And you can get birth control for free, especially if you’re poor, so the cost aspect is removed. So it really comes down to either laziness, stupidity, or simply wanting the government check for popping out a bunch of kids.
You honestly think that’s the best decision they can make? Better than trying to put off having kids until you can gain enough skills to get a job that pays enough to support a family?
I only read the first couple page of this trainwreck, but something I keep seeing is posters who claim to never or rarely shop at WalMart and nobody has claimed to work there or even know anybody who works there.
What the heck to you know about it, then?
I shop the HELL out of Walfart! I love it. People are friendly, selection is awesome, prices low. One Stop Shopping. From motor oil to laundry soap and everything in between.
I personally know an employee. Wife’s good friend. We tried to get them a job at a “good place” and they were immediately rejected for having zero skills and horrible credit.
They got hired at WalTart, have a decent job, been promoted at least once that I know of, can pay the rent, have health coverage for the first time in their life. Seems to be happy for the first time in years.
If WalShart opened a store closer to me, I’d go get a job. (They probably wouldn’t hire me! ) Ain’t nothin’ wrong with Walfart. If you can’t support yourself on your paycheck, either get another job or change your lifestyle. But why blame the people who gave you a job?
Yes, it is cheap, which is why I didn’t go into cost for birth control and condoms. I also didn’t say they shouldn’t take it. However, the less than 1% figures for the pill are from clinical trials and only consider perfect handling and intake of the pills. Ever get an illness, wake up late and then have to rush out the door and forget something? What if that something was your pill? Well that’s at least 48 hours of you are unable to be screwed. But will you really remember when you’re getting romantic at 9PM the following day?
Also note that this scenario isn’t included in the 1% factor because that’s not considered the proper way to take it. But that’s reality.
You are making excuses for how you think people should live life and ignoring what it’s actually like to be poor.
Minimum wage at 30 hours a week (so the company can avoid medical) for two people is about $22,000 before taxes, which will pay for the bare necessities. Rent. Electricity. And the shittiest food at the store.
Best decision within their circumstances? Yes. Absolute best decision to make from a standpoint of personal responsibility? No.
But why do you expect them to step back and plan for the long term when they can’t even be sure they’ll make enough money to survive the month? Try working 20-30 hours a week (company doesn’t want to pay medical, after all) at even $9 an hour (much less minimum wage) and then going home and then sitting there watching your local stations. At that rate, you have paid for the basics if you live frugally.
So, you get a significant other. Woo, cut your costs in half, but it seems like having an SO implies more than just being a cost a cutting measure. But it’s not like you save that much on rent and utilities, since you’re already living in the cheapest place you can find (with no regard to anything else, like crime or whatnot). You can do a few more things, but not really that much more. Whether they are smart and save the money or use it to finance some bar crawls or whatnot, that extra money is still largely unavailable to them.
You have SEX because you’re bored. Babies happen as a result. And why wouldn’t you take advantage of the cheapest way to have that baby once you are pregnant?
Why do you think there are always mini baby booms 9 months after the midwest or northeast gets 28 tons of snow dumped on them? Seems being trapped with nothing to do means people go back to the tried and true fun things in life.
Now imagine that’s your entire life. You can’t afford to go to movies, museums, zoos, completely fill your car’s gas tank, ANYTHING. You are POOR.
It amazes me how many people are completely out of touch with what poor actually means. It doesn’t mean you are squeaking by with $35000 or $40000 a year. It means you are paying for the shittiest basics (a tiny 1BR or studio in the highest crime area of town, for instance) and maybe are getting some small extra perk like basic cable TV and then you are tapped out. There is no nest egg, there is no “Well, I guess I can cheat on my budget and get some roses for my sweetie!” there is nothing.
And, when your poor self gets your tax return, you might be lucky to get some spending money. But you are probably going to use that money to pay off some sort of debt because when you are living on the wire, any disruption makes your balance come unglued. Get sick and miss a 6-hour shift? Well, now you’re behind on electricity/water/whatever and the tax return cures that.
WRT to Wal-Mart’s moral duty to pay a certain wage…
The idea of taxes being replaced with voluntary contributions has been raised a few times in threads in GD. The response is always - and correctly - that such a method would not raise sufficient funds to run the government, because of the free-rider problem, meaning that because people who didn’t pay still got to use government services, there’d be an incentive to pay nothing.
