thehoytreport
thehoytreport
| Forum role | Member since | Last activity | Topics created | Replies created |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Member | Oct 30, 2012 (13 years) |
- | 1 | 0 |
- Forum role
- Member
- Member since
Oct 30, 2012 (13 years)
- Last activity
- -
- Topics created
- 1
- Replies created
- 0
Bio
The Hoyt Report is moving on - from the excitable flaneurie of the newcomer to this extraordinary New York City, to a more focused approach. After the 2016 election I no longer knew what to say. Everything seemed to be about the crisis of the new presidency, and that crisis was being ably addressed by many more articulate than I.
I want this blog to be about life in a time of uncertainty and financial insecurity that affects so many people that a name, the Precariat, has been coined to describe a new socio-economic class. In the first post I use Guy Standing's description of the new precariat class as a springboard for a blog about survival in the cracks of a system that has ceased to serve most of its participants.
I have lived in the 'precariat' by choice for most of the 50 odd years since I left my comfortable suburban home in a smallish city in New Zealand. Admittedly, simple survival was less of a problem in a welfare state like New Zealand than it is here in the US, where even health care is not considered a social good so much as a business opportunity. Still it is possible and plenty of people are now having to do it.
The challenges are not only about survival. Almost as challenging is how to find meaning, identity, and some sort of moral self-esteem in a culture of 'winners and losers'.
There is a strong moral narrative about the importance of paid work, even as calls for a Universal Basic Income get louder, and regardless of how little you are prepared to try and live on. If you don't have paid work you're a loser. This judgement bears little relation to the sort of work one does, it's work itself that matters - and it must be for money. As any mother from a single-income family will tell you; raising children, cooking, cleaning, and keeping a house is work, no question - but it doesn't count. As long as there's a paycheck attached, even the most meaningless 9-5 activity fits the moral imperative.
For the reasons given in the first posting, I believe it is time to look at all this in a different light
WordPress.com Forums 