What is a sliding scale?
A sliding scale is a tool for building economic justice, and it requires your active participation. If a sliding scale is implemented effectively, everyone pays a similar percentage of their income for the same products or services. A wide range of payment options across the scale promotes broader accessibility, while insuring fair compensation to the producer. Paying according to one’s available resources creates a more equitable system for pricing of products and services.
Sliding scales are often based on individual income levels, with people of higher incomes paying more. However, many factors complicate and affect our financial status. Some groups of people have costs that the larger population does not. Others have access to resources that are not always reflected in their lifestyle choices and income levels. Please consider both your class background and earning power when choosing your share payment.
Why Sliding Scale?
I offer sliding scale herbal consultations, herbal medicine, and herbal education for a few reasons:
Consider paying less on the scale if you:
A sliding scale is a tool for building economic justice, and it requires your active participation. If a sliding scale is implemented effectively, everyone pays a similar percentage of their income for the same products or services. A wide range of payment options across the scale promotes broader accessibility, while insuring fair compensation to the producer. Paying according to one’s available resources creates a more equitable system for pricing of products and services.
Sliding scales are often based on individual income levels, with people of higher incomes paying more. However, many factors complicate and affect our financial status. Some groups of people have costs that the larger population does not. Others have access to resources that are not always reflected in their lifestyle choices and income levels. Please consider both your class background and earning power when choosing your share payment.
Why Sliding Scale?
I offer sliding scale herbal consultations, herbal medicine, and herbal education for a few reasons:
- To continue in a long line of practitioners who have made it a priority to make sure their work was financially accessible. I have personally benefited tremendously from other practitioners offering their services at a sliding scale, for barter, and sometimes for free. Almost all of the healing work I've gotten has been on a sliding scale.
- My community (queer and trans) and the communities I serve (low income, chronically ill, disabled, Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks) face systemic barriers to accessing respectful and high quality care, especially health care needs that aren't covered by insurance. I want to ensure people wanting to use herbal medicine can afford it.
- Alexis J. Cunningfolk has a written more about sliding scale, including this helpful image, and you can read those articles here and here. I also like what Hadassah Damien has to say about sliding scale.
Consider paying less on the scale if you:
- are supporting children or have other dependents
- have significant debt
- have medical expenses not covered by insurance
- are eligible for public assistance
- have immigration-related expenses
- are an elder with limited financial support
- are an unpaid community organizer
- are a returning citizen who has been denied work due to incarceration history
- experience discrimination in hiring or pay level
- are descended from enslaved people or Native American Indians (I recognize that much of my privilege has come at the expense of these communities)
- own the home you live in
- have investments, retirement accounts, or inherited money
- travel for recreation
- have access to family money and resources in times of need
- work part time or are unemployed by choice, including unemployment due to full-time school in a degree-earning program
- have a relatively high degree of earning power due to level of education (or gender and racial privilege, class background, etc.) Even if you are not currently exercising your earning power, I ask you to recognize this as a choice.