Have they ever?
In what universe is this a bad thing? Technology is drastically reducing the need for work. That’s a good thing! It would be amazing if we could do this - it would mean that we, as a society, have moved past the need for fast food wait staff, and the people who were previously doing that could do something more productive with their lives.
Ah, who am I kidding, what’s going to happen is that they all lose their job and join a permanent jobless class, along with everyone else whose job gets taken by robots, while the people making the robots get richer and richer. Star Trek my ass.
Yeah, actually, they were. The unions in Germany are not only incredibly strong, but their strength is actually anchored in the Grundgesetz.
The law was not made for the purpose of targeting most of the German workers. It was intended to stamp down the practice of hiring interns and trainees and paying them an absolute pittance, a practice which exploded in the last decade.
And yet you advocated a wage given to them merely for existing. Everyone else is advocating minimum wage, so they’d at least have to work. You are the one advocating that people get money without working. You advocate for flat out socialism and then act like being on the left is bad. You’re advocating far more dependency on the government.
You can’t say people aren’t entitled to something but advocate for an entitlement. The only reason I didn’t blast you before was that you suggested the far more liberal alternative to the minimum wage, which, while impractical, would ultimately be better.
These types of arguments just don’t hold up. You’ve got horrible cognitive dissonance going on here. Or, you are trolling, and just said that other alternative to be combative. It sure does seem completely out of your normal political arena to be so far on the left.
Maybe it’s like “government should get out of the marriage business and only issue civil unions” or “we should only have unisex bathrooms”–things that are less likely to happen–using the perfect as the enemy of the good.
No, you’re wrong. (I can go back and forth, seems wasteful though)
Many employers need to negotiate, the fact that you think they don’t shows your lack of knowledge regarding how people get jobs. Maybe you didn’t negotiate your salary because you suck and don’t have any skills to negotiate on. You must be one of the roving pack of homeless people begging anyone to give them some shitty job because you have no skills anyone with a business would want.
The fact that you equate getting a job with the end of WWII just shows how moronic you are.
I do appreciate that people can find themselves in tough situations. But other than a surprise medical problem, would you agree that it is a circumstance of their own making. Maybe someone should have stayed in school and gotten a degree or learned a trade; maybe someone shouldn’t have had a child (or children) without a plan of how to pay for them; maybe someone should have not stayed in a dying town and moved, gotten a job on a ship or oil rig or joined the military where they could not only have a job/career, but also learned skills that would give them more options when they left. The hard truth is that even being stuck in the minimum wage job pool is the result of a series of decisions and individual made—poor decisions.
Would you agree with that so far.
Let’s assume a perfect world, one in which everyone does exactly as you propose. Everyone stays in school, and has the aptitude and opportunity to stay in school and get a degree or learn a trade. They don’t have children early; they get out of dying towns. They all become perfectly employable.
Who washes dishes? Who works at Walmart? Those jobs still exist, but now there’s nobody who (in your mind) deserves to work at them. So who does them? Who works for minimum wage in your perfect world, and why is it their fault?
I was responding to Octupus’s point that everything in Wal-Mart is made in China. By the same level of hyperbole, if everything in Wal-Mart is made in China, then we have no high tech manufacturing.
By the same token, as there are some goods in Wal-Mart that are produced in the US, there is some tech made here as well, but if you are talking about mass manufacturing of computers, phones, Tv’s, Hd players, gaming consoles, and other computer products, the vast bulk of that is NOT here. The manufacturing of the boards and chips that are used in assembly by the company in your cite and others like it is likely not here.
My point in all of that is simply that wages only account for a small and possibly insignificant part of the reason that jobs producing these high demand consumer devices does not take place in the US. We could pay the pennies a day that people were outraged about Iphone plants a few years back, and it wouldn’t help.
My point of Thorium is not on topic, so I would rather not hijack too much, but if you google “rare earth shortage”, you will find many articles like this one, which makes the point that lack of rare earths hinders our high tech manufacturing. With thorium locked up in the minerals that bear many of the common rare earths, and all of the less common more valuable ones, and Thorium being regulated as a radioactive waste, the US is severely hindered in its ability to roll out something like a high volume smartphone factory. The mines in China are not much different from the US, just our treatment of the waste from them.
Young people, most likely. As is the case now.
There’s nothing wrong with washing dishes or working at Walmart. The problem is simply one of supply and demand. If there are fewer people who don’t become engineers, accountants, etc., that’s fewer people who have to look for those lower paying jobs. And the lower skilled workers can get the work they want. And the better ones—show up on time, nice to customers, etc.—will be able to negotiate a higher wage. The problem is when one finds himself on the lower and of the job spectrum AND it’s crowded.
But you do raise a good larger point about all this constant talk about sending everyone to college. Why the fuck would we think that is a good idea? Especially when all it will do for some people is put them in debt. I really don’t see how America bounces back to it’s former greatness without plenty of low- to medium-skilled manufacturing jobs. But that’s a rant for another thread…
And that. Yes.
I’ll add that this is not a small point. It used to be that flipping burgers was a job done by teenagers, and it was a way for them to learn about what it means to have a job. It’s becoming harder for teens to find that experience now as older and older people have those jobs.
Oh no! I’m not indespensible to my company! Just like 99.9% of all low-wage employees (the ones we’re talking about here) ever. Newsflash, oh wise one: people in shit jobs typically don’t have skills that make them indespensible to their parent company!
A person needs to be indispensable to a company in order to negotiate for starting wages or salary? Who said that? Who THINKS that? How come someone be indispensable to a company they don’t even work for yet?
You can’t - there’s no such thing as the “objective value” of labor. The value of anyone’s labor is whatever you can convince someone else to pay you. That’s subjective by definition.
Again, in the US that is not true. MW workers are not supporting themselves or others, and do not live in poor households.
Yes.
Regards,
Shodan
Bullshit.
You’ve either never been to any of these places, you’re cluelessly unobservant, or you’re just plain lying.
Walk into your local Walmart. Most of the staff are middle aged and older women.
So in your first paragraph you admit that there are some jobs that, despite a pool of employable people, still need to pay minimum wage (or as low as the market will bear, I’m sure). And in your second, you then argue that we need low-skilled people to fill those jobs.
And in neither did you address the fact that those low-paying jobs pay sufficiently that those employees don’t make enough money to survive without state assistance.
Well done.
In order to demand a raise, it has to be a better option to raise my salary than to fire me and replace me with the next resume down. You think this is actually a thing at McDonalds or Wal Mart?
Fair enough. I find this morally abhorrent and practically disgusting.
You keep saying this, and I keep not getting what you mean. Care to explain?
You actually think nobody at McDonalds or Wal Mart ever gets raises? You are definitely living in some weird fantasy land.
I think your employment situation is bleeding over into your insipid postings on this topic. Maybe you should spend less time posting idiotic messages online and more time trying to better your skills to leave your shitty paying job.
No, it’s the way the market works. What is the value of a banana? Whatever shoppers are willing to pay.
Substituting “labor” for a “piece of fruit” doesn’t change the economic equation.
You claimed
And at least in the US, this is not true. Most people who earn minimum wage are not living on their own; they are students or teenagers working for beer or gas money or for school. And they are not living in poverty - the households in which they live are not typically below the poverty line.
The notion that the typical MW worker in the US is desperately scrabbling for survival is not the case. This has been cited fairly often in the past - feel free to try the "CITECITECITELIAR!!!’ gambit, but don’t expect to be taken seriously.
Regards,
Shodan