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 ...
You are one of the few on here that understood my post. You worked, saved your money and made smart choices. That was what I was talking about.
A couple of the toughest things to do are:
1. Get the gumption to leave the hometown for greener pastures. I’ve known many people who have never travelled outside their community, county or state. The fear of the unknown paralyzes a lot of people. They want to stay near mom and dad, relatives, and their friends.
2. People haven’t been trained to broadly watch the economy and how it is changing. What jobs, occupations and professions are going to disappear in the next 10, 20, or 40 years? What new ones will arise to take their place? How do I get trained for what’s coming? If you aren’t particularly ambitious and are happy screwing lug nuts on the left rear wheel all day long, you will be out of work. Retooling yourself is hard to do, but you have to be prepared to do it two or three times in a career.
Nobody ever said life was easy.
Correction: “already have lost our country”
I didn't read many other comments on the posted thread after yours but I will go back and see what other folks had to say.
But your comment, hit the nail on the head. Poor life choices.
That's what it's like when the bloom is off the prose.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.”
In her book, “Nomadland,” journalist Jessica Bruder reveals the 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.”
My mother blew through half a million $ in 22 years, just buying books and clothes and supporting my sibling.
I ran across a nomadic couple in the fall of 1975! The first such type of people I had met. I was working in a paper mill in the high desert of Arizona where a new powerhouse was being built. This couple, probably in their fifties at the time, had bought a large fifth wheel trailer and turned it into a mobile restaurant. They would travel from construction site to construction site bringing their excellent restaurant business with them. The construction workers loved it — far better than a ham sandwich in a lunchbox or a cellophane wrapped “burger” heated up under a heat lamp (pre microwave days!). I still can taste her incredible chili con carne.
Of course, all the steelworkers, millwrights, boilermakers, electricians, and laborers were nomadic, too. It’s a huge unsung workforce that nobody in America sees, but they build every big project that keeps the USA humming. When you are driving around, stop and think who builds and services all the factories, power plants, cell towers, and refineries across this great land. The workers are almost always hundreds or thousands of miles from home.
“That’s $22,727 a year for a family of three. “
She was by herself in a paid-for house. And she got Social Security and a pension. She had $500k in assets when my dad died.
like "Route 66"...
and many people DO aspire to live such a life...
making a crisis out of everything these days...
Basically, you took out a loan with an interest rate of about 25% to look for a job. 10% penalty + tax rate. The bank would have given you a better rate than that.
yep....they should try working a regular job in a busy acute care hospital...
Our family car in the fifties was a 1953 Chevrolet DeLuxe. It was an underpowered, wussy six-cylinder. You could turn the ignition key a little to the right, take it out of the ignition, and never have to use a key again. These days that would mean massive auto theft.
The windshield wipers were vacuum powered so that when you accelerated, manifold vacuum pressure would drop and the wipers would stop working.
The heater was a little thing that put out just enough heat to keep reminding you how cold you were.
For vacation, Dad put in a swamp-cooler, tubular air conditioner that was held in place by rolling up the driver’s side window. It held a modicum of water to keep the baffles wet so air could flow through and into the car.
There was a string you pulled that rotated the baffles down into the water to rewet them as necessary. If you pulled on the string fast, it would throw water up into the air path and give the driver’s head a good soaking. This was called ‘entertainment.’
One of my favorite cars was a 1964 Malibu SS, 283 with a Power Pack. I bought it in late 1963 when Chevelles first came out. It was midnight blue and I got pulled over in North Carolina for doing nothing. The deputy just wanted to look at the car. I paid sticker price for it ... $3290.
The worst of all possible worlds — you go a little nuts, are paranoid or schizophrenic plus divorce plus lawyers.
A friend is getting divorced because she is convinced her husband was cheating. She is convinced he stashed away huge sums hidden from her. The divorce isn’t final after four (maybe five) years and she’s now on her fifth attorney because “they are all incompetent.” They sold the house and split it (a great sum); her half of those assets are gone to the lawyers. This is a very highly educated woman, too. She has lost all of her friends because all she can talk about is the divorce, her scheming lawyers, and her cheating husband. The husband has presented fair settlements many times and she has rejected all of them because he is not “revealing all the money he hid away.” This is truly Captain Ahab and the Great White Whale in real life.
It is so bad, even lawyers don’t want her anymore!
If you're age 55 there is no penalty for withdrawal if due to job loss. As for the 20% tax, much of it will be refunded based on your tax rate when filing at the end of the year.
Don’t forget her attention to “economic justice”. I wonder where she would place herself in that plan?
sometimes bad things do happen to good people.
LOL...precisely. Surprised it took 36 posts for someone to point out the obvious. Either FR is slipping or it is so obvious that it no longer needs to be pointed out.
Excellent point.
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