People's Action Institute reports via Common Dreams
People's Action Institute released a report today [February 28] that details the dire need for jobs that pay a living wage, and for public investment in communities that are most neglected.
[...] The report, Prosperity, Not Poverty,[PDF][1] shows the gap between job seekers and jobs that pay a living wage. According to the report, nationally there are seven job seekers for every job opening that pays the national single adult living wage of $17.28 per hour.
[...] The odds are much worse for a single parent hoping to be paid enough to support herself and a child. Prosperity, Not Poverty includes living wage figures and job gap ratios for each state and Washington, D.C., as well as the national number.
[...] Policy Recommendations from Prosperity, Not Poverty:
If done well, public infrastructure programs and investments will benefit all, and especially marginalized communities and the places they live.
- Create high wage jobs and target hiring and training in local communities, especially marginalized communities. Wages from full-time work should be at least enough for a single adult to make ends meet.
- Increase access to affordable health coverage. Low-wage workers are less likely to have access to employer-sponsored health care than higher-wage workers.
- Strengthen Social Security so all workers can retire with dignity.
- Expand and strengthen equal opportunity statutes to apply to the LGBTQI community as well as women and people of color.
[1] I have replaced the goofy link in TFA with a direct link. Google cache text of the 40-page report.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday March 02 2017, @02:12PM (26 children)
I stopped reading there. While I agree that everybody should be able earn a decent living, the reality of the free market is that nobody can "create high wage jobs" just because they decide to - and neither can a planned, Soviet-style economy, that only manages to create low wage jobs.
The truth is, the economy, with the current slump - which is probably here to stay forever, given that the economy is mainly dependent on cheap energy - can't provide decent jobs for everybody. Period. That's the sad, naked truth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @02:17PM (1 child)
Whenever I hear philosophizing like that, I just ask myself whether there has been someone making the same rant for the last several thousand years. In your, and most, cases, the answer is: yes. That undermines whatever universal generalization you were trying to make as a point.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday March 02 2017, @06:43PM
Whenever I hear philosophizing like that, I just ask myself whether there has been someone making the same rant for the last several thousand years.
Hey! I resemble that remark!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @02:18PM (8 children)
We should nationalize public resources. All oil, gas, coal, timber, etc. profits should pay for health care and universal basic income.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @02:34PM (7 children)
Just like Venezuela.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @02:42PM (4 children)
Let's do the whole thing. Repeat after me. "OMG SOCIALISM! Stalin! Mao! Pol Pot! Venezuela!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @03:24PM (3 children)
What's your point, they're all terrible failures.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by art guerrilla on Thursday March 02 2017, @07:20PM (1 child)
yeah, cuba -as one example- is a 'failure' because we have both propagandized that drumbeat into stoopid sheeples tiny, bite-size brains, AND we have worked overtime by the nature of 'sanctions', etc (arguably war krimes) to MAKE SURE it is a 'failure'...
unfortunately, we could stand to be such 'failures' in terms of most healthcare cuba has, literacy, lack of malnutrition, universal education, etc...
communism -or socialism of whatever flavor- in cuba did not 'fail', it was fucking beat to death, and then we stand over the corpse with our bloody truncheons and say, 'see, i told you it was going to fail'...
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Thursday March 02 2017, @07:25PM
oops, meant to say 'arguably krimes against humanity'...
our actual war krimes are a dime a dozen...
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday March 02 2017, @10:19PM
The USSR had a creditable space programme, with the first artificial satellite (Sputnik), first person in space (Yuri Gagarin), the first landings on Mars, probes of Venus and the Moon (Venera, Lunokhod, Zond and Luna) and a shuttle designed to fly with or without a crew (Buran).
http://www.ozy.com/flashback/when-the-soviets-first-landed-on-mars/61124 [ozy.com]
Militarily it survived a Czechoslovak-Japanese-Greeks-American-Polish-Canadian-Serbian-Romanian-Italian-British-French attack soon after its formation, survived and turned back invasion by the Nazis, and withstood decades of enmity with the United States.
http://www.criticalenquiry.org/history/polarbear.shtml [criticalenquiry.org]
Not to condone the oppression of the Soviet people and their neighbours, or the disastrous adventure in Afghanistan, or the design of the RBMK...
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Thursday March 02 2017, @04:11PM (1 child)
WEW LAD
I love how people (selectively?) do not realize this has been tried n times and failed every fucking time for the same fucking reasons. Why would it work n+1 time?
