Image Credit – Michael Ivanov License- CC BY 2.0

Whether you’re ready to acknowledge it or not, as a whole, this country is a mean, hateful place. As a nation, we’re greedy and self-serving, and we’re oftentimes a big, fat bully. And not only to the outsiders and “illegals” (though that is a huge issue of ours in and of itself), but we’re big, mean bullies to our own, as well.

My last piece covered just a portion of the problem with the USA’s attitude – the fact that my 64 year old grandmother doesn’t have access to decent, affordable medical insurance or treatment, and was recently smacked with a big ole diabetes diagnosis. And it’s certainly not just an issue for my grandmother. It’s not just a problem for any particular demographic in this country. It’s an ever-pressing problem for everyone that’s not lucky enough to be a part of the 1%. Living in America, unless you have millions in the bank, you have to worry about being able to afford healthcare. It doesn’t just affect the “poor” percentage either. Even the blue-collar folks are paying hundreds and often thousands of dollars out of pocket in deductibles, co-pays, and insurance costs.

Other countries, such as Canada, have state-funded insurance nationwide for EVERYONE. No one in Canada has to worry about how they’ll pay to get medical treatment. Dozens and dozens of other countries around the globe are following this example. In France, Australia, Israel, Sweden, Norway, Japan… – Free healthcare for all their citizens. But not in America, boys. Never in America. Why on Earth would we want to ensure that our citizens can have access to affordable and decent medical care when we can instead hold their health over their heads like some sort of fucked up extortion? Why would we ever want to spread the costs evenly across our taxpayers with a small percentage, rather than line the pockets of every politician, insurance company, and pharmaceutical company across the nation?

Our health insurance costs us astronomically more in the U.S than other developed countries, leaving approximately 11.3% of American adults without health insurance altogether. The cost of medical treatment in the U.S is exorbitantly higher as well. The United States is currently the most expensive place on Earth to give birth – coming in at around $30,000 for an all-natural birth and upwards of $50,000 for a cesarean. And this is just a national average. Whereas the total bill in Singapore, for a non-citizen, would come in at around $10,000. If you’re a Singapore citizen, you get a $6,000 baby bonus. And Singapore isn’t even the cheapest country to give birth in, it just doesn’t take much to outdo the good ole United States of America.

With the price of treatment being so high in this country, doctors and hospitals have a tendency to do more. Because, why not? Every time they walk into your room, touch you, run a test, or prescribe a medication they’re making more money. Whether they charge that to your insurance or put it on your tab, they don’t much care. They overdo, because they can, and it makes them more money that way. It’s a sad truth when millions of American citizens are now opting to travel to other countries for any extensive medical treatment or procedures, because it’s the only way they’ll be able to afford it.

But don’t think for a moment that medical care is the only way America lines its velvet pockets. We’re slicker than that. We like to screw you over with a healthy heaping of student loan debt as well. College in America is more expensive than literally anywhere else in the world, with a bachelor’s degree averaging out to around $21,000. The same degree in New Zealand is about $4,200, and in Portugal it’s only a hair above $1,100. Now keep in mind that the good ole U S of A does not like to give much government help to anybody. So, students are usually left eating thousands and thousands of dollars in student loan debt to pay for the education that our country says they should have.

Around 44 million Americans share a total student loan debt of $1.4 trillion. As a matter of fact, the rates of education are rising even faster than inflation in the country, making an affordable education even less and less attainable. Again, we’re faced with the fact that many young adults are choosing to travel outside of our country to seek an education, simply because that’s the only way they can afford it.

Now, we know that our medical costs are increasingly rising, and our education costs are continuously going up at an exceeding rate, yet our wages… well, our wages ain’t going any damn place. Our average hourly wage has only grown around 0.2% per year since the 1970’s. Our economy has grown, our national debt has grown, and our average cost of living has increased exponentially, but our pay hasn’t gone much of anywhere. It costs us far more to live, to survive here, than it used to, but we’re not being paid enough to keep up with that. We haven’t been since somewhere around the early 70’s.

We literally can’t afford to live, even working 40 hours a week. Yet, our country deeply frowns upon any sort of government assistance, our president even going so far as trying to replace the SNAP program that helps feed literally thousands of Americans – including the elderly and children, with a box of prepackaged shit food delivered to your door every month.

