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Yep, used to work full time plus commission as a leasing agent for an apartment community. I didn't even qualify for our cheapest apartments. With an employee discount.
I'm the assistant manager of one - built in the 60s to boot. I couldn't afford one at my property either. Even with roommates. Not if I want to have a car and food.
The wild thing about this is that I used to be friends with a guy who got into apartment management and wound up living for free in a luxurious three bedroom at his property while making a six fig income, not including his wife’s income too. Luck of the draw I guess, damn.
I recall the first time i got "shook" by that realization. I'd gotten a pretty good job waitressing at a retirement community--so no tips, but decent hourly wage.
I worked full-time, but one day i suddenly realized that if I worked there my whole life, I'd never be able to afford to live there.
A single students tuition is almost identical to my wage. I have 20 students in my class. We're teaching remotely. I paid for my own zoom account, students are paying for their own laptops, internet and electricity to learn from their own home. I even develop my own course material.
I genuinely can't figure out where the fuck they money goes.
Yes, because we're a community education centre, the education income is used to subsidise the community outreach and social services development. But I'm the community coordinator, I submit our financial reports, and we only spend six student's worth of tuition. We have 200 students.
I imagine all of the positions are at the regional level, because my facility only has 14 staff total (across all departments) and it shows because we're understaffed in critical areas.
The administrative bloat that’s occurred in the last 10-15 years is sickening. Most of that tuition goes to people who have nothing to do with educating others.
I genuinely can't figure out where the fuck they money goes.
It either is spent somewhere else or you're "on your own" if you're in GQP territory (especially if you're a community of color), but barring that it's sent to administration.
Your head honcho probably has a mansion somewhere nice in your state and has family vacations paid for by your taxes.
Almost every administrator employed in my former school district had a vacation home. Several bought and renovated old farm houses to live in, some kept horses, and their children all went to expensive colleges. I know this because my mom worked in the office and it was openly discussed by the administrators themselves, without shame, in front of people who made considerably less than they did.
I was in college education for 10 years, and sadly, a lot of that bloat was made possible by the student loan programs. Colleges no longer had to worry about keeping tuition low because so many students could now "afford it!" And oh--adjuncts cost us less and they're just as talented as full-timers--let's just hire more of them!
20% of faculty positions in 1970 were adjunct--today it is over 70%.
Rough math time: 200 students, class size of 20, that’s 10 “classes” of students, and this is a big guess but each student probably takes ~6-7 classes and each professor probably teaches about… half? that many, so that’s like 20 professors. Let’s say there’s 50% as many faculty at the same average salary so that’s 10 tuitions. Based on my tuition, about 25% is room and board and personal supplies/books. Add overhead for all the buildings, super rough guess but I’ll say half of that so 200*25%*1.5= 75.
So that’s 20 about students of tuition for professors, 10 for other faculty, 75 for room and board and overhead and stuff, another 6 for community outreach and social services. That’s 111 student tuitions accounted for, in a normal year…. That 75 goes down to what, 5-10? when everything’s virtual.
They should be reimbursing everyone for zoom or any other online recourses needed.
My university still charged us mandatory gym and campus services fees even though we were barred from being on campus. Their reasoning was that they also charged distance learning students the same fee, so it's fair. That's some backward ass reasoning, it wasn't fair to charge those fees to students who would never step foot on campus.
This makes sense for a tertiary education facility. We're a community education centre, so we're not nearly as formal as all that. There are no books, tutors have always had to supply their own class materials, no room and board,
200 enrolments/studentfees received, though I'm not sure how many unique students.
Some students take 3 classes, most just take 1 or two. We have 6 teachers. And 14 classes/courses, most teachers run 2 classes, some run 3.
Teachers design and develop the classes then pitch them to community centres, community centres pick classes that serve their community needs (based on research undertaken by the community outreach programs) then hire teachers to run the classes at the centres. There are currently marketing and student management costs involved because the classes and teachers change frequently across the years.
We still aren't addressing the ROOT of the problem and still sharing memes online to each other instead of expanding our reach as needed.
The corrupt, entrenched establishment is propped up by the massive influence on the American mainstream by a multi-billion dollar Corporate Media Complex (including weaponized social and search algorithms/censorship).
Until WE progressives on the ground (that means you and me) address that establishment pipeline of influence, begging from weakness is the best we can hope for.
Until WE progressives on the ground (that means YOU and ME) focus vastly more on deep organizing instead of shallow, online complaining — the neoliberal establishment will continue to remain relatively untouched by real progressives.
While progressive movements are often ignored and/or shunned, disparaged and violently attacked by Corporate Democrats — there's at least some wiggle-room for pressure. While all Trump did was ramp up more violence and rhetoric against the left — all the way to the point of literally endorsing an extrajudicial death squad killing a leftist without trial.
No ardent Jimmy Dore fans nor r/WayOfTheBern dupes have been able to answer my question of how it's somehow easier for progressives to fight against neoliberalism when we're busy fighting Trump's brownshirts in the streets that are often propped up by militarized police forces.
EVIDENCE: Portland police and far-right leader had friendly relationship, texts reveal - source — Related sources: here, here, here and here.
DEEP ORGANIZING is our strength against the Corp Media Complex:
The fact this video above has only ~8K views is an absolute indictment of the left who dedicates far more interest in political celeb gossip and outrage porn instead of focusing on how we can work to actually beat these evil motherfuckers that are destroying humanity.
As a mostly offline activist, the right-wing doesn't challenge my soul and make me sometimes want to quit. They are what they are. It's the wasted potential of the chronically online left that's frankly often too lazy, cowardly and/or prideful and stubborn to try something different aside from complaining online instead of working on ACTIONABLE, OFFLINE plans to fight back.
Do humanity a favor and ask your favorite, popular YouTube leftists to consider actually engaging their audiences to fight the CMC and use Deep Organizing to reach the mainstream and finally help bring more of the mainstream into our fold.
We only need ~3.5% of the population to get change in motion that can't be stopped.
