I'm good at what I do. PAY ME!

Somehow it has become the norm in this society to ask individuals to do their work for free or a very minimal wage.  Often the temptation of "exposure" is supposed to substitute for the fact that you don't make any money.  We no longer have to live on love, now we have to live on exposure.

If you work as a waitress, the restaurant will pay you $3/hr and expose you to restaurant patrons who are expected to pay for your services as well as their food.
If you are a college student, you are expected by Federal Financial Aid formulas to make several thousand dollars each summer to contribute to your education.  Future employers however, want to see that you've worked as an unpaid intern for the experience and exposure to the real workplace.

Colleges feed the adjunct system with the idea that people will teach for almost nothing for the exposure of leading a class which will be good for their resume.

Minimum wage is set at a level that is half of the living wage with the idea that this is a "training wage" that individuals will get for a short period of time until they have exposure to the workplace.

Freelance writers are expected to write for free for exposure of their work to a larger audience.

All of this exposure is a lot closer to the victimization of pornography, then a legitimate on-ramp to the professional world.   Just like a lead in XXX films is unlikely to lead to life as a main-stream movie star, taking any of these positions puts the taint of desperation on your resume.

Right now I'm living in that gulf between minimum wage and a living wage.  This is a horrible place to be, especially when I consider myself a talented professional.  

Lets STOP expecting people to work for free for exposure.  And shame on bio-online for calling dnlee a whore for asking how much she would be paid for writing a guest post.  Maybe that word jumped to mind so fast since they knew they were the pimps trying to peddle exposure instead of money.