I'd apply for a new job and demand nothing less than CEO. It worked for Robert California...

Daniel, it's not IM or nothing. You have many options and can be in business for yourself and do very well. You can write. Handymen do well in this economy. Spend a little time enumerating all your skills. Make a list. Then choose one that you can do even offline. Start small and build. You don't have to work for one of these greedy lowly evolved types. They'll just waste your time anyway, unless you are already established and functioning in a job.

This kind of stuff has incited such anger in me over time that I wrote an entire book on it! It's not just the employee's finances that get affected by these shenanegans...but the employee's TIME and energy as well! I emphasize time because this is the most important commodity (if it could be called such) we have! I'm going to shake some heads here with this, but what the corporate world does to the consumer is no different than offer "doggie treats" for loyalty. It's amazing how the masses have been conditioned to accept these kind of terms! Our TIME is not replaceable. It cannot be redeemed and once lost, cannot be recovered! This is the critical variable of the equation...one that the corporate world readily exploits. Joan mentions the squeezing people and the thing here is "WAGE SLAVERY." I regret my apparent inability to create a meaningful existence in an online business...one which I have been trying to reverse for some time now...and being faced with the inevitable fact that the next thing in line is to subject myself to the exploitation mentioned here...in spite of what I know about it. People CAN be squeezed much more than they are now. It can (and will) be done through GRADUALISM. This stuff is happening right now under our noses right in the grocery store... Raise the prices...put on sales at the old pricing...slightly reduce the size of the product...end the sale, raise the prices...put on sales at the old pricing...slightly change the packaging to make product look bigger...etc...etc..etc. Then, call it inflation...a necessary evil...when in reality, it's devaluation. But worse of all...companies know very well that they can manipulate a brain-washed herd into performing literally for peanuts! Time is the greatest essence here and working for others under current conditions means we not only surrender our time...we then do so our power and energy...let alone money... I vowed I'd stop writing about things like this here (and stay only on Internet marketing...but this means I won't create content about it in the Forum and my blog. I will add to content someone else has already started...as in this case. If current conditions in my life persist like this one more week...I will be disappearing from WA. It might be a good thing for this membership, but certainly not for me who needs otherwise to be in this environment for the obvious benefits nowhere else to be found on the WWW.

"1965: Avg Hourly Income $19.61" - is that adjusted for inflation or something?

Hi Marvin, I tried to leave a comment on your blog, but it wouldn't accept my ID. Hope I didn't screw things up. The trend that you describe is going to have dire consequences. People have just about had it with the corporate mentality. You can't squeeze people to this extent and expect them to sit still for it. I think it's an ugly trend. Everyone has a right to live. These people are just plain greedy. I saw it happening in my old industry at the end of the 1990's, when they tried to squeeze me in a most unfair way. I just told them to have a nice life, and off I went. What's going to happen if everyone does that? Atlas Shrugged anyone?