• About Us
  • Staff
  • Contact us
  • Hire me
  • Advertise With Us

A place to share stories, find solutions, and discuss ideas for a better future.

  • Featured Post
  • Interviews
  • Community
  • Underemployment In The Media
  • Underemployment Around the Globe
  • Red State Andrea is Blue
  • In Other Words
  • Politics Corner

Archives for April 2017

It’s Our One Year Anniversary Giveaway Sweepstakes !!!

April 28, 2017 by J. Parks Leave a Comment

Hey!!! We got a giveaway sweepstakes. We’re celebrating our first year being up and running by giving away some pretty cool merchandise from our Cafe Press Store. Check it out. There’s great stuff there. Golf balls, t-shirts, laptop skins, pajamas, tote bags and a wide array of things we thought you’d like.

So, here’s how you enter and qualify for free stuff. We have a 100% spam free newsletter. We send it to subscribers when a new piece goes up or if we have something specific we want you to know about. Join our newsletter list, and you are automatically entered in the giveaway.

Subscribe here!

So, what’s in it for you, besides a shot at free swag? Well, we plan on getting special discounts for things you want or need. We’ll occasionally ask you what you want to see on the site. Our goal is for the The Underemployed Life to reflect our readers. Finally, we’re going to have occasional fun contests and giveaways for subscribers only. Just to do it.

Rules and Information for the Sweepstakes

Who is eligible? Anyone living in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Blogs

It’s Our One Year Anniversary Giveaway Sweepstakes !!!

April 28, 2017 by J. Parks Leave a Comment

Hey!!! We got a giveaway sweepstakes. We’re celebrating our first year being up and running by giving away some pretty cool merchandise from our Cafe Press Store. Check it out. There’s great stuff there. Golf balls, t-shirts, laptop skins, pajamas, tote bags and a wide array of things we thought you’d like.

So, here’s how you enter and qualify for free stuff. We have a 100% spam free newsletter. We send it to subscribers when a new piece goes up or if we have something specific we want you to know about. Join our newsletter list, and you are automatically entered in the giveaway.

Subscribe here!

So, what’s in it for you, besides a shot at free swag? Well, we plan on getting special discounts for things you want or need. We’ll occasionally ask you what you want to see on the site. Our goal is for the The Underemployed Life to reflect our readers. Finally, we’re going to have occasional fun contests and giveaways for subscribers only. Just to do it.

Rules and Information for the Sweepstakes

Who is eligible? Anyone living in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Blogs

Show Some Respect For The Working Poor

April 27, 2017 by Andrea Thompson 1 Comment

Image by Nephilim X (License CC BY-SA 3.0)

 

How many times have you done it? You’re running through the McDonald’s drive-thru, grabbing something quick to feed yourself and your kids after a long day at work. You’re tired, you’re hungry, and you’re ready to go home. As you approach the window and see the cashier, you think, “God, I’m glad I’m not him. How do people end up working such a dead end job? Surely he can do better than that.”

Or, maybe you’re having a conversation with an acquaintance, and they mention how much they’re struggling. They’re living that paycheck to paycheck grind. They had to buy the cheap work shoes. The ones that will inevitably be worn out within the next few months at best. So, trying to be helpful, you suggest that they start saving money to get out of the situation they’re in. You kindly mention that had they bought the more expensive pair of work shoes, they would have lasted longer and saved them money in the end. You’ll go home and wonder why they bought that cheap pair of shoes. You’ll wonder why they’re stuck in this situation. Why don’t they just work harder and better their situation instead of “Free-loading” off the government and barely getting by.

“Though the majority of the population is living paycheck to paycheck, that doesn’t mean they’re not busting their asses just as hard, if not harder than you are.”

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Red State Andrea is Blue

Working and Poor: An American Tragedy

April 26, 2017 by Staff TUL Leave a Comment

Few people choose to be poor. Even fewer choose to be working and poor. Yet recent data shows there are over 12 million working Americans living below the poverty line. This is where issues like low minimum wages, lack of well paying jobs, automation of the workplace, and the 1% getting richer as the poor get poorer intersect.

