The Growing Wage Gap

THE GAP (not to be confused with the overpriced clothing line)

This may seem like an ambiguous title. What I am referring to is an interesting phenomenon, which, like all trends, facts and realities taking place all around them, the majority of Americans are completely and totally unaware of. Just like they are unaware of the fact that they're beloved "Land of the Free" is slipping into 2nd World nation status.

The growing wage gap is the ever widening gap between national minimal wage, which, has risen yet failed to rise to a level that is actually satisfactory for sustaining one's existence in an economy which is on the edge of hyper-inflation and the accepted wage by those desperate for work and financial means.

I came upon this realization whilst performing research on ways to make passive income.  Sure, passive income has been a viral thing that seems like a complete scam to most but what many do not realize is "Where do all these stock websites come from?"  What I mean by stock websites is these, learn to blog, learn to sew, learn to trim your nose hair type sites that share more in common with infomercials than actual, legitimate web sites of yester year.  What is going on here?



HOW THE INTERNET DESTROYED THE EARTH

I believe the majority of Americans answer was similar to mine, that large companies own many smaller, daughter companies which likewise own smaller companies and these push their products, services and other cheap crap like the old model we either believed we were familiar with or simply accepted as fact.  I had a fair knowledge of the workings of the web but never really investigated very far into the business side of things.  Frankly, it had never interested me nor did it seem particularly relevant to my life.

It wasn't until a few years ago when I really began to understand where the internet was headed and what it was becoming that I also began to see its value as the greatest marketplace ever created.  And sadly, today, that's what the internet has become: one giant marketplace.  Instead of being a virtual library of sorts the world wide web is turning into a world wide market place and actually has been for quite some time.  Although many of us seem to be in denial of this fact it is there in front us everyday whether we like it or not.

Just try to research something.  The information that used to be provided for free (i.e. legal advice, legal text, laws, etc.) now are only available by joining particular sites and paying astronomical fees for monthly memberships just to read some trivial information which you do not have access to preview or peruse before purchasing said membership. Simple example, nothing more.

We can say that this was inevitable.  If we look at the history for the past 2 centuries, it becomes vacantly clear that something similar to the internet was coming along (tying all members of humanity into one society, connecting the entire globe, prophecies of Revelations fulfilled.  I won't preach to you, just pointing out the obvious.)

Anyway, with such a simple system to dominate the world and eventually further the one world ruling power which the United Nations is the blueprint infrastructure of, what will become of America?



THE BIG PICTURE IN LITTLE WINDOWS

Because the vastness and scope OF this picture is so wide, it helps to view smaller, incremental pictures of it to help digest it and piece together the entire canvas.  Although being aware of the global agenda and what it truly means in terms of reality is irrelevant for most people, I do find it interesting that from a skeptic's perspective, all the windows' views were accurately described in a book written more than 1,000 years ago (speaking about Revelations in the Holy Bible).  At least now I can SEE why the church does not want to touch on the book of Revelations. It's bad for business.

Anyway, a global scope has become apparent and has been around since the thirties and introduction of the Federal Reserve, virtually America's death warrant.  Any president who attempted to stop the Fed Reserve has been assassinated.  Over the last 40 years we have seen job after job outsourced to 3rd world nations because the work is cheaper and profits can expand. Great.  Hooray for 3rd world countries.

What most of us do not realize is that in those 3rd world countries, the reason they work those 16-20 hr days 7 days a week is so that after 1 week, they HOPEFULLY may purchase a loaf of bread. Hopefully.  But how does that affect us?



BRING IT HOME

New window. Full circle to the subject of this article: the Gap. A new trend in America called passive income via the web has been in full swing since the mid nineties.  Sure, passive income has always been around. But the internet provided a new, better, self maintained and automated way to do this.

For the majority of bloggers and folks who 'fiddle' on the web, passive income is an elusive and imaginary entity. For the growing number of thousands of folks making their livings based off of passive income through the internet it is a grizzly and cut throat reality.  The biggest nightmare to deal with is Google, their ever changing policies and newer and stricter rules concerning SEO (search engine optimization) tactics.

After that, it's simply the amount of competition as more and more folks lose jobs, lose interest in their jobs, discover ways to make money off the web and so forth.

