Sunday, May 30, 2021
The Squawker Reflects: Never Getting A Good Job Destroys A Life
Sunday, May 16, 2021
The Squawker Returns: "The Poor...Is Separated From His Neighbor"
Proverbs 19:4
It's a continuation of my pre-COVID struggles, when I went without seeing some relatives for too long, and those relationships withered, as well. I became a stranger. Would they have loved me if I had money? It eats like gall within my soul. A rich, spoiled Baby Boomer mother, too embarrassed to even have you around. Years of being made to feel like pond scum, because, for some reason, others in your family were loved enough to get good jobs and a chance and a place to belong. Not you and yours, though.
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Tyler Perry Has It Right: Ownership Is Everything
Here's how the basic business model works, if you're not familiar with it. (I'm making this proposition for argument's sake. With so many people resorting to sites like Mechanical Turk for survival, you'd have to visit another planet to find someone who isn't familiar with gig work, in some way. Then again, there are people who've never used Facebook, signed up for cable TV, or used a cellphone, right?) You sign up, which may or may not involve some sort of audition, demo, or test.
You may also undergo an interview, though that's only happened to me a couple of times, usually for a writing-related opportunity. (I usually turn them down if they want me to essentially do something complicated from scratch, for free, especially if it might take a few hours of my time.)
Depending on how your initial screening goes, you'll get in right away, or go on a waiting list, if the site's popular enough. Then you can get right to work, for rock bottom rates that run all over the map. In my experience, $5-40 per item is the range, with the median landing at $10-20.
The pros? As much work as you want. No need to invoice anybody, nor wait for someone to send you a check (as the middleman, the site takes care of it). No need to worry about somebody spacing out on those finer details. Generally speaking, the work won't strain your brain, so once you get into a certain rhythm, it's theoretically possible to raise whatever per hour rate you've set as your benchmark.
The cons? Plenty, baby, plenty. You'll work like a pack mule for next to no money, and those rock bottom rates rarely unless the entity involved needs to clear a lot of excess work off its platform. Actually, your rates usually go south, because if see you doing too well, they'll cut your pay. If it's a writing-based site, you may get multiple, rewrite requests that eat up more of your time that you could spend seeking out better paying work, or credits that might advance your career.
The mechanical, repetitive nature of the work will also grind you down. There's no room for creativity, so your talent won't shine on a 500-word clickbait atrocity like "How To Put Pants On A Dog." Like porn, it's all about the act itself., no more, no less. If you churn out this type of word gruel long enough, you'll eventually start questioning your sanity and well-being.
You won't feel any emotional involvement in something like, "The Pros And Cons Of Paint Strainers," even if it doesn't get unceremoniously scrubbed, years later, off whatever platform pitched pennies at you to bang it out. You won't ever find yourself saying, Hey, I did that, because it was never yours.
Conditions change without warning, which leaves you scrambling when the work (or your rock bottom pay) drops off. Sites disappear without abruptly, too, once the promise of that quick clickbait revenue evaporates. All that piecework you did for pennies? It's gone forever, but you signed an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), remember?
That means you can't retrieve or circulate all that digital sweatshop labor, so forget about raising your profile. You can't contact anybody through the site, because they might do the unthinkable, like pay something close to what your time and talents deserve.
Your name typically doesn't appear on your work, further eroding its value as a calling card. The only difference between a piecework site and an express kidnapping gang is that you've spared the bad guys the work of dragging you to the bank to drain your ATM, because you've essentially signed a piece of paper allowing them to do it as often as they want.
But if that's the case, why does greedygigwork.com insist that you sign it over to them, forever and forever, in perpetuity, blah-blah-blah, by any and all means, blah-blah-blah, including those yet to be created, discovered or patented (as the relevant boilerplate demands)? What's the point, if nobody's going to read it, even 15 minutes from now?
I think it's time for a new paradigm. Tyler Perry made the case succinctly when he joined "wealthy celebrities like Jay-Z, Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg in the Hollywood billionaires' club," as PureWow reported in September 2020. He earned a place on the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans list, no small feat for an African-American who started off as an obscure playwright.
All that changed for Perry with his first film, Diary Of A Mad Black Woman (2005), which grossed $50 million worldwide, and enabled him to take creative control of his projects. His back catalog includes 22 films, two dozen plays, and 1,200 TV show episodes, as PureWow reported. He also owns a 330-acre studio lot in Atlanta, that serves as the hub of his creative empire.
Perry explained his philosophy thusly. "My father was a subcontractor, and he would get paid on Fridays and be so happy that he had made $800, but I would watch the man that owned the house sell it and make $80,000," Perry said, in part. "So I always wanted to be the guy that owned the house. I own the lights. I own the sets. So that's where the difference is. Because I own everything, my returns are higher. Ownership is everything."
