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Hundreds of fast food workers are striking nationwide Tuesday, joining other workers in pressing for a more livable wage. But while some say $15 is a minimum needed to survive, some business owners say dishing out more pay would leave them struggling to keep their doors open.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fast-food-workers-strike-again-nationwide-for-15-an-hour
In New York City, rallies are being held in Harlem, the Financial District and Brooklyn in support of efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, reports CBS New York.
In Los Angeles, the local protests are organized by Service Employees International Union, and include fast-food, home-care and child-care workers, along with other "underpaid" employees, reports CBS Los Angeles.
"Is this the America we believe in? When someone works all day long and they still can't get by," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said during an early-morning rally in Downtown Brooklyn. "Does anyone believe that it's easy to get by in New York City on less than $15 an hour?"
Critics say a $15 minimum wage would obliterate opportunity and usher in higher taxes, but de Blasio said the opposite is true -- with more money to spend, low wage workers contribute more to the economy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:32AM
Fuck that. If an utterly unskilled teenager can do your job with little to no training, you should be paid like it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:07PM
Fuck that. If an utterly unskilled teenager can do your job with little to no training, you should be paid like it.
There are plenty of teenagers out there who actually need to work for a living. If they are working full time they should be able to survive off it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:33PM
Only if they offer enough in return. Everybody is entitled to life. Nobody is entitled to the means to support that life. For that you have to trade equal value.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by NotSanguine on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:26PM
Only if they offer enough in return. Everybody is entitled to life. Nobody is entitled to the means to support that life. For that you have to trade equal value.
Absolutely correct.
Being poor is a disease. We need to isolate those people so their evil doesn't rub off on us. I mean, if they were good people, they wouldn't be poor right? And if they're not good people, they need to be taught that they don't matter.
I'm going to create a startup to take all those empty warehouses and factories around the country and put bunks in them. I'll advertise for $10/night beds (cheaper than any rent out there, that's for sure!) and sell franchises for food and cleaning services.
Most of those who live there can take the $8/hour (contract labor, of course) and clean/feed themselves.
We can adjust the pay (down, of course) to maximize profit for me and the franchisees. That makes sure these folks get exactly what they need without disturbing the real humans.
Are you in, Buzzard?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:54PM
Being poor isn't a disease, it's a choice. You choose to either be poor or acquire skills through hard work and then work your ass off like the rest of the world who like to eat regularly. Bitching because flipping burgers or sweeping a floor won't get you a nice house in the burbs is childish bullshit and deserves to be treated as such.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:48PM
Being poor isn't a disease, it's a choice. You choose to either be poor or acquire skills through hard work and then work your ass off like the rest of the world who like to eat regularly. Bitching because flipping burgers or sweeping a floor won't get you a nice house in the burbs is childish bullshit and deserves to be treated as such.
I appreciate your point and agree that hard work (I can certainly vouch for that) can help people to better their circumstances.
However, I disagree with your conclusions. Given the state of education in many parts of the U.S., a lack of real opportunity for those few skills to obtain more of them, and the reality that if you have to work several jobs to pay for your living expenses, it's unlikely that you'll have the time (there are only 24 hours in a day) to invest in upgrading one's skills. Especially if you have children to care for and/or lengthy commutes (since most places in the US make it very difficult to get around without a car -- which adds thousands a year to the budget).
I won't address the whole "privatizing profit and socializing the needs of workers" issue. That's been addressed pretty completely in other posts.
Arguing that the poor must be stupid and/or lazy because they're poor ignores the reality of U.S. society. A 40 hour/week job that would allow a single person to support themselves without government assistance, and a serious reduction in the disdain and stigma of having less, would go a long way to creating the conditions that allow those without resources to better themselves. I'd also point out that in the 50s, 60s and 70s, it was actually possible for those with minimal skills to live on the income from a single job. That's no longer the case in many (if not most) places in the U.S.
What's more, most people who have nothing would be happy with being able to take care of and better themselves if they could do so without being spat upon as lazy because they're poor.