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Monday March 06 2017, @05:28PM
Only if you ignore all of Europe and most of Asia can you say it has failed every fucking time. In fact, the US is the last first-world country to not adopt socialism in the form of Democratic Socialism.
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Thursday March 02 2017, @03:06PM
>I stopped reading there.
Yeah, this is a weird piece.
I do think that there's enough to go around, but it's no simple feat to accomplish. I'm talking decades, generations. Just because it never has doesn't mean it can't. Not holding my breath, though. Power and wealth flows up, not down, which makes it very unlikely to start getting better.
So, yeah, I agree on the outcome. Not happening any time soon in the USA.
>probably here to stay forever, given that the economy is mainly dependent on cheap energy
Forever is a long time! That stellarator could change everything. Probably not in this decade or the next though...
Also, I think 'high wage jobs' is shitty language for them to use in this context. To call a job with a wage that "should be at least enough for a single adult to make ends meet" a 'high wage job' is despicable. The tone is so all over the place, it's bizarre. It's as though they try present this in such a convoluted light on both sides that it appears impossible to solve.
Overall this whole article smells rotten. 7 times the number of candidates than jobs? Bullshit. It doesn't feel honest at all, which as someone that believes the underlying premise they talk about is true (a full time job should pay you enough to feed and house yourself) I find it very disheartening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @03:18PM (7 children)
Of course they can. The only reason we're in this mess is because of that thinking. There's more than enough money to pay people a living wage for any job that's worth paying for. It doesn't happen because the rich are allowed to take as much as they care to take, leaving the funds necessary to fund it in the hands of greedy bastards that could stand to only be incredibly rich rather than obscenely rich.
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Thursday March 02 2017, @03:50PM (6 children)
"The rich" do take a large share, but I don't think it is as much as you think. Take Walmart for example. According to Morningstar the total annual executive compensation was about $72M (2016) with the CEO taking about $20M of that total. Walmart has 2.2M employees world-wide, and 1.3M in the US, so you can give them all a $32 annual raise, not really much help. The ratio improves some if you switch to a company like Exxon Mobil, about $82M paid to executives with about 72K employees, but that is only an $1100 raise, better, but not really life changing either.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday March 02 2017, @04:12PM (4 children)
The Wiki page on "Walton family [wikipedia.org]" says their combined fortune is estimated at USD 124 300 million.
Divide by 7 Waltons: USD 17 757 million / Walton
Divide by USD 20 million /year (assuming the 7 family members all earn the same as the CEO): 887
Has the Walton Dynasty been in business for 887 years, or are we missing something here?
(I'm being disingeniououus(sp?) here, because I didn't take into account accrued interest on their bank accounts, but still, 50 years ago the family probably didn't get USD 72 million / year executive compensation)
Shit I did it wrong; should have just divided the 124 300 million fortune by the 72 million total annual executive compensation. That gives 1726 years instead of 887.
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Thursday March 02 2017, @04:47PM (3 children)
The Walton's have a high net-worth because they own a lot of things of high value, such as share of stock in Walmart. Their net worth has grown proportional to the value of the Walmart company over the last 50 years, not their earned income per se. If we are talking about paying higher wages, then that money has to come from the income of the company. If we are talking about taking the net worth of rich individuals and giving it to poor(er) people then that is wealth re-distribution, which is an entirely different topic.
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:44PM (2 children)
All that means is that the income they are drawing from Walmart is significantly greater than the salary which Walmart reports paying them.
Hah...yeah it's definitely not *earned* income, but it's still income. The money doesn't just magically materialize. If their net worth has increased, it means they had some form of income.
The money comes from the income of the company, and instead of going to the shareholders like the Waltons it ought to go to the employees.
Keep in mind that these kinds of non-salary benefits were largely created in response to attempts to implement wage controls during WWII. The entire point is to pay a wage that you can claim isn't a wage. But just because the money is being laundered doesn't mean you aren't getting paid.
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Friday March 03 2017, @02:12AM (1 child)
I am not sure you understand what net worth means. They have an ownership interest in the company. When the value of their stock rises they are worth more, but don't actually have any more money in their pocket. It is all on paper. They don't realize that as income until they sell the stock (capital gains), so you are correct, it doesn't magically materialize. Some companies do pay their share holders a portion of their profits in the form of a dividend, but I am not sure why that would be a problem. The shareholder has given the company money so that the company can expand or otherwise improve the business. It is the same as being paid interest by the bank on your saving account.
