Tangled Web

A friend of mine was recently wondering how she could make a few extra bucks. A lot of people are, these days.

My friend is usually pretty savvy about all these ‘work at home’ schemes you see advertised on the internet. She’s looked into a lot of them over the years, and she’s learned to ignore all the hype. But this one didn’t have all that hype, it all sounded very above-board and fairly believable.

She signed up. She got a $5.00 bonus for doing so, and was promised she would be paid – yes, actually paid – for every survey she completed.

The next day, she sat down, intending to spend an hour filling out surveys and see how it went. After 2 ½ hours, she finally had enough and signed out of that website. She had made 50 cents, and isn’t sure how she had done that. When she calmed down, we talked about her latest experience.

“It had me fooled at first few,” she admitted. “After a while, I realized they were all yes-no questions; Do you suffer from back pain? Do you have allergies? That sort of thing. Then I realized that every time I answered ‘yes’ to anything, I was shunted to another ‘survey’. And that survey was set up exactly like the first, even asking the same questions. So if I answered ‘yes’ to a question in the 2^nd ‘survey’, I was shunted to another survey.”

“Sounds like it would be impossible to make any progress,” I suggested.

“Right. So I stopped worrying about giving ‘honest’ answers, and just answered ‘no’ to everything. Then I got to the end of one of those ‘layered’ surveys, and I was asked to choose 2 of the following wonderful offers.”

“Uh oh.”

“You know it. First, they didn’t offer anything I actually wanted. Second, if I had chosen even 1 of those ‘wonderful’ offers, I would have paid out far more than I would make on the survey. And third, if I did NOT choose any offers, my survey was not considered complete.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah. I should have known better. Lesson learned. Again.”

She’s still looking for a way to make a few extra bucks.

Are 'Family Values' Trademarked?

I saw a ‘photo’ posted on Facebook the other day. It said Family Values are eroding. Then it asked if possibly that could be because both parents have to work and don’t have any time to spend with the children and after paying the bills, there’s no money left for family hobbies or other ‘luxuries’.

It seemed really straightforward to me, and I’ve been watching this kind of stuff go on for the better part of my life, so I didn’t figure it was really anything new, just something that was being pointed out ... again. At the time, there were 2 comments for that posting; the second one taking umbrage because the posting was ‘obviously’ aimed at Republicans.

Huh?

I know the Republicans like to spout the phrase ‘Family Values’, but when did they trademark it so that nobody else could use it? When did anything that uses the phrase and wasn’t spouted by them somehow become an insult to them?

Family values are suffering, just like the ‘photo’ said. It’s been happening for a long time. About every 4 years, it becomes another hot phrase in the political arena. I don’t want a political party that merely talks about family values; I want the party that understands how families are struggling, and tries to do something to address those problems.

This is a Minimum?

Like most US families these days, money is a source of contention. All the bills keep going up, month after month, year after year. My little family has been slowly sliding toward the bottom of ‘Middle Class’ for over a decade. But on paper, it looks like we’re a long way from poverty.

That got me punching keys on my calculator, trying to figure out just what ‘poverty’ is. Politicians talk about people in poverty as if poverty was a minor inconvenience.

So, let’s take a look at this. A family of four, I heard recently, lived in poverty if their income was less than $23,000 a year. A full-time job is 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, so how hard could it be for a family to make that much? Not that easy, it turns out, because a single bread-winner would need to make $11.06 per hour.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25. (This is NOT the minimum in all states. However, NO state has a minimum of $11.06.) A full time job at minimum wage only nets about $18,000 a year.

I know what you’re going to say; the other parent needs to get a job. That would push their income up to $36,000 a year. Good point. But who says this family has a second parent?

And even if it does, who will care for the children? 20 years ago, I was lucky to find a neighborhood woman who would watch 2 children for only $100 a week. I’m sure they want more than that now. If you want to take your children to a licensed day care, you will probably pay every after-taxes penny made by that 2^nd worker. What about family values? Are you a firm believer that children are better off being raised by a neighbor lady or a hired staff rather than their parents?

Another possibility is for the parents to work opposing shifts, to eliminate child care. This might work once the kids are in school, the night-shift parent could sleep during the day. But the parents would hardly ever see each other. Is that family-friendly?

I have my thoughts on how this ‘inconvenience’ should be addressed. I haven’t lived in poverty, but I have been that 2^nd bread-winner, and I’ve been the 2^nd bread-winner with 2 jobs when the 1^st bread-winner had 3. It should not be necessary for 1 family of four to have that many jobs in order to put food on the table.