• Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    11 months ago

    Glad to see the Times still churning out utterly tone-deaf columns about kitchen-table economics.

    I don’t care about what the statistics say about the economy; what matters is that all these available jobs are entry-level. The rate of inflation is largely irrelevant when I’ve been losing purchasing power since 2003 anyway. The real problem is that when I entered the job market, you had to have 15 years of experience to make middle-class wages in journalism, and 13 years into my career, everyone with experience had taken buyouts or been laid off, with those of us stupid enough to think editing wouldn’t die being shipped off to centralized production facilities.

    Now, I can’t get a job paying a subsistence wage in any field. Either the algorithm finds me too old or data analysis and coding, which I understand to be in high demand, don’t count if done in a newsroom. I’m still supposed to have more than 20 years of career left and had to move into a vehicle because all the hard work one was supposed to do in one’s 20s for the later payout of a comfortable life with vacations and such just … doesn’t count.

    I don’t care what the Fed does or who’s in the White House; I care about being able to afford more than bologna sandwiches for every meal having already given up housing. That much should not be difficult to understand.