Or maybe not so obvious, judging by how many people still flock to these sites, like Etsy, who reported $451.5 million in total revenue for the third quarter of 2020, right about the time Tyler Perry achieved his billionaire status. Think how far even 10 percent of that money could go, if we put it into our DIY communities, and supported each other's efforts, and developed our own networks, instead of allowing some giant corporate entity to hoover it out of our pockets, forever and ever.
Steve Chou, of mywifequiteherjob.com lays out the case against Etsy, and other sites like it, well in his post (see link below). Granted, he's not a disinterested party, but still, he makes some strong points. Like many auction sites, the sheer number of sellers means you'll probably never earn more than a fair side income, at best. And that's before we get to the overall chunk of income that you'll hand over to these folks. (In Etsy's case, plan on dedicating eight to 23 percent to them, Chou estimates.)
Given all the headaches involved, like the plethora of fees, and ever-changing policies, "you have to ask yourself whether you want to be doing all of this work for a site that you do not even own," Chou writes.
But, honestly, it's not a question of, "Should you use this site, or that one?" That's a distraction from the main issue. How do we ensure creative control over our businesses and livelihoods? How do we reach a point of owning as much of ourselves as possible, so that we aren't constantly at the mercy of mindless, unforgiving megabully, who'll toss their grandma (and all their blood relations) under the nearest bus, if that's what it takes to stay profitable?
How can we establish an alternative infrastructure that's durable and long-lasting, so that others don't have to grovel like their predecessors did, and leave the next generation to reinvent the wheel all over again? How well we answer those questions will determine what really is possible. Because, remember: ownership is everything. --The Reckoner
Links To Go
Etsy Reports Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results:
https://investors.etsy.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2020/Etsy-Inc.-Reports-Third-Quarter-2020-Financial-Results/default.aspx
My Wife Quit Her Job
Why Selling On An Etsy Store Is A Bad Idea
Compared To Running Your Own Shop:
https://mywifequitherjob.com/etsy-stores/
My Corona Diary (Take XXXI ): The Funeral Home Won't Leave My Bones Alone
Sunday, May 9, 2021
False Equivalency 101: Springing The Student Loan Jailbreak
President Biden has shied away from progressive calls to cancel $50,000 of debt per student. He's willing to write off up to $10,000, which would ease a third of the average student's debt load ($30,000), but hardly dent those of the average MBA ($66,000), PhD ($110,000), lawyer ($145,000), and physician ($246,000). Nevertheless, Biden has tasked Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to see if he can cancel student debt by executive order, via the Higher Education Act.
Time will tell if the Biden administration works up the gumption. Even so, his predecessor, Donald Trump, and former "Education Secretary," Betsy DeVos, postponed student debt repayment deadlines three times, as Debt Collective organizer Astra Taylor notes in her piece (see below). Though it's fine that Biden has extended the deadline again, to September 21, continuing "a flawed Republican policy is hardly a victory," Taylor states, in part.
Biden doesn't help matters when he suggests that struggling borrowers should rely on parents, or sell their homes, "a luxury those without intergenerational wealth cannot afford," Taylor scoffs. At times, his reading of the facts seems downright muddled, such as his willingness to tout options that fail borrowers, like the notorious Public Loan Service Forgiveness program, which rejected 95 percent of its applicants.
Student debt has reached alarming levels in this country. As of January 2021, 44.7 million Americans hold an estimated $1.71 trillion in student debt, or twice the total level of credit card debt. That's an eye-popping figure, fueled by extreme cases like Seth Koeut, a Cambodian refugee who convinced a federal bankruptcy judge in December 2020 to wipe out 98 percent of his medical school debt ($440,465).
What makes Kouet's case noteworthy, other than the mountain of debt that nearly swallowed him whole, is that he still got screwed, even as he dutifully followed the standard life script ("College pays off," "Education is the answer," yada-yada-yada). His educational odyssey included bachelor's degrees in marine biology and Spanish from Duke University (2002), and a stint studying clinical tropical medicine in Bangkok.
Koeut wrapped up his education at the for-profit Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico, in 2010. But Koeut never gained a residency placement, something that happens to roughly 10,000 medical school graduates per year. He then worked a series of part-time McJobs (Banana Republic, Bloomingdale's, Crate & Barrel, dishwasher in a Mexican restaurant) before he finally threw in the towel in 2015, and initiated the long road to his bankruptcy relief.
Yet students like Kouet often face a stunning lack of empathy. The Department if Education argued against clearing most of Kouet's debts by suggesting that he hadn't "given his best effort to find better employment." Thankfully, the court didn't buy it, as its reasoning made clear: "A medical school graduate who works as a parking lot attendant and dishwasher cannot be described as lazy." You'd think, right?
