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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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:58AM
"In Los Angeles, the local protests are organized by Service Employees International Union"
You betcha. Make sure you pay your union dues, slaves.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:21AM
Someone told me that's a communist front. I haven't checked it out for myself. Hmmm - http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6535 [discoverthenetworks.org]
Whatever - skilled craftsmen in much of the country can't get fifteen bucks. Sorry, people, but if a journeyman carpenter can't get that much, WTF makes you think some kid bagging up hamburgers and fries should get that much?
If the minimum wage goes up to $15, a couple things are going to happen. The purchasing power of the dollar is going to go down, just as it always does after a minimum wage increase. Your $15 may or may not remain equal to the purchasing power that you now have - probably not though.
Companies are going to look at decreasing labor costs by reducing the labor force. Maybe McDonald's can't do much outsourcing, but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5NvgOjRuVw [youtube.com]
(Score: 1) by ataradov on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:36AM
That's a cool machine and I'd rather deal with it than with McD employee. If they could also make an app for this, no machine will be needed.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:50AM
Interesting. I'm an asocial person. I can take or leave the employee, but I generally put up with him/her because he's got to make a living somehow.
Having a preference for the machine seems anti-social to me. That is, you want your wants and needs met, but to hell with the wants and needs of anyoen else.
Social people, on the other hand, would much rather deal with a person.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:16AM
Agreed.
The older I get the easier it is to put up with the kid taking my order, having trouble with the cash register, forgetting the ketchup.
They are only newbies once, and a few kind words gets them past the moment. I got no beef with newbies. I was one many times over my life.
They are there working. They are trying. Cut them some slack.
You'll get better service on your next visit.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:24AM
What do you expect? "I got mine...fuck you!" is the mission statement of the Tea Party specifically and the Right in general.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:21PM
That's because they treat their employees inhumanely and want them to act like predictable robots saying the same stuff to produce a commodity product. Its a hell of an awful way for a human to live. So replacing them with an app or a robot won't change your interaction, at least from the MBA perspective.
"Real service providers" know what you want and make it your way. Not like a cheesy commercial. I go to my local flakey granola hippie health food store for the smoothie, not for the witty marxist banter, but because the lady behind the counter knows what I like in a smoothie and she makes it just right. Yes I know smoothies are just a carb punch to the gut but F it if I'm going to eat something unhealthy it will be something that tastes extremely good. This would make a business exec at McDonalds shit a brick because he's in the business of selling identical commodities not custom products. I don't think you can replace the smoothie lady with an app.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:03PM
I don't think you can replace the smoothie lady with an app.
Unfortunately, too many people now, if they do not demand, at least expect the convenience and speed of an app. It is going beyond fast food as well, with people even being able to order their food before they get to a restaurant. I suppose the old fashion social interactions are gone anyway, just look at how many people sit in a restaurant staring at their phones...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:45AM
not that old myth. yes some mild inflation happens but that is a good thing for growth, especially since more money gets circulated downward
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:49AM
WTF makes you think some kid bagging up hamburgers and fries should get that much?
Because people demand burgers in convenient locations nowhere near where that kid can afford to live and having him live on foodstamps means we're paying for it anyway. Oh, and greater local spending power means more customers for these burger joints.
Companies are looking at decreasing labor costs by reducing the labor force no matter what happens.
FTFY.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Informative) by soylentsandor on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:09PM
Oh, and greater local spending power means more customers for these burger joints.
Exactly. This is what Henry Ford understood a century ago [wikipedia.org].
It worked back then, there's no reason it couldn't work today.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:23PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 5, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:02AM
> Companies are going to look at decreasing labor costs by reducing the labor force.
Until companies look at reducing labor costs by reducing the pay of upper management, I have zero sympathy for their wails that they will go bankrupt if minimum wage is raised, or that they are taxed too heavily. CEO pay is so outrageous that, yes, it is enough money to give a big raise to everyone working for minimum pay. They will never convince me that they pay people fairly when the CEO makes far more than a mere 12 times or even 40 times the lowest paid worker. It's hundreds of times more, and that's what has to change. A few years back, a company I once worked for pushed their CEO out. They gave him a hell of a big golden parachute. He got $52 million, 16% of the company's net worth!!! Don't know which of the morons on the board went for that scandalously favorable contract, but wow, just wow.
As for McDonald's, the current CEO, this Steve Easterbrook, will earn $1.1 million, and that's just the base salary, that's not counting bonuses and the like. With all the extras, his compensation is over $10 million. That equates to over $5000/hour. If the lowest rate they pay workers is raised to $15/hour, and CEO pay is not changed, the CEO is still making at least 333 times as much.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:34PM
I agree - CEO's are overpaid, astronomically. That needs to be curbed.
I wasn't expecting "sympathy" for the corporations, I was just pointing out the facts of life. Mickey D has gotten used to exploiting people at a certain cost, and if those costs go up, Mickey is going to look harder at automation. That's just the way it is.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:30PM
Management uses change and events as pretext for their agendas, which, sadly, are them first. They know very well that they are going to automate more and employ less, regardless. Humans cannot compete with machines at simple, repetitive, automatable tasks. Lowering the minimum wage will not save any of those jobs, and suggesting otherwise is little more than a cynical attempt to manipulate and scare the public into accepting lower minimum wages.
The money saved by beating down pay tends to go to upper management in the form of even bigger bonuses, for reducing labor costs of course. That's what Crandall, CEO of American Airlines, did many years ago. He persuaded the unions to accept lower pay. Argued eloquently that the survival of the airline (and their jobs) depended on getting costs down, and they agreed. Then he was awarded a huge bonus, that was pretty close to the amount of money saved. The employees and unions were furious when they found out, as they did shortly after. There was even a political cartoon about it, showing Crandall at a podium giving a speech about labor costs, while reaching into a cookie jar he was holding behind his back. "Watch what we do, not what we say." But that's so typical. Could hardly have better demonstrated the routine greed, selfishness, and hypocrisy of upper management. They need keepers or something, to stop them from behaving so foolishly. They're like Icarus, flying too close to the sun.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday November 11 2015, @06:58PM
The CEO of Target Canada did an EPIC FAIL, face palmed out of Canada and got $61 million U.S. for his troubles!
Fail = $61 million.
(Whereas for me, i'm sure Fail = fired).
Things are WAY OUT OF WHACK... this is the kind of thing that makes the world a horrible place. Hard-working people with families can't get by vs. People fail utterly and get a huge payoff.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:07PM
The CEO of Target Canada did an EPIC FAIL, face palmed out of Canada and got $61 million U.S. for his troubles!
But, but, CEO's need to be paid that much because they face all the risk!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:04PM
Wish i could face risk like that...
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday November 13 2015, @02:56AM
You and me both. Knowing that no matter how badly you screw up short of ending up in jail, you are set for life. I guess the risk involves become insane with arrogance.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:19AM
Someone told me that's a communist front. I haven't checked it out for myself. Hmmm -
Wow! Communist Front! Kinda hard to be that anymore, since there is no Communist Back? Why not just say "Communist", or "Economic Democracy", or working class. Sometimes, Mr. Runaway1956, I bethinks meself that thou are in the 1956, with your pal Congressman Joe McCarthy.
Whatever - skilled craftsmen in much of the country can't get fifteen bucks. Sorry, people, but if a journeyman carpenter can't get that much, WTF makes you think some kid bagging up hamburgers and fries should get that much?
Pounding nails and using a cut-off saw is that much more skilled than flipping burgers and practicing proper food hygiene? Come back to talk to us when you are a master carpenter, or a master chef, or, of course, a master baiter, you troller! Had me going! Thought it actually was a minnow!
If the minimum wage goes up to $15, a couple things are going to happen. The purchasing power of the dollar is going to go down, just as it always does after a minimum wage increase. Your $15 may or may not remain equal to the purchasing power that you now have - probably not though.