No one should be working 40 hours a week and still have to apply for food stamps. No one. The working poor in America are growing larger, not smaller. To some this may come as no surprise. To those who believe we’ve recovered from the 2008/09 financial meltdown, well, the fire’s still burning folks.

We have a great article tomorrow on the working poor and attitudes they’re often met with by strangers. Today’s clip is a few minutes long, and puts faces to the crises so many poor working American’s face today. You may find yourself wondering, just how great a country are we that there exists such a divide between the poor and rich in our country? A divide that is among the highest in all industrial nations.

Filed Under: Underemployment In The Media

The 12 Best Self Tanning Products of 2017

April 25, 2017 by Kay Smythe Leave a Comment

Image by Harold Navarro (License CC BY-SA 2.0)

 

We want to let you know that neither Kay nor the site have been paid in any way to advertise or endorse the following products on this list. In fact, she put this list together on her own, and then we got links for them. However, we do get a small commission if you use any of the following links to purchase something. That commission assists us in running this site. Also, many of the following links we have contain discounts on the items you’ll be told about. With that out of the way, take it away Kay.


 The 12 Best Self Tanning Products of 2017

Having grown up in South Wales, a land where “summer” constitutes maybe a random week in April when I would be sat in a classroom, I am more than accustomed to being pasty white and miserable.

Underemployed audience, I can feel your stress as you sit in your office, watching as the sunshine glitters and glimmers outside your window. My only hope is that you can open a window, and are not parched of fresh air as well as vitamin D.

It is this workaholic lifestyle that led the best in beauty brands to create the sunless tan. This marvelous invention is not limited to making your exterior glow, but can also create a sense of sparkle inside too. Whether it is natural or not, life is ALWAYS better with a tan.

A decade of fake tans has led me to develop my comprehensive list of the best self-tanning products on the market, so that even though you may be in a miserable job, you can still glow inside your own skin!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Blogs

From Republican To Democrat: Turning Left

April 25, 2017 by Daniel Steingold Leave a Comment

Image by Pabak Sarkar (License CC BY-SA 2.0)

 

Politically, I’ve defected from one side of the ideological spectrum to the other. And I’m proud of it.

The consequence is that there is great variance in how others perceive my ideology.

One’s impression of my stances, by and large, is temporally-based— hinging on what point in my life a given individual met and last saw me.

Over the past eight years, I have done quite the 180: gone from being a hardcore conservative to identifying as a fairly strong liberal. It’s been a tough journey— and perhaps one that’s still unfinished— but I think it’s made me into who I am today.

In this article, I wish to dispel the myth that political ideology is necessarily something fixed, as opposed to fluid.

Why do people, myself included, change their political beliefs? How common is it? Are political positions predicated upon nurture (your environment) more so than nature (your genes)?

Let’s delve in.

 

“…most of us won’t become millionaires and billionaires, and we shouldn’t be marginalized by those who are.”

 

The Beginning

Growing up, I admittedly cared little for politics. I followed broad political events— like presidential elections— but I knew very little about the actual beliefs or nuances of being a Democrat or Republican.

Nevertheless, as a 12-year-old, I do remember making a $5 bet— then a substantial amount— with my dad in 2004, apropos John Kerry beating Bush.

I had borrowed my prognostication from a Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice poll or something of the like in which Kerry led by a handy margin; of course, the poll was based on faulty premises, not to mention it didn’t factor in anything like the Electoral College.

Plus, what kind of Cali kid would’ve expressed any sort of goodwill toward Dubya? I would’ve immediately have lost the few cool points I ever had.

Needless to say, I begrudgingly handed over a crisp Lincoln to my dad that November.

From what I remember, it wasn’t until my senior year of high school in 2009 that my strong interest in politics truly began to take shape. Whether by happenstance or fate, it was an AP Government course that sparked said interest.