This is all separate from stock options, which I assume are the non-salary benefits you are referring to. These are often grossly abused, and should be scrutinized.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday March 03 2017, @03:18PM
And so is cash -- literally. Yeah, stocks don't have value until you do something with them. The same is true of cash or any other money. That's what makes it money -- it's not food that you can eat or a house that provides shelter, all you can really do is buy or sell. So compensation as stock value is still value which that person possesses which was transferred into their possession by the company. It really doesn't make much difference if that value is a number in a stock broker's PC, a number in a bank's mainframe, or a number on a slip of paper in your wallet. It's all financial assets. It's all income.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:09PM
Sure they do. The top 1% alone have almost as much as the bottom 50%. They didn't earn most of that money. That's money that wasn't paid to the people that created the wealth. Just letting a larger portion of it go to the workers would go a long ways to solve the problem without abandoning capitalism the 1% did not get there by their own work.
It's disingenuous to focus on salaries when it's mostly shareholders that get the money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @06:24PM
It is not hard to create well paid jobs. We can do it by regulating the consolidation of corporations, limiting mergers and buyouts to situations where the resulting corporation has no more than a reasonable (e.g. five or ten percent) share of their market. Corporate mergers are cost effective for the corporations because they reduce the number of well paid jobs involved. Limiting mergers would result in prices that are higher than the theoretical minimums, but it would prevent markets from moving into a monopolistic state where prices become even higher while consumer choices are reduced. Note that the concept of a coproration is an artificial construct created by the government to boost the economy. It is perfectly reasonable for the government to regulate coporations for the benefit of the nation as a whole.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 02 2017, @06:50PM (1 child)
the reality of the free market is that nobody can "create high wage jobs"
Every high wage job in existence was created, by somebody, at some point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05 2017, @06:48PM
Correct, but whoever created it never intended it to be a high-paying job. It was created with the intention of being as low-paying as possible while still finding a schmuck who would do the job. Now bow and say "thank you" to your feudal overlord, peasant.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Murdoc on Thursday March 02 2017, @07:24PM
The truth is, the economy, with the current slump - which is probably here to stay forever, given that the economy is mainly dependent on cheap energy - can't provide decent jobs for everybody. Period. That's the sad, naked truth.
Most of what you said is right, but that's not all of the sad truth. What's most sad is that we cannot create jobs to help provide for everyone while at the same time we physically have more than enough natural resources and installed technology to produce enough goods and services to provide everyone (at least on this continent) with a high standard of living. The main trick is getting away from the idea of "jobs" being the only way of doing that.
(Score: 3, Funny) by art guerrilla on Thursday March 02 2017, @07:38PM (1 child)
@ rosco(e?)
"I stopped reading there. While I agree that everybody should be able earn a decent living, the reality of the free market ..."
i stopped reading there...
the moment someone starts plumping for the 'reality of the free market', i am pretty sure they are an irredeemable propaganda victim of kapitalist imperialist bullshit...
there is no 'free market' except in shitty textbooks about economics... that would be most -if not all- textbooks on economics...
here is the another actual factual that IMMEDIATELY makes me discredit the UNPROVEN ravings of 'free market' defenders: there is what is called 'structural unemployment' builtin to the economy that essentially means you and i of the 99% will be FOREVER SCREWED...
(oh, and in point of fact, just ONE of millions of ways in which the 'free market' is not free in any meaningful sense, but CONTROLLED to the benefit of the 1%)
this 'structural unemployment' (approx 5%) is so that we 99% can NEVER, EVER have 'full employment (or a close enough practical approximation) for US to have leverage in the job market... The System (tm) makes sure unemployment NEVER drops below about 5% so that the employers ALWAYS have the upper hand...
there is nothing 'structural' about it, it is simply newspeak for making sure unemployment ever gets low enough to give workers bargaining power...
lastly, i have been spinning around this solar system for a while, now, and since i was young-n-stoopid i have heard this 'trickle down' bullshit for why the 1% need to get ALL the breaks... but the ONLY 'trickle down' i have seen in that lifetime is wet, yellow, and smells of asparagus...
fool me once, shame on thee;
fool me for a million times in a row, well, what did you expect, you stupid shit...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03 2017, @04:40AM
Lucky dog, you got asparagus flavor.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Justin Case on Thursday March 02 2017, @02:37PM (13 children)
Whenever you encounter a whinefest like this, instead of joining the crying, realize that a great opportunity has been identified.