Actual facts do not agree with your sucking up to capitalists and Paul Ryan presumptions. Purchasing power goes down when the Fed increases the interest rate on T-Bills. You ought to know that. And besides, it is not at all about "minimum wage", it is about a "liveable wage". Why should the rest of us subsidize companies who underpay their workers, just because government will pick up the costs of food, shelter, and medical care? I say, cut them off. Minimun wage, $25/hour, and if you do not pay this, your employees will be ineligible for any government assistance, and I mean any. Work for Walmart? No Social Security for you, gramps! Work for MickyD's? No medicare, even under your parents plan, and definitely no Obama care. Of course, if you quit these slaver jobs, then we will support you. But not your employer. If a company cannot afford for its workers to live, it deserves to die. With extreme, and communist, prejudice.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:36AM
What about the poor unemployed corps?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:39AM
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:30PM
"Pounding nails and using a cut-off saw is that much more skilled than flipping burgers and practicing proper food hygiene? Come back to talk to us when you are a master carpenter, or a master chef, or, of course, a master baiter, you troller! Had me going! Thought it actually was a minnow!"
You are describing a third class carpenter's HELPER. I specifically said "journeyman carpenter". Despite the fact that you are being a wise guy, I'm here to inform you that a MASTER carpenter doesn't get $20 around these parts, unless he owns his own business. We don't all live in the big cities on the left or right coast.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:58AM
If increasing minimum wage is what causes purchasing power to go down, then why has my purchasing power gone down so much without any minimum wage increases to cause it?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:37PM
He's assuming minimum wage caused inflation but ignored the fact that it happened right around the time wives started joining the workforce. Suddenly lots of households became two-income and not long after the price of houses shot upwards.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 4, Touché) by K_benzoate on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:30AM
Exactly. What a bunch of retarded sheep. I'm an enlightened rugged individualist so I wisely chose not to join the liberty-crushing union. Now excuse me, I have to go spend my Wal-Mart scrip at the company store before it expires!
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bziman on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:07AM
There are so many fast food workers in the United States, that thousands or tens of thousands of them probably call in sick every day. If "hundreds" are striking, chances are no one is actually going to notice. They'd need a hundred thousand to strike to inconvenience anyone enough to notice. And if they unionized, they could probably organize that. But the sorts of people capable of that level of organization and coordination probably aren't the ones that need a raise to $15 an hour.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:06AM
You are of course 100% correct.
Unfortunately the PR war on Unions was so successful it has become second nature for almost all americans to consider them evil and have mumbling about mafioso as a reflexive response.
But this is not an issue restricted to fast food workers or even low wage workers. The neo-con dystopian dream has always been for a large supply of desperate, disposable workers willing to do anything just for the privilege of being employed for just enough to keep their bodily functions going while they are at work. Coupled of course with a "captured democracy" in which voting means little so this never changes.
They may not articulate it that way, but if you look into their policies that is exactly what they have been aiming for. Of the rich first world countries I am familiar with, america has progressed furthest towards this aim.
Just wait until robots start taking over jobs en masse, things will progress very quickly at that point.
(Score: 0, Troll) by frojack on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:26AM
The neo-con dystopian dream has always been for a large supply of desperate, disposable workers willing to do anything just for the privilege of being employed for just enough to keep their bodily functions going while they are at work.
Such drivel. Even Marx never stooped to that level of hate mongering.
Nobody has ever wanted that, because such people are more troublesome than well paid loyal workers.
You just can't keep yourself from overstating your case to cartoonish levels, can you.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:50AM
Sounds like what is happening now in foreign made products. And kind of happening here.
Its not like the working poor want to start a class war that hadn't already been started by crony capitalists.
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:40AM
Outsourcing to 3rd world countries that are already part of this dystopia is part of the process, not separate.
Outsourcing is not as efficient as producing in your target market and there are many minefields. So it is better to subjugate your own.
What has not really been thought through until only just recently (e.g. recent WTO and OECD reports) is that as the portion of people living on incomes with no disposable cash increases, the economic activity companies and countries rely on shrinks rapidly.
The fact that this is some sort of recent revelation to modern economists betrays the deep bias and "head up ass" syndrome that has pervaded much the field. (NB: Not everyone of course)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:52AM
Marx wasn't around anymore when neocons emerged... the behavior of these cut throat industrialists is indeed surreal and disgusting.
But it's also true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by buswolley on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:01AM
Captains of Industry and the Poor
http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/industrial-age-america-robber-barons-and-captains-industry [neh.gov]
This did not come to America with the rise of "neocons"
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:01PM
This did not come to America with the rise of "neocons"
No, but it has been accelerating rapidly since then.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:14AM
I thought that page was vandalised:
The incentive to deregulate comes from the consumer who wishes to pay a competitive rate for items or services, rather than one set by the government often at the behest of businesses or unions.
So consumers feel that prices are not competitive if everyone has to adhere to the same rules, and businesses are often the ones in favour of / profiting from regulation?
Yeah, right.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:59AM
I would argue but it would serve zero purpose as it is obvious what you are.
Reality makes my argument for me.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @06:23AM
A Neoconservative likes his country to spend a bunch on weapons and to have a giant military in order to project power.
The term "Chickenhawk" often has significant overlap.
"World policeman" is one of their favorite concepts.
The term you are looking for is Neoliberal:
Gov't regulation is bad; unregulated ("free") trade is good; privatize everything; race-to-the-bottom economics; things only happen because of the rich (ownership class).
It's not exactly an intuitive term.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Insightful) by compro01 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @06:53AM
The overlap between the politicians espousing neoconservative ideology and the ones espousing neoliberal ideology is so near complete in the USA, UK, and Canada that they're basically synonymous.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Wednesday November 11 2015, @06:57AM
Nope:
neoconservative
adjective
1.relating to or denoting a return to a modified form of a traditional viewpoint, in particular a political ideology characterized by an emphasis on free-market capitalism and an interventionist foreign policy.
In this case the tradition being returned to us one of robber barons, lords and peasants in poverty with an almost non-existent middle class.
This is very much on the way there in a big way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:01PM
You're absolutely right. However, those in government and the corporate interests don't seem to realize this - or they don't care. In the UK there's a policy to force those on unemployment benefits to do unpaid work or be denied their benefits. This is a classic example of those at the top not caring whether the workers resent their jobs. The ironic thing is someone who hates their job can do a lot of damage and likely end up costing the economy more than what their basic unemployment benefit would be.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:59PM
Unfortunately the PR war on Unions was so successful it has become second nature for almost all americans to consider them evil and have mumbling about mafioso as a reflexive response.
This sort of thing is easy to judge. If a union (or any other group) infringes anyone else's right to life, liberty, or property (with or without government sanction / assistance), then what they have done is evil. Otherwise, they are well within their rights.
Unfortunately there has been a very successful PR war to give unions government help to infringe the rights of others in some circumstances in some areas.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:47PM
The entire ridiculous and quite obviously false premise here is that unions are one thing.
They are not.
They vary wildly and are very much dependant on their membership and leadership.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:02PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:35AM
Tell that to the anti-union crowd.
They do not see it that way. (although they are oblivious to the fact that is what they doing)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:07AM
> They'd need a hundred thousand to strike to inconvenience anyone enough to notice.
And yet the strike was reported on all the major nightly news shows as well as all the 24-news channels and hundreds of newish websites.
Looks like they might actually know more about how this stuff works than you do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:23AM
I wish that The Center for American Progress had updated this concept this week.
The page contains a 647kB animated GIF that shows the number of cities where actions have occurred between Autumn 2012 and Spring 2014. [thinkprogress.org]
The final count then was 150 cities.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:21AM
They got kiosks for taking orders and machines for making burgers. Just throw 'em the damn bone.
I've also got a few points I mention everytime this comes up:
- I think they should get the raise, but raising the minimum wage shouldn't come at the expense of pushing the middle-class down and then calling it all "the new normal," which is what I think is going on.
- See comment about automation above.
- I've read that some who have receive the raise have asked their bosses for cuts to their hours so that they can continue to receive government assistance.
But what if fast-food is automated away? Well, I think it'd be hilarious if all the disgruntled laid-off fast-food workers trashed the kiosks and burger-making machinery. Now THAT's an engineering problem to solve. Food terminals would have to be like armored ATMS and that still wouldn't stop angry folks from pissing in the food slots. Any ideas on how to solve that problem?
(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.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:32AM
Pissing in the food slots? Just build the damned things so that it requires more than a 1 1/2 inch hose to reach. The kind of people who would do that won't have the necessary equipment.
