The days of working for one company for 40 years with raises and promotions and then retiring with a gold watch and a pension are gone for good. Even job-hopping is difficult when there are few jobs. Today more and more people are temps or freelancers. Freelancing means hustling up your own jobs one by one, hoping you’ll be paid, never knowing when the next dollar is coming in. It also means that tax time is a nightmare (15.3% to social security? In one lump sum?), health care is a luxury, and everyone thinks you are unemployed. Freelancers never have any “free time,” even if they are not working, because that time must be used to line up the next project.
Garlic Jackson Comedy put together a little song about freelancing, to the tune of “It’s a Hard Knock Life” from the musical Annie. -via Buzzfeed
The economy died in 2008, in large part due to poor leadership from both sides of the aisle, at the highest levels. Don't neglect to remember the money blown in the longest war in US history (Afghanistan), and the most misguided and fraudulent war (Iraq).
I lost my long term job in April last year, they did not extend the EUC, the economy is still in the doldrums, negative cash flow is all I've got. They want me to work until I am 67, but there are no jobs. We send money all over the world, but the home front is ignored.
Local municipality is putting up cameras, not to make roads safer, but to pad their bottom line. We are no longer citizens to be served, but revenue sources to be tapped.
I'm am done putting any money into the system, they can take their expectation of 15.3% and shove it, I won't declare any of the change I beg as income. I'm willing to play ball on a level playing field, but it isn't, and hasn't been for quite a long time.
Sad but true.