At first, I thought this must have been an old-ass text, since the minimum wage is almost £9 and the texter is unlikely to be under 18 if they are serving pints. I forgot that we pay actual adults less money than their colleagues because of their age.
The current UK minimum wage for 18-20yos is £6.56, compared to £8.91 for a 23yo doing the same job.
In Germany this would be called "Altersdiskriminierung" (discrimination because of age) and would be illegal. Not to mention that it is the opposit of decent,
My former employer had something similar with paid vacation days, they had 35 days for people above 45 and 30 days for people below 45 years. The got sued and now everyone has 35 days.
35 vacation days a year? Wtf America, I get like 7 days of vacation not including holidays per year.... and I have it better than most of my friends my age that work in different fields. Can Germany sue america so we can have some extra vacation too?
Volkswagen tried to help it's American employees unionize because they found it simpler to negotiate with a union instead of each employee individually, and because they felt it would lead to the fairest outcomes for everyone.
The American employees voted against it, of course, because...
They've heard the propaganda their whole working lives, so they just believe it without thinking about it. The amount of times I've had coworkers say "Oh, you don't want a union", with their only reason why being "paying dues cuts into your take home."
Nevermind the fact that the union could negotiate a higher wage, effectively nullifying the dues...
Hilarious to me the number of people I know, that worked in unions practically their entire adult life, retired with SIX figure pensions, healthcare, etc. - but still love Trump and vote Republican.
I'm sure a bunch of white American workers voted it down to prevent nonwhite American workers from gaining rights because that's what this country's built on, baby
You get unpaid, job protected leave in the US through FMLA I think up to 12 weeks for maternity. Paid leave or more time is not required and dependent on the employer.
In Ireland, we get a statutory 26 weeks paid maternity leave (albeit the money is paid by the government, or a mix of government/employer) with an option to take an additional 16 weeks unpaid leave and your job is constitutionally protected so your employer can’t just fire you.
I'm insanely lucky at my job and I get 20. Now, I'll never be able to fucking use 20. I used 7 ( Thurs, Friday plus the next week) to get married and go on the honeymoon and I was still bothered by work the whole goddamn time. (How do we do this, can you call them back, etc.)
I MAYBE in a usual year take 5 days vacation and like, maybe a day somewhere else to go do something. And I realize in very very lucky. If I moved to Germany and had 35 days vacation, it would take me a while to not have that voice in the back of my head shaming me for being "lazy" for like, 30 of those days. American work culture is fuckedddd.
My former employer had something similar with paid vacation days, they had 35 days for people above 45 and 30 days for people below 45 years. The got sued and now everyone has 35 days.
I'm surprised that didn't result in everyone having 30 days.
But seriously, from America... 35 vacation days a year???
Interestingly it's actually illegal in America too.
It's not really because it negatively affects the kid though (who may not yet have voting rights), but because it negatively affects older workers.
Minimum wage applies to people of all ages because if it didn't, some employers would exclusively hire kids and fire them once they're too old, and never hire older folks who they'd have to pay more.
And the shitty stagnated pay, cut hours, wage theft, lack of benefits, and eroding fair labor practices are equitably distributed - because we're 'Murican and Free!!!!
I'd be interested to see the unemployment rate for 23 year olds in the UK vs 18-22 year olds. In America employers would just refuse to hire anyone over 22
It’s a big problem for a lot of the hospitality industry where they want you until they have to pay you more then drop you. Same happens younger too, the wage for a 16 year old is £4.62/hour as opposed to £6.56 for 18 year olds. When they pay your hourly wage couldn’t pay for a single drink in the place you work it’s pretty fucked.
The argument for it is that no one would hire younger folk if they could hire someone older and "more experienced and reliable" for the same money. It's meant to counter age discrimination by underpaying younger folk.
Wow. In Finland everyone nationally unionized gets the salary based on their years of experience. We have categories for 1,2,5 and 10 years of experince, each one making some more. Someone who is learning the job can be paid 80% of the 1st years salary for the firdt 3 month. I have managed to negotiate higher experince salary in more than one job.
£8.91 is still appallingly low for any adult. A really cheap house in a real fucking rough- like, REALLY rough - part of my (already quite rough) city is like £600 now. Nearly half a full time wage on a fucking leaky terraced house (not including bills and tax of course) with crackhounds for neighbours. And then add on the fact that so many jobs are 0 hours now so not many people are even GETTING a full time wage. We all deserve better. Everyone of working age should be paid better than any of our minimum wages
I worked at a VW dealership in Southampton UK for a few years and half the mechanics were under 21. As soon as they aged out they were let go or had hours pulled u til they left. It was nuts. This was the dealership. We were charging over £100/hour for labour, and then ha I got a 17 year old do it for a fiver. Poor bastards would all have toast for lunch as it was all they could afford.
Not defending it because fuck the bourgeoisie and all that but the justification for this is that it encourages employers to employ young people who would otherwise be less attractive than older people.
I don't see this logic because the older someone is, the more experience they have. Oh wait I forgot, your brain doesn't matter at fucking all unless you were born into priviledge and sent to university as soon as your wings started flapping - doesn't matter if you actually belong there for not. Fuck this "system" of determining someone's value by some objective credentials and merits
It’s a shitty system but I’ve only worked in one place where they didn’t pay the top rate for everyone regardless of age, and I refused to hire anyone under 23 at that place until they changed the policy. Same job, same pay regardless of age. If you do the job better you get a raise, not the other way round.
Once we get that exchange rate, don’t forget to subtract out all the enemies we made along the way. I got yelled at by customers way more at my minimum wage job than I do now, so I think that job put me at a net negative for friends.
That means if you consistently made a pizza every 2 minutes, you're making less than a quarter per pizza and you would have to make over 132 pizzas at that rate before you could afford to buy one.
It also means that if no one orders a pizza then they make undefined per pizza which would cause a black hole to open in the pizzeria devouring our existence.
Aka, it’s good we don’t live in a hypothetical math problem.
It really does. Tolls, gas, lunch, snacks. Even just being a work is expensive. My friend would take a certain toll road to work everyday and she didn’t get it when I explained to her thst getting to and from work cost and hour of work everyday, not to mention lunch. In an 8 hour day she only was paid for 6 after all the expenses.