I seldom go to a fast food place anyway. Processed, predigested imitation food, for the most part. I'd much rather pay a dollar or five more, and visit a real restaurant. At that price, it's usually still not great food, but at least it's real food.
(Score: 2) by black6host on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:05AM
What, you've never pissed up? Damn, I thought that was something everybody tried at some point in their life. Either young or drunk... It's like writing your name in the snow :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:27AM
My mom shot a picture of me once, back arched backward, pissing a neat arch right over my head.
I guess I was three or four.
Gee, I wish I could still do that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:38PM
That's one hell of a classy mum you got.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:43AM
Hire three minimum-wage "security" guards (8 hour shifts, 24 hour coverage) and park them in a McDonald's uniform near the kiosks. They can browse the Internet on their phones for all it matters. Just being there will stop almost every casual vandal. Call the cops if someone starts tampering with food or destroying property.
I want some kind of basic income to be enacted, so automating away meaningless jobs is a high priority for me because it'll increase the amount of technologically displaced workers who will agitate for such a system. Humans shouldn't be making chips and milkshakes, and if that's all they're good for then we're all better off just paying them to sit home and watch Netflix, and occasionally spend money on other things to keep the whole project of civilization moving for the rest of us who care a bit more about the deep questions. And, of course, anyone is welcome to join that latter camp--and with a basic income there's virtually nothing stopping you if you have the interest.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:28AM
There are already robot security guards. No need to waste money on unreliable teenagers.
Problem is, who's left to buy the food?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:03AM
That's where the Basic Income comes in.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:11PM
Install cameras, outsource watching the cams to India or mturk for "contractors" to watch them for pennies on the dollar of local security guard wages.
Already being done, so I'm told. If you have sufficient internet upstream to give patrons internet access while they eat "food" then you can use the unused bandwidth to shove cam footage, plus or minus customers trying to torrent stuff or DDOS zombie participants it works pretty well.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:56AM
This is exactly why we absolutely need a Basic Income pretty soon. Before long, most of the low-end jobs are going to be automated away. There's simply too many unskilled people for the amount of unskilled work available. The typical advice is for people to get an education, but our education system is a shambles, and many of these people aren't really capable of anything higher-level than this anyway. And finally, what other higher-level work is there, even if they could be trained for it? You only need so many robot repairpeople. And the last thing our society needs is more salespeople to sell us robot-made stuff, or more marketing dweebs, or other such parasitic jobs.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:21AM
I hear that Grishnakh isn't capable of anything higher-level, for example. Grishnakh needs a basic income now to avoid eating several fingers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:26AM
Then stop telling them to go to college and send them somewhere they'll learn something useful.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:39AM
Iraq?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:16AM
Possibly. You're less likely to find someone sitting on their ass playing XBox all day there, so there're probably a few skilled people who could use an apprentice.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:07PM
Depends on your MOS. I have aheard of some who never leave the base and have lots of free time to dick around and yea thy do have laptops and consoles. Many of these were assigned to FOB's or forward operating bases. Those people were colloquially called fobbits.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:59PM
Its an interesting generation gap. A quarter century ago I was a REMF. In the olden days there WAS a rear echelon, you see, whereas now a days everyone is an IED or suicide bomber target, so the RE part of REMF no longer means anything.
Ironic today is veterans day, I was talking to a MUCH younger vet who recently got out and almost all the slang and racial epitaphs have changed, its almost a communication breakdown.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:04AM
Then stop telling them to go to college and send them somewhere they'll learn something useful.
What would that be, I wonder? Not everyone can be a theoretical physicist.
As others said, it's often easier to put them on basic income (a.k.a. social security) and forget about their existence. However this creates a few problems. First, it is psychologically damaging; then it builds a ghetto of unwanted, unusable people who are left to live however they want (and one doesn't need to think for more than 30 seconds to imagine how it will end up; hint: you'd need a wall.) Also, those social security monies (or just food/clothes) have to come from somewhere. Nice if you have robots that look like gods to you. But in the meantime - which may last a century - this is not going to be a stable solution.
(Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:31AM
Get them hooked on mmorpgs. They'll waste their whole lives sitting in one spot, be unlikely to reproduce, and be happy the whole time.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:34AM
This is how we will all get lost in the matrix, imho.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:43AM
Speaking of which, Aion is free on Steam now. Graphics are pretty, character appearance is very customizable, and you get wings! I blew way too much of my weekend on it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:40AM
Or perhaps they'll write the next Harry Potter (love it or hate it, it brought billions into the economy), make sought after handmade goods, etc.
The key is to make the income actually high enough to actually get by.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:13AM
Skills not education, tftp. You can be dumb as a sack of bricks and become competently skilled at welding or any number of other skilled trades.
As for "basic income"? The only way I'd ever agree to even a dime is if anyone taking it lost their right to vote until they got off of it. If we're going to support them like children, they don't get the rights adults get.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aclarke on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:28PM
There are different types of intelligence. Have you ever tried welding? Are you any good at it? "Skilled trades" are called "skilled" because they require ... skill. Welding isn't just moving a couple things across some metal. Here in Canada to get your tickets as a welder you actually have to go to college and learn a fair amount. Maybe you don't need to know astrophysics or Persian literature, but it does require some brains, as well as the ability to make good decisions on the fly.
As for basic income, I don't think you're looking at it in the right way. I'll start in no particular order.
- The current system is broken. The middle class is being decimated, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer. I hope you see a problem with this.
- If you look at why basic income can't work, start challenging those suppositions and assume that those problems and attitudes CAN be changed. Start looking for ways to change the system for the better, instead of assuming all those impediments have to stay the same.
- There are many people who are employed who probably are overall a drain on their employers. They're unmotivated, lazy, dumb, burnt out, or maybe just stuck in the wrong sort of job for their temperament because they need to pay the bills. Is it such a bad idea to to free the workplace from this sort of person? It leaves the rest able to do their jobs, and it also opens up opportunities for others who may be looking for those positions themselves.
- Many of those who are currently employed in the wrong place will go on to be productive in other ways. Perhaps they'll do a better job raising their children. Perhaps they'll look after their elderly parents, go plant a garden, clean up their neighbourhood, or do something else productive. The problem with financial capitalism is that it really only rewards jobs that can be monetized. A capitalistic society doesn't financially value taking care of our elders, so there's little financial motivation to do so. Universal basic income frees up people to work on making society better. Ultimately, a healthier and better-functioning society is a benefit to all of us.
- Some people won't work on making society better. They'll sit around in their underpants at home, smoking weed and watching Ow my Balls. Guess what a lot of those people are already doing. Guess how they're being paid to do that. Government social assistance and/or crime. If you're already paying people to sit around and do nothing through government programs, how about doing it through a government program that might actually be more efficient?
- Some of the people who are going to sit around doing nothing are already sitting around doing nothing in organizations all around the world. Do you really want to keep working with them if there's another alternative?
- As alluded above, there are already a myriad of social programmes meant to look after teenage mums, kids in school, grandparents, blue-eyed amputees between the age of 45-49, whatever. Trying to make a whole lot of programmes for a bunch of special interests is an inefficient way of looking after human needs. One program, combined with a simplified tax structure and other changes aimed at streamlining the fact that you're going to start looking at peoples' economic and social needs in a different way, may actually cost less than you might think.
- You might disagree with this, but in my opinion all humans deserve basic dignity. It's not right that some of us are getting richer and more comfortable while others in our same country are dying on the street because they lack the basic care they need. This is the case whether they're mentally or physically healthy or sick, lazy or hard-working, young or old. I don't want to be the one who, directly or indirectly, denies at least an opportunity to someone because, for example, they're mentally handicapped, bipolar, or whatever, and can't properly hold onto a job.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:01PM
Yup and not especially. My welds hold and every now and then I'll whip out a pretty one but not consistently enough to get paid for it.
Skills are not intelligence though. Having skills has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence is simply the ability to learn. For instance, I learned how to weld properly (enough to do it, not enough to be paid to do it) very quickly. I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. I just don't have the motor control to do so. That's a muscle memory issue not an intelligence issue.
Now the knowledge that comes along with being a badass welder, I'm not downplaying that. It's just that with enough effort, it's something that most people can learn if they put enough time and effort into it. It's valuable, specialized knowledge but it's not rocket surgery.
