{"id":24781,"date":"2016-02-15T08:12:53","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T16:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=24781"},"modified":"2016-02-15T08:12:53","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T16:12:53","slug":"i-have-learned-a-new-word-precariat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/15\/i-have-learned-a-new-word-precariat\/","title":{"rendered":"I have learned a new word: precariat"},"content":{"rendered":"

The precariat. It’s apparently the social class I’ve belonged to nearly all my adult life. In the growing American class war<\/a>, it is a growing class. The precariat: Those who freelance or otherwise work without traditional benefits or even minimal assurances of security. Those who live precariously.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I find the class war distressing, unnecessary, and in a major way, unAmerican (if “American” means the old melting pot and “anybody can succeed with hard work and smarts” mentality). The class war is divide and conquer. It’s all about whining and grievance and wallowing. It’s about being stuck and not making any personal effort to get unstuck because only political<\/i> effort matters.<\/p>\n

Yet I liked stumbling across this new word, precariat. It’s so wonderfully descriptive.<\/p>\n

I came out of the working class. All our collars were blue, blue, blue. And rather frayed and faded, at that. My parents, like most of that day, wanted more for their kids and, glory hallelujah, they managed to push my siblings firmly into the middle class, sparkling clean white collars and all. (My brother, in fact, used to try to write off the three-piece suits he was required to wear for his job. He classified them as “uniforms” since he wore them nowhere but at work. The IRS would catch this wrongful deduction year after year, scold him, grab some extra money — and miss all the other equally funky tax dodges he successfully pulled off. Yes, definitely middle-class, that boy.)<\/p>\n

Me? I may have aspired to the middle class for a while in my 20s (I’ve written before that I was, in fact, the first of the siblings to “make it” in the professional world); but I dropped out as quickly as I dropped in. Before age 30 I had, in my sister’s disdainful words, “chosen life beside a mosquito swamp” over life in the fast lane. I’ve descended farther since then.<\/p>\n

But on the occasions I’ve had to think about class, I’ve never been sure what I am. Working class? Nope. Despite my origins and modest income, I don’t have a dirty-hands job or<\/i> the mentality associated with plodding labor. Middle class? Don’t make me laugh. Bohemian artsy class? Again, nope. I am much too hardheadedly practical and hillbilly-born for that even though I write and draw and reject a lot of conventions. <\/p>\n

But “precariat”? Yeah, that fits. <\/p>\n

Well, better than all those other terms. I don’t quite buy that We the Precariat live quite so precariously as the pundits fear. When I first began freelancing as a young thing, a recession had hit and a lot of people “securely” employed in the ad\/communications world lost their jobs. People like me got busy on the fragments of the work responsibilities they left behind.<\/p>\n

Good<\/i> members of the precariat also build relationships and reputations. I may not know exactly what day of the week or month my clients will pay me. I may not know how much I’ll earn for any given article or effort. But I know that those clients will<\/i> pay me and that they’ll always do their best to treat me fairly — which is more than can be said about (for instance) the corporation that securely but miserably employed my father for 40-some years.<\/p>\n

So yeah, “precariat” is an apt term for people like me and the growing number who live in the so-called “gig economy.” <\/p>\n

Technically, to be in the precariat, you must also be in the proletariat: both insecure and low income<\/a>. Without capital for building a real business. Selling your labor, piecemeal. Hey, I qualify again!<\/p>\n

But what the heck. Life itself is precarious. And though the vast precariat lives on uncertainties, name me anybody who ultimately doesn’t<\/i>. How many fabulously rich stock-market investors have taken spectacular falls? How many “secure” middle-class people have suddenly been rendered precarious by illness, addiction, divorce, accident, or government interference in their lives?<\/p>\n

We are all<\/i> members of the precariat as long as we’re still breathing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The precariat. It’s apparently the social class I’ve belonged to nearly all my adult life. In the growing American class war, it is a growing class. The precariat: Those who freelance or otherwise work without traditional benefits or even minimal assurances of security. Those who live precariously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind-and-spirit","category-money","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}