@FrugalCat wrote:
I am the idiot. Yes, I take the MF grocery shops for $0. Since COVID-the fee has disappeared. Rarely there is a $5 fee put on the shop- usually for the last minute assignments that someone else flaked on. I take these shops at no fee as I need groceries. During the pandemic, I was spending a ton of money at supermarkets (I stopped dining out or even getting takeout). The shops are super-easy, as I am used to asking the stupid questions and filling out the report- I was doing the grocery shops for about 5 years pre-pandemic. Call me an idiot if you must, but these grocery shops feed me and my family. Sure, it would be nice to have a fee or bonuses. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a shop today and every day for the rest of the week.
@Morledzep wrote:
@FrugalCat wrote:
I am the idiot. Yes, I take the MF grocery shops for $0. Since COVID-the fee has disappeared. Rarely there is a $5 fee put on the shop- usually for the last minute assignments that someone else flaked on. I take these shops at no fee as I need groceries. During the pandemic, I was spending a ton of money at supermarkets (I stopped dining out or even getting takeout). The shops are super-easy, as I am used to asking the stupid questions and filling out the report- I was doing the grocery shops for about 5 years pre-pandemic. Call me an idiot if you must, but these grocery shops feed me and my family. Sure, it would be nice to have a fee or bonuses. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a shop today and every day for the rest of the week.
If you wait a few days, they move the grocery shops up on the list and add $5 or $8 for the shop payment. All you have to do is wait a few days, stop self-assigning them until after they add the shop payment. That's ALL it takes is to wait a couple days. Stop selling yourself short and stop cheating the rest of us out of paying work. I don't generally do them at $8 either, I wait for them to call me to offer them at $15 or higher both pre and "post" covid.
[www.brookings.edu] (also Nov. 2019)@ wrote:
An estimated 53 million people—44 percent of all U.S. workers ages 18–64—are low-wage workers. That’s more than twice the number of people in the 10 most populous U.S. cities combined. Their median hourly wage is $10.22, and their median annual earnings are $17,950.
Gig work like ms-ing is likely plugging income holes for a lot of Americans. Even my sister and cousin, who both teach elementary, have part-time and gig work jobs they do at night/weekends. They need/like the flexibility of it, since they can't really commit to regular hours of a second stable job (at least not until the summer), but they sometimes make less than min. wage on these jobs (sometimes in the $6.50 - $7/hour range from what we calculated).@ wrote:
Recent analysis by our Metropolitan Policy Program colleagues as well as researchers at the Federal Reserve suggest that there simply are not enough jobs paying decent wages for people without college degrees (who make up the majority of the labor force) to escape low-wage work.
Our colleagues Chad Shearer and Isha Shah identified good jobs for workers without bachelor’s degrees by defining “good jobs” as those paying median earnings or more for a given metropolitan area and providing health insurance. They found that such jobs are relatively scarce, held by only 20% of workers without bachelor’s degrees in large metro areas. Another 13% are in “promising” jobs, in which incumbent workers are likely to progress to a good job within 10 years.
An analysis by Kyle Fee, Keith Wardrip, and Lisa Nelson came to similar findings. They defined good jobs for workers without a bachelor’s degree as those paying at least the national median wage adjusted for local cost of living. The analysis found that for every good job there are 3.4 working-age adults with less than a bachelor’s degree.
I agree with you 10000% in comparing back then to now. I am 68 years old, and well remember how we grew up. You are spot on when you say media has turned wants into needs. We played with few toys but were never lacking to play with something. I can't tell you the number of hours we all in the neighborhood played "stick ball" with broom handles, "pinky" balls and 6 empty soup/veg cans - 3 lined up per side behind the batter, with a chalk circle drawn in front of the batter for the boundary to keep the stick in. We played for hours all summer long. So different now!@sandyf wrote:
As someone who was very much alive 50 and 60 years ago I just want to mention that many low wage workers today have more than my solidly middle income family did back in those days........
The data IS impartial (those figures can be found anywhere) - even if you dislike Reich for whatever reasons.@maverick1 wrote:
A Robert Reich/NYT reference...yeah, not impartial data at all...puuu-lease!
That's part of it, although housing inflation has hit the rich too. It's just that:@sandyf wrote:
Well yes, this has been true Shoptastic. The rich only use a very small percentage of their wealth to purchase items that have inflated in price. The rest is in investments, most of which have done very well this past year. The low inocme on the other hand spend all their "wealth" so it is all hit by inflation. Although there has been very little price inflation during the few years it is coming now as businesses struggle to survive and recoup losses durings the pandemic. I just read that Proctor and Gamble expects to raise all prices in September. They are heavily into household staples.
Lending standards also tend to tighten during recessions - not just b/c one has a lower income, a low credit score, etc. - it's just one of those typical macro-economic environmental factors. Banks are more skeptical of people's ability to pay when the overall economy is doing very poorly. Not your fault, necessarily.@F and L TeleComm wrote:
My score is the highest it's ever been and it has taken me like three months of paying everything down to finally start getting credit line increases. and about 3k paid off.
[www.reuters.com]@ wrote:
"There’s been no shortage of credit provided overall by U.S. banks in the last year. It’s just that most of it went to Wall Street rather than Main Street."
@F and L TeleComm wrote:
$9, $12, and $15- 7 , is not much. Think of it this way, you have to go on the board and find the shop.5 minutes, print materials for some shops,(I don't print MF's except once when they first change the questions) and I don't have to print TS's anymore since COVID. Then let's say it takes 10 minutes to drive there and 10 minutes to drive home, you are at 25 minutes in, then the assignment takes 20 minutes to go around all the different departments, you are at 45 minutes plus $3 dollars worth of gas and you are loaning them your 9-15 dollars for over a month. Then there is the matter of the 10-15 minutes it takes to input the report. So one hour of your time plus loaning them $9-15, and 3 dollars for gas. I think that is more than enough to deserve a measly $5 shop fee. Would you loan a million-dollar company money without interest too? They supposedly want the information to increase sales and make more money. But at whose expense? It's like those companies that don't care about their employees but steadily making millions.
@Shop-et-al wrote:
So people who have little resources are expected to demand more in fees which might raise their tax bill later. How is that good?