I absolutely do not. The rich getting richer does not make the poor get poorer. Wealth is not finite. Wealth, both personal and universal, is limited only by the human mind's ability to create. You and you alone (the evils of involuntary taxation aside) determine how much wealth you will create and how your wealth will be allocated.
Example: I code for SN here. Every bit of code I create is wealth because it, hopefully, is capable of making life a little bit easier or otherwise better for everyone who comes to the site. I do this for free because I find enough value returned to myself by having a good site and keeping my coding chops sharp. I receive value, all the other users receive value, the company receives value in the form of cash from subs, our hosting company receives value from us paying our bills, and so on and so forth. Wealth was thus produced from my mind and has added to the total sum of wealth in the world.
Currency? That's simply one means of keeping score of how much wealth you have stored for easy exchange and it's not even a very good one.
Do you have a car? A TV? A computer? How many mobile devices? The ability to instantly communicate with anyone on the planet? Central heat and air? Hot water? A refrigerator? The poor of today are insanely wealthy in comparison to the top 1% of a hundred years ago or even thirty years ago. The poor in the US are even a damn sight more wealthy than the poor of our neighbor Mexico. Relatively speaking, the US has no poor and I'm really getting sick of hearing that I'm a bad person if my heart doesn't bleed for them.
Merging all programs into "basic income"? Fantastic idea. Still with the you do not get to vote stipulation. If you are a drain on the nation, you should not get to choose its direction.
All humans are welcome to basic dignity. Dignity is not something you are given though; dignity is something you start out with and can either choose to keep or choose to drop in favor of comfort. They throw dignity out the window the first time they accept a handout. That makes them a bum and bums are without dignity.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:51PM
"Wealth is not finite. Wealth, both personal and universal, is limited only by the human mind's ability to create."
True (as with Julian Simon); however, a society made of humans will not work well if a few (greedy, unenlightened) humans have 99.999%+ of everything and so can buy the laws in their favor, where said laws can include imprisoning all the rest (including you) for, say, posting on the internet without an appropriate license.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license [wikipedia.org]
Or, for that matter, reading the internet without a license.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom [wikipedia.org]
Or reading anything else for that matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Read [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 [wikipedia.org]
See also:
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA [youtube.com]
And also:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html [pdfernhout.net]
"My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws banning all free software like GNU/Linux and OpenOffice after our economy began its current recession, which started, how many times must I remind everyone, only coincidentally with the shutdown of Napster, that we would be in far worse shape then we are today. RIAA has confidently assured me that if independent artists were allowed to release works without using their compensation system and royalty rates, music CD sales would be even lower than their recent inexplicably low levels. The MPAA has also detailed how historically the movie industry was nearly destroyed in the 1980s by the VCR until that too was banned and all so called fair use exemptions eliminated. So clearly, these successes with software, content, and hardware indicate the value of a similar approach to law.
There are many reasons for the value of proprietary law. You all know them since you have been taught them in school since kindergarten as part of your standardized education. They are reflected in our most fundamental beliefs, such as sharing denies the delight of payment and cookies can only be brought into the classroom if you bring enough to sell to everyone. But you are always free to eat them all yourself of course! [audience chuckles knowingly]. But I think it important to repeat such fundamental truths now as they form the core of all we hold dear in this great land.
First off, we all know our current set of laws requires a micropayment each time a U.S. law is discussed, referenced, or applied by any person anywhere in the world. This financial incentive has produced a large amount of new law over the last decade. This body of law is all based on a core legal code owned by that fine example of American corporate capitalism at its best, the MicroSlaw Corporation. ..."
But even if you don't buy any of that, studies show more egalitarian societies tend to have happier wealthy people. Also, other studies show most families lose their great wealth within three generations, so what's the point?
Given the enclosure and privatization of most the land by the government (to enforce land rights), one can argue peopel have a right to soem of the fruits of the land by right of citizenship as part-owners in that national enterprise of enclosing the commons.
Also, all humans share in our collective cultural inheritance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit [wikipedia.org]
"Douglas disagreed with classical economists who recognised only three factors of production: land, labour and capital. While Douglas did not deny the role of these factors in production, he considered the “cultural inheritance of society” as the primary factor. He defined cultural inheritance as the knowledge, techniques and processes that have accrued to us incrementally from the origins of civilization (i.e. progress). Consequently, mankind does not have to keep "reinventing the wheel". "We are merely the administrators of that cultural inheritance, and to that extent the cultural inheritance is the property of all of us, without exception.[8] Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx claimed that labour creates all value. While Douglas did not deny that all costs ultimately relate to labour charges of some sort (past or present), he denied that the present labour of the world creates all wealth. Douglas carefully distinguished between value, costs and prices. He claimed that one of the factors resulting in a misdirection of thought in terms of the nature and function of money was economists' near-obsession about values and their relation to prices and incomes.[9] While Douglas recognized "value in use" as a legitimate theory of values, he also considered values as subjective and not capable of being measured in an objective manner. Thus he rejected the idea of the role of money as a standard, or measure, of value. Douglas believed that money should act as a medium of communication by which consumers direct the distribution of production."
See also:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways [psychologytoday.com]
"On the basis of such observations, Christopher Boehm proposed the theory that hunter-gatherers maintained equality through a practice that he labeled reverse dominance. In a standard dominance hierarchy--as can be seen in all of our ape relatives (yes, even in bonobos)--a few individuals dominate the many. In a system of reverse dominance, however, the many act in unison to deflate the ego of anyone who tries, even in an incipient way, to dominate them.
According to Boehm, hunter-gatherers are continuously vigilant to transgressions against the egalitarian ethos. Someone who boasts, or fails to share, or in any way seems to think that he (or she, but usually it's a he) is better than others is put in his place through teasing, which stops once the person stops the offensive behavior. If teasing doesn't work, the next step is shunning. The band acts as if the offending person doesn't exist. That almost always works. Imagine what it is like to be completely ignored by the very people on whom your life depends. No human being can live for long alone. The person either comes around, or he moves away and joins another band, where he'd better shape up or the same thing will happen again. In his 1999 book, Hierarchy in the Forest, Boehm presents very compelling evidence for his reverse dominance theory."
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:58PM
tl;dr
Also, don't make arguments to me with other people's words. Especially not in video format. A quote or two is fine but I'm not going to read fifty pages or watch half an hour of people spouting idiocy for the sake of an Internet argument.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:10PM
There are different types of intelligence. Have you ever tried welding? Are you any good at it? "Skilled trades" are called "skilled" because they require ... skill. Welding isn't just moving a couple things across some metal. Here in Canada to get your tickets as a welder you actually have to go to college and learn a fair amount.
Unfortunately, the majority of the welding jobs have already been automated.
We're just an effective pipe-laying machine away from the rest going...
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:25AM
Ever been in a Bobcat (skid-steer) factory? I got to see one and there were hardly any humans in it. That was in 2001.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:20PM
then it builds a ghetto of unwanted, unusable people who are left to live however they want (and one doesn't need to think for more than 30 seconds to imagine how it will end up; hint: you'd need a wall.)
Its a racial / cultural thing. You give everyone retirement at 65 and they in general don't turn too deviant. Or you've basically described lower than tenure level academia, they have occasional issues but nothing too bad. This is also basically a bad K-12 school district, nothing too awful happens there, and if you take away mandatory physical proximity and mandatory insane guards (aka teachers) and insane guard management, K12 education isn't that bad of an experience.
One argument I've always heard about social security style basic income and Medicare style socialized medicine is its not rocket surgery to just lower the minimum application age by two years for every calendar year or five years or however fast or slow you need it culturally and budgetar-ily.
Long into the future, plus or minus civilization collapse, we're still going to have both medicare and social security and endless media battles about how we need or don't need socialized medicine and basic income. Of course the general population need not be told that in the old days you qualified for SS at 67 instead of when you got your high school diploma, or that you had to be 65 to get medicare in the old days and now you get it the day you roll off your parents income tax statement as a dependent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by buswolley on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:06AM
(1) There is office/legal/management work.
(2) There is research/engineering work.
(3) There is skilled labor (e.g., in manufacturing, construction)
(4) There is "unskilled" labor.