I haven’t really navel-gazed as to why I became a card-carrying Republican in my youth, but I believe both environmental and biological factors were at play.

My dad, as far as I know, has always been conservative. My mom wouldn’t quite fall on the conservative end of the political spectrum, but she isn’t so liberal that it turns off my dad.

From a young age, it was always my dad talking about politics and listening to conservative talk radio, so his influence weighed heavily on an ever-impressionable youth.

It also doesn’t hurt that much of my extended family happens to be on my dad’s side, and they  generally lean right to varying degrees.

Therefore, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that genes, which are said to substantially influence political orientation, were somewhat at play.

While I didn’t necessarily fit all of the standard demographic traits for a Republican, I wasn’t totally unaligned.

You’re significantly more likely to be a Republican if you are white, for example, as I am, but also more likely to fall on that side of the aisle if you’re religious or older— of which I am neither.

Some have argued that merely living in a city makes you more liberal. This notion is largely reflected in metropolitan voting patterns. Many will point out that in 2012, for example, there were only a handful of large cities that did not vote for Obama.

This finding even holds for big cities in otherwise red states— e.g. Austin, Texas and Atlanta, Ga.

It has also been speculated that conservatism meshes seamlessly with small-town or rural values: self-dependence, a religious outlook, etc.

Self-dependence, in particular, is something I’ve always preached, even if I didn’t walk the walk. I have always felt that one should try to fulfill their own needs, whenever possible.

This belief likely saw its genesis in the situations I encountered at school; in group projects, for example, I couldn’t trust my classmates to get work done properly, so I overcompensated by taking on the attitude that I should take complete responsibility, and perfect everything on my end.

In retrospect, maybe it was clear to others that I wasn’t meant to be a hardcore conservative, but I felt the need to latch onto an identity, and that seemed like the lowest-hanging fruit.

(It also helps that my AP Gov teacher was extremely liberal, and I liked being a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian.)

Libertarian Phase

It was sometime during the beginning of college that I began to realize that the conservative stance on social issues was largely wrong and antiquated.

Regardless, I felt unable to go full lib. This was probably partly due to the fact that I wasn’t fully ready to adopt such an ideology, and politically, I felt most strongly about a free-market economy.

I also wasn’t willing to fully swallow my pride, and admit that I was completely wrong.

Thus, becoming a libertarian seemed like the most fitting choice.

Nonetheless, I don’t think I ever felt fully comfortable about being a libertarian, as much as I tried to force the label down my throat.

I never did vote for Gary Johnson— I declined to cast a ballot in 2012, while voting for Jill Stein this past November— and I remember feeling cognitive dissonance at the utter disregard that many libertarians express toward the environment.

I think that my prioritization of the economy over all else took root in having majored in Entrepreneurship in college. Giving undue weight to economic issues ended up interfering with other parts of my life.

Many friends and romantic interests, for example, were turned off by my political stubbornness. One partner, in particular, told me that she simply hadn’t realized how steadfast I was in my beliefs when she broke up with me.

The writing was on the wall— I needed to change again. It was just a matter of when I would be willing to accept my fate.

Bernie Bro?

In all honesty, I do not remember the exact point at which I started to identify as being liberal. That fact in itself likely signifies something bigger: for most, changes are gradual, and take pain and struggle to take effect.

After all, a political belief at rest stays at rest.

With my pro-capitalist conviction being the only thing that had to be shattered, it should have been seen as inevitable to outside observers that my political leanings could change dramatically.

It took some personal trial and error, however, for me to begin to change my outlook.

During the end of college, I had begun working in financial services. I had somehow convinced myself that it was a fitting field for my interests and temperament; the truth was I was mainly in it for the thrill of the sale and a potential six-figure income.

Once I failed at multiple firms in the sector, I had to reexamine not only my life goals, but my deeply-held beliefs. Was capitalism so great? Did I really want to prioritize making money over being happy?

