"Wheel estate"

This is all very healthy and good. Things are going great.

My first encounter with one group of the new nomads came in 2013, at the Desert Rose RV park in Fernley, Nevada. It was populated by members of the “precariat”: temporary laborers doing short-term jobs in exchange for low wages. Its citizens were full-time wanderers who dwelled in RVs and other vehicles, though at least one guy had only a tent to live in. Many were in their 60s and 70s, approaching or well into traditional retirement age. Most could not afford to stop working – or pay the rent.

Since 2009, the year after the housing crash, groups of such workers had migrated each fall to the mobile home parks surrounding Fernley. Most had traveled hundreds of miles – and undergone the routine indignities of criminal background checks and pee-in-a-cup drug tests – for the chance to earn $11.50 an hour plus overtime at temporary warehouse jobs. They planned to stay through early winter, despite the fact that most of their homes on wheels weren’t designed to support life in subzero temperatures.

Their employer was Amazon.

It's interesting to watch the continuing discussion in town as New Orleans pretends to compete in the national sweepstakes for Amazon's new headquarters. We're all falling over each other to "incentivize" them to bring the good jobs to town.  Your excitement over this prospect is directly related to whether you imagine yourself among the employees of HQ2 or whether you're more likely to be booted out of the way so those employees can pay the rents you can't.

But, hey, life on the road sounds exciting.