<story><title>What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?</title><url>https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/what-does-shitty-job-mean-in-the</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>iamdbtoo</author><text>Yeah, that&amp;#x27;s kind of how this country markets itself. Being able to afford a home and a family on a regular worker&amp;#x27;s pay is literally part of &amp;quot;The American Dream.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>rnikander</author><text>So rent a room and&amp;#x2F;or don’t live in the best part of the city. That’s what I did near Boston a few years ago. My rent was well under $1000. Do people think they’re entitled to private apartments in the most expensive cities in the world?</text></item><item><author>abxytg</author><text>Cynically untrue. Amazon is not even close to bottom of the barrel. And it&amp;#x27;s clear you haven&amp;#x27;t paid market rent in a major city since you bought that starter home back in the 90s - 42k is a joke when your rent is close to $2500 and you get no benefits.</text></item><item><author>mrjangles</author><text>&amp;gt;how modern work for a lot of jobs has become de facto indentured servitude...The average worker can&amp;#x27;t afford anything without taking on debt.&lt;p&gt;For people from other countries wondering about the veracity of these claims, let&amp;#x27;s take an example:  The typical shitty job everyone on here complains about is working at an amazon warehouse.  This is a job people with no skills take on.  They pay 15 USD an hour. In other currencies that is 42k a year AUD or 2390 Euros a month.  (the cost of living is roughly the same in these places).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll leave you to decide whether this is &amp;quot;slavery&amp;quot; and whether they &amp;quot;can&amp;#x27;t afford anything&amp;quot; or whether Americans are just so rich they are out of touch with reality.</text></item><item><author>alexfromapex</author><text>I think this article starts to touch on a topic area I don&amp;#x27;t hear much about but am extremely frustrated by: how modern work for a lot of jobs has become de facto indentured servitude.  In the &amp;quot;When They Know They&amp;#x27;ve Got You&amp;quot; section, they mention the real challenges of not being able to obtain a lawyer if things truly aren&amp;#x27;t fair.  The average worker can&amp;#x27;t afford anything without taking on debt.  Insurance is a scam in a lot of cases but if a worker is sick it will only hurt the worker not the company a lot of the time.  To make matters much worse, the corporations lobby the government and fund all candidates and have seemingly captured the government so no changes are being made.  Healthcare, extremely high rent, and things like property tax where failure to pay sends you to prison are used as the means of coercion.  If the United States continues on the current political course, nothing will ever change.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pempem</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve thought a lot about this, esp as someone who was born here and whose parents immigrated here for the American Dream.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve done great. We lived in a rural area. It was possible because one of them came highly skilled and solicited to immigrate.&lt;p&gt;That being said I shudder when I hear &amp;quot;just move to rural &lt;i&gt;blah blah blah&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;. My life was horrible there. I was considered black, egytian, non-english speaking, to come from a family of savages or royalty or witchcraft depending on the speaker.&lt;p&gt;This whole &amp;quot;move to a rural place&amp;quot; really doesn&amp;#x27;t seem open to the non-white growing majority. Its certainly nothing like the Californian life I live now where I still cannot afford a home but can enjoy Mexican, Indian, Ethiopian, Korean, and american culture in a form of acceptance that was fully closed to me growing up.</text></comment>
<story><title>What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?</title><url>https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/what-does-shitty-job-mean-in-the</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>iamdbtoo</author><text>Yeah, that&amp;#x27;s kind of how this country markets itself. Being able to afford a home and a family on a regular worker&amp;#x27;s pay is literally part of &amp;quot;The American Dream.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>rnikander</author><text>So rent a room and&amp;#x2F;or don’t live in the best part of the city. That’s what I did near Boston a few years ago. My rent was well under $1000. Do people think they’re entitled to private apartments in the most expensive cities in the world?</text></item><item><author>abxytg</author><text>Cynically untrue. Amazon is not even close to bottom of the barrel. And it&amp;#x27;s clear you haven&amp;#x27;t paid market rent in a major city since you bought that starter home back in the 90s - 42k is a joke when your rent is close to $2500 and you get no benefits.</text></item><item><author>mrjangles</author><text>&amp;gt;how modern work for a lot of jobs has become de facto indentured servitude...The average worker can&amp;#x27;t afford anything without taking on debt.&lt;p&gt;For people from other countries wondering about the veracity of these claims, let&amp;#x27;s take an example:  The typical shitty job everyone on here complains about is working at an amazon warehouse.  This is a job people with no skills take on.  They pay 15 USD an hour. In other currencies that is 42k a year AUD or 2390 Euros a month.  (the cost of living is roughly the same in these places).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll leave you to decide whether this is &amp;quot;slavery&amp;quot; and whether they &amp;quot;can&amp;#x27;t afford anything&amp;quot; or whether Americans are just so rich they are out of touch with reality.</text></item><item><author>alexfromapex</author><text>I think this article starts to touch on a topic area I don&amp;#x27;t hear much about but am extremely frustrated by: how modern work for a lot of jobs has become de facto indentured servitude.  In the &amp;quot;When They Know They&amp;#x27;ve Got You&amp;quot; section, they mention the real challenges of not being able to obtain a lawyer if things truly aren&amp;#x27;t fair.  The average worker can&amp;#x27;t afford anything without taking on debt.  Insurance is a scam in a lot of cases but if a worker is sick it will only hurt the worker not the company a lot of the time.  To make matters much worse, the corporations lobby the government and fund all candidates and have seemingly captured the government so no changes are being made.  Healthcare, extremely high rent, and things like property tax where failure to pay sends you to prison are used as the means of coercion.  If the United States continues on the current political course, nothing will ever change.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aerosmile</author><text>The American Dream is not about getting more for less, as in &amp;quot;most luxury for the least amount of effort.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s about having a shot at owning a business without the financial backing of a rich family [0], which is more like &amp;quot;most luxury for an insane amount of effort.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;[0] A lot of recent discussion centers on how many of the most successful US entrepreneurs come from privileged backgrounds, but you should not lose sight of the fact that literally every other country in the world will fare a lot worse in this regard. Many things are broken in the US, but no other place on Earth has lower barriers to starting your own LLC and hiring your first employee.</text></comment>