Howie Klein sums up the situation well in a post ("The Student Snake-Oil Scam") on his Down With Tyranny blog. Education used to be considered as a path to upward mobility, one that's turned seriously sideways, as Klein points out: "In the last couple decades, it has instead turned into a path to permanent debt penury and financial servitude."
Yet the same strawmen are still peddling the same tired arguments against canceling student debt, from the standard boilerplate line ("It would only help the rich"), to the speculative ("The federal government would lose too much money"; "It won't help the economy"), to the downright defeatist ("It won'f fix higher ed overall; it won't help those who didn't go to college").
I'd offer a simple rejoinder to all of those bromides:
So...What?
Even if any of them were true -- and they aren't -- do we really want to perpetuate a debt-based higher education model, with all the implied social costs? With so many millions struggling under crushing repayment schedules, does it really matter if they racked up their debts at a state school, or a private one?
We also need to deal with the "The What About?" argument, as in, "What about me? I busted my ass to repay my loans, why should I pay for everyone else who can't pay theirs?" That rests on the classic American notion of "bootstrapping" -- "I pulled myself by my bootstraps, so why can't you?"'
You know we've become a truly twisted society when we wax anxiously about, "What happens if we make life better for others?" Aside from the obvious rejoinder (Isn't that what government's for?), such notions rest on the premise that giving people support, no matter how badly they need it, makes them weaker and more dependent. Take them off the hamster wheel, and they might lose their edge. Or some crap to that effect.
When cash-strapped Donald entered the real estate game, his father set up the multimillion dollar loans that made his presence possible, and helped transform New York City into a giant Monopoly board, at its non-wealthy residents' expense. When Trump's dream of Atlantic City as a gamblers' paradise started going south, his dad jumped in, and discreetly bailed him out.
In other words, the price of admission for the rich and the mega-rich is way, way different than the rest of us: no bootstraps needed. For them, it's simply a case of making the right call, or flashing the right amount of cash, to make whatever headache they're facing disappear, as Lori Loughlin demonstrated, in showing her willingness to pay $500,000 to get her two daughters into USC, on the pretext of joining the rowing team.
These indiscretions earned Loughlin and her husband a mere two months in prison, plus the usual community service/supervised release model of legality, and $400,000 in fines, which they'll probably write off next year, as they move on to the next quarter of their lives. Their daughters remain enrolled at USC, they've never joined the rowing team, and while their various business ventures have been disrupted, they'll probably find someone else willing to roll the dice. No bootstraps needed.
Suddenly, the strawman argument ("But canceling student debt would only hurt you") looks a hell of a lot less impressive, if we consider one simple fact. We've been subsidizing the Loughlins and the Trumps of the world all along, for far too long. That should be reason enough to pull the plug on the edu-debt scam, and start over from scratch.
If nothing else, canceling student debt would provide a major stimulus in itself. Instead of allowing banks and the feds to skim off the interest, the money could actually go back into the economy, or the indentured edu-debt class could actually set some aside for themselves -- what a radical concept, eh?
Again, time will tell if the political class finds the gumption to actually allow it, but we shouldn't wait for them anymore to find it. We've waited too long as it is. And not stop raising hell, publicly, privately and politically, until they do. --The Reckoner
Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry,
Before The Interest Rate Carries You Away...)
Admissionsly.com:
Eye-Opening College Dropout Rates & Statistics:
https://admissionsly.com/college-dropout-rates/
Down With Tyranny:
The Student Debt Snake-Oil Scam:
How America Uses Education
To Expand Poverty And Hurt The Economy:
https://www.downwithtyranny.com/post/the-student-debt-snake-oil-scam-how-america-uses-education-to-expand-poverty-hurt-the-economy
Educationdata.org: College Dropout Rates:
https://educationdata.org/college-dropout-rates
MarketWatch:
Schumer: With Relief Bill,
Major Argument Against
Student Debt Cancellation "Vanishes":
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/schumer-with-relief-bill-major-argument-against-student-debt-cancellation-vanishes-11615903993
The American Prospect:
Six Stupid Arguments Against
Forgiving Student Loan Debt:
https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/six-stupid-arguments-against-forgiving-student-loan-debt/
The Guardian:
Biden Is Already Backtracking
On His Promises To Provide Student Debt Relief:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/25/joe-biden-student-debt-american-students
Yahoo Finance:
Medical School Graduate Sees Nearly
All His $440,000 In Student Loans Discharged:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/medical-school-graduate-440000-student-loans-discharged-151422886.html
Sunday, May 2, 2021
Gleichschaltung, GOP Style: The Death Of Democracy Starts Here
Gauleiter of Berlin, Portrait: 1942>
The standardization of
“If the day should ever come when we must go,
https://news.yahoo.com/heaven-help-us-court-upholds-100000745.html
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/democracy-brink-161201472.html
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/el-salvador-top-judges-attorney-190917419.html