While this article will not touch on HOW to make money off the web, I will give some keywords for you to begin your searches while omitting any direct links because personally, my dear, I don't give a damn.  You're probably too young to get that. ;)

KEYWORDS: passive income, blog to make income, web based business, how to earn web based passive income

Beyond that, by crunching numbers, doing hard research and reading others success stories we see this is not an overnight thing: that's good for most of us, because that weeds out a lot of the chaff.  There are folks making passive income which is web-based and is the sole of their bread and butter. My advice: don't quit your day job.


MY DISCOVERY

I find that presenting a lot of interesting material to chew on is a great way to present the bulk of an article and then we can have a build up and climax at the end. So now the scope of our window will narrow to my perspective, which is a very tiny window in the global picture.  That's good because at the cellular level, we can view how the core elements of the system interact and affect one another as a whole rather than a series of seemingly random and meaningless events.
What I am getting at is that, through good old fashioned logic and scientific simple evaluation, we can come to form some hypothesis of what America's future may or may not hold. Read on.

It began this week when I got really serious about passive, web based income and began to do research and begin some test runs of concepts in hopes of forming some hypothesis and observations with which I could form some sort of loose strategy for the next phase of setting up a firm infrastructure of passive income. 

In case you are still lost on this term it simply refers to the unique ability for the web to automatically sell and collect payments for you or your products with little to no work or involvement at all.  While many read that and think either 'easy money' or a 'lazy way to get out of work' it actually is a great alternative to those who are interested. Stocks are still a dangerous game and with the knowledge I have and the hypothesis I have come to form, I would not put my money anywhere near the markets, though, if I am right, it won't matter a hill of beans.  For now, don't worry about it.  If I'm right, you'll know exactly what I was thinking without me saying it. If I'm wrong, we'll be okay at least for the time being.

Anyway, while I'm still researching and testing out some different programs and blog strategies, I also stumbled upon a great 'side' income.  I refer to it as 'side income' because it is not truly passive income.  I am talking about freelance work.  And, due to my ability to crank  out 1000 words in 60 minutes and (sometimes) stick to a structure that both makes sense and is informative, I could see that this would be a great, new experiment. 

There are needs for content writers on blogs, article writers on niche sites, how-to authors on educational sites, fiction writers for scam sites (I mean, sites that sell genuine "fiction books") and also academia papers, technical papers, etc.  I know this is also a frustrating and cut throat industry so of course, I will investigate.

So I began by visiting the most popular free lance sites and, sticking to the ones that do not charge an upfront fee, wrote some articles, pitched some proposals and prayed for some feedback as to why I was rejected.  And I began noticing things I hadn't really anticipated but should of thought of beforehand.

Despite my lack of credentials and work experience, these sites offer 40 question tests which assess your competency and knowledge on hundreds of different areas of expertise.  For the majority of the tests, I scored in the top 20%-30% range in areas of English vocab, grammar, word usage, etc. with several tests placing in the top 10% of folks who took the test, including one in which I was ranked number 197 out of 20,000 people for the highest score.
There are also specific tests testing knowledge on certain softwares and products, some of which I fared above average as well. Great.  So with this and hopefully, an impressive cover letter, I can now apply for freelance gigs that clients post in hopes of attracting folks that can perform with quality and punctuality within their given budgets and time frames.  And this is when the unprepared dismay set in.

I tried to stay detached, I really did.  But I always see a bigger picture, whether it is in focus and whether it is even accurate at the time.  And the picture frightens me. 
What I was seeing is that despite my outrageously high scores and polite, informative cover letters, it was not my inexperience or lack of sample and portfolio materials that held me back: it was price.  Now, I went in being sensible and figured, ah, my price is close to $8-$9 per hour: I'm at home, no expenses beside electricity (public internet can rock when working), I have no experience, why not.  But I was not being cut by say, a $1 or more.  Try by sometimes as much as 99% more.  And I wish I was joking.

One job I had applied to ended up hiring someone from Indonesia to write the article. Well, good for that guy, I thought. But it wasn't . That guy was gonna write that article for $0.50 an hour.  And he agreed that he would be paid for no more than 2 hours, whether or not his amount of time exceeded that.  I know that, even in those countries, they can't survive on that.  The situation is the same in Kenya, Belize, China, Singapore, Philippines, etc.  The lowest I saw someone working for was $0.0005 per word. I wish I was making this up.  The size of the article was 1500 words, no more.  And they're thankful to have the work.



WHAT'S THE BIGGER PICTURE?