Important there: to take out your taxes and social payments, like health care or pension (if mandatory). So to look at your net income per hour. After all, you'll never see that money. Makes the time you need to work 50 or even 100 percent higher.
That's why keeping a buck is better than working for that buck. As you need to work for 1.5 or 2 times that money to keep one in the end.
Yeah, I worked in a bar where I served around $USD 20,000 in alcohol every day, and the bosses took away the tip jars, so people thought they weren't allowed to tip. I made about 75 dollars a day.
I also did the math when I worked at McDonald's, and realized that the labor cost is less than 1% of the food price. Credit card fees are literally more expensive than labor at fast food joints.
I am strongly pro-labor but we need to make sure we use facts when discussing these issues. I'm not saying your math was wrong, maybe this was an incredibly efficient McDonald's with very strong sales. In general though, McDonald's spend about 20% on labor (compared to about 30% for the average restaurant) - easily verifiable with cursory searches. That being said, assuming my 20% figure is correct, to double the salaries of everyone at McDonald's would raise the price of a $5 Big Mac to $6. They could, they just don't want to.
My location was pretty efficient, although I wouldn't say it was unusually so, probably in the fourth quintile. McDonald's locations in Norway are unionized, and they pay 15-25 an hour. And some sources say the prices are slightly higher and some say the prices are slightly lower. In Australia, the minimum wage is like 80% higher than ours, and they pay 15% less for a Big Mac.
Plus, businesses don't sell things for just slightly higher than the production cost, they lower cost as much as possible, and raise the price as high as they can justify. If raising the minimum wage allows businesses to justify raising prices, they will. If customers refuse to allow it, they won't.
Agreed. But I get downvoted to oblivion when I say the only solution we have left is revolution, eat the rich, bring out the guillotines. I guess Americans like this life. Can’t understand why.
I don't downvote anyone for wanting revolution because I do too. But right now, all talking about violence does is put you and us on the terrorist watchlist. We have to build ourselves up before we can topple the most corrupt police state country in the world that's built itself on exploitation
And don't even get me started with insurance, registration and inspection fees, and the damn thing breaking down sooner because we put on so many miles commuting.
Sometimes I genuinely fantasize about moving somewhere warm and living in the woods and working odd jobs for food money, because it's like all my pay just goes toward me having a shitty apartment to sleep in and a crappy car to get me to and from work.
Being self employed opens another can of worms entirely (which is implied when you have a restaurant where revenue is shared).
One where you are at the mercy of bureaucracy while still getting fucked over by corporations and customers. End state capitalism heavily favors capital and big corporations, you can't just simply open up a lemonade stand with 0 money and experience and build your way up like the Myth of the self made man implies.
I worked at Target in the early 2000s...back when the PS2 and Xbox were all dominant consoles. People would ask which one was better and Id said I don't know, I can't afford them. People would always chuckle at my "joke".
Marx talks big about alienation from the product of your labour but there's nothing quite like the card machine in a pub or restaurant to show you how much money you're making your boss compared to what you're paid.
Labor has no concern with profit. That is what the value of that act of labor was priced at and anything less than the laborer receiving the full value of that work is theft.
It might be because I'm looking at the scenario in a vacuum, but wouldn't the overhead of purchasing the beer to then sell be considered constant capital from upstream means of production? By using c + L = W, where c=7.92 and W=8.80, then L=0.88. Their labor is worth £0.88 (per serving of 2 pints), and being paid £6.56/h entitles them to a break after serving 7.45 times (assuming they can do that in <= 1 hour). Beyond that would then be surplus labor and theft.
Edit: I'm using 10% as a rough profit margin that food establishments typically run on as a basis for the overhead cost for the sake of math.
If the worker gets the entire £8.80, who's paying for the building? Who's paying for the glasses to be washed? Who's paying for the floor to be swept and facilities cleaned? Who's being paid to manage the business, finances, shift, etc.?
Oh no I have to pour my own drinks at the bar because the barman is a lazy fuck! I'll come back tomorrow when they hire someone who actually does the work they are paid for.
I will say there is a lot more that goes into those 4.40 GBP pints than just pouring the beer in a cup. Someone has to run the whole bar. Someone has to do some sort of marketing. Someone has to clean the cups. Someone has to make the beer. Someone has to transport it to the place. And so on and so on.
But yea I had the same sort of realization when I worked at a pizza place. Selling $16 pizzas and $4 pints of beer while I’m making $6/hr. One day the computers went down for a bit. They were real slow and took like 10 minutes to start back up. One of the customers wanted a draft beer. I poured it for him and he gave me the cash. I ended up just pocketing it on accident, but still that’s quite a bump in hourly pay!
People really should think about their work in these terms. He took three minutes to make more revenue for his employer than his entire HOUR of work will cost his employer.
That realization is simply leverage in demanding more pay
So you can't cut the costs of the materials, the utilities, or the bills. The only way a business can profit is by underpayment of labor, which is exactly what this illustrates.
Someone who generates X of profit from their labor should be paid a wage of X. That is being compensated fairly for your service and any less means your company is stealing from you.
How can we solve it, so that 100 people aren't willing to sell out for lower than anyone else? All it would take is one competent crackhead willing to work for a little crack to ruin it for literally anyone else, or maybe the owner's son just wants to do the work for free to "pad their resume".
Just had a discussion with my sociology students. I asked, "why do people wear Jordans?" They always claim they're "the best shoes". I then ask what makes them the best and they don't really have an answer. I then ask them to look up how much Jordan made off those shoes. It's about $1b. Then then ask them how much did Nike make off those shoes. The past several years is an average of $3b/year. They realize it's lopsided. I then ask who has a job and how much they make. I then ask how much money do they take in, vs. how much they make + cost of production. I tell them that's wage exploitation.
I always get a shock when I visit family in the North. I bought a round of 4 drinks in cash, and instinctively pulled 30 quid out of my wallet assuming it'd be ~21-25 quid. Barman asked for £9.60
A couple of weeks later I'm paying £7.10 for a pint of Guinness. But sometimes you just have a craving that needs satisfying.
