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Comment by 0x20cowboy | Hacker News Reader

I suppose it’s in how you word it. I’ve given up on trying to get a job because there is no point in trying. I can’t afford to pay my rent, but I guess you could call that early retirement.

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If you can stomach it, the seafood canning and fishing industry in Alaska will usually (IDK what the situation is this year) hire anyone off the street, work them 16 hours a day for several months, and give them "free housing." You'll get dumped back in Seattle in several months with at least $10k in your pocket.

Edit: genuinely perplexed on the response. This saved my ass one winter when I had nothing for rent.

I thought the fishing industry paid … way more than 10k / 3 months. Color me surprised o.O

That's net after housing, perhaps a good deal depending on what your rent would've been otherwise.

It is a seasonal low skilled work. How much should it pay? Overall it is comparable to a seasonal farm work: mostly done by immigrants

my brother did that 20 years ago; I didn't realize it was still a thing today

Surely it's not actually 16 hours a day, that would leave maybe 6 hours for sleep after other needs are taken care of.

People who have been aged out of tech aren't going to be able to physically pull off 16 hour days in Alaska.

If you are working 16 hours a day, you won't even go to your "free housing", you will sleep next to your workplace on a mat and then try and finish toilet/bath in office restroom in 1hour, so you can at-least get some restful hours of sleep before the next day.

Point of labor participation is that it's independent of whether you want to be employed or not.

You and gp agree that characterizing non-paticipation as (voluntary) "early retirement" is unsupported.

That sounds kinda pointless unless the point of the stats is to make the State and Enterprise look good and justify cuts to non-corporate WELFARE

Ding ding ding!

You can’t pay your rent? But then where will you live?

A question that roughly 500,000 people in America find themselves asking. So far, the answer seems to be “in a pup tent in the woods behind Walmart”, because there’s not a ton of great options otherwise.

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