There is a great surplus of people looking for jobs.
So what do you do about it? Think of a way you can hire them to take advantage of this surplus. They'll be eager to work for you, and perhaps even grateful... dare we go so far as to say loyal?
Anyway, these are talented people who are willing to put in an honest day's work for good pay. Since labor creates all good things in this world, your new company can produce a ton of wonderful stuff! You might even turn a modest profit, which we know you will graciously decline by lowering your prices and distributing the remainder to your employees.
These are all good people. None have a criminal record. They are not drug addicts, or high school dropouts, lazy, stupid, or anything like that. Great workers, every one. All that is lacking is you to think of some enterprise that can put them to work!
What's that you say? Starting a new company is hard? You need an innovative product, a few high skilled people to formulate a workable plan, some seed funding to pay for raw materials and buildings and chairs and computers and of course health insurance and oh yeah those generous salaries? Plus you have 10 layers of government fighting you at every step?
Wow with all those obstacles it is amazing how any employers manage to survive, much less grow. The few who do provide jobs for thousands should be amply rewarded for their service to society.
Or, we could just call for "public investment in communities that are most neglected". Barf! That phrase reeks of incurable stupidity, also known as leftism.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by moondoctor on Thursday March 02 2017, @03:26PM (4 children)
>That phrase reeks of incurable stupidity, also known as leftism.
Hey! Please don't call that catchphrase neo-liberal make-yourself-feel-better-while-fixing-nothing garbage leftism...
Just the same way (most?) people on the right aren't all racist Trump-worshipper freaks and don't deserve to be lumped in with that.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Thursday March 02 2017, @05:04PM (1 child)
Please don't call that catchphrase neo-liberal make-yourself-feel-better-while-fixing-nothing garbage leftism.
OK, I'll assume you are trying to help me improve my terminology. What should we call it? Neo-liberal sounds to me pretty close to leftism (to me), but I'd be willing to use a recognized and accurate substitute.
As an aside, I do think we agree that the language of TFS/A is a waste of precious electrons. It sounds like yet another easy-chair warrior waving his arm and directing everyone else what to do.
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Thursday March 02 2017, @05:42PM
Yeah, the neo-liberal thing is like being lefty but without all that irritating thinking. You end up with the hyper-PC bullshit that's just as awful as the Alt-right.
Meant that more tongue in cheek, don't really feel it's my place to tell anyone what to say. More just pointing out that what is generally portrayed as the left feels like a caricature of the worst of neo-liberalism (big useless government) and not how the average lefty that I've met feels.
Yeah, weird ass piece of writing for sure! Seems like there's a huge agenda but it's impossible to figure out what it is...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @08:20PM (1 child)
It never ceases to amaze me how people here expound on things about which they have absolutely no knowledge.
Take you for instance.
You have taken 2 terms which mean OPPOSITE things and used them to describe the same person.
The level of ignorance is astounding.
Do make an effort to become educated.
Here, I'll give you a little push-start.
Marxist/Socialist/Communist/Leftist: Egalitarianism is good; the workers should own the means of production (a separate ownership class is unnecessary); gov't (the taxpayers/workers) should own the natural monopolies (e.g. energy, communications, transit).
Liberal: Capitalism is good, it just needs proper gov't regulation; treat the Working Class as if they are the backbone of your economy (which they are).
Neoliberal: Gov't regulation is bad; unregulated ("free") trade is good; privatize everything; nothing happens without the rich (ownership class).
Neoliberalism is Reactionary in its nature.
Characteristics of Neoliberalism:
Tax breaks for the rich and powerful
Privatization of public services
Cuts to the social safety net
Attacks on labor unions
Passage of so-called "free trade" agreements allowing unfettered capital investment flows (aka exporting jobs)
Minimal regulation of financial institutions and corporations
Endless marketization of society
Terms identified with Neoliberalism:
Radical deregulation
Globalization
Market Fundamentalism
Laissez Faire Capitalism
Supply-side economics
Thatcherism
Reaganism
Clintonism
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:07PM
>The level of ignorance is astounding. Do make an effort to become educated.
