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THE NEW ECONOMY AND MULTIPLE INCOME STREAMS
November 25th, 2007
One thing for sure: the workplace will change beyond all recognition. The conventional ‘job’, aka stress-source and general millstone around people’s necks, isn’t what it was.
The level of commitment to a single source of income which can dry up overnight is becoming a liability. Time is consumed, health, in some cases, too. This is an expensive world, and not having some backup is dangerous.
The ‘New Economy’, in which technology opens up a lot more options for workers, has a lot going for it in terms of relative access to income. People can now operate in many different ways, online, in ’boutique’ or contract situations, and design their income streams if they can get the right mix of income and time usage. It’s now pretty easy to work several jobs and self-manage a lot better.
It has the added advantage for employers of removing the need for massive offices and internal corporate structures, and their associated overheads, many of which can fit on a single spreadsheet if not carrying the Flintstones-style structures. Fortunately someone has figured that out, and the cost benefits are pretty obvious, even to most employers.
It is arguable that Western society is replacing a sitcom with a game show by going down this track, but at least you can win a game show. The old economic system is very hierarchical, where it’s a lot easier to be at the bottom, stay there, and get no recognition, as well as working for a rather self-limited income range. Career tracks can be like gopher tunnels, and gophers tend to only have experience and qualifications in being gophers.
Job IdeasEmployment in renewable’s
Self Employed
Fire Fighter
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Farm jobs
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Jobs in Korea
Blue Collar Temping
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Japan JobsEffectively the worker in the new economy is becoming a subcontractor. There are more ways of creating an income, and commitments are to a job, not to some obscure workplace ethos and social pecking order. That’s a huge difference. Offices can be very unhealthy places to work, and people do suffer in environments like that.
Relative productivity is another killer for the old economy. In a New Economy job, you can run your own production, and work to your own best time frames. In an office, you’re more or less stuck with what the office generates, when it generates it, and any spare time is either wasted or just lost. Generally, job design is pretty ad hoc, and usually not good.
People have been trying to get out of the salary trap for a long time. Multiple jobs, in office hour time frames, however, are killers. There’s so much which can be done, and no way of working things so time can be used better. Some people do like to have social lives, or just lives, and most of the week vanishes in some vague blur.
“Income tends
to be limited by
how you make it.”
Being nailed to a job can be a source of extreme stress. A cycle, where the person is relying on a job to meet commitments like mortgages, loans, etc, while operating a personal budget, means the pressure point is the job. So the reverse cycle is that the job, which is a finite source of income, becomes the problem, while the person is entirely dependent on it.
Income tends to be limited by how you make it. Costs, however, happen whether anyone likes it or not. The probability is that a single stream of income simply will not be enough. Sharing costs helps, but it’s often two people with the same problem, rather than solving the problem.
No longer solely dependent on a single stream, the ‘employee’ is now free of a lot of constraints, especially if making enough money. The high stress from commitments is reduced by having alternate sources of income. Losing a job isn’t as damaging, physically or emotionally. In fact, in some cases it’s a real positive to be able to get out of an unrewarding position which is using up time that could be spent making better money.
Multiple income streams change the picture entirely.
Social culture may never be the same. The ‘respect’ factor operates here too, so employers no longer have office serfs to deal with but people who can tell them where to go. A much healthier relationship, and probably the end of the Office Dictator, and other useless appendages.
Job IdeasRenewable Energy Jobs
Self Employed
Fire Fighter
Join the Army
Farm jobs
Skiing Jobs
Jobs in Korea
Blue Collar Temping
Temp Jobs
Tour bus driver Jobs
Japan JobsThere’s a lot of people getting out of the workplace where they can. At the moment, New Economy jobs are relatively small beer, but the trend is unmistakable. Costs are lower for everybody. Even the daily saga of the expensive 2 hour commute can be avoided.
That said, there are risks in the New Economy. Outlays on things like franchises, for an extreme version, might have no cover. Contract law doesn’t yet have a firm grip on that. Liabilities aren’t yet sufficiently covered in even case law, although that will change. Scams, there are many, and those can be highly damaging and costly.
Fortunately, people complain, and a subset of checks and balances is becoming apparent as the internet absorbs new information about how scams operate. A level of resistance is already showing, and that’s a good sign.
(Not that the old economy isn’t full of ripoffs itself, but the law knows how to handle those.)
In the long run the teething issues will have to be addressed, because economic reality favors the New Economy. People need income sources which won’t fall to pieces on them as the hardware of the global economy redesigns itself.
Ironically, a lot of the battering experienced by the workforce in the last 20 years of extremely clumsy management will have a payoff. The employees can now downsize their commitment to employers, and outsource themselves to anyone they can find.
Justice?
Yep.
Photo Credit: MrBee
3 Responses to “THE NEW ECONOMY AND MULTIPLE INCOME STREAMS”
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November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am
I am waiting to see how the workplace evolves. I know my own 8hr day at work has morphed into a workload that sometimes goes home with me and consumes a few more hours, not to mention that I do ebay, work another part time job doing bookkeeping in my spare time, and do some freelance art on the side. I have been jokingly told that i am a workaholic, but I admit that I am scared to rely solely on what the 8hr day provides me and not take anything beyond that. At any given time I am working on things for a minimum of four people plus my full time position. I wonder what will happen next, as this seems to become more of a trend, especially with people of my agfe group [mid-20s]. This structure to my income is also convenient as my schedule makes it hard to punch a timeclock at more than one job location.
Hmm…I will say that it is very easy to get burned out this way. I have not picked up something to read in weeks as I have siply not had the time or will….at what cost, what am i giving up in life that i could be enjoying, to work this damn hard and is it necessary?
November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am
While I have not mastered the art of this yet because I am a student and freelance writer. I would someday like to master having an 8 hour a day job or less…make a good sum of money there and be able to write. While as of right now this would not be very lucrative…I hope that freelance writers are someday used for newspaper syndicates as opposed to everyday writers who can become dry and boring after a long period of time. If you think about it, having a different sports writers view on generally the same topic would be a lot more exciting than day after day of the same persons view on the same topic.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:55 am
http://www.cvtips.com/self_employed_work.html