In America there are jobs for (1), (2), and (4).
see the problem?
subicular junctures
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:41AM
Exactly. I say this from a pinko-commie-lefty standpoint, but the whole $15/hr thing is a bandaid for the real problem which is a complete lack of decent paying blue-collar work in America due to the fact that we exported it all. McDonalds should be a training-wheels job for high school or college kids -- something to learn about work and earn a little beer money. The fact that people are actually trying to live on these types of crap jobs is the problem, not that they pay crap.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:53AM
They're not trying to live on it by choice, they're trying to live on it because they have no other choice if they want to live, as there are no other jobs.
(Score: 4, Touché) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:54AM
That's kind of exactly what I said.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:35PM
With all due respect to you and AC I think what AC might have been getting at is there is a lot of Orwellian doublespeak and they're not "trying to live" they are "actually living" off minimum wage and its not "off minimum wage" but "off minimum wage and a ton of govt benefits like EBT etc".
So the hard core marxists, never seen a government program they don't want to expand, all want the minimum wage to stay at $7.25 or heck even lower it back to $3.35 because the government can take $20 in tax revenue and national debt and provide the employee with $5 of food stamps etc, meaning the cat ladies in the government get to spend the delta of $15 on accounting and paper pushing and salaries for social workers and all that crap.
Meanwhile the hard core capitalists want to eliminate socialism and have a fair and free market, so they want a minimum wage of $15/hr and get the government out of their employees lives. They find it offensive that someone like me, who buys nothing from McDonalds or Walmart, is having the crap taxed out of me so the .gov can pay the employees living expenses instead of their theoretical employer McD or walmart. Why should, say, the CEO of (insert your favorite real restaurant here) be happy that he's personally being taxed so that his competition doesn't have to pay a fair wage so the .gov can help his competition undercut his own real restaurant?
In the endless discussion of basic income, I think we're missing the forest for the trees that what is actually being rolled out in the united states is a new communist system of serfdom. You have no rights anymore and have to pretend to work a crap job for crap pay, but the .gov will pay the balance for your food, housing, medical care, cell phone, all that stuff. Its a new lifestyle model. Its been in progress for a couple decades and expands by a couple million people every year in the USA. Eventually we'll all work for minimum wage, which won't provide even a tenth of what it costs to actually live, but that's OK because we'll all be wards of the state. Note how this dovetails nicely with other government policies like not providing services or benefits to people without drug tests or with drug convictions, sure you can try to live "in the free market without government support" but if everyone is a ward of the government under the new socialism, you won't be able to survive. Then the .gov can implement endless social engineering on its "freeloaders" or "wards of the state". Expect all kinds of behavior codes, weird mixtures of neopuritan christianity vs SJW signalling, etc. On the positive side the economy looks ready for collapse and during the hyperinflation getting literal government cheese for all and McJobs for all might mean the difference between coming out the other side as a unified nation vs basically a collapse and civil war. So shitty as it looks, the new lifestyle model for american peasants is none the less better than doing nothing or several of the alternatives.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:06PM
So the hard core marxists... want... [stuff completely at odds with what they really want]
Meanwhile the hard core capitalists want... [stuff completely at odds with what they really want]
And NASA wants to rebuild Saturn V so it can take the green cheese away from the Moon Nazis.
Eventually we'll all work for minimum wage, which won't provide even a tenth of what it costs to actually live, but that's OK because we'll all be wards of the state.
Eventually, we'll run out of a low cost workforce globally and the competitive pressure on developed world labor will ease up. I figure that'll happen around 2050-2070, depending on what Africa does. Whether your country is on top or bottom of the pile at that time will depend in large part on the labor policies and legal infrastructure you have. A high minimum wage is a guaranteed way to have a lot of permanently unemployed and unskilled people.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:25PM
I think you're confusing what they want with weird corporate propaganda. If .com owns .gov, you're going to hear really weird nonsensical stuff from the two parties in .gov. My stuff makes sense, what the "lets boost quarterly profits" crowd says the politicians want is likely a pipe dream in the sense that it is formed completely out of large quantities of marijuana smoke.
Eventually, we'll run out of a low cost workforce globally
I donno man, the poor always reproduce the fastest leading to more poor, and for millennia whomever is the dominant empire has always been pretty good at creating new poor areas.
I kinda agree with your general outlook in that internationalization needs cheap infinite oil (which we don't have) and safe transport (no somali pirates on every coast in the world). Both trends look REALLY bad for the future. The future is containerships that can't run because of the cost of oil, which is good because every non dictatorship country and every dictatorship country not aligned with ours will pirate anything that none the less sails by. Emphasis on sails, BTW.
Africa is dead man walking. For a good laugh look at some population growth graphs showing Africa having 4 billion people by 2100 or other pure WTF. What they intend to eat and drink is carefully avoided in the discussion. Africa of the future is likely to have a lower, not higher, population than now. The Chinese are replicating parts of the western experience such as industrialization and having a great depression, and one other thing they're trying is imperialism and colonization, everyone's gotta try it once and get it out of their system, and they're trying it in Africa. So the African of the future is likely to be starved to death (aka not there) or be a Chinese immigrant along the lines of the former white output of South Africa.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:40PM
My stuff makes sense
To rehash, hard core Marxists want lower minimum wage because it decreases the power of labor. No, actually they want the other thing. Similarly, hardcore capitalists want higher minimum wage because they want higher wage costs. No, actually they want the other thing.
Before asserting that your stuff makes sense, make sure it makes sense.
Africa is dead man walking. For a good laugh look at some population growth graphs showing Africa having 4 billion people by 2100 or other pure WTF. What they intend to eat and drink is carefully avoided in the discussion. Africa of the future is likely to have a lower, not higher, population than now.
If that's true and it may be, then 2050 is closer to when wage competition eases up.
I kinda agree with your general outlook in that internationalization needs cheap infinite oil (which we don't have) and safe transport (no somali pirates on every coast in the world). Both trends look REALLY bad for the future. The future is containerships that can't run because of the cost of oil, which is good because every non dictatorship country and every dictatorship country not aligned with ours will pirate anything that none the less sails by. Emphasis on sails, BTW.
Oil isn't magically disappearing overnight, it'll just get more expensive. And shipping stuff by sea is really cheap even with more expensive oil. As to piracy, there's a fix for that, but it requires someone to get their hands dirty, say like the European powers did in the 18th and 19th centuries.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:03PM
To rehash, hard core Marxists want lower minimum wage because it decreases the power of labor. No, actually they want the other thing.
Um, OK.
I'll try some numbers. Some people like numbers. I'm cool with that.
Postulate it costs $14/hr income to live. Just stay with me here, its just a number, even if you'd prefer $30 or $3 or whatever. I just didn't want to use a variable "X" to keep the math simple, I want a nice easy number. Its sort of like a basal metabolic rate, if you eat under 1500 calories for too long you eventually die, you're burning 1500 from food or stored fat or you have genetically engineered green skin and do photosynthesis it doesn't matter you're burning 1500 to stay alive. Thats the concept here.
If the legal minimum wage is $7 then the welfare queen corporation pays $7 and the government chips in $7 worth of entitlements. No I don't want to debate the morality of entitlements in general or in specific examples or their costs. I just want easy math to get the point across. So the government being bloated and inefficient it needs to pull in like $70 worth of tax money from productive workers. So when someone eats a $5 chezeburger, it actually costs $6 to provide that burger and the government takes my money at gunpoint in the form of taxes, wastes most of it, and hands $1 my money to the worker because the workers employer is a no good Marxist commie welfare queen corporation.
If the legal minimum wage is $14, then the cheapest crappiest honest capitalist free market corporation pays all $14 of the cost of living for their human drone and the government chips in ... zilch. nothing. nada. Because this is a free market capitalist scenario not a "corporation as welfare queen" scenario. So the government being bloated and inefficient compared to the private sector and having to raise $0 for entitlement program expenses, it raises taxes of $0 ... oh wait, I'm liking this. So when someone eats a $6 chezeburger, it actually costs $6 to provide that burger and the person eating it pays the full price, not demanding that I, via the government taxes, chip in an extra buck or so. Also $70 of tax dollars not raised, means at least $70 of real economic activity, so the entire country is wealthier. Some people don't want america to be wealthy, they want america to fail, of course, we generally, unfortunately call them "leaders". So there's that problem.
