single minimum-wage employee. Assuming your "several thousand dollars" is less than $10k, that corresponds to about 5 minimum-wage employees. And maybe, just maybe, there might be an incentive structure that involves wages above minimum wage for people who do a good job.
- jpindar 9y agoI bet a lot of them could make crafts that could be sold online, if there were someone there with a computer & internet to do the actual selling, and perhaps to purchase materials. In some cases, they'd be preserving authentic folk art.