Eh? You must not have met most of the world then. I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid. I think you might be overreacting a bit.
>You have taken 2 terms which mean OPPOSITE things and used them to describe the same person.
Not being facetious, but I don't follow. Where did I use 2 contradictory terms to describe someone? You seem to have a good grasp on this stuff and I'm listening.
Are you talking about the terms neo-liberal and leftist?
(By the way, your definitions are roughly the same as mine)
Regarding misusing the term "Neoliberalism" - I'll just leave this here:
Wiki: "The term has been used in English since the start of the 20th century with different meanings,[18] but became more prevalent in its current meaning in the 1970s and 1980s by scholars in a wide variety of social sciences,[19][20] as well as being used by critics.[21][22] Modern advocates of free market policies avoid the term "neoliberal"[23] and some scholars have described the term as meaning different things to different people,[24][25] as neoliberalism "mutated" into geopolitically distinct hybrids as it travelled around the world.[3] As such, neoliberalism shares many attributes with other contested concepts, including democracy"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @03:43PM (4 children)
>Think of a way you can hire them to take advantage of this surplus.
Job seeker desperately begs for more job openings on unknown extremist forum soylentnews.org
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday March 02 2017, @04:20PM (3 children)
Good work! You earn a bronze "detect shill" merit badge. You found the lowest of the low, the most despised shill of all the shills, the unpaid shill. Find 9 more to earn your silver detect shill merit badge!
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday March 02 2017, @06:54PM (2 children)
"unpaid shill"? Part of the definition of "shill" is that they get paid, or at least have a financial interest in whatever they are shilling for. Could you possibly have meant "fanbois"? Even then, "fanbois of a living wage" does sound suspiciously odd.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday March 03 2017, @11:09AM
How about a Shill Extern?
An Externship is generally an unpaid Internship with no credits.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03 2017, @01:20PM
looks like he used it in the sense of "defends a pre-fab worldview without having a clue". that's completely legit ;)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @05:18PM (1 child)
So what do you do about it? Think of a way you can hire them to take advantage of this surplus. They'll be eager to work for you, and perhaps even grateful... dare we go so far as to say loyal?
This sounds good in theory, but how does it work in practice? Let's say I need some good software developers. It doesn't help me at all to have an excellent pilot, plumber, babysitter, podiatrist, novel literary critic, and baseball player all looking for work.
I guess I could hire them and train them from scratch, but then would they be worth $17.28 an hour for the first year (?) while they learned skills... for that matter, would they be worth any pay at all? They would be a net drain on resources until they learned the basics, assuming they even could.
It's even worse than I said above, too. Let's say I'm looking for a Java web developer. It doesn't matter if there is a C++, a .NET, a python, a RCSE, or numerous other "computer people" looking for jobs. Even a Java Swing or a Java Micro Edition developer may not help me enough to warrant that $17.28 an hour.
What's that you say? Starting a new company is hard? You need an innovative product, a few high skilled people to formulate a workable plan, some seed funding to pay for raw materials and buildings and chairs and computers and of course health insurance and oh yeah those generous salaries? Plus you have 10 layers of government fighting you at every step?
So your solution is to drop my already successful company and create a brand new one from scratch? That sounds like a lot of work, a lot of risk, and not too much gain given I'm already in a successful company. I mean, you do know something like 50% of restaurants fail in the first 2 years, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @08:55PM
Here's a crazy idea:
When the entrepreneur (a Baby Boomer?) who owns the company decides to retire, he offers the company to the employees.
(It's been done with some companies, e.g. grocers.)
Even crazier idea:
The Congress passes a law that says that when a company is undergoing a change of hands, the employees must be offered the right of first refusal.
Really crazy idea:
The new owners form a Worker-owned cooperative where decisions are made democratically; each Worker gets a vote and all votes are equal.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03 2017, @02:50AM
These are all good people. None have a criminal record. They are not drug addicts, or high school dropouts, lazy, stupid, or anything like that.
When America sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jdavidb on Thursday March 02 2017, @02:39PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 02 2017, @02:42PM (10 children)
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf [bls.gov]
Go ahead, read what the lying sumbitches want you to believe.
Then, look at the real job situation again. Married couples with degrees struggling to make ends meet? He works two jobs, she works one or more, and they can't pay their college loans? Visit the inner cities - young black people don't work. All the jobs have been taken by illegal aliens.
