To continue with the above:
I think it's important to give new shoppers a balanced sense of the reality of the industry. Sometimes you get overly one-sided views:
a.) people who always talk up the industry and how much can be made with big bonuses, etc.
b.) people who only say the pay is awful, the work required ridiculous, and focus on negatives, etc.
I wish there were more balanced views when I first came to the forum. Maybe something like:
"There are some great success stories out there from shoppers who make $30,000 to $60,000 from ms-ing. But, that's rare and more often it does not happen. Jobs fees can be very low and not worthwhile for the work required in a lot of cases. But, if you're willing to spend the time to learn shops well, develop speed, and learn to route effectively, then it's possible sometimes to make these low-paying jobs profitable for you. But, it's a lot of "unpaid" work you may have to do and may not have expected. And just know that sometimes it may never work out. You may live in an area where there are too many other competitor shoppers, which often drives down fees/bonuses. In many cases, the big bonused shops are in isolated areas and they are subsidized through the work of shoppers taking on the low-fee shops. You may need to travel very far to get the big bonused shops.
It can be very time-consuming to learn the ropes. And it may never pay off if you're just in an area that is oversaturated. As long as you know that going in, you will be able to better manage your expectations and also not be thrown off by overly one-sided views."
.....something like that I guess.
One thing to keep in mind is that many people likely "have to" do this work. That's been the nature of much of the gig economy labor, which now represents about 25% of the American labor force. I probably sound like a broken record by now, but per Gilens and Page's seminal Princeton University study (a political science college syllabus reading staple these days), we know that America is an oligarchy now. The rich rule and American voters' desires have near-zero effect on politicians' voting (they show this over decades of voting patterns). People like Bernie Sanders, who organizes through small dollar donations from everyday working people, are trying to combat this. The not-so-free market is creating so many desperate workers.
This has been the result of the corporate onslaught against American labor since 1978's Bellotti Supreme Court decision that gave corporations the right to contribute money to political campaigns (saying it was "free speech"
. They effectively buy our politicians out legally and deregulate, crush unions/labor, defund social programs (many of which they themselves benefited from to have opportunity in America), and institute welfare for the rich. It's why American drugs, for example, cost 10x more here (even though Americans MADE THEM and big pharmaceutical companies benefit from free research tax grants - paid for by working wage Americans - to create their products) than in Canada. We cannot bargain for pricing here, because Big Pharma donates billions of dollars a year to politicians. It's why once good manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas in NAFTA, so big corporations could benefit from cheaper labor and the lack of environmental protections overseas. ,etc. etc. Big industry after industry is like this and has increasingly gotten worse since the Bellotti case. 2010's Citizen's United Supreme Court case put legal political bribery on steroids! America is reaping the fruit of this. Bigoted demagogues like Trump divide people to maintain the status quo for the wealthy, as he pretends to help the working-class.
MSCs are usually very small players. Not big corporations. Many MSC owners themselves probably struggle to get by (not all - as some are also very wealthy) - I've met one on a somewhat personal level (she was a shopper herself, before becoming an owner). But, they exist within this larger context of an oligarchy and record high inequality that makes so many Americans desperate for enough income to survive or maintain any semblance of a once middle-class life. My experience with gig economy workers is that most are struggling mightily just to get by.
It's a false assumption that many people can just quit this work. That's an important thing to keep in mind!
Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2019 12:36PM by shoptastic.