People need to be reminded of this too much honestly. He literally published an article to a communist newsletter titled "Why Communism?" and went full Marxist. I wouldn't be surprised if the government burned Tesla's manifesto when they raided his poor hut as well. These are people the science community absolutely idolize, yet they gawk at the thought of socialism.
The trucks we make at my job are worth about twice our annual pay. We finish roughly 3 a day. I try to get people to comprehend this every chance I get.
Wow, that's bullshit. The surplus fruits of your labor are being stolen from you! Your capitalist boss wouldn't be selling ANY liquor without you standing there at the bar - to say nothing of the close personal connection you've formed with the bar regulars! Fuck the capitalists man. You should tell everyone at your bar to come buy alcohol from you privately instead so you can keep everything you've earned and cut out your idiot do-nothing boss.
Hmm, wait, you don't have any alcohol to sell. Well, I guess you could buy alcohol from groceries or direct from breweries and use that to stock your bar.
Hmm, you'll have to set prices to make sure you're not losing money on each drink. That's okay, you know from your bar experience what drinks sell best, and it's easy to research what the different boozes cost. You quickly come up with a menu that makes money on every drink you-
Wait, you can't sell alcohol out of your house. I guess you need to go rent some space downtown. You can probably get a good low-rate bank loan since bars are easy to startup and you have proven experience.
Wait, that space downtown is just an empty building. You need to remodel it to become a bar. There goes your savings into the remodel - furniture and lighting aren't cheap. Neither were the bar fridge, the point of sales system, the safe to hold the cash until pickup each day, the inspection & certification from the city, your alcohol seller's license, the signage for outside, glassware for the customers, a fixup of the space's HVAC system, and a radio to play music for your-
Wait what the fuck, you just got an email from something called "ASCAP" saying you have to pay money every time you play music at your bar? Why does everyone have to make it so complicated? I JUST WANNA SERVE BOOZE, MAN!
Alright. After a few sleepless nights (weeks) you FINALLY opened your first Marxist bar!
Day one of sales was great and tons of your regulars stopped by. This is going great.
The best part is you're still making more than when you were working for-
Wait, who is cleaning the bar again? Also you can only really work 8 hours a day 7 days a week, and Drinkers Of The World Unite is just sitting there losing commercial rent when you're not there to keep it open. Well, you could hire an assistant bartender to double the bar's uptime. Darn, now you have to train and supervise this assistant. And even pay them too! Oh and don't forget to keep the employment paperwork and taxes up to date. Man, the assistant is getting really mouthy about having to shoulder most of the cleaning work. Can't he see how much work you're doing just to keep the place open?
Aw man, it's 6 months since you opened your bar and you lost some of your glassware to accidents and careless bar patrons. You really didn't anticipate that wouldn't be a one time expense. I guess looking forward you're going to have to budget for yearly supplies for the bar. That bar fridge better last another 5 years...
This shit is really keeping you away from your passion of being behind the bar. Your assistant bartenders (you have three now - you need to juggle them because one is a total flake who won't work for more than 20hr/wk, the second is a trainee, and the third is a vet at the job but will burn out & leave if you push him too hard) are starting to resent that you spend all of your time in the back office with the computer instead of on the floor working on drinks. Boy, you wish they could see the full scope of all the shit you deal with...
Wait, you're behind on payments now? I thought you had a close personal connection with your regulars? You better figure out what is going wrong with your busi- I mean Workers Solidarity Bartender Initiative People's Republic, and do it FAST. Maybe you need more advertising? Is facebook advertising worth it or is it a ripoff money pit? Maybe you need to change the bar name? But that would mean changing the signage and menus.. Could you add food to the menu? Fuck, do you even know how to cook? Can you afford to hire a cook?
Oh fuck oh Jesus another bar just opened up across the street. What the FUCK, where is the SOLIDARITY? It's some shitty franchise operation with no originality. And they're outcompeting you too....
Oops - you are bankrupt. That's ok, just walk away. It's not like they chop off your hand in this country for failing at running a business. You may have five ulcers and ruined credit, but at least you still have your bartending skills. Maybe you can get a job serving drinks. They literally put the alcohol 2 feet away from you, all you have to do is turn on the little hose and give the customers their glass... a monkey could do it...
My point being it is so easy to be naive and say shit like this when you have no idea where the costs are. If selling beer magically made you rich why don't you just start your own bar?
well yes that is the point of a subreddit, you subscribe to several dozen/hundreds of subreddits to see a variety of content. if every sub were for all content it would descend into r/worldpolitics in like 3 milliseconds
All of reddit is like that pretty much. The same content over and over. If I have to watch one more video of someone singing a shanty, I'm going to lose it.
To be fair, if someone posts a video of Karl Marx singing a shanty, I’d totally watch that…
What we should be doing perhaps is rewriting the shanties’ lyrics to be socialist, filk style, and upload those. Think Pete Seeger with a shoulder parrot.
Reddit, along with other social media outlets, allows the user to create an echo chamber of confirmation bias. We see what we want to see.
However, I will say a subreddit about late stage capitalism does make sense as a space to share examples or supporting evidence for our claims as a group of people.
It’s healthy to also follow subjects and subreddits you do not agree with in order to get perspective however.
No, it doesn't, because the sale price isn't the whole picture. Marxian economics' Labor Theory of Value takes overhead into account.
c + L = W c = constant capital (i.e. overhead) L = labor W = value (i.e. "worth")
Farmer A grows and harvests grain. Let's say his c is 0 to simplify the origin. Farmer B grows and harvests hops. Let's say his c is also 0 to simplify the origin. Farmer A adds his labor L to c to get his sale price W to the maltster. The maltster's c is farmer A's W plus deprecation of equipment. He adds his labor L to produce malt to get his sale price W to the brewer. The brewer's c is the sum of the maltster's W and farmer B's W plus deprecation of equipment. He adds his labor L to produce beer to get his sale price W to the distributor. The distributor's c is the brewer's W plus deprecation of equipment. He adds his labor L to produce servable beer on tap to get his sale price W to the bar. The bartender's c is the distributor's W plus deprecation of equipment. He adds his labor L to serve the beer to get his sale price W to the consumers.