We're fekked.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Thursday March 02 2017, @04:56PM (1 child)
Yes, the problem is that CEO's (etc) and politicians think a living wage is $4 an hour (i mean, really: they struggle on their 7+ figure incomes, but THEY HAVE EXPENSES!!!), whereas the average person only needs 4bucks (cause.... Kraft dinner and cat food).
If a CEO was told he had to share his bonus with his employees (if he gets a 400% salary bonus, so do his employees) he might understand EXACTLY WHAT THE MONEY MEANS!
But people get out of touch: a good example is baseball players.
-I heard the one guy say "I signed a contract for 4 million a year. This other guy signs for 4.5 million a year and my stats are better than his, so i'm not playing until i get 5 million a year" and i think: Listen to yourself, you idiot!
1. You just signed a LEGAL contract: you got the best deal you thought you could get.
2. He negotiated a better LEGAL contract than you. Suck it up.
3. You are making $4 million dollars A FECKING YEAR!!!
4. If you went on strike and were just allowed to strike until you ran out of money, would you find yourself working at McD's making dick an hour?
SUCK IT UP, BUTTERCUP!
People just lose touch and we need a REVOLUTION to make them realize how good they have it.
Look at Steve Jobs: earned all that money and now he's dead.
Look at Bill Gates: earns all that money by being a dick, starts up a fake foundation so he'll earn the rep of being a 'philanthropist' dick, and soon he'll be dead.
Wouldn't it be nice to earn, maybe, LESS money, make people around you happier and make society a better place and be thought of as someone great?
Instead, you're thought of as a dick, then you die.
All of it over $$$$.
Don't be a dick.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:02PM
How does this jive with having only 10 days vacation per year in the US?
Part of the reason I moved away was because you really do only live once and you can't make it all up retiring in style. Age 65 you are not going to backpack around Asia on $10/day or finally learn to ski or play the trumpet. That shit needs to get done NOW or it never will. Save bridge, golf and watching Fox News for your golden years.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Thursday March 02 2017, @05:44PM (7 children)
You go ahead and try to hire them. Machine shops trying to hire operators have a hard time finding applicants, regardless of race, who will:
1. Pass a drug test.
2. Show up for work.
3. Show some diligence and attention to detail.
4. Continue showing up for work for more than two weeks.
5. Not steal tools and materials from the shop.
Add to this that profit margins are relatively slim even with good employees, and when one guy is slacking off on the clock or stealing it goes negative. Business wise it's far better to have a very small staff of high skilled, trustworthy employees and more automation.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:37PM (5 children)
I refuse to apply for shops that demand a drug test: even if I would likely pass.
Do the executives have drug tests before meetings, even if their decisions may be safety-critical?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday March 03 2017, @12:51AM
No temp work or placement agencies for you then, at least not around here. Even if we drop the test many fail the other requirements.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday March 03 2017, @04:33AM (1 child)
The kind of person who can't stop doing drugs for a few weeks before an interview is the same kind of person who would steal from their workplace and stop showing up after two weeks.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday March 03 2017, @04:59AM
Far as I know, most employers don't bother testing for caffeine. They often supply it, along with the white stuff (sugar).
Friday June 18, 1993 [dilbert.com]
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Friday March 03 2017, @01:20PM (1 child)
A machine shop seems like a good job to have drug testing at given that someone who is under the influence would be a danger. That said there are far too many jobs that should not have drug tests because they aren't safety critical, but things like machinists, mechanics, electricians, heavy equipment operators, truckers, linemen, pilots, etc. seem reasonable to test to ensure that they aren't under the influence.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday March 03 2017, @04:55PM
When testing for things like marijuana, you will pop positive if you only partake on week-ends.
You may pop positive simply from second-hand smoke as well. Ross Rebagliati [wikipedia.org] lost his medal in snowboarding over it.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday March 03 2017, @04:41AM
I'd pass everyone of those conditions except the quoted, I like to have a joint before bed, costs me about $50 a year for soil, fertilizer and slug bait. My other conditions would include, usually having 40 hour (35 would be ideal) weeks and vacation time to avoid burn out. Unluckily I'm not young and therefore not hire able and most of those jobs have been outsourced. My Dad did that for a long time until his job got outsourced to America (Phoenix) where they paid $8 an hour, had all those problems you mentioned and the company went out of business. (They were quite profitable paying $25 an hour) Seems that paying low wages is not the way to get people who show up for work, show diligence, keep showing up for work and are honest.
ps here in Canada, giving drug tests is usually considered an infringement on peoples rights and illegal without a good reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @04:50PM (1 child)
Because, you see, $17.28 is great in Manhattan, and great in Mississippi. It's fantastic in South Carolina and in San Francisco. The uniformity in this country makes it so easy to simply set a national minimum wage.