And since we’re talking about the cruelty of America already, I want you to just take a moment and consider what you just read. Our president, our country, wants to take away a program that helps ensure that children don’t go to school hungry, that our elderly can still feed themselves, and instead send them a small box of nearly inedible, innutritious, bottom-of-the-barrel, Trump wouldn’t eat it if you paid him, food. That’s just how truly mean and downright fucking hateful we are as a country.

How does a nation get to a point where it doesn’t give a damn about its own people? We, the citizens, are what makes America. We ARE America. Yet our nation bullies us. Our government is stuffing us in lockers and flushing our heads in the toilet. We’ve forgotten what it means to love and care for our own. We’ve lost sight of the gratification involved in helping our fellow brother. We’re flushing the dream, and splendor, and wonder of what America is truly supposed to be down the shitter. We no longer care about anyone but ourselves. The lining of a politician’s pocket is taking precedence over making sure our veterans are housed, our elderly and sick, our weak and weary are cared for, our children our fed and educated. We’re a mean fucking country. We’re mean spirited and unaccepting to any that doesn’t belong to us, and we’re cold-hearted and hateful to our own. When our very own citizens, the very blood and heartbeat of America feels the needs to flee this country – Well, boys, we got a fucking problem.

Grab the book that will lift your spirits with laughter. 

Support Andrea’s writing on our site by subscribing to our newsletter on this link, Subscribe here!

Andrea is a freelance writer based out of Kentucky. She is the mother to a 3 year old little girl and step-mother to a 6 year old boy. She’s been married to her husband and best friend for 5 years. She enjoys fishing, camping, hiking and the occasional glass of wine by a bonfire.

A lot of folks troll this page and the whole entire wide world of the internet. They comment on memes and statuses and articles written by 24 year old’s in a dimly lit, yet cheap 2 bedroom apartment. They’re generally going on and on and on and on (you’re catching my drift here) about how underemployment is a big ole crock of shit, and all of us big, bad, ugly millennials are just out here getting liberal arts degrees, aspiring to be a Bic lighter repair man, and expecting a comfy 100k a year for it. They think we should be going to trade school or going to college to get a “real” degree and a “real” job. For the sake of my word count, I’ll let you have that one this time. (Though, expect me to be coming back to that.) But, I have to wonder if any of those fine, fine folks have taken a moment to stop and think about the underemployed percentage that isn’t a millennial with a master’s degree in curtain hanging.

My grandmother is 64 years old, and she is underemployed. Severely. She’s currently a high school lunch lady. All of her life, she’s been a cook working mostly in restaurants. She went to the high school a few years ago in an attempt to make her work a little easier on her health. Summers and weekends off. The occasional week-long breaks throughout the year, and much shorter work days. She had to. After a knee replacement and heart surgery, she wasn’t left with a whole lot of other options, and simply not working wasn’t one either. But she doesn’t get paid jack shit.

My grandmother was also recently diagnosed with diabetes. She’s had it for around a year, but thanks to our crack-shit medical system in the good ole U S of A, no one told her until her kidneys got entirely bent out of shape and the doctor’s office accidentally stumbled over her sky-high glucose for a second time. But, again, another topic for another day. Now, diabetes isn’t necessarily a death sentence. People live productive lives with it every day. Even in my grandma’s case, where she’d gone undiagnosed for SO long, it still has some turnaround potential with the right diet, exercise regimen, and medication. The big problem here is, she’s terribly underemployed and her health puts her in a position where she can barely handle the job she has now, much less pursue a different, better one.

She has medical insurance through her job. She pays for it, somewhat heftily, but she has it. She’s not eligible for Medicare yet, and she makes “just a little too much” to be eligible for Medicaid. That means she won’t be receiving a drop of help from the government or anyone else to help pay for her testing supplies or her medication. That also means that, no matter how badly her health is deteriorating in front of our eyes, she has no choice but to continue to work to keep what little bit of health insurance she does have.

