CJ, I'm very glad I woke up too. My brother had that sort of dream and did not wake up until he discovered it was not all a dream.
Mark, part of the problem is there are so few places to work in my area that you pretty much get stuck in retail (where they have a lot of the same problems) or food service. Most of the smaller businesses shut down and/or don't hire anyone outside of their family or close friends. I was looking at statistics for my town and found that there are more college educated people living in poverty than ones who have high school education-- because most places here won't hire people who are college graduates (which is why I don't mention my college degree anymore when applying for jobs because I was always getting the "overqualified" bs). The real reason is they don't want anyone who will recognize when they are getting screwed and argue with them when they try to break rules and do things that are illegal. That high school graduate or person who didn't even graduate at all is less likely to argue when the manager tells him/her to clock out and keep working off the books (the supervisors here do that a LOT).
People have to be employed in order to qualify for food stamps or public assistance (unless they are disabled) and there are a LOT of people who have low enough income to qualify but aren't able to work but can't get disability. You have to work for 2 years to get disability & some of the people have mental and/or physical issues that made it so they were never able to keep a job that long. The employers around here treat employees like garbage, rip them off, etc.
Oh man, the salaried thing... My brother was offered a salaried position at the casino but after seeing another guy get a "promotion" to salaried & getting screwed, he said "no thanks". They made him work 80hrs a week without overtime & were only paying him 4cents more than regular salary for a 40hr work week. It used to be a salary was a good thing but now there are no pensions following it.
And people don't make enough $ to put in to savings accounts bc they have to pay the bills and frickin' sales tax is 10.45% on most things. It's 6% on food & medicine (even prescription). That 10.45% is also applied as service tax. There's even a tax on internet service (which is technically illegal but they call it a "fee" to get around it). The utility companies are borking people up the wazoo with their prices. Then there's the property taxes-- in my town if someone is late on property taxes they charge them $100 a month for every month they are late & if the taxes haven't been paid in 1 month they claim the property belongs to the city until taxes are paid and within 3 to 6 months they can take the property away from people. My friend's had to pay $600+ just in late fees when he found out his mom hadn't paid the property taxes for 6 months and he got an eviction notice. They don't even mail him to notify him what his property taxes are. He has to go to City Hall and ask them. From what I understand of the law, they are only supposed to be allowed to charge 10% of the property's value. Last time my friend's property was assessed around $60. So they charged $10x the tax. Then there is the income tax on top of this crap.
Ok, venting. LOL.
Anyway, I'm awake because I can't sleep bc I discovered my kitchen sink has two pinholes in the stainless steel and its been leaking under the noise reducing pad on the right basin. So, now need a new kitchen sink. It's not even visible from the top. Had to use a flashlight to see it.