So the marxists want a low minimum wage because they like higher taxation of the "right" people, employment by the .gov of cat lady types, and they like socialization of the economic system.
Meanwhile the free market capitalists want higher minimum wages because they like low taxes and the resulting economic growth and the effects of that growth, less government employed cat ladies telling them what to do, and generally feel its fairer to have people pay what stuff costs without government subsidies and also like not having to compete with competitors who are corporate welfare queens. Its just a win-win all around.
Now because .com and .gov have merged, AND because you haven't heard welfare queens squeal until you try to take away their .gov free cheese, you get endless 1984 style doublespeak about how "true scottsman" fallacy "real capitalists" want lower wages so the economy becomes ever more socialized and taxes always increase and free markets are evil and all that BS.
There are serious stock market type issues. For example, Walmart is a huge welfare queen and their entire sector is based on the idea that the government should pay about half their payroll costs. And that has certain stock price issues WRT comparison to something like IT, where the .gov doesn't chip in anything at all for your average $150K/yr software dev. So removal of corporate welfare would have some stock price impact etc.
Even more crudely, obviously walmart only has to pay millions to .gov reelection funds to get billions in payroll subsidies in the form of entitlement programs. So since they own the politicians they purchased, you can assume they're strongly against change.
You're not going to hear the whole story if you only hear the Marxist welfare queen corporation side in the multinational megacorporation controlled media.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:33AM
Mmm. Cheese. I know of a cheese stick in the fridge. I must eat it now.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by Kawumpa on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:56AM
One major problem with exporting all or almost all skilled labor to other countries is that you also lose all creativity and innovation possible in this area. So while a company might gain a short term cost advantage it sacrifices a long term competitive advantage. On aggregate an economy loses much of its middle class and economic stability. Something that we can witness in quite a few industrialised nations, the US being a prime example.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:06AM
Go call a plumber/contractor/electrician/welder and tell me that again after you've paid them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:40AM
I do my own plumbing, contracting, electrical and welding.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:41AM
I went to two years of tech school for machining and it worked out fairly well for me. I would not encourage my sons to follow in my footsteps however. It's gotten so that unless you're one of the best you're treated only a little better than a fast food worker. And yes, automation is making fast inroads on machining jobs. What employers want/need now are a small number of very skilled and experienced people to make the robots go, but there are fewer paths to develop those skills and they don't want to pay you to develop them. I'm thinking the industry is going to require mind uploading or memory copying to preserve skills and experience unless strong-enough AI can be implemented before too many of us retire or die off.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 12 2015, @04:07AM
I'm thinking the industry is going to require mind uploading or memory copying to preserve skills and experience unless strong-enough AI can be implemented before too many of us retire or die off.
No, it won't.
The skills and experience simply *won't* be preserved. The BRIC nations will reinvent this stuff and they'll preserve it, while our society looks either like Somalia or Mad Max.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @06:03AM
People who go to college/university so they can get a good job and make more money really shouldn't be there in the first place. It should be for people who are primarily interested in gaining a deep, academic understanding of the universe, not for people with petty, shallow ambitions. Encouraging all these people to go into higher education just causes the colleges and universities to dumb it down further so they can make more money and also fills the environment with people who aren't really interested in education; most colleges and universities weren't that great to begin with, so this is especially disastrous. If people want free college, we should first vastly raise the standards of all existing colleges and universities that have poor standards so as to kick out all the losers, but I am sure most would not like that.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:45AM
That would be fine if you can also convince HR departments that few jobs actually NEED college graduates rather than them claiming they need H1-Bs because there are no citizens who can do the job.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:31AM
You are conflating two different problems.
The H1-B situation needs to be addressed by giving H1-B's improved access to green cards and job switching. If they are good enough to fly halfway round the world to work for you, surely they are good enough to make a home in your country.
The HR situation with requiring degrees for everything would be self correcting if you could actually do that to the colleges. At the moment, I think the degree requirement is simply a basic check that you are not a complete moron, and that you can actually concentrate on working for ten minutes at a time.
Also, the government likes the current situation because parking everyone at college for three or four years is equivalent to reducing the unemployment rate by approx 10 percentage points. Mostly direct removal of workers, but there are also all the jobs created to babysit them.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:59PM
I'm fine with more green cards and no H1-Bs. The point is to leave the various HR departments no option but adjusting expectations.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:08PM
If people want free college, we should first vastly raise the standards of all existing colleges and universities that have poor standards so as to kick out all the losers, but I am sure most would not like that.
Actually, (free education)+(raised standards)=(desirable long term outcomes for humanity).
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:49PM
Your point reminded me of this Emerson quote:
Higher education should be the means for those who love learning to expand their horizons and create new knowledge through discovery and synthesis. It shouldn't be a diploma mill for semi-literates to say that they have a piece of paper in hopes of increasing their pay package.
Pushing everyone to go to college has created so many perverse incentives for the schools, the students and the greedy folks who prey like vultures on the gullible and needy.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:52PM
Why do they think automating away the jobs of burger flippers is easy, but automating away the jobs of Wall Street Bankers who do nothing more than play with spreadsheets all day is impossible? Because it ain't. It's quite the opposite. I've done it. I once automated an entire division at the Northern Trust Bank. They were so stunned they summarily fired me.
Think of all the money we could save by automating away the jobs of each and every person in the finance industry. Literally trillions. So that's where the big wins are, not in getting rid of burger flippers.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 12 2015, @04:05AM
Well you just answered the question yourself. It won't happen (before the burger-flippers) because it'd piss off too many powerful people. The people at the bottom of the totem pole (being unskilled workers) have the least power to protest their job being automated away, so their jobs will go first.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:52AM
Occasionally a score of five is not high enough.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:21AM
Having relied on public assistance when I started my family years ago, I can tell you that currently the incentives are not right to encourage working. Past a certain income, benefits go sharply down so that marginal gains for each hour worked are minuscule..one or two hundred more dollars a month for the time you give up...a small but guaranteed basic income would not disincentive work...but encouraged it.
subicular junctures
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:59PM
Like this [businessinsider.com] one?
Sounds like we'd get better burgers, and maybe could finally stop putting people to work in those godawful environments in the first place.
We really need to get past this idea that automating away work is a bad idea, and move onto figuring out how to distribute the little work and more resources there are left in a remotely fair and social system. The 40 hour workweek was the labor struggle of the early 20th century; perhaps the 20 hour workweek could be the push of the 21st? The idea that we have millionaires living on capital denigrating anyone for handouts while living on the fruits of the labor of others in a market where supply is vastly outpacing demand is a bit absurd, and that anyone is actually listening to these sniveling twats seems only to revolve around their owning media outlets.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:14PM
We really need to get past this idea that automating away work is a bad idea, and move onto figuring out how to distribute the little work and more resources there are left in a remotely fair and social system.
This isn't a real problem. In societies that don't massively disincentivize employing people, they don't have to figure this out.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Snotnose on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:34AM
I'd love to see ICE do a thorough roundup of illegals and run them all through a background check. Those that fail get sent home immediately, no court tests, nothing. Then do a roundup of the fast food asshats who think they're worth $15/hr because reasons. Now do a 1 for 1 trade, 1 illegal for 1 entitled idiot. The illegals get to stay, the entitled idiots go to Mexico.
The result? Well, the illegals will soon have more skills, hence better jobs with more money. Plus the fast food industry will have to raise wages because they can't find enough entitled idiots. Finally, the entitled idiots learn what it's like to live in a third world country, I'm guessing 2/3 of them will starve to death before they figure it out.
My ducks are not in a row. I don't know where some of them are, and I'm pretty sure one of them is a turkey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:55AM
> Now do a 1 for 1 trade, 1 illegal for 1 entitled idiot. The illegals get to stay, the entitled idiots go to Mexico.
Don't you ever get tired of yourself?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Snotnose on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:04AM
Not as long as I post under a name, not as an AC.
My ducks are not in a row. I don't know where some of them are, and I'm pretty sure one of them is a turkey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:54AM
> Not as long as I post under a name, not as an AC.
As if "snotnose" isn't anonymous.
But of course something totally irrelevant like posting from an account would be key to your self-respect. That's just how petty you really are.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:44AM
As if "snotnose" isn't anonymous.
