If you are self-employed, a SOHO business owner, a solo-preneur, slash careerist... you are a pioneer. In many ways you are blazing a path for cubicle dwellers and others who find themselves on the receiving end of a W-2.
That is because as an independent, you are engaging in capitalism and free enterprise in its purist form. No Unemployment Insurance for you if the economy's downturn shrinks your paying customer base. And no TARP money for you either--unlike AIG and Goldman Sachs, you're not big enough and you don't have a strong lobby working on your behalf. That's right, no welfare for you.
No, you get to engage in capitalism in its purist form--you walk a tightrope with no safety net, except the one you build yourself.
But it seems that the cubicle dwellers are not so far behind. Their supposed security gets more precarious by the day. Witness the case of Lou Carlozo, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He was asked to write about his family's finances for the paper's blog called “The Recession Diaries.”
As Carlozo describes it, "it involved me telling very tough stories about my own family finances–stories that led me and my wife to squabble many times over which details to withhold, which to print, and which ones looked inappropriate in print after the fact."
His thanks for his thankless task? The paper took down his final post explaining that he had just been laid off due to the very recession he covered. You can read the story here http://tinyurl.com/cyhkpo
While he did land another job, for many of us, we land our jobs by creating them. Welcome to the New Economy.
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