Now, you may say, “So what! She’s got health insurance, doesn’t she? I work 897 hours a week and I can’t afford to pay for health insurance and Obama took all of my tax refund because of it,” and so on and so forth. Some may say, “Who cares?! She only has another year until she can retire. A year isn’t that long!” And to a degree, you’re kinda right, she does have okayish health insurance right now. And, yea, she can retire in a year. But that’s a whole year, with just kinda okayish health insurance, at a severely underpaid position. I don’t know if any of you have any experience with diabetes, but it can be an extremely expensive disease to have. It requires a lot of monthly medical equipment – glucose monitors, test strips, lancets, a complete upturning of your diet, and a lot of exercise and hard work. All of which cost money.

Her insurance will cover part of the equipment she’ll need every month, but it doesn’t touch anything else. Gym memberships are not free, and the unfortunate truth in this country is, the healthy food is expensive. Sugar free snacks are 5x the price of Little Debbie’s, and the wheat bread is $4 a loaf, where the regular bread is a couple bucks. Fresh fruits and vegetable are usually astronomically higher than the high sodium, high sugar, canned ones. And her health insurance does not care about that. Which is whatever, no health insurance covers food, the issue is, she’s so underemployed that she can’t afford to either. Yet, she still makes “too much” to be eligible for food stamps or any kind of assistance. So, she’s left trying to figure out how to feed herself food that won’t contribute to killing her, while still keeping her lights on. It’s a tight rope to walk.

Then she’s left trying to determine how she’s supposed to get all of this exercise that the doctors keep recommending. Again, she’s 64, with terrible arthritis, heart issues, and she works full-time. By the time she gets home, she has about enough energy to cook herself and my grandpa some dinner before she’s down for the count. She can’t afford any of the programs or gyms that could help her exercise comfortably, because all of her money is going to medication, testing supplies, food she can eat, and keeping her bills paid. She’s left with virtually no options, because she’s drowning in underemployment. All she can do is hope that her health will allow her to work until she’s eligible to retire, and hope that the state of our country still allows her retirement to be there when she does.

There’s a problem in this country, and it is not just a dirty millennial problem. It’s an everybody problem. It’s a problem for the 24-year-old writing articles in her dimly lit 2 bedroom. It’s a problem for the 35-year-old single mother trying to support her kids on her own, and it’s a problem for my 64-year-old grandmother who’s trying to get her diabetes under control so she can squeeze as many years as she can out of this life with the ones she loves. It’s a fucking epidemic, and it’s affecting everyone. No one should ever have to worry about whether they’re paying the light bill or buying their medication this month. Especially not when they have a fucking job.

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Andrea is a freelance writer based out of Kentucky. She is the mother to a 3 year old little girl and step-mother to a 6 year old boy. She’s been married to her husband and best friend for 5 years. She enjoys fishing, camping, hiking and the occasional glass of wine by a bonfire.

Image credit – Ben Scholzen License- CC BY 2.0

I don’t do LinkedIn, though I do have an account. I set it up a little over a year ago when I first started to carve out my attempt at freelancing. I filled in the basic demographics, mostly because, according to just about anyone you ask, LinkedIn was and is the holy grail of networking. If you were looking to become anything of anything in the world of business, especially as a freelancer, apparently LinkedIn was the one and only way to ensure that you made the right connections. According to everyone, it was the ticket to making all the right friends in all the high places. You know what I got on LinkedIn? I got hit on. That was about it.

According to the ever-intelligent internet, LinkedIn is supposed to be a social network platform that is aimed at businesses, professionals, and employment. Evidently, it’s the largest “professional” social media and networking site that’s available today. Everybody is linking in! But, why?

If LinkedIn really worked like it was supposed to, then people would probably benefit from it immensely. Especially people like me that are trying to fight their way into the world of freelancing, where it’s just not as simple as filling out a job application and then being guaranteed 40 hours a week of, at least, minimum wage.

It should allow you to connect with other professionals in your field, swap ideas and know-how, showcase your professional abilities and accomplishments, and even find employment opportunities. But in my experience, it just doesn’t do that. Instead, it seems to be a creepy breeding ground for overly pompous “business” folks who think because their LinkedIn profile says they’re a multi-million-dollar business owner, they’re justified in sending you a dick pic. Not to mention, even without the weekly DM of shlong, it’s just not helpful. Like, at all.