I tried a handful of other jobs in rapid succession between where I was then and where I am now, trying to find my true calling, which I seem to have found in writing.

Ultimately, I think my post-collegiate employment experience awoke me to the fact that most of us won’t become millionaires and billionaires, and we shouldn’t be marginalized by those who are.

Furthermore, my experiences exposed to me the fact that we need a strong social state to support us, particularly in an era in which there is an ever-increasing wealth gap.

Sometimes you have to learn the hard way, and it’s not always pretty.

Is My Situation Common?

It’s not super common to switch immediately from being a Republican to Democrat, or vice versa, according to the Pew Research Center, although it is more common for those who deem themselves independents to choose a side.

The operative word here is “immediately.” My swing from conservative to liberal was gradual and organic, spurred by maturity, life experience, and getting to know the “true” me.

A 2013 piece in Wired UK spoke to the many things that play a factor in political ideology, “including biology and neurology, cultural conditioning, motivation, personality and temperament.”

It goes on to cite studies that have found phenomena such as individuals tightening their grip on beliefs when presented with facts directly contradicting said viewpoints, and people actually holding stronger opinions when ignorant on an issue.

These biases are only further reinforced if you only hang around people who hold the same views as you, aka groupthink.

Many have speculated that most Trump voters knew few to no Clinton voters, while Clinton voters knew few to no Trump voters. A lack of understanding can cause a lack of perspective and empathy, which I will touch on a bit more briefly.

It’s important to remember that a number of politicians have switched parties, whether out of true change in belief or for the sake of convenience. In fact, at one point, both Trump and Clinton identified politically as being something other than a Democrat or Republican.

President Trump identified as being part of the Democratic and Reform parties— running for president on the ticket of the latter in 2000— before settling as a Republican.

It was news to me that Hillary was actually a Republican for many years. She supported Goldwater, and attended the 1968 GOP Convention.

All in all, I’d like to think that changing parties or ideologies, regardless of the nature of the switch, signifies that an individual is open-minded and independent in thought.

Being able to admit that you may have been wrong is a noble trait in itself. People change and evolve throughout life, and to imply that political beliefs don’t follow that same rule is a belief you should drop.


 

Daniel Steingold is a writer from Los Angeles, CA who’s an advocate for alliterative artistry. Admittedly ambivalent towards social media, he halfheartedly hopes hospitable humans heap plentiful praise upon his prose periodically posted to Facebook.

His two known writing projects, one used and one abused, are The Article Review (thearticlereview.com) and A Wiki a Week (awikiaweek.com), respectively. He enjoys learning about everything under the moon, because, well… the sun BURNS his ghostly white skin.

Filed Under: Politics Corner

The Underemployed Drinking Game

April 24, 2017 by Kay Smythe Leave a Comment

As you may or may not know, I am British. Therefore, my American readers, I am better at drinking than you. Given, I used to be able to sink eight pints on a Sunday afternoon, and now I’m lucky if I can walk home after four, but that’s not the point. I am still better than you at drinking. Fact.

That is why, in a recent formal employment (which was TERRIBLE!) I decided to develop The Underemployed Drinking Game. It’s a simple game, built from hours of passive-aggressive conversation, over-time without pay, and a fairly anti-Semitic boss.

Although the entire premise has been developed as somewhat tongue-in-cheek, if you do intend to play this game, then I seriously suggest setting yourself up with a back-up plan for once you get fired. Other than that, get yourself a designated driver, and enjoy!

