We're number two in low-wage employment among OECD member nations

[rpannier]

From a Korean paper -- this is about Korea, but it's relevant elsewhere too

The ranks of the working poor are swelling. Members of this group, who are unable to escape from poverty no matter how hard they work, walk a tightrope getting by from day to day amid straitened circumstances, with the strong possibility of falling directly into the poverty class if they experience a sudden illness or unemployment.

Last year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) announced that South Korea had the highest rate of low-wage employment among all its member nations, with its 25.6 percent rate putting it ahead of the United States (24.5 percent) and Japan (15.4 percent). In terms of the poverty rate among households with employed members, South Korea was far above the average for OECD member nations.

snip

Working poverty refers to a situation in which a household is classified as poor even though the head of household is at working age (18 to 65 years) and there is at least one person employed within the household. The increase has been in the percentage of families falling into this category. The leading example is the “880 thousand Won household,” earning its title because it receives the monthly pay of 880 thousand Won as calculated in 2007 by multiplying the 1.19 million Won average pay of irregular workers by 73 percent, representing the average relative pay rate for individuals in their twenties. In many cases, people are unable to escape from poverty despite engaging in high-intensity work, including small business operators, migrant workers, and artists, including film workers such as 32-year-old screenwriter/director Choe Go-eun, who died alone from poverty-related causes in a small rented room last month.

snip

“Working poverty is a multidimensional and dynamic phenomena that is hard to capture through simplistic past concepts of poverty,” said KLI researcher Eun Soo-mi. “It assumes a structural form that reproduces a ‘triangular vicious cycle,’ where irregular employment leads to things like unemployment, thrusting workers into the poverty trap.”

link:
http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/463674.html

[Newest Reality]

1. Go Capitalism!

Works great, right?

When we put profit over people and life and enshrine it as a god, it gives us the results we can see and experience tangibly and with an undeniably concrete effect on our organisms.

While many of us who were born into this financial ideology which has turned out to be the new religion of the wealthy, others are emerging into its vacuous promises that turn out to be a terminal form of cancer in the end.

When any system has no regard for its impact and relevance to life itself and those who live it, be they humans, animals or vegetation, what would you expect its impact and results to be? Exploitation and destruction are clearly and demonstrably proving to be the legacy of our only-for-profit system. You can imagine and dream what you want to and resort to your televised, corporatist propaganda to support it, but we are being led on a path of imbalance that is about winning to the point that the winners assure us that we will not survive. That is the end game.

Either you recognize and stop that sociopathic trend towards our collective demise, or you endure the results of controllers who demand no control while they inflict control upon you, every step along the way.

We have to work this problem out now because we are in a crises and that word has a very important meaning, in the Greek sense, about where it will go from here.

[leftstreet]

2. K&R

Interesting read

[Starry Messenger]

3. k&r

I'm sure the "Americans are spoiled" brigade will be along soon, but thank you for posting.

[xchrom]

4. Recommend