When I first signed up on LinkedIn, I was naïve and optimistic. Which, let’s face it, is never really a good combination. I set up my account and started connecting with everyone that had ever said anything about being a writer. Everyone from best-selling authors, to people that mentioned having a journal in the 7th grade. I made myself sound as professional as possible while not actually having a shred of real experience. And then I waited. According to virtually everyone that ever wrote a blog about being a freelance writer, I should’ve had job offers flooding in at any moment. I should have been connecting with big people, having intelligent conversations and swapping intellects with the best of the best. LinkedIn was going to be my meal ticket. Except, it wasn’t.

Truthfully, for the first several days, it didn’t do anything. I checked it, often. I tried connecting with multiple people. I worked my butt off to make my profile as flattering as possible. And nothing. I mean, I understood that I was a newbie if ever a newbie there was, but I really expected to get at least something. Some sort of entry level job for an online magazine that paid virtually nothing. Or even an offer to guest write for nothing more than a byline. But no, there was nada. It just sat there. Until the dong pictures made their way around.

I had grown-ass men messaging me about how much money they were worth, and oh, by the way, since I’m worth so much money, here’s an unwelcome photo of my limp noodle. I know you didn’t ask for it or indicate to me in any way that you would want to see my shriveled twig and berries, but given that my LinkedIn profile says I’m worth billions, I just automatically assumed.

And that, folks, is the extent of what I got out of LinkedIn. Far too many pictures of shriveled up, crooked weenies, and some spam. That was it. My meal ticket turned out to be a soggy ham sandwich and some constipation inducing government cheese. Not exactly the 5-star, 3-course dining experience I was expecting. After a couple of weeks of that, I just stopped checking it. Heaven only knows how many dicks and princes of Nigeria lie waiting, lonely and ignored in my inbox. May they rest in peace.

I’m sure several folks out there have had a far more flattering experience out of the social media platform that is LinkedIn than I did. Obviously, there must be, because it still seems to be operating at full force. If you happen to be one of those that squeezed even an ounce of productivity out of it, then let me applaud you now. Perhaps I didn’t do it right. There’s a good chance in that, considering my 4-year-old is more tech savvy than I. But something tells me I’m not the only one that finds LinkedIn to be a bit of an over-inflated joke.

The fact of the matter is, no matter how professional or business-oriented LinkedIn is supposed to be, it’s still a social media network. It still exists on the cesspool that is the internet, and it’s still subject to all the shitty things that cesspool has to offer. That means spam and junk mail and a bunch of big, fat liars.

That’s right folks, people lie on LinkedIn, too. There’s a good possibility that 35-year-old man that owns four companies he’s built from the ground up, is worth 35 gazillion dollars, and has one hell of an opportunity for you, is actually a 47-year-old nerd in his mom’s basement that’s making $59.95 off of every gullible schmuck that buys his “software.” And you’re probably gonna end up with one of those pesky computer STD’s to top it off. Truth is, no one is obligated to tell the truth. Anywhere. And LinkedIn is no exception, even though it’s supposedly a “professional” platform. If you think everything you read on LinkedIn is true, then boy do I have a great opportunity for you to make millions, and it’ll only take 5 easy installments of $25.99. Visa, Discover, and Mastercard are accepted. No two-party checks, please.

With all that being said, LinkedIn can honestly end up being a big ole waste of your time. There are currently around 100 million users on LinkedIn. But that doesn’t mean there’s 100 million people that are active on LinkedIn. I, myself, being a perfect example here; a good chunk of those people aren’t using their LinkedIn profile, for whatever reason. So, you could be busting your hump for hours a day connecting with people that are growing cobwebs on their profile. If you’re spending much more than a couple of hours a week trying to network through LinkedIn, then you’re most likely wasting your time on people that haven’t seen that profile since the dark days of 2008, and you’re missing opportunities for real work with real people.

If lying liars, dusty profiles, and uninvited nudies don’t turn you off of the LinkedIn platform, then try this on for size; if you want even the slightest of benefits from LinkedIn, then you best open your pockets and wallets, cause the good shit ain’t free. Sure, you can sign up for a profile for free, but if you want access to reference searches, or the ability to directly email any of your connections, you have to pay a monthly fee. If you’re anything like me when I started out on LinkedIn, you need every penny you can save to make sure you have enough Ramen to keep from starving. You definitely don’t have any room for an extra fee in that starving artist budget.