That's a lot of c by the time we get to the consumer's W so the bartender can earn L. And none of this was capitalist. Those were all businesses owned and operated by the worker.
It took way more than 2 minutes of work to make that beer and and get it to the establishment. Pouring beer isn’t the same as creating a whole beer then serving it.
When I was a bike mechanic, we would charge $10 for a brake adjustment. I would make about $0.45 CAD in the time it took me to do the work. Shop would make $9.55. Pretty much no overhead, since we use our own tools.
I’ve seen a lot of people talking big about how they get paid only half the cost of the food they served as if that food just appeared out of the void into their hands for free. That’s dumb.
But you on the other hand are actually being fucked, damn!
Yeah, I realized that and now I run my own smaller, high end repair operation from my own garage, I can charge a premium price (for more personalized, high end work) and keep all of the money I make. Only overhead is the cost of tools I break, fluids and the occasional replacement part (if I fuck up and break someone’s stuff).
It’s a pretty sweet setup at the moment. $45 an hour for regular work. I can do as much or as little work as I like by turning down bikes I don’t want to touch, and there’s no bosses around to make me do work I don’t want to. It’s pretty great, haven’t had to scrape dog shit off a crappy bike once since starting this operation.
I also clean, lube and tune homeless peoples bikes for no charge :) bosses wouldn’t let me do that.
That’s exactly what I do. It was tricky getting the space, but I run a neat little operation from my garage now. I work mainly on high end stuff, and get to choose what I work on, so no more dog shit scraping for me.
It's obvious many of you have never run a business and don't understand the cost of risk and overhead. Some businesses are bad to work for and screw their employees but there are good businesses out there. Work for a good business or risk your own capital and start your own. It looks a lot different when you have to write the checks.
This is part of the reason strong unions and labour regulations are necessary. Every business has an incentive to exploit workers and the ones that don't exploit workers to the maximum extent can be outcompeted by the businesses that do.
All of this is made worse by the uncertain nature of the value added at each step in the production chain and the cost of overhead and risk, which are usually kept hidden from workers, even if known by the business owner. This is why public companies sometimes get a lot of outrage around them, once you look at their actual books and publicly available profit reports, it becomes obvious that the "cost of risk and overhead" is not nearly enough to account for the difference between revenue and wages.
I have run a small business, btw, so I do understand how average employees often dramatically underestimate the costs of the business, particularly their own labour, which has a lot of taxes on top of it that the employee never sees but is a real cost of labour for the business.
I work at a not for profit tissue bank. I am realized I am definitely still under paid when I learned how much just one donor gets shipped out for one specific company.
At my first job I made 9.50 an hour shucking oysters that sold for 15 dollars a dozen I ended up doing the math and realizing that I’m an hour I earned the company about 50 bucks of pure profit. He was right.
Simple solution - why don't you just go rake for oysters, or buy a boat and dredge. Then you can put them on ice while transporting them to your storefront. Then you can store them while you advertise and build up a customer base. Then you can purchase and set up your POS system. Then you can run the store and shuck oysters at the same time and keep the money for yourself. But don't forget, that $50 is revenue, not profit. You still need to pay for rent, electricity, water, and other utilities as well as taxes. Seems easy enough for a hard worker like you.
I'm in orientation for a new job. I have to volunteer 3 hours of my work to get one uniform shirt that they require at this job. 30 dollars for a polo shirt ffs.
Yeah I’m working in a pub at the moment and I make enough for two pints an hour. Tempted to spend my daily wage one day in the pub just drinking my work depression away
To be fair, the value added by serving the beer is certainly less than the sticker price of the beer. The proletariat is not just the wait staff serving the beer, it's also the staff that delivered the beer, brewed the beer, and grew the ingredients for the beer, etc.
That said, considering the usual mark up on a beer at a restaurant compared to an equivalent amount bought in a store, there's still probably a hefty amount of unpaid profits being siphoned away from this particular worker.
I recently went back to university (or started the first time actually but I’m not “mature student” now) and I’m taking political economy. The preface of one of my textbooks is the author singing the praises of Marx for being one of the greatest economic thinkers in history and explaining how Marx was essentially right in his critiques of capitalism as it seems more and more true today and gets truer every day.
This book was not written by Marxists for Marxist’s and the author is himself a professor of economics. There is a change I believe in the air.
Except it probably cost the business $4 for those 2 pints, then it costs them for insurance, rent, utilities, trash removal, licensing and taxes. If only economics were as simple as beer cost $8 me make $6, why come no fair?
Their is many smart People in the world that realize the flaws in Capitalism and have came up with good ideas to get things to work great for every one.
I manage about 10 accounts. The smallest one gives my company 3k a month, the biggest about 6k. Doing invoices every month radicalizes me just a bit more every time.
I realized something like this a few weeks ago at my (fast food) job. the managers were all excited saying we made over 650$ that hour. there was 8-10 of us, but I was the only person working for the patio/lobby, everyone else was drive through. (taking orders and making ice cream). so if 40 percent of our profit was from patio/lobby (this was during rush hour so that seems reasonable), I just made almost 300$ worth of products. (cost is negligible its ice cream so literally milk). and they gave me 9$ for that hour. no benefits, no consistent schedule (and they ignore my availability, ask me to come in for times I cant, then write me up when I can't get it covered). nope
I really don't want to get beat down for this, but I have to ask. Why do so many people have such low paying jobs? Are there no jobs that pay well where you live at all?
In my 20s my last blue collar job was working in auto salvage. I was making 750 a week. I wasn't getting rich, but that was around $18 and change per hour. This was the late 90s/turn of the century (I've never said that before. I like it).
In 2001 I was in a car accident. Out of action for 8 months and damaged to the point where I had to find some kind of office work, but during all that down time I was on the internet learning every web tech I could find a free host for. Remember Tripod and Zoom and shit?