Wages are no different. In effect, people who demand that Wal-Mart pay wages higher than what they can negotiate are asking Wal-Mart to engage in charity. Since it’s generally accepted that charity isn’t sufficient to provide a tax base, why should it be sufficient for wages? The same incentive to offer lower wages, thus gaining an advantage over competitors, would exist.
Wage minimums (or better yet, a negative income tax), like taxes, are the domain of government, not a moral code. They are part of setting the “rules of the game”, which is a primary duty of government.
When a whole lot of people have a tendency to engage in behavior that doesn’t make sense on its face, it seems to me that it doesn’t indicate isolated failures of free-willed individuals. It indicates the presence of pervasive social factors that are immune to middle-class sanctimony.
It doesn’t make good financial sense to have children one can’t afford. But it does make good psychosocial sense. Children give people a sense of purpose. If you’ve got a college degree and a good job doing important things and people who appreciate you for talents other than your prowess in bed, you don’t need to find purpose in children. If all you’ve got going for you is tits, ass, and the ability to throw down in the kitchen, then you will likely be someone’s baby mama. If all you’ve got going for you is swagger and charm, then you will likely be someone’s baby daddy. Sex is secondary. Children make people feel like they matter.
I consider myself very liberal, but I would be in favor of mandatory birth control for anyone receiving welfare. Because I don’t think having kids is a right. However, in the absence of such a policy, what else can you do but mitigate the inevitable? Children don’t ask to be born. And it is inevitable that poor people will have kids. Austere wages not only won’t stop this, but they just make it worst. Sanctimony does nothing. Blaming individuals for social problems is no different from covering one’s ears and shouting LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU! I’m hearing a lot of that here.
You’re using sex and best decision in the same sentence. Interesting. (Same metaphorical sentence.)
I’m pretty sure you don’t support abstinence only sex education. But if what you say here made sense, then so would that. Yes, the best decision is to put off having kids until you can afford them. And staying in school. And going to work every day and working to the best of your ability. But some people don’t, and yelling at them for not making good decisions doesn’t solve the problem. Like I said, around the world improved standards of living lead to lower birth rates. Got a better idea? We’ve had sterilization mentioned. One child per woman unless you have money?
Of course no matter what you do, some people are going to screw it up. But I suspect that lots of the unemployed and idle today would love to work. Hell, during the bubble, where there was better than full employment, drug dealers were getting jobs. Let’s be pragmatic here.
Is there a trend line in wages that has been interrupted by the 2007 recession? http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2012/recession/pdf/recession_bls_spotlight.pdf
This page initially suggests that there may be, but it appears to use nominal changes, where wage growth has dropped from 3.5 to 1.6%. During the same time period, inflation in the US has also dropped significantly, so the effect on real wages may not be quite so large. Of course there would be some effect of the recession on wages, but I was talking about the long term trend that many people on the board discuss.
A lot of your argumentation in this thread has been to highlight differences in the pay structure of Costco and Walmart and to suggest that Walmart are being foolish to not pay employees more. If they paid more, their employees would be more productive, leading to better outcomes for the company, as you contend it has for Costco. You may well be right, it is entirely possible. (I would contend that Walmart’s managers have probably looked at this question in MUCH more detail, with much more data, and decided upon their current course of action. Knowing the retail industry a little, I would go further and hazard that they’ve already tested this hypothesis empirically. Good retail ops managers always roll out localised changes that they’re contemplating to see what happens. There’s no shortage of feedback loops in retail. But this is besides the point. For the purposes of this discussion, there is every chance you’re correct.)
Bo - the people affected are not only those that do the job that automation or the Chinese took over. Lets say there were 100 jobs earlier - 50 in manufacturing and 50 in services. If you lose 30 jobs in manufacturing to automation and the Chinese, the 50 people in services ALSO are affected. The pool of people competing for those 30 jobs has almost doubled. Of course it isn’t one for one in this fashion, but you get the idea.
