Foto Blag
Photos, links and thoughts, with a focus on odd vehicles since I have a slight obsession with them.
All of my personal work is licensed under a Creative Commons "Non-commercial/Share-alike/Attribution" copyright.
What are people wasting their money on?
Just read an article at nytimes.com about how the slow job growth in recent recessions (including this one) is leaving people who used to have good jobs and were always employed with no job options. They quoted a woman who has been jobless for two years, and is living with her husband on his disability check of $1,595 a month. And because their rent is $1,380 they have no choice, the article says, but to get food from food pantries. Another person quoted is in this situation: “And now they find themselves in this desert of joblessness, her paycheck replaced by a $702 unemployment check every other week.”
I understand the cost of living is different, and that where I live is pretty low. But is it seriously impossible to live on $700 every two weeks? Seriously? That is what I’m currently getting paid, and I know lots of people who are making less. I don’t consider myself living paycheck-to-paycheck. Didn’t these people save any money for emergencies? It’s hard to feel sympathetic for people when every person quoted in the article was making more on unemployment than Mitch and I live on now.
One example was of a single mom with three kids who made $10,000 a month at her job. If she was making that much, she probably could’ve been saving at least $40,000 a year. It does NOT cost $120,000 to raise three kids for a year. Now she’s unemployed and, the article reports, the job she’s in training for will pay only $15 a hour. That’s $3 an hour more than I’m making. Cry me a river. >:(
