Food stamp land

Thanks for checking in, Corporal Klinger.

 

Are that many people really unable to earn a subsistence wage in this business? Again, I must be completely naive.

When I first started in this business ... less than 10 years ago ... it was at a 25K paper in the middle of bumfuck nowhere that paid about 21K. I wasn't saving up for a yacht, but it was enough to rent an apartment and pay the bills and buy groceries.

When I left that job five years later, I wasn't making that much more. But, combined with my wife's salary (which was less than I made), we were able to own a house ... plus two cars, etc etc.

I guess my point is 21K isn't a lot of money, but it was enough for me to exist on. What are some of these jobs paying that we can't even afford food?

It's shocking. It should be illegal.

 

Just to make this thread hit home a little harder and become a little more depressing...

When your kids start school in a few weeks, see if they qualify for a free (or a reduced) lunch.


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The fact that college educated people are posting on a thread like this should be a moment of clarity for some people thinking about getting into this business.

 

If you want to be really resourceful, see if your kid will bring part of that reduced lunch home in a doggy bag.

 

I'd actually prefer my child ate. maybe that's just me, though.

 

I'm sure they can find something lying around the lunchroom after the other kids leave. Pizza crusts and half eaten puddings and such.

 

Too much of publishing has been looked upon as a career sinecure for the well-off, for too long.

You shouldn't have to be a trust-fund baby to enjoy a career in this niche.

Fat Cats love the prevailing state of affairs, of course.

Fewer competent investigative reporters, the better.

 

Some Guy: First, you were in Bumblefuck. A dollar goes a long way there. Not so much in other parts of the country. $21K in my last town would have absolutely qualified you for assistance. Even if you and your spouse made a joint $45K, that was well below the joint medium income there. And you wouldn't have been able to buy a house. Not even close.

Second, you were making $21K about 10 years ago. Problem is, salaries have not kept pace with inflation and cost of living in that time. The equivalent to that salary is about $29K today, and I don't think many places are paying that as an entry-level wage.

And yes, it really is this bad. My first full-time job out of college was classified as an "internship" even though the workload wasn't and so I was paid $13K that year. It was 2001.

 

The ironic thing in this situation is that 70 percent of the wealth in the US is owned by the top ten percent of the population, and 2-1/2 percent by the bottom fifty percent, precisely because journalists and their editors do not speak truth to power, and it comes back to bite journalists, themselves, in some of their asses.... yet still, there are comments on this thread, like, "someone should do a story about this!"

....but, the big problem here is that my posts are too long. It would not occur to an American journalist to examine why the French are demonized by the media, despite their dramatic success in addressing quality of life issues. Who is our economic/political system set up to benefit?

 

Of course, 90 percent of all statistics is right only 20 percent of the time while the other 10 percent is wrong 80 percent of the time.

Generally.

 

126.

 

Why does it seem that almost everybody posts with frat boy kinda 'tude? This is a conversation about life in the US, and the tone is so unconcerned, cynical, baiting....from journalists.... "I got mine....", right?