As to the other issue, I apologise for not being clearer in my meaning. There is no doubt that it is easier to be happy for or feel sad for your own countrymen than for someone across the nation. I should have stated, as Hellestal has, that it a morally ambiguous position, which too many people who repeat this point constantly miss. Also it’s not clear to me that people are on average worse off in the US than they were, because the wave of automation and offshoring may have reduced wages, but it has also made consumption of many consumer goods cheaper. I’ve read a couple of papers to that effect. Will try and dig them up.
p.s : your post in the subjective opinions thread lead me to listen to Louie Louie the song proper for the first time!(I’d heard the tune in movies and such like) It’s been playing non stop in my head for the last two days. Thanks!
pps : Sorry for the multiple posts people. I have difficulty accessing the board these days and the proxy that I end up using breaks almost all button-based functionality.
The real breakpoint came with the 2001 recession and Republican economic policy. I agree that wages did not increase during the 2000s, and the housing bubble and low interest rates covered up this problem until it collapsed.
WalMart was there first, and, as I said, when you are first at cutting wages it is a powerful competitive advantage. That isn’t the only reason they did well - they manage their supply chain very well also. Why don’t they change now? It would be very difficult to do so. Higher wages is not something which can be rolled out piecemeal. They appear to be stepping up hiring. And they may be ideologically committed to lower wages. Plus it is hard to change directions of a company. I used to work for the Bell System - I know that well.
We can’t expect WalMart to change. A higher minimum wage would put more money in the hands of people who would spend it and level the playing field. Ditto UHC - but I’m clearly just dreaming now.
Why do they need to be “ideologically” committed to paying lower wages than Costco? They have a business model that works. They get many times the applicants as they have jobs, so they can pick and choose at the rate they are paying. Seems to me they are “ideologically” committed to paying the market rate for their business model-- just like virtually all businesses.
It’s funny how some people on this thread seem to think there’s a choice involved in deciding how you’re going to get born. Like there’s a box you can check, pre-birth, that says “I’d like to be born to an upper-middle class couple, who take me to Disney World in the summer. Plus, I’ll choose the option for the 130 IQ, please.”
Or, “I’ll take the depressive, binge-drinking, single mom with anger-management issues, who gives me pictures of things she wishes she could buy me on my birthday. And a 70 IQ and learning disability would be nice, too. Thanks.”
I hadn’t noticed anyone in this thread saying anything about this, even in the hijacks about birth control. It’s funny to me that you’d bring this fascinating observation us when it has absolutely nothing to do with the OP or the thread in general.
Seems rather obvious to me, though clearly some people think in completely different directions than I do. It’s got nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with the different business models that, in the case of this example, Walmart and Costco have. They are trying to achieve different things and value different things and thus their personnel cost models are completely different and emphasize (or de-emphasize) different things. Both are successful in their niche, so it’s unclear to me why either should change if what they are doing is working for them. Both are also in compliance with the laws and regulations, such as minimum wage laws, that we as a society have set.
Not working as well as it used to. WalMart is not the growth company it used to be. And execs can be as ideologically committed to business models as any politician is to a platform. I’ve seen that.
I’m sure Costco is just as swamped by applicants. In that situation you can either cut wages knowing you will still get people or you can increase wages a bit and hire for quality, knowing that you might be able to snag better people than you could during a low employment period.
You can see all applicants as equal, so you can wind up with lazy losers, or you can see applicants as distinct. If the former yeah, you pay rock bottom wages. If the latter, you need to work a bit harder to get good ones. No one thinks all applicants for tech jobs are equal, and companies target their pay rates at some point at or above the mean, depending on the people they want. Doing that at the low end is not stupid - unless one thinks that all people applying for minimum wage jobs are the same.
For example, there are certain things I see business do*. It seems dumb! I have a simple solution! So what is going on here…is everyone stupid or am I not seeing the whole issue and my solution has major problems/won’t work? Similar to this is condemning large groups of people for acting wrong and wondering why they are so stupid. IF large groups of people are doing it, it might not be as stupid as you think, though you can’t see how that would be.
Like for example…why not pay salespeople on how much a project makes in profit? It seems a major issue for every company I work for is salespeople get paid on the amount of $$$ they bring in and then have to harass and supervise and add layers of management to watch to make sure salespeople are properly pricing the project. Why not pay them a (higher) percentage of the profit? If the project makes no profit, salesperson gets squat. Heck, make it progressive and give higher and higher % to salespeople for higher profit projects? I think this sounds reasonable but there has to be something wrong with it because I have not seen it done.
) Ain’t nothin’ wrong with Walfart. If you can’t support yourself on your paycheck, either get another job or change your lifestyle. But why blame the people who gave you a job?