Another day older and deeper in debt

At one time in America, there were numerous towns (generally in industries like coal mining and lumber) that were built by corporations in remote areas where their workers shopped in company stores and lived in company owned houses.  They were called company towns, and while a few eventually grew into municipalities, most failed because, well, it was bad enough to get fucked every day by the company you worked for while you were working without letting them fuck you while you were shopping and relaxing at home, too.

The result was that often workers ended up in debt to the companies they worked for and thus were basically forced to continue working to pay off the debt--it was a never ending circle.  I note this because of an article I read recently by Barbara Ehrenreich in which she discussed how expensive it is to be poor.  As an example, if you can't afford a nice car, you have to buy an old beater, which results in expensive repair bills and generally poor gas mileage which raises your transportation costs (and doesn't even include lost work days because said old beater breaks down).  Of, if you can't afford first and last month's rent for an  apartment, you end up living day to day in cheap motels which are more expensive over time than almost any apartment.  Not to mention they usually are without cooking appliances, thus forcing the poor to spend even more money on fast food or pre-cooked meals which are immeasurably more expensive than making your own.

And this is what minimum wage jobs have wrought--low wage workers are basically stuck in their jobs because they don't make enough money to have a chance to get out of them.  In a nutshell, it's an awful lot like the aforementioned company towns--except that now instead of being in a dead-end job and just paying their hard earned money to the company they work for, low pay workers are in a dead-end jobs and pay their hard-earned money to many, many companies.

And, in what should come as surprise to no one, we once again see that the free market ain't so free.

Peace,
emaycee