I was leaning more toward "descriptive." Sounds like someone who would work for McDonalds, or just regular "the Donald", or wants a free vacation in Mexico.
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:18PM
As if "snotnose" isn't anonymous.
It's not...it pseudonymous.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pseudonymous?s=t [reference.com]
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:34AM
Back when I worked for minimum wage, I lived with my parents - who bought my car and paid for the insurance, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to "afford the job." $3.35/hr (minus taxes) was enough to pay for my gas and give me a little spending money, the spending money never amounted to an auto-insurance payment for a 17 year old, but, as I said, it's not a living wage, never was even close.
90% of my co-workers were in similar situations, some got rides to work, all but a couple were living with their parents, and the story was much the same all over town. The few who made full time jobs of it were living 4 and 6 to a trailer in a park within walking distance.
Is this right? No, it's just the way it was, and still is.
Personally, I'd rather see the minimum cost of living dropped, rather than the minimum wage raised. Foster conditions that provide affordable rent and transportation, I think food today is pretty cheap, by comparison. We're already concentrating into cities where the transport can be cheap, concentrate on keeping safe affordable housing present in places that have good access to cheap transportation.
Oh, and it's about time to repeal the laws that make it attractive to businesses to keep a huge staff of benefit-less part-timers. Making people work 2 and 3 jobs without benefits just to make ends meet is a great formula for children raised by television instead of their parents, and, by the odds, that doesn't turn out as well as often and being raised by people who care.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:42AM
I know lots of people making minimum wage who are raising children. It's not by any means a training wage. To say that it's not meant to be a living wage belies the application to which it is put.
Back in the day you could make good money making clothing at a big factory in Rockland, Maine. That closed down right around the time I moved there in 2001.
Gas stations typically profit $0.02/gallon on their gas - the gas pumps serve only to attract convenience store customers. All that money goes to the oil companies, a modest portion goes to taxes. Back in the day, the cost of a gallon of gas could pay for several full-serve attendants who would check your oil, water, tires, transmission fluid and wash your windows.
What has actually happened is that larger and larger shares of our nation's wealth has gone to those already wealthy, with less and less going to those at the lower ends of the pay scale.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:02AM
The title of this post means I have to recount this CSB.
I was a teenage busboy in around '74 or so. One of my co-workers was a nice old lady in her 70's, can't remember her name although I can recall her face. One day one of my other co-workers brought in some special brownies. We enjoyed them. Went to bus the cook's station, lady who's name I can't remember is singing "oh I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Weiner", and was much friendlier than her normal very friendly self (nothing sexual, just a really nice lady). I went to Mike and asked "did you give her a brownie?" "well, she asked if she could have one, what was I gonna say?".
Mike died last March of Lou Gehrig's disease, I'd known him since '63 or so. This CSB is in honor of Mike, hell of a cool dude who died way too young.
My ducks are not in a row. I don't know where some of them are, and I'm pretty sure one of them is a turkey.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:47AM
Back when I worked for minimum wage, I lived with my parents - who bought my car and paid for the insurance, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to "afford the job." $3.35/hr (minus taxes)
I'm older than you, I think my minimum wage was something like $1.25 (mid 70s). Bought my own car and paid my own insurance, but my situation was the same. Then again, I was under 18 and still going to high school for half my minimum wage days.
Oh, and it's about time to repeal the laws that make it attractive to businesses to keep a huge staff of benefit-less part-timers.
This. When I worked minimum wage I either opened, closed, or worked the mid day shift. I knew what my hours were going to be 6 months in advance. My understanding of things now is management dicks with your hours so it's impossible for you to hold a second job, or go to school, or care for an old parent. In my case I was going to college. This is bullshit and needs to be stopped.
My ducks are not in a row. I don't know where some of them are, and I'm pretty sure one of them is a turkey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:57PM
This is bullshit and needs to be stopped.
Tell your boss your situation; if that doesn't help, quit and find another min. wage job
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:42PM
The problem is that a lot of low wage jobs screw with your scheduling. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/starbucks-workers-scheduling-hours.html [nytimes.com] More on "on-call" scheduling. http://www.wsj.com/articles/retailers-under-fire-for-work-schedules-1428890401 [wsj.com] Though, perhaps there is at least hope for some. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/on-call-scheduling-labor/412132/ [theatlantic.com] (Apparently this last link has served targeted ads to Ad-Block Plus users or at least so says my plugin.)
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:29PM
I bought my own computer (8 bit) with money I had saved since birth, basically - that could have bought my first car instead ($1500 either way), but to earn $1500 for a car, I would have had to work a minimum of 500 hours, about 6 months part-time, and how to get to the job for 6 months with no car? Using the city bus would have turned a 4 hour shift into a 6 or 7 hour shift, and made it impossible to work close - which is what I mostly did due to scheduling conflicts with school, not to mention bus fare eating up the first half hour's pay every shift - but then once you have the car, I think insurance for a 17 year old male in my town (with perfect driving record) was about $1000/yr at the time, so, work another 4 months to pay the year's insurance - gas was cheap, that might have only been $300 a year for the gas needed to get to-from work... All in all, I suppose I could have afforded my own expenses to work the job, if I didn't have to pay for rent or food. The car expense could have been traded for sharing a cheap room within walking distance of the job, but then you're stuck shopping at the 7-11 for food, not exactly efficient.
Later, I had a manager who used to dick me around about my schedule - he and I had a set-to one day where he (Asst. Mgr.) said: "Maybe you don't need this job!?!" and I replied: "Maybe I don't." After that, my schedule became exactly what I wanted, more hours, more regular, on the days I asked for, and not on the days I didn't want. Truth was, I didn't need that job, so the bluff worked.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by sasha328 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:41PM
late last year I went to the US for a holiday with my wife. We ended up going to Macdonals for an apple pie!
Anyway, it wasn't until after we left the store that I realised what was wrong with Macdonalds (and hence the US).
Where I come from in Australia, the average age of the workers at Macdonalds is probaly very early twenties. And we have a minimum wage and universal health insurance. Very very few people make it a career at Macdonalds (they would be paid like in any other career anyway)
What I noticed after visiting the Macdonalds (and a couple of others while we were there) is that there were quite a few older workers behind the counters! I would estimate the average age to have been high twenties if not thirties!
I agree with JoeMerchant that low paying jobs should only be "spending money" and not for living off it, but that does not seem to be the case! There are way too many social exclusiveness in the US to allow such a basic idea to flourish these days.
I don't know what the problem is, but as an outsider it appears to us that as a society, you seem to find it is OK for people to be disadvantaged as long as you pay less tax or "keep the government small".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:22AM
I think, as a society, US Americans think primarily about themselves and what will benefit themselves within the next several weeks to possibly months (for the above average on the long-sightedness scale.)
We have charity, we have great philosophers and societal architects, but we mostly elect bottom line bottom dollar tax cut promising politicians, and they mostly cut taxes for the people who gave them the money to get elected.
What amazes me is the brainwashing job that has been done on the masses, to the point that disadvantaged people either don't make the effort to vote to improve their situation, and even more amazingly, that a large block of the working poor will vote for candidates who promise to make things better for the rich, not the poor. When I have asked these people why, I mostly get answers based in fear, fear that with things as bad as they are (in their personal situation) anything that might cause their bosses to lay off or cut back would be even worse.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:35AM
which opportunity shall be obliterated, precisely?
The opportunity to dine at a soup kitchen?
I know many homeless people. Lots of them have regular jobs.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:04PM
which opportunity shall be obliterated, precisely?
The opportunity to dine at a soup kitchen?
If someone can't afford food on their minimum wage job now, I doubt they'll be able to afford it once they've lost their job.
There is a huge, unwarranted assumption that if minimum wage increases, then workers will get paid more, rather than having their jobs automated, shipped to China, or just simply eliminated.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday November 12 2015, @10:49AM
that's always been the argument against organized labor. What actually happened when we got decent working conditions and raises and pay was economic abundance.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:45PM
that's always been the argument against organized labor. What actually happened when we got decent working conditions and raises and pay was economic abundance.