This got me thinking: okay, economy is eventually going to crash in America.  In the first depression (which I truly believed was purposefully manufactured by the same people, the Big Banking families and the global banks -with the purpose of introducing the Fed Reserve to the U.S.- due to the fact that when you place graphs of the economy crashing in 2008 over the graphs of the 1930's, there is absolutely not one variation whatsoever, and the next lines on the graphs are the ones that plummet into nothingness 5 years after the first plunge) freelancing was how a lot of people tried to make ends meet. Whether or not they were successful was inconsistent.
Again, as the U.S. economy heads toward an inevitable breaking point with the complete devaluation of the U.S. dollar gaining momentum every day, free lancing markets are at an all time high.  The only problem is we're competing with folks in 3rd world nations willing to work for less than a penny an hour.  You cannot compete with this.

You can try.  You can try writing for $0.50 an hour.  Now, do you take 2 hours to write it and make $1 or do you cram and finish in 1 hour and hope to get the next job, the one you bid $1 an hour for because, dammit, this is America and we're progressive around here?

What happens when Americans finally come to this sort of acceptance and begin to resort to freelancing for this kind of money?  Right now, there are still jobs available, though not as many as there were before 2008.  But there are still way more opportunities here than in Sari Lenka. For today, anyway.

What about tomorrow?

What about when hyperinflation hits our shores and the price of gas climbs to $1,000 per gallon?  Think that's insane and impossible? Research hyperinflation in eastern Europe and in southern Africa between the late 70's and the year 2000.  One tiny country in Africa with an irresponsible and selfish government much similar to our own devalued their own currency to the point that 1 gallon of gas ended up costing $2,000,000. For 1 gallon.  A loaf of bread in a European country near Chekoslavakia had bread priced at $100,000 a loaf.
And it wasn't gradual. Sure, there was a gradual pre-inflation. Maybe gas was $4 a gallon than, 10 yrs later, $8 a gallon. But after the year of $8 per gallon, sometimes it was only 6 months before it could hit $500,000 a gallon.  Its the way hyper inflation works: there is a cascading, tumbling effect as the ponzi bubble finally bursts.  Its unstoppable.  What about when that bubble finally bursts containing the world's standard for currency?

America is now being considered a 2nd world country, at least, economically, in many parts of the world.  As more folks lose jobs or have to rely more on internet based freelance work, where do you draw the line? What happens if, as in other parts of the world, it gets so bad that $1 an hour looks good because there is no other sign of hope?  Yes, there are minimum wage laws in this country but that doesn't apply to contractors.  If there are no jobs, we all become contractors, more or less.

There is the majority who honestly, somehow believe that 'this could never happen in America'.  Folks, Rome was around a LOT longer than this little ho-dunk nation.  And it fell in a day. We've only been a nation for a little more than 200 years.  My grandma is almost half that old.

I'm not sure what it means.  I know it isn't good.  I know there are those who scream, oh, we just can't work for that low of wage.  But tell me this: are you going to sit around drawing comic pages for free because you refuse to work for less than $50 for a page of pencils when you could get paid $30 per page instead? You're getting paid, right? On the other side of it, the lower the bar goes, the cheaper the expectation becomes.

It's a snowball effect that, sadly, has been moving strongly since the Carter administration and neither you nor I are going to stop it.  We weren't meant to. God has a plan. If you don't believe in God that's your decision. But things are changing on a global level that has been accurately described and predicted by countless religious prophets, philosophers and historical and economical professionals for centuries.  One of these ambitious groups will globalize this planet.  It's just a matter of which one.

And that's all fine and dandy but the bottom line comes down to what can we do today to try and secure a strong tomorrow?  I think we have to find an even balance.  I think we have to turn off the damn televisions ( I LOATHE those things), do some research, diversify our incomes and stock up on necessities and try and follow closely the day to day shift.  Because like president Obama said, "this is no longer a Christian nation: we are a nation of many faiths and tolerate many ways of life.  And we are no longer a sovereign, independent nation who can turn a blind eye on it brothers and sisters in the United Nations, for we now live in a global society where our neighbors now reside on different shores and among different peoples."  I'll stop there before I throw up on my computer.

Keep an eye open for your own evidence of the gap.  This article isn't meant to scare.  It's meant to make you stop and think. To get you to turn off the TV. To get you to spend time with your kids.  To investigate real ways you can save money and open undiscovered streams of income INTELLIGENTLY (not with scam artists get rich quick crap) and build them upon good, solid infrastructures that can weather the politically motivated storms Google will inevitably throw out with each new, passing, insane policy change and whatever else may come.  The future is ours.  It may be inevitable but you can still make a choice on which side of the coin to remain.