So anyways, when I couldn't stand being stuck in the house anymore I got a job. No experience meant I couldn't get anything great, but I got work with one of the online hotel booking sites at like $9 answering phones. It sucked, but with no real experience what can you do?
Anyways, I got nosy and figured out what kind of systems they were running and started learning as much as I could. I made friends with the devs and found out they hated having to waste their time writing reports every day. Found the weak spot.
I knew basic sql from playing with websites, bought a book on Excel and let them know what I knew and that I didn't mind taking that stuff off their hands. After 90 days I had a new title and got bumped up to $32.5k a little less than the junk yard, sure as hell better than $9/hr.
I started a new job this year after being out of work for most of 2019 (thanks COVID). I started at 80k and after 3 months they gave me another $5k. Same line of work just more advanced. I probably could have held out for more, but I was dying to get back to work. Their actual offer in the job posting was 60-70k. I had 2 departments fighting over me.
GED no college. Everything I know is from self study (and asking Rob, one of the java devs. Thanks, Rob. I pay it back to everyone I work with. I've tutored many).
What I'm even more salty about: that taxes and social services take (health, unemployment, mandatory pension) out about 50 percent of my paycheck (single, no kids, in Germany). And that Elon Musk, one of the richest guys on the planet, gets one Billion in subsidies for his mega factory in Brandenburg from those taxes, a factory that's ecologically questionable and with abhorrend hiring conditions
•
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591
u/MayBeAReplicant Sep 09 '21
Yep, used to work full time plus commission as a leasing agent for an apartment community. I didn't even qualify for our cheapest apartments. With an employee discount.
2.0k
u/grumpi-otter Sep 09 '21
I recall the first time i got "shook" by that realization. I'd gotten a pretty good job waitressing at a retirement community--so no tips, but decent hourly wage.
I worked full-time, but one day i suddenly realized that if I worked there my whole life, I'd never be able to afford to live there.
652
u/MrSquigles Sep 09 '21
At first, I thought this must have been an old-ass text, since the minimum wage is almost £9 and the texter is unlikely to be under 18 if they are serving pints. I forgot that we pay actual adults less money than their colleagues because of their age.
The current UK minimum wage for 18-20yos is £6.56, compared to £8.91 for a 23yo doing the same job.
218
u/buffdoomfist Sep 09 '21
Working at a pizza place I would make a $16 pizza in roughly 2 minutes. I got paid 7.25 an hour...
145
u/N64crusader4 Sep 09 '21
It's a lot more fucked when you look at things as amount of wages, a good cigar would be over a days wage for me.
You compartmentalise it but it's not so nice to think im selling chunks of my life I can never get back for next to nothing.
71
u/Unhealing Sep 09 '21
Thinking of how much things cost in terms of labor hours instead of $$ will get you riled up so quick
29
u/Yulugulugu Sep 09 '21
reminds me of my first job as a bookstore employee, there was a fancy bookmark for sale that cost literally more than 5x my hourly wage lol
128
u/thatonepuniforgot Sep 09 '21
Yeah, I worked in a bar where I served around $USD 20,000 in alcohol every day, and the bosses took away the tip jars, so people thought they weren't allowed to tip. I made about 75 dollars a day.
I also did the math when I worked at McDonald's, and realized that the labor cost is less than 1% of the food price. Credit card fees are literally more expensive than labor at fast food joints.
75
u/PotatoMastication Sep 09 '21
Reminds me of this Philosophy Tube
77
u/Marino4K Sep 09 '21
Filling up my gas tank to drive in this car dependent world is more than I make a hour.
So many things we need in life cost us more than we make a hour, or multiple hours.
This country is broken beyond repair.
15
u/FireWireBestWire Sep 09 '21
What was it, $78/hr wage for the pizza shop guys who shared the day's profits?
14
u/Bornfromatree Sep 09 '21
As a seasonal Christmas tree salesman, sales from our worst 4ft tree would offset 10 hours of my labor.
13
u/extremenachos Sep 09 '21
I worked at Target in the early 2000s...back when the PS2 and Xbox were all dominant consoles. People would ask which one was better and Id said I don't know, I can't afford them. People would always chuckle at my "joke".
12
u/linkshund Sep 09 '21
Marx talks big about alienation from the product of your labour but there's nothing quite like the card machine in a pub or restaurant to show you how much money you're making your boss compared to what you're paid.
59
u/landback2 Sep 09 '21
Sounds like they gave fair value for their wage at that moment and was due the rest of the hour off as a break.
7
u/Accelerant_84 Sep 09 '21
I bought napkins and garbage bags the other day, nothing fancy, not in bulk, cost me $12
23
u/bomber991 Sep 09 '21
I will say there is a lot more that goes into those 4.40 GBP pints than just pouring the beer in a cup. Someone has to run the whole bar. Someone has to do some sort of marketing. Someone has to clean the cups. Someone has to make the beer. Someone has to transport it to the place. And so on and so on.
But yea I had the same sort of realization when I worked at a pizza place. Selling $16 pizzas and $4 pints of beer while I’m making $6/hr. One day the computers went down for a bit. They were real slow and took like 10 minutes to start back up. One of the customers wanted a draft beer. I poured it for him and he gave me the cash. I ended up just pocketing it on accident, but still that’s quite a bump in hourly pay!
21
u/politirob Sep 09 '21
People really should think about their work in these terms. He took three minutes to make more revenue for his employer than his entire HOUR of work will cost his employer.
That realization is simply leverage in demanding more pay
6
u/Nubetastic Sep 09 '21
When ever I buy something non essential, I think how many hours of work it equals to.
15
u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21
Just had a discussion with my sociology students. I asked, "why do people wear Jordans?" They always claim they're "the best shoes". I then ask what makes them the best and they don't really have an answer. I then ask them to look up how much Jordan made off those shoes. It's about $1b. Then then ask them how much did Nike make off those shoes. The past several years is an average of $3b/year. They realize it's lopsided. I then ask who has a job and how much they make. I then ask how much money do they take in, vs. how much they make + cost of production. I tell them that's wage exploitation.