Except when we didn't get that trend, like the last half century for the US. The 20th Century through to 1970 was for the US a time of increasing competition in demand for labor. Those labor unions, improvement in working conditions, and increase in pay happened coincident with that and I believe were completely dependent on that increase in labor power. When globalization occurred and US labor started competing with a far larger and cheaper labor pool, then we saw a degree of reversal in all those things. The power of the labor unions evaporated in industries which were susceptible to this labor competition and strengthened in industries which weren't susceptible, leading, for example, to today's world of weak private sector labor unions and strong public sector labor unions.
My view is that minimum wage will be near irrelevant when it is low and a disaster when it is high. There is no sweet spot for it aside from just not having it in the first place (and not having the overhead of keeping track of and reporting wages for a government bureaucracy). Our current minimum wage has despite it's relatively small amount already led to high unemployment among young adults, the poorer ethnic minorities, and people with a criminal record. For example, 11% [aljazeera.com] of black males over 20 are still unemployed in the US or 1 in 4 [thenation.com] black males under 20 held a job in New York City.
At some point, you have to look at the consequences of these policies. My view is that the loss of labor power was triggered by increasing labor competition from the developing world. But policies intended to protect US labor like a higher minimum wage, mandatory benefits, or restrictions on hours worked instead weakened labor power further by decreasing demand for labor and made the situation worse.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gman003 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:43AM
The ultimate effect of having a too-low minimum wage is the subsidizing of corporations using large numbers of unskilled workers - mostly fast food and low-end retail.
The mechanism is simple. If minimum wage is insufficient for a full-time worker to live on, no matter how modestly, they rely on government assistance programs. Which is not in ipse a bad thing - I would much rather my tax money go to someone who is working the same forty hours a week I do, than someone who does not work at all. (And most people on minimum wage work far more than 40 hours).
However, look at the effect on the companies employing people at those wages. Remove the government from the equation completely (no minimum wage, no welfare) and they would have a much harder time filling those positions at those wages, because anyone who is remotely able to get a higher-paying job, would. Those who simply can't would probably drop out of civilization completely - go live in the forests, hunt and forage for food. It's not easy but it's at least living, which is more than minimum wage would be without assistance.
The economic end result is that companies that would otherwise need to raise wages can skimp on pay, knowing that their employees will subsist on welfare.
I'm a bleeding-heart liberal, so I don't actually object to helping the poor out, within reason (subscribe to my newsletter if you wish to hear more). But Wal-Mart and McDonalds do not need my charity, and they do not deserve to have my tax money spent to boost their bottom line.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:35PM
The ultimate effect of having a too-low minimum wage is the subsidizing of corporations using large numbers of unskilled workers - mostly fast food and low-end retail.
And that's a terrible thing because we would be subsidizing the employment of poor people.
But Wal-Mart and McDonalds do not need my charity, and they do not deserve to have my tax money spent to boost their bottom line.
And the welfare of the people they employ.
But what I think is most ridiculous about this argument is that raising and lowering the minimum wage does absolutely nothing to eliminate the subsidy. The surviving corporations can still mooch. The same problems you claim to be concerned about will stay and be just as bad as they are today. But less people will be employed.
My view is that increasing minimum wage is stupid. A somewhat better approach would be to provide a basic income and eliminate minimum wage altogether.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:44AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:58AM
Malibu has a Jack in the Box and it's a 30-minute drive from a cheap roommate situation in SFV or Santa Monica. If they give you even a dollar or two more than minimum wage per hour it's well worth it if you can't find a job in a more affordable place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:42PM
Disneyland has a Mcdonalds, they only sell french fries, and they cost $8 or so. You can expect those prices at every fast food greasehole if they get their $15.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:15PM
It's worse in places like Vail or Aspen, but they just bus the workers in from out of town.
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:30AM
The most important candidate quality in the upcoming elections is not ideology, nor particular policy ideas, nor any of the other things the media tells us matters.
The most important characteristics are:
(1) Wants to make people's lives better.
(2) Represents the PEOPLE, not the oligarchy.
Left or right, THAT is what is needed.
I know who I think that is. Do you?
subicular junctures
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:37PM
Donald
J.
TRUMP
Right?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:20PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @06:29PM
Convincing people that he will, if elected, make their lives better.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:56PM
I think it would be a very good thing for the fast food workers to get $15/hr. Then, of course, instead of lowering CEO pay for those chains they'll raise the prices for the consumer. What that means is that the cost of fast food will be as high, or higher, than real, quality, healthy food. In NYC the restaurant scene is already so fiercely competitive that you can get fantastic food of any description for maybe a buck more than a McDonald's meal. If the cost of mickey D's goes any higher, it will kill them for sure here, and perhaps elsewhere too.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Bill Dimm on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:31PM
McDonald's CEO makes $13.8 million per year [huffingtonpost.com]. McDonald's employs 440,000 people [statisticbrain.com]. So if the CEO were to forgo his entire compensation and distribute it to the employees that would come to a $0.016 per hour salary bump for employees.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:52PM
Per hour salary bump for employees: $0.016
Whining from the CEO about how hard his job is: PRICELESS
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:28PM
Min wage is for trainees or high school kids, it's not a career. You're supposed to better yourself, learn a trade, get a higher education. If they get their $15 then your're going to see lazy bums screwing around even more than they do now, less hours, higher prices, or lost jobs. You want a living wage? Then get off your lazy ass and learn a trade and earn it like the rest of us did. I'm the one that submitted this story. I started out at $2 an hour, and I am comfortably retired now because I bettered myself.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:55PM
You were one of the lucky ones. Min wage was $4 when I started working. When I had reached $7.50 an hour after 6 or 7 years, min wage was raised to $7 an hour. A new hire with no skills at all was being paid almost as much as I was. Some of the workers ended up with huge pay increases because they were making less than the new minimum wage was. I currently only take home about $100 a month more than it costs just to have a roof over my head and food on my table. When I retire I will basically be screwed with no retirement funds other than SS.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:56PM
and I am comfortably retired now because I bettered myself.
And smug people like you who keep voting for the loony right are part of the problem. Things have changed in the last 40 years. There just aren't the better jobs to go round. There is nowhere for young people to better themselves for. The better jobs are not there.
People with university degrees, people who have worked at professional jobs for 20+ years, people who have educated themselves and trained hard and finding themselves in these jobs today just to get by because there is no alternative.
The cost-cutting, off-shoring, out-sourcing, work-until-you-drop folks have rigged the system to keep themselves rich and getting richer at the expense of everyone else.
No one has any real money to spend, so they have rigged "growth" from printing money to provide easy credit. Property prices and rents are sky high. There is a bubble waiting to burst and the proles will be paying for it again, because the wealthy can not be let down or they will go elsewhere.
The end-game for the global economy is being played right now. It's in things like TPP and TTIP. The world economy will finally be cast in stone set up completely in favour of the large American corporations. Everyone else can beg for their crumbs.
A well-paid, healthy and content workforce is better for everyone. But that would be pinko-commie.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:15PM
BS. People are more lazy today and/or don't have the same work ethics as 20+ years ago. They want a cush job that they can fluff off and still get paid big bucks. I cringe at the clock milkers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:41PM
some business owners say dishing out more pay would leave them struggling to keep their doors open.
So you offer no value to your customers? You only offer the lowest price?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:52PM
How about the higher end restaurants.
These dudes use tips to pay their workers. 2.13 an hour.
I chatted up my server a few weeks ago and this was on a to-go kiosk sort of thing. "So do they pay at least min wage when you do this?" "no I went home with 15 dollars yesterday had to split the pool with the other guy working this station" "how long were you here?" "Oh about 6 hours". "is that common?" "oh yeah no one tips on togo orders".
A McDonalds job is luxury pay to what some servers get.
The companies are supposed to make up the difference. They dont. They never do. If they raised that wage you would see thousands of restaurants go out of business within a few months. The marginal ones just getting by would go under. The high end ones where it didnt matter much would go on.
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Wednesday November 11 2015, @06:07PM
The argument over the end result reminds me of something I learned in high school taking a business class: if you laid all of the economists in the world end-to-end, you would never reach a conclusion.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:21PM
If you artificially raise the price of labor by x%, prices of goods go up by the same amount, negating any artificial increase in the floor, AND screwing everyone else too as the effects rippled into other areas of the economy.
Want more money? increase your value like the rest of us do.. idiots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:31PM
The problem is... Some or most minimum wage workers don't want to better themselves to make living wages. They want more money for idiot skills.