Posted on 11/10/2017 7:15:03 AM PST by huldah1776
In her powerful new book, “Nomadland,” award-winning journalist Jessica Bruder reveals the dark, depressing and sometimes physically painful life of a tribe of men and women in their 50s and 60s who are — as the subtitle says — “surviving America in the twenty-first century.” Not quite homeless, they are “houseless,” living in secondhand RVs, trailers and vans and driving from one location to another to pick up seasonal low-wage jobs, if they can get them, with little or no benefits.
The “workamper” jobs range from helping harvest sugar beets to flipping burgers at baseball spring training games to Amazon’s AMZN, -0.24% “CamperForce,” seasonal employees who can walk the equivalent of 15 miles a day during Christmas season pulling items off warehouse shelves and then returning to frigid campgrounds at night. Living on less than $1,000 a month, in certain cases, some have no hot showers. As Bruder writes, these are “people who never imagined being nomads.” Many saw their savings wiped out during the Great Recession or were foreclosure victims and, writes Bruder, “felt they’d spent too long losing a rigged game.” Some were laid off from high-paying professional jobs. Few have chosen this life. Few think they can find a way out of it. They’re downwardly mobile older Americans in mobile homes.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Once upon a time there were boarding houses where for a few dollars per week you can get a room and meals. Often these houses were run by a widow or other elderly person supplementing their income. These homes have been zoned out of existence.
Sure, people still rent rooms, but it has become much riskier. More often than not, offering a room for rent will put you in violation of a plethora of laws: zoning, fire codes, food safety, business license, municipal taxes. And running an out and out boarding house would be a legal nightmare.
And this doesn't take into account the way society has changed. Once society's marginal people were just economically wanting but otherwise normal. In today's world of sexual freaks, drug addled wastrels, habitual drunkards, and violence prone mental cases, renting a room out could be a terrible risky proposition. And depending on the community, running a full blown boarding house could be as dangerous as Russian roulette.
Exactly, Youtube is packed with people who have said “enough” to the rat race, were very successful, but gave it up, and now live as modern day “nomads” in their campers.. and they love it. Its by choice for a lot of them.
Well said.
Life often happens while you are making other plans. Yes, some people make “poor life choices” but others are doing their best to deal with what life has thrown at them. As someone who’s made his share of “poor life choices”, I’ve learned to be grateful for what I have and realize that it could all disappear in the blink of an eye.
I hope that I would deal with unexpected adversity and survive as admirably as EQAndyBuzz did in his post above. I don’t know that I could.
What year was yours?
We la te dah. Maybe you need to get out of your bubble and see how some in the rest of America live because of their own government. This is why true Consevatism under God’s laws needs to be restored and retried.
Jessica Bruder Goodreads Author...
Jessica Bruder is a journalist who writes about subcultures and economic justice.
For her most recent book, “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century” (W.W. Norton & Co.), she spent months living in a camper van, documenting itinerant Americans who gave up traditional housing and hit the road full time, enabling them to travel from job to job and carve out a place for themselves in our precarious economy. The project spanned three years and more than 15,000 miles of driving—from coast to coast and from Mexico to the Canadian border.
Jessica has been teaching at Columbia Journalism School since 2008. She has written for publications including Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, WIRED, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, T ...more
:)
Many of the poor choices are theirs.
Of course you are correct. The artificially low interest rates destroyed that rung on the ladder to and through the middle class for savers.
Millions lost the ability to climb in the Bush and Obama years. Republicans lying about their conservatism! Dems doing what Dems do.
I have seen what Obama did to many also.
My husband doesn’t plan to retire at any time in the near future. He loves his job and one never knows when adversity may strike. It’s best to be prepared.
Hippies. Oy.
Yes there are people in that life out of desperation but the majority have chosen it, selling houses and possessions, intentionally following mild weather, north in summer south in winter, and finding seasonal work. Many just volunteer at parks and campgrounds in exchange for free camping. I’ve considered it myself since my current work doesn’t tie me to one place, it can all occur via text, email, FTP and online. Rather than painting them as pitiful desperadoes, maybe a little applause at their ingenuity and determination to remain self-supporting in sometimes difficult circumstances would be in order.
They apparently can afford a dog.
Has any research been done to discover how many of them CHOOSE that lifestyle? Like the hobos of the 1930s, some people don’t like to be tied down.
Take away the crushing taxation that provides those programs and the "haves" can afford to give to charities to help the needy.
The hard part is separating the can't works from the won't works.
The term for that, I believe, is "clickbait headline".
I am 70 years old and live more comfortably now than I did during my working careers and raising a family.
That's because I saved my money, didn't put it all in the gambling stock market, worked hard at whatever job I had to do and learned to not live beyond my means.
No big, expensive, fancy cars. No big, fancy extravagant houses. No fancy, expensive toys. Paced myself and my lifestyle, knowing I would need to live on some of my money in later life.
To your point about bad choices, the only former classmates of mine from high school in 1966 who are down on their luck nowadays, are those who wasted their money on drugs, drank heavily, partied their money away, wasted money every week on lottery tickets, and went on luxury vacations with nothing to show for it. Bad choices. Now they bitch that someone needs to help them. They couldn't even help themselves when they were able to.
If you didn't plan ahead, life's a bitch when you run out of options.
How did John Wayne put it? "Life's tough but it's even tougher if you're stupid."
That may be a lot to a Yankee, but that is two to three months of work driving for me.
And as Andy discovered, no one wants a 50/60 year old no matter how much experience. My certifications are all that keeps me self employed. He was younger when he went through it but it is no less fun at any age.
So keep the attitude aligned and Prayers Up!
The big push this year is Belize.
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