All these recommendations amount to: pay a metric buttload of money that we don't have on projects of dubious desirability, in ill-defined ways.
Can't go wrong!
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:09PM
In the actual study (which is not accurately reported in TFA), they adjust the definition of a living wage by state. The lowest looks to be 14.58 (Arkansas), and the highest looks to me to be $21.92 (DC). The underlying study looks state-by-state - how many job seekers, how many job openings there are, how many jobs meet the state-level "living wage."
Even a state-level idea of a living wage isn't entirely accurate - $20.42 might be low in Manhattan and high in Albany. Also, especially in larger states, the places where people live and the places the jobs are might not be the same, and not all states can be commuted across easily. It would be even more accurate to look at a finer-grained idea of both local living wage and job seekers.
But it's inaccurate to critique the study for blindly ignoring differences across the country.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Entropy on Thursday March 02 2017, @06:10PM (3 children)
A hypothetical person that dropped out of high school in the 8th grade, and has done nothing but have children. Do they deserve a living wage? Did they truly develop any skills that would justify $17/hr? In my opinion no, they did not. They might -need- a bunch of money, for all the children that will follow in their footsteps, but they are not deserving of such.
Take some time to develop marketable skills, and stop thinking that a starter job at McDonalds needs to support a family of 4. It's a starter job, you're supposed to grow out of it as your career develops.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:12PM (1 child)
Until McD's, Starbucks and Walmart are the only games left in town. And everyone applying to work there. And those kids you shat out ain't learnin' squat by theyselves. And stealin' cars lookin' real good now.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday March 03 2017, @12:56AM
Those companies will be mostly automated soon.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:37PM
Race war race war RAAACE WAAAAR!!!!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Jiro on Thursday March 02 2017, @11:03PM
People read "there are X job seekers for Y positions" and think that it means that (X minus Y) people can't get a job. That isn't true--you get churn.
Imagine a simplified situation where there are 10000 jobs, no job openings, and 10 unemployed people. That's an infinite ratio--that sounds pretty bad.
Now imagine that every so often, someone from the 10000 gets swapped with one of the unemployed people. This doesn't increase the number of openings or decrease the number of unemployed people at all--there are still 10 unemployed, just a slightly different 10. But since the jobs are being swapped out, the fact that this happens means that each person moves in and out of the unemployed group. How much time you spend in the unemployed group in this scenario depends on the relative size of the unemployed group and the employed group with which there is churn, not the relative size of the unemployed group and the number of openings at any moment. In this scenario everyone is employed for 10000/10010 of the time and unemployed for 10/10000 of the time, They really aren't that bad off at all, even though the ratio of unemployed to openings is infinite.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03 2017, @02:06AM (2 children)
WTF why do LGBTQI think we need so many different types of bathrooms? Men's room for men, women's room for the ladies, and the street for H1B holders.
And since when did "Queer" and "Indifferent" get added to the list of sexual deviancies? It's LGBT, period.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday March 03 2017, @11:28AM (1 child)
They forgot Eunuchs, Metrosexuals, Squirters, Corprophiliacs, Sadomasochists, Androgynous, and Necrophiliacs.
So it should be LGBTRQIMSCS/MAN.....
Can't leave anyone out ya know....
LGBT covers it quite nicely. When you start adding ambiguous things like Indifferent, where do you then draw a line? Indifferent crosses out of the gay community and onto a slippery slope of inclusion confusion.
Queer was a derogatory term when I grew up in the 1960's and referred to LGBT so it is redundant at best, offensive at worst.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday March 03 2017, @05:01PM
Those labels are not about sexual fetishes, you dope.
I know it is confusing whenever they add a new letter. I stands for "Intersex". I had to look that up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03 2017, @03:04AM
Full-time workers get more benefits by law. Companies that don't evade this cost are quickly put out of business by those that do. Thus jobs are part-time, aside from a few fancy jobs where the extra benefits are a tiny percentage of the total compensation.