SHOTS

Personally, I hate shots. Even the thought of chugging a Jager bomb like I used to during high school makes me feel queasy. However, I appreciate that the best drinking games need to start small. The only way to do this is through shots. So grab your novelty shot glass from Las Vegas, Ibiza, or Tiger Tiger, and pick out your best least vomit-inducing hard liquor!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Blogs

If I Wasn’t Underemployed And Didn’t Have To Worry About Money

April 21, 2017 by Turner Wright Leave a Comment

Sometimes, I like to imagine I’m someone else. Someone who doesn’t have to worry about income on a daily basis. It’s easy to look at a guy in a suit walking out of a Starbucks with a fancy venti drink in one hand and a cell phone in another and assume he’s the type who doesn’t have to choose between seeing the doctor and eating that week. I’d like to think I’m right in the middle of the economic divide. I’m probably between someone like that guy in the suit with the venti and a homeless person. But the truth is, I’m more likely to become homeless than I am successful.

I wonder how the world must look from that man’s eyes and those of others like him? Are they so wrapped up in their own lives they simply can’t appreciate how lucky they’ve been to maybe have a friend who could introduce them at a networking party, or a family member who knew to call an acquaintance regarding a job when they entered the job market? How maybe they caught the interviewer on a good day? How they were fortunate they could afford the business attire to make themselves appear respectable? How they had a safe place to store those clean clothes, take a shower, and have enough sleep?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Blogs

The Struggles Of A Working Momma

April 20, 2017 by Andrea Thompson Leave a Comment

Image by Tina Franklin (License CC BY-SA 2.0)

 

We’ve all watched 90’s sitcoms. Dad goes to work, mom stays home to care for the kids and ensures the family has a hot meal every night. They live in a nice home, in a nice neighborhood, and drive a nice car. It’s the epitome of the American dream, right?

Yeah. Too bad it doesn’t work like that anymore. In this day and age, unless one of you happen to be a CEO or some kind of trust fund billionaire, it’s nearly impossible for a family to survive with only one parent working.

I live in Kentucky, so the cost of living here is cheap compared to somewhere like New York or California. But our minimum wage is still a measly $7.25 an hour. The average, “good paying” job around here is $10-$12 dollars an hour.

The annual cost of living in Kentucky, for a married couple with one child, comes out to around $50,224. That number goes up to $77,562 for a family with four children. If dad works at the local factory, making $10 an hour, working a 40 hour work week, his gross income will be around $400 a week. That’s $1,600 a month, $19,200 a year. Not only is that ridiculously below the annual cost of living, that’s below poverty level. Long story short, momma gotta work.

Even with two moderate income jobs, most families will still struggle. That’s only $38,400 of gross income a year. It’s above poverty level, but still a few thousand under the cost of living. No matter which way you look at it, both parents have to work.

“You work your butt off to support your family, but then you work so much that you never see your family. The guilt sets in.”

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Blogs, Red State Andrea is Blue

Working Mothers Are Strong, Not Babied, But Are Tired

April 19, 2017 by Staff TUL Leave a Comment

When you work as hard as most working mothers do, it can be rough trying to balance family and work. The emotional toll can wreak havoc on even the strongest mother’s psyche. As a society we espouse how important raising a family is, but we don’t support those platitudes with policies that allow new mothers(Or fathers for that matter) to spend the important early months of a newborn’s life bonding with their new babies. 12 weeks of UNPAID time off is all new moms get before it’s, “Good on you and excellent job on popping out that kid, but those spreadsheets at work aren’t gonna spread themselves. Now on you go, back to work missy” (Read this in a British accent for maximum impact)

Tomorrow, we feature a story about the difficulties working mothers face balancing home and work life. The piece is about the sacrifices, struggles, and economic realities for one of our writers and for working mothers everywhere in this country. It’s a compelling read, and we urge you to check it out.

Since we’re running a piece on working mothers tomorrow, we’re featuring a clip today of working moms sharing their experiences and hardships. There’s also information on the current status of where we stand as a country when it comes to giving mothers and fathers a fair shot at achieving real work and family balance. Enjoy the clip.

Filed Under: Underemployment In The Media

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

If you like what we do, buying our new book goes a long way towards funding the site. Plus, the book is really funny, and we think you’ll like it.

How Much Do You Fuckers Pay?

Copyright © 2021 · Metro Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in