While there are myriad stories about people "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps," there are many, many more about being denied opportunities because society is structured for them to fail (e.g., crappy schools, lack of access to services, limited opportunity in their location, people looking down on them based on their economic circumstance, etc.).
It's becoming more difficult for the have-nots to become have-somethings. I imagine that most would just like to be able to provide for their families without having to rely on government assistance just to keep from becoming homeless.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:10AM
Sounds like your hypothetical people made a hell of a lot of shitty decisions and are having to live with the consequences. I approve of this. People should have to live with the consequences of their choices. The state exists to secure our liberty not to hold our hands cradle to grave.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:16AM
Sounds like your hypothetical people made a hell of a lot of shitty decisions and are having to live with the consequences. I approve of this. People should have to live with the consequences of their choices. The state exists to secure our liberty not to hold our hands cradle to grave.
Absolutely. These people [google.com] especially deserve everything they get, don't they?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:38PM
Except for the minor detail that what we call "poverty" in America is roughly European middle class, and top-tier for the rest of the world.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday November 12 2015, @08:07PM
Except for the minor detail that what we call "poverty" in America is roughly European middle class, and top-tier for the rest of the world.
You're lying to yourself [wikipedia.org] and others [wikipedia.org], friend.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 12 2015, @08:28PM
Right...
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor [heritage.org]
As one of the bottom 1%, I can attest to this.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Thursday November 12 2015, @10:49PM
Based on that very page, we can conclude that:
20% of poor households do not have A/C
over 25% do not own a car/truck
half do not own a personal computer
57% do not have internet access
and 17% of poor families do not have enough food to eat
The other side of the coin looks very different, doesn't it?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 12 2015, @11:49PM
If you neglect to control for those who live where A/C is redundant to the climate, and who use a cellphone instead of a PC and internet access... as to "not enough food" I have yet to see any starving poor in the U.S., and aside from having never broken the poverty line myself, I've lived in some very poor areas. Just today I was reading another study, tho, which noted that this was a self-reported stat and when broken down into food types, basically translated as "at least, we don't get to eat as much expensive junk food as we'd like".
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Friday November 13 2015, @04:11AM
I was actually referring to the different emotional reaction people have to the 2 stats, depending on phrasing
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday November 13 2015, @04:28AM
Good point.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @01:24AM
20% of poor households do not have A/C
Twenty percent of poor household don't have their own Anonymous Coward? This is an outrage!
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:48AM
Yup, it was really stupid of them to be born into poor uneducated minority families. Serves them right. Wrath begets wealth and poverty begets poverty. The world is not nearly as economically mobile as you seem to think.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:52AM
*wealth begets wealth.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:35AM
[QUOTE]If an utterly unskilled teenager can do your job with little to no training, you should be paid like it.[/QUOTE]
Agreed, unfortunately there are precious few opportunities to do anything "better" even for people who have skills.
I'm paid well, have valuable widely applicable skills, but in our job market I have found myself unemployed 3 times in the last 25 years for spells lasting a total of 8 months. During those job searches, I "couldn't get arrested," no one would hire me at any price because the jobs just weren't there. If I desperately needed money during those spells, I would have had to fall to near minimum wage employment to get it. My unemployment checks actually paid better than full-time minimum wage, barely, while they lasted.
People who are railroaded into low paying jobs can find it very hard to get out, much harder than simply finding work while unemployed. So, are you a bigger problem to society if you take a job that doesn't use your valuable skills, or if you take no job at all? Is either your fault? Should you uproot your family (and possibly working spouse) every time jobs fitting your specific skillset leave town?
I think a huge part of the solution can be found in remote work (via network connection), but we will need better global economic parity before that can work well in places like Europe and North America. Until that happens, minimum wage looks like a king's ransom compared to the competition on the other side of the globe.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:35PM
Especially if you want unskilled teenagers to be able to find jobs at all. Unskilled teenagers (still mostly supported by their parents, so hardly a family's breadwinner) staff the majority of these positions. So yeah, let's raise the wage beyond the value of the employee, and see how many of these unskilled entry-level positions remain. I'd guess about 30% go away, coincidentally the same as the increase in costs.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.