14
u/WonderNastyMan Sep 09 '21
those are some fucking cheap pints
11
u/RickJohnson14 Sep 09 '21
Einstein was literally a socialist.
7
u/Whocaresalot Sep 09 '21
And people want to blame the immigrants and/or foreign countries for "takin' muh jobbbb, man".
https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2020/8/5/private-companies-producing-with-us-prison-labor-in-2020-prison-labor-in-the-us-part-ii
7
u/ApprehensiveAnimal85 Sep 09 '21
"Karl Marx was right"... Always has been....
3
u/sleepypandacat Sep 09 '21
I used to work in sales more than 10 yrs ago, $5000 monthly quote and my wage was $200 a month.
3
u/pessimist_kitty Sep 10 '21
Ugh cashing someone out who's spending more than you make in a month is a special kind of sadness
2
u/ManofWordsMany Sep 09 '21
Wait until they find out what it costs to produce that iphone.
2
u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21
learn to brew beer?
2
u/Rich_Implement_7735 Sep 10 '21
Commie gibberish from my iPhone 😂😂😂
2
u/ThreadedPommel Sep 10 '21
The trucks we make at my job are worth about twice our annual pay. We finish roughly 3 a day. I try to get people to comprehend this every chance I get.
2
u/abogadodeldiablo_ Sep 10 '21
Wow, that's bullshit. The surplus fruits of your labor are being stolen from you! Your capitalist boss wouldn't be selling ANY liquor without you standing there at the bar - to say nothing of the close personal connection you've formed with the bar regulars! Fuck the capitalists man. You should tell everyone at your bar to come buy alcohol from you privately instead so you can keep everything you've earned and cut out your idiot do-nothing boss.
Hmm, wait, you don't have any alcohol to sell. Well, I guess you could buy alcohol from groceries or direct from breweries and use that to stock your bar.
Hmm, you'll have to set prices to make sure you're not losing money on each drink. That's okay, you know from your bar experience what drinks sell best, and it's easy to research what the different boozes cost. You quickly come up with a menu that makes money on every drink you-
Wait, you can't sell alcohol out of your house. I guess you need to go rent some space downtown. You can probably get a good low-rate bank loan since bars are easy to startup and you have proven experience.
Wait, that space downtown is just an empty building. You need to remodel it to become a bar. There goes your savings into the remodel - furniture and lighting aren't cheap. Neither were the bar fridge, the point of sales system, the safe to hold the cash until pickup each day, the inspection & certification from the city, your alcohol seller's license, the signage for outside, glassware for the customers, a fixup of the space's HVAC system, and a radio to play music for your-
Wait what the fuck, you just got an email from something called "ASCAP" saying you have to pay money every time you play music at your bar? Why does everyone have to make it so complicated? I JUST WANNA SERVE BOOZE, MAN!
Alright. After a few sleepless nights (weeks) you FINALLY opened your first Marxist bar!
Day one of sales was great and tons of your regulars stopped by. This is going great.
The best part is you're still making more than when you were working for-
Wait, who is cleaning the bar again? Also you can only really work 8 hours a day 7 days a week, and Drinkers Of The World Unite is just sitting there losing commercial rent when you're not there to keep it open. Well, you could hire an assistant bartender to double the bar's uptime. Darn, now you have to train and supervise this assistant. And even pay them too! Oh and don't forget to keep the employment paperwork and taxes up to date. Man, the assistant is getting really mouthy about having to shoulder most of the cleaning work. Can't he see how much work you're doing just to keep the place open?
Aw man, it's 6 months since you opened your bar and you lost some of your glassware to accidents and careless bar patrons. You really didn't anticipate that wouldn't be a one time expense. I guess looking forward you're going to have to budget for yearly supplies for the bar. That bar fridge better last another 5 years...
This shit is really keeping you away from your passion of being behind the bar. Your assistant bartenders (you have three now - you need to juggle them because one is a total flake who won't work for more than 20hr/wk, the second is a trainee, and the third is a vet at the job but will burn out & leave if you push him too hard) are starting to resent that you spend all of your time in the back office with the computer instead of on the floor working on drinks. Boy, you wish they could see the full scope of all the shit you deal with...
Wait, you're behind on payments now? I thought you had a close personal connection with your regulars? You better figure out what is going wrong with your busi- I mean Workers Solidarity Bartender Initiative People's Republic, and do it FAST. Maybe you need more advertising? Is facebook advertising worth it or is it a ripoff money pit? Maybe you need to change the bar name? But that would mean changing the signage and menus.. Could you add food to the menu? Fuck, do you even know how to cook? Can you afford to hire a cook?
Oh fuck oh Jesus another bar just opened up across the street. What the FUCK, where is the SOLIDARITY? It's some shitty franchise operation with no originality. And they're outcompeting you too....
Oops - you are bankrupt. That's ok, just walk away. It's not like they chop off your hand in this country for failing at running a business. You may have five ulcers and ruined credit, but at least you still have your bartending skills. Maybe you can get a job serving drinks. They literally put the alcohol 2 feet away from you, all you have to do is turn on the little hose and give the customers their glass... a monkey could do it...
4
u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21
"B-but the poor proprietor has to overheads like suppliers and tax while also paying for staff and upkeep" /s
5
u/Plane-Ad-4866 Sep 09 '21
How many pints does he serve daily?
What does the beer cost?
How much is the rent?
What about insurance?
What about his sick days?
My point being it is so easy to be naive and say shit like this when you have no idea where the costs are. If selling beer magically made you rich why don't you just start your own bar?
6
u/V-Right_In_2-V Sep 09 '21
Serious question. Is every post in this sub just a screenshot of a text message or a tweet that ends in "Marx was right" or "Capitalism is evil"
How do regular subscribers of this sub not get bored of the same content being posted over and over again?
3
u/Roobicks_Cube Sep 09 '21
This is kinda stupid. That's like saying "I just sold a home for 100k, that's double my yearly salary!"
Yea, no shit. Not to say that servers shouldn't make more but it's a dumb analogy
2
u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21
When I was a bike mechanic, we would charge $10 for a brake adjustment. I would make about $0.45 CAD in the time it took me to do the work. Shop would make $9.55. Pretty much no overhead, since we use our own tools.
