What are you reading?

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming a growing community of nomads: migrant laborers who call themselves "workampers." Bruder hits the road to get to know her subjects, accompanying them from job to job in the dark underbelly of the American economy, while celebrating their resilience and creativity.

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Fascinating.

Sounds very interesting, Kobi....

Originally Posted by Kobi

It was very good and also very sad. Didn't realize how many elderly people are doing this just to survive.

Kobi? Does the author give an neutral scientific account for the background of the people who have particular financial resources to even afford to pay for gasoline or own an R. V. or 5th wheel trailer? Do they mention the class standing they once we're counted as members? Things of this nature?

I ask because my mother is elderly, she's still working an terrific (aka horrific ) schedule as an nurse in an penitentiary, plans to go out on medical leave soon, and sold her house to my sister, just to get that gorilla off her back because in Idaho (land of original fascist bigotry ), you can't get Healthcare unless it's through your employer, and employee sponsored health care is an massive joke --- employers get a huge tax break to give it's employees virtually non-existent coverage : my mother is footing the medical bills for three siblings who can't get medical coverage to save their lives. If not for my mother working herself to death, all four of them would be penniless, have no care, have no place to live, etc.

I'm guessing the author gives an look at "poverty" in terms of those who are trying to bridge the fucked up chasms between age and in terms of small sector employment that most others couldn't even participate in, unless their social mobility allows them to in particular terms that others could not even hurdle.

But I agree with you, the subject in the book seems fascinating.