Look, being a grown-up sucks. It’s hard. It’s especially hard when you’re trying to break into a career. And it’s easy to fall prey to anything that the internet says will help give you a leg up or a foot in the door. But, heed my warning here. I’m trying to help you, I promise. LinkedIn may sound like you’re ticket to ride, but it’s just not. If you’re new to your career game and trying to chisel out a new path, your time could be so much better spent elsewhere. Spending hours trying to “network” isn’t productive, you should never have to pay for a job, and honestly, if you want dick pics, they’re a dime a dozen on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Trust me when I say, there’s nothing special about the “professional” penises.

Support Andrea’s writing on our site by subscribing to our newsletter on this link, Subscribe here!

Andrea is a freelance writer based out of Kentucky. She is the mother to a 3 year old little girl and step-mother to a 6 year old boy. She’s been married to her husband and best friend for 5 years. She enjoys fishing, camping, hiking and the occasional glass of wine by a bonfire.

Millennials ruin everything. Thus far we’ve killed beer and motorcycles, sex, diamonds, and even the Big Mac. We’ve destroyed patriotism, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Home Depot. We’re like King Midas, who turned everything he touched to gold. Except we’re different, because according to mainstream media and society, everything we touch turns to absolute shit. I mean, how the fuck does a collective group of people born in a certain time frame kill Home Depot? Millennials have been blamed for the downfall of virtually everything in common society. But chicken wings and DIY supplies aren’t the only thing we’re killing! We’re killing reproduction as well!

That’s right. The news stories aren’t wrong, and you’re not just imagining things. Millennials aren’t having babies. At least not very many of them. And we’ve got damn good reason for it, too.

I’m 24 years old. I was born in 1993. I don’t know that it necessarily gets much more millennial than me. I was a spawn of the ‘90s. I grew up through Polly Pocket, floppy disk, AOL and AIM, and I witnessed the transition to CD’s and DVD’s. Yet, I’m still young enough as an adult to understand and thrive with the new and ever-changing technology. And I fit society’s general description of the millennial group. I’m a liberal, I’m pro-choice, I’m pro-gun control and pro-LGBT+. The only thing I don’t have going for me is the fact that avocados make me gag. Otherwise, I pretty well reek of the millennial stereotype. And, like the good little millennial I am, I ain’t having a bunch of babies either.

I have one kid. A four-year-old daughter. I didn’t have her on purpose, but I wouldn’t trade her for all the corn chips in the world. However, I’m done. This kitchen is closed. No more buns will be baking in this oven. Actually, I’m in the process of seeing some doctors to make sure that I NEVER bake another bun. And just like my fellow millennials, I have damn good reason.

According to the powers that be, and the Washington Examiner, millennials are having babies at a record low, causing a “baby bust.” We’re just not reproducing fast enough to keep up with the rate of death in America. Evidently, women are supposed to produce 2.1 children to keep up with the amount of people dying. The last time those numbers were reached was in 2010. Since then, the rate has dropped to a mere 1.8 child per millennial woman. According to the statistics, we just ain’t spitting out the babies fast enough. But why?

The last baby boom was between 1946 and 1964. WWII had just ended and people were finally moving forward with their lives again. They were optimistic about the state of the country and our economy for the first time in a long while. Up until then, their lives had been put on hold. They didn’t have a chance to recoup from the Great Depression before they were thrown into a war. They couldn’t worry about making babies because they had to worry about staying alive. They put off everything from babies, to marriage, to buying a home, because our economy, and life as they knew it, was teetering on the precipice. But once the war was over, what better way to celebrate than to reproduce like rabbits?

Young and old alike were piled into maternity wards, birthing as many babies as their vaginas would allow. Life was good again! By 1964, 76.4 million baby boomers were toddling their way across the nation.

