“And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it.” George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (external link)
So said George Orwell when he completely ran out of money. Orwell was tramping about Paris and London at the height of the Great Depression. For the vast majority of working class people there was no money left. I felt that way looking at Craigslist today.
This employer is offering one cent to three cents a word. When the goal of every writer is a dollar a word. I have worked for ten cents a word and I have been near sixty cents a word (internal link) but now? The wage floor for writing has truly collapsed.
Note, too, that the job requires excellent research. And that they would prefer, if possible, 60 five hundred word articles each week. Perhaps if I were in Pakistan I would be happy for the work. But I’m not and I won’t work for these wages. I’ve written about the collapse of the wage floor before (internal link). And here we are again. Gone to the dogs.
