

Less than zero: The value of intern labor in an age of economic inequality - SandB0x
http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/018_02/7802

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gyom
I read something in a book about the history of England that's somewhat
connected to this :

In England somewhere around the 18-19th century, members of parliament got no
salary. The highest aspiration that you could have was to make enough money
from other sources so that you could devote yourself to being a politician.

Now, some famous politician at the time recognized the fact that this implied
that only people of considerable wealth could take part in the government,
that this was a problem, and the law was eventually changed so that they would
get a basic salary.

It sounds a lot like what I read in that article mentioned, where good
internships are essentially impossible to get for people who can't afford to
work for free for any extended period of time.

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cafard
"No such exemption applies to Washington’s vast nonprofit sector, however,
where long, unpaid internships are unavoidable if one wishes to make a career
serving the public interest."

I would rewrite "serving the public interest" as "working there". Would HN
readers assume that one can only serve the public interest by writing policy
papers or lobbying for the cause of x/y/z? Also, the many associations here
often pay fairly poor wages, but unpaid internships are anything but
universal.