Long story short, people weren’t having babies during the economic crisis of the Great Depression and World War II. Now, take into consideration that us millennials were sort of “coming of age” during the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Thanks to the Great Recession in the early 2000’s, we watched our parents struggle. We watched them lose their jobs, and oftentimes their homes. We were old enough to see and somewhat understand what was going on, and we’re coming into adulthood during the recovery. Therefore, we’re attempting to not make the same mistakes that our parents did.

That means we’re opting out of a lot of things that were considered “normal adult behavior” 30 years ago. Things like a driver’s license, first car, marriage, and homeownership are being severely delayed or even relinquished all together. And that includes reproducing.

We want to be smarter than those before us. We don’t want to drown under a ridiculously high mortgage that we can’t pay for. We’re choosing public transportation over a license and new car, mostly because it’s cheaper. And we’re opting out of things like marriage and parenthood, because it just doesn’t seem like a smart decision.

Instead, we’re focusing on our careers and activism. We’re renting small apartments for as cheap as possible in lieu of trying to become the ever-elusive homeowner. We don’t want to bury ourselves under a house payment like we watched our parents do. And because of all of this, we’re avoiding reproduction.

We don’t want to raise babies in tiny apartments and try to get back and forth to our OB appointments via the subway. Our careers and futures are important to us. And truth be told, we are the only generation that’s old enough, yet still young enough, to recognize the multitude of fuckery that is our country right now. We’re fighting tooth and nail, noses to the grindstone, to fix the economy that the baby boomers completely and entirely fucked up for us. We’re focused on making this world a better place to live before we clog it up with more people to live on it.

Quite frankly, we’re embarrassed of what we have to offer a child right now. Because it’s nothing good. So we’re doing our best to rectify that. Millennials got the short end of the stick. We’re far too busy cleaning up the baby boomer mess to even have time to consider doing “normal” things like getting married, buying a home, and starting a family. We were robbed of an economy to even sustain these things.

Instead of having babies, and houses, and husbands or wives – we have careers, and rallies, and protests. We give up all the things that we’re deserving of, so that the coming generation can hopefully thrive. We forfeit having children in an attempt to make a world worth having children in.

I chose to have my daughter, and I don’t regret that. But I want to leave her with a world worth growing up in, a world worth having more children. I can’t do that with 5 kids in tow.

Our economy is fucked right now, and babies are expensive. Us millennials are a bit smarter than you think. We know that we can’t afford 2.1 children, so we don’t have them. We understand the state of our affairs in this country right now, and we choose not to bring in more witnesses.

So, no, millennials aren’t making babies. At least not as many as we should be. But believe me, we’re doing our share for this world, and I don’t think we’re anywhere near extinction anytime soon.

Support Andrea’s writing on our site by subscribing to our newsletter on this link, Subscribe here!

Andrea is a freelance writer based out of Kentucky. She is the mother to a 3 year old little girl and step-mother to a 6 year old boy. She’s been married to her husband and best friend for 5 years. She enjoys fishing, camping, hiking and the occasional glass of wine by a bonfire.

Image Credit – Alper Çuğun License – CC BY 2.0

My money says that you know at least one person who is active in the gig economy. It may be your roommate, your best friend’s second cousin’s wife, or hell, maybe it’s you, driving for Uber on the weekends. It’s a common occurrence these days, considering the federal minimum wage hasn’t budged from $7.25 an hour since 2009. In addition, the cost of living has inflated so much that our minimum wage is now literally worth less than it was 50 years ago. It’s not uncommon for anyone in this day and age to try and pick up a few side jobs. And they’re readily available.

Nowadays, there’s very little you can’t do as a “side job.” From the ever-popular Uber and Lyft, where you can get paid to drive drunk college kids home from the bar and hope they don’t puke in your car, to AirBnB, where you can rent your extra room (or if you’re lucky enough to have one, your extra house) to a vacationing family, or a group of college frat boys on spring break – again in hopes that they don’t puke all over your house. There’s a multitude of survey sites to help you land a little side cash, and even a website called Fiverr, where you can literally offer just about any service imaginable for a respectable five whoppin’ bucks. Not to mention, you can do just about anything (or try to anyway) as a freelancer. All you gotta do is hit up Craigslist.

