Why Some of Us Won't Ever Stop Working

I am so, so tired.

Like, existentially tired.

The reason is fairly simple: we’re all required to work in order to survive unless we’re independently wealthy or are being/have been supported or otherwise gifted, in money, goods, and/or opportunity, what we need to survive by someone else.

Just today, I learned of a younger (20-something) friend’s housewarming party: his parents are moving to another country and have gifted him their home. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t begrudge my friend his luck, and I am glad for him that he’s now got one less major thing to worry about. But my goodness, how it stings to know that it’s one of the only paths these days to acquiring things as basic as a stable housing situation despite one’s ability to earn above a certain amount steadily forever.

The more gifts and opportunities, of course, the better, as we humans are notoriously great at messing up whatever we happen to get our sticky little mittens on. In fact, that’s my own working definition of privilege: the ability to mess up and make mistakes, again and again, without those mistakes tanking you — why, just look at Trump!

Minus those circumstances, which I believe just enough people still enjoy to prevent a revolution, working is the only way to get what you need in life. And oh, how I’m trying to work! In fact, I’d say I spend at least as much time looking for work (and worrying about being able to find enough work) as I do actually working. There is no room for mistakes there or even a surprise health scare: one step off the merry-go-round, and it all falls to pieces.

Among people in the US, my situation is unique. While I earn what would be considered poverty wages there, I live a fairly comfortable, though still precarious, life in Mexico. I didn’t come to live in Mexico for that reason — my first living quarters as a non-student were two rooms on top of a house with an outdoor sink and no door on the bathroom — but I’m able to take advantage of the (for now) lower cost of living here nonetheless.

So, we have to work. Fair enough. But no employer, however, government or otherwise, is required to give any particular person work, and they’re certainly not obliged to offer what most people would consider good, stable jobs. Heck, they’re not even required to pay enough for the worker to pay for all their basic needs!

Up until, honestly, just before I was born (I’ll be 42 in a couple of weeks), getting ahead and acquiring the trappings of our 1950s ideal of a middle-class lifestyle through hard work was much more possible for a far larger proportion of the population than it is today.

But the days of “working oneself through college,” reasonably affordable housing, and stable union jobs supported by robust labor protections are far, far behind us.

What we have left is a labor hellscape that shows no signs of abating as this now over 40-year effort of funneling more and more wealth away from workers and toward “capital” continues on its trajectory.

And with the increasing number of “contract jobs” — an employment classification made possible for companies that would otherwise need to hire employees by the rapid loosening of labor laws that allow them to only summon workers when they need them — many even professional workers’ prospects for financial stability have been slashed.

The advantages to companies of hiring contractors rather than employees are clear: they cost about 30% less than regular employees because companies can avoid payroll taxes as well as avoid giving benefits to their workers. Essentially, they get all the advantages of having a worker with none of the responsibilities beyond paying them for the specific work they’ve done. Any article on the advantages of hiring contracts vs employees will outline those advantages in detail, always with an insistence that contractors just love the flexibility of that kind of work.

Ha.

For contractors themselves, things are complicated. First of all, the IRS treats contract workers as if they owned their own businesses, meaning they pay higher taxes than employees (remember how companies get to save on payroll taxes? You get to pay those for yourself instead!).

Technically, contractors set their rates and bill their “clients.” In reality, companies say, “This is what we pay for this job; take it or leave it,” while still requiring that you send in “invoices” in order to get paid (they’ve got to prove to the IRS that you’re not just a misclassified employee, after all!), usually an entire month later.

Then of course, there’s the issue of stability: companies save tons of money by not having to pay their workers a dime during slow times. Basically, hiring contractors means that you get to pass on many of the risks and costs of doing business to the workers themselves.

And that’s bullshit.

Because the result is that those who rely on an increasing number of contract workers who really should be employees (“true” contractors are professionals like plumbers, wedding photographers, or lawyers in a firm, for example, not people in a call center) are reaping millions, sometimes billions, at the expense of workers who must deal with frequent bouts of financial instability, not to mention an inability to plan one’s days, weeks, or months in the absence of a work schedule.

That’s certainly my situation, anyway. The recommendation, then, to workers like me (writers and translators are rarely hired in full-time positions) is to have lots of different “clients.”

I’ve got six, and am still looking at a possibly empty workweek ahead, something that does not bode well for September expenses, which come with the kind of predictability, consistency, and gradual raises in cost that I fantasize about someday finding in a work situation.

So far, it’s not looking good, as I’ve got much more to lose than I have to gain; taking the time out of working for next month’s survival to try creating my own business, as many people suggest I do, is too big a risk — rent and food must be paid for, and there’s no cushion. Here’s the metaphor of being a contract worker these days that’s been rolling around in my head all week:

1. You, the worker, are like a woman in the 1960s, before women could, without a male relative’s sign-off, get their own bank accounts or credit cards or finance a home for themselves.

2. In order to live away from your parents, you need to get married; you need a man, preferably a husband, to support you.

3. Uh-oh, there’s a shortage of men who aren’t afraid of commitment! What to do?

4. To get at least some of the benefits, you agree to be a casual girlfriend, hoping it will turn into something eventually; maybe he’ll love you so much that he’ll make the sacrifice needed to make you “an honest woman.”

5. In the meantime, he sometimes makes you think you’re his world. He needs you. Can’t live without you. Other times, he’s distracted, or maybe goes on vacation with his real family. He has no responsibility toward you, after all. You are trying to be the wife, but the decision isn’t up to you. All you can do is show how great you are and hope he decides to make the leap.

6. In the end, you do everything you possibly can to stay relevant to him, because that is your ticket to survival. You read articles geared toward marriageable men with messages like, “Why by the cow when you can milk the cow for free?”

7. Eventually, you tire of the relationship and resent needing it at all. But, you’ve still got to survive.

8. You accept the unfair fact that while the man will always be able to treat you like a whore, you will always have to behave as a submissive, cheerful wife, ever at the ready, if you want to survive.

The solution? As always, I don’t know. I’m in charge of myself, but not in charge of the greater society and economy. So for now, all I can do is try to explain these situations as clearly as I can and hope that together, we’ll all come up with a solution.

Because this… is not sustainable.