It’s also becoming increasingly popular for folks to try and carve out a long-term career within the gig economy, and it’s understandable. At first glance, it’s got a lot to offer: you can schedule your own hours, no working for “the man,” it’s typically fairly quick cash, and it can potentially offer a lot of experiences that a “regular” job can’t. It’s a great opportunity to carve your own path, so to speak, in this dog-eat-dog world we live in. But let me be the first to tell you, the gig economy isn’t always what it seems.

Under all the shimmer and shine, and wonderful, life-altering promises that the gig economy has to offer, there is an ugly underbelly. The gig economy, as a whole, has found a perfectly legal way to undercut the working man, and they’re exploiting the hell out of it.

First and foremost, the gig economy doesn’t owe you shit. And I mean that. They don’t owe you benefits, or a steady paycheck, or even a guarantee of at least minimum wage pay. That means, in the short of it, the gig economy gets your time and hard work, without having to give you much of anything over a measly pay rate for providing their services.

Take Uber for example – Uber is currently the most valuable start up in the U.S, by a mile, with a current valuation of around $68 billion, beating out AirBnB, the second most valuable U.S. start up, whose valuation is currently weighing in at around $31 billion. So, it’s fairly obvious that both of these companies are doing quite well. But, nevertheless, they still fail to offer their “employees” much over a peddler’s wage. They offer no opportunity for full-time work, pay or benefits, and very little room for moving up in the company.

Companies like these also get to dump a whole, big bunch of their tax issues on your head. Anytime you take a gig with a company like Uber, you’re considered self-employed. Meaning they’re not holding out a dime in taxes. That seems all great and wonderful at first, right? More money in your pocket. For now, anyway. But at the end of the year, you’re left responsible for all of it. Which means it’s a damn good possibility you’ll be left responsible with a big ole bill to the IRS as well. Now that’s not to say that Uber and companies of the like don’t pay their fair share in taxes. I’m no businesswoman, but I can only imagine what their accountants have to go through. But that is to say, they’re certainly not going to be doing you any favors with yours any time soon.

But one of my least favorite aspect of the gig economy comes down to this – your job relies on opinions. Take Uber again. (I’m really picking on them today. Sorry Uber!) The money you make, and even whether you get to keep your gig or not, relies heavily on the ratings that your riders give you. Same goes for AirBnB. If your clients give you a low rating, your pay goes down, and you’re potentially up for termination.

Uber’s rating system is so pertinent to the drivers, that they can potentially be punished for as little as a 4-star rating. Now we all get that ratings are important. If your Uber driver is a jackass or your AirBnB host was a total jerk, you should have every right to air your grievances and let the company know what they’ve done wrong. But it can really put employees in a bad situation. People have a tendency to be petty, and rate their driver low as hell because they didn’t like the music in their car. It puts your gig on a teetering pedestal that’s hard to live up to.

When all of the above gets added up together, it makes for a heady recipe for other businesses to follow. Bigger companies are now starting to lean towards the habits of the gig economy, because they’re seeing how much they can get away with. Why should they have to put you on the payroll, offer benefits, and withhold taxes, when they could just merge into the gig economy and not be responsible for much of anything when it comes to their employees?

Now before you jump my ass like a spider monkey, yes, I do know and understand that, as a freelance writer, I am considered a part of the gig economy. But I made sure I did my research. The gig economy isn’t always a horrible, terrible thing. It can be a great way to pad your income, and if you’re lucky enough, it can lead to a great career. But you have to make sure you keep your common sense about you. Businessnewsdaily.com has a few tips for those looking to dip their toes in the gig economy. Such as finding a company that offers full-time conversion, leaning towards smaller companies, and making sure that you always aim to be treated as a respected and valued employee.

The gig economy can be a useful tool, but never forget that it’s a two-headed monster in the end. So, if you need some extra cash, or you’re looking to branch out beyond the 9-5, make sure you do your research, have a clear and concise game plan, and keep your self-respect. Because I promise, the gig economy doesn’t have a lot of respect for you.

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Andrea is a freelance writer based out of Kentucky. She is the mother to a 3 year old little girl and step-mother to a 6 year old boy. She’s been married to her husband and best friend for 5 years. She enjoys fishing, camping, hiking and the occasional glass of wine by a bonfire.