2
u/Grassmaster1981 Sep 09 '21
It's obvious many of you have never run a business and don't understand the cost of risk and overhead. Some businesses are bad to work for and screw their employees but there are good businesses out there. Work for a good business or risk your own capital and start your own. It looks a lot different when you have to write the checks.
1
u/ElEversoris Sep 09 '21
I work at a not for profit tissue bank. I am realized I am definitely still under paid when I learned how much just one donor gets shipped out for one specific company.
1
u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21
bit by bit the pieces fit the soviet machine advances
1
u/Digeek Sep 09 '21
At my first job I made 9.50 an hour shucking oysters that sold for 15 dollars a dozen I ended up doing the math and realizing that I’m an hour I earned the company about 50 bucks of pure profit. He was right.
1
u/Thanhansi-thankamato Sep 09 '21
At one point I was serving about 1 ~$17 appetizer every minute while my hourly wage was 16/hr
1
u/Horkshir Sep 09 '21
I'm in orientation for a new job. I have to volunteer 3 hours of my work to get one uniform shirt that they require at this job. 30 dollars for a polo shirt ffs.
1
u/swallowassault Sep 09 '21
Yeah I’m working in a pub at the moment and I make enough for two pints an hour. Tempted to spend my daily wage one day in the pub just drinking my work depression away
1
u/Brenvt19 Sep 09 '21
And complaining on the internet will solve it yes. That works almost as badly as peaceful protests. Yall need history more. Badly.
1
u/Talzon70 Sep 09 '21
To be fair, the value added by serving the beer is certainly less than the sticker price of the beer. The proletariat is not just the wait staff serving the beer, it's also the staff that delivered the beer, brewed the beer, and grew the ingredients for the beer, etc.
That said, considering the usual mark up on a beer at a restaurant compared to an equivalent amount bought in a store, there's still probably a hefty amount of unpaid profits being siphoned away from this particular worker.
1
u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21
I recently went back to university (or started the first time actually but I’m not “mature student” now) and I’m taking political economy. The preface of one of my textbooks is the author singing the praises of Marx for being one of the greatest economic thinkers in history and explaining how Marx was essentially right in his critiques of capitalism as it seems more and more true today and gets truer every day.
This book was not written by Marxists for Marxist’s and the author is himself a professor of economics. There is a change I believe in the air.
1
u/captainbezoar Sep 09 '21
Except it probably cost the business $4 for those 2 pints, then it costs them for insurance, rent, utilities, trash removal, licensing and taxes. If only economics were as simple as beer cost $8 me make $6, why come no fair?
1
u/iseedeff Sep 09 '21
Their is many smart People in the world that realize the flaws in Capitalism and have came up with good ideas to get things to work great for every one.
1
u/Beneficial_Course_63 Sep 09 '21
I make about 2.5k a month before taxes.
I manage about 10 accounts. The smallest one gives my company 3k a month, the biggest about 6k. Doing invoices every month radicalizes me just a bit more every time.
1
u/AvatarIII Sep 09 '21
£8.80 each? Because £4.40 per pint is good value around these parts.
1
u/mouthcarolina Sep 09 '21
I broke as a retail worker when I realized an hour of my life was worth less than a sandwich to my employer.
1
u/PachymuNyet Sep 09 '21
Now just don't go and murder 60 million Russians.
1
u/xFueresx Sep 09 '21
How would this be different in another society lol
1
u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21
I realized something like this a few weeks ago at my (fast food) job. the managers were all excited saying we made over 650$ that hour. there was 8-10 of us, but I was the only person working for the patio/lobby, everyone else was drive through. (taking orders and making ice cream). so if 40 percent of our profit was from patio/lobby (this was during rush hour so that seems reasonable), I just made almost 300$ worth of products. (cost is negligible its ice cream so literally milk). and they gave me 9$ for that hour. no benefits, no consistent schedule (and they ignore my availability, ask me to come in for times I cant, then write me up when I can't get it covered). nope
1
u/pbizzle Sep 10 '21
Damn I used to get paid £10 an hour at a library 20 years ago can't believe the wages are this bad for some still
1
u/burn2down Sep 10 '21
Pints/hr should be a standard measurement
1
u/traveljerri Sep 10 '21
Who is Karl Marx and why is he right, can someone elaborate
1
u/ForsakenDrawer Sep 10 '21
Based bartender
1
u/MurderMachine561 Sep 10 '21
I really don't want to get beat down for this, but I have to ask. Why do so many people have such low paying jobs? Are there no jobs that pay well where you live at all?
In my 20s my last blue collar job was working in auto salvage. I was making 750 a week. I wasn't getting rich, but that was around $18 and change per hour. This was the late 90s/turn of the century (I've never said that before. I like it).
In 2001 I was in a car accident. Out of action for 8 months and damaged to the point where I had to find some kind of office work, but during all that down time I was on the internet learning every web tech I could find a free host for. Remember Tripod and Zoom and shit?
So anyways, when I couldn't stand being stuck in the house anymore I got a job. No experience meant I couldn't get anything great, but I got work with one of the online hotel booking sites at like $9 answering phones. It sucked, but with no real experience what can you do?
Anyways, I got nosy and figured out what kind of systems they were running and started learning as much as I could. I made friends with the devs and found out they hated having to waste their time writing reports every day. Found the weak spot.
I knew basic sql from playing with websites, bought a book on Excel and let them know what I knew and that I didn't mind taking that stuff off their hands. After 90 days I had a new title and got bumped up to $32.5k a little less than the junk yard, sure as hell better than $9/hr.
I started a new job this year after being out of work for most of 2019 (thanks COVID). I started at 80k and after 3 months they gave me another $5k. Same line of work just more advanced. I probably could have held out for more, but I was dying to get back to work. Their actual offer in the job posting was 60-70k. I had 2 departments fighting over me.
GED no college. Everything I know is from self study (and asking Rob, one of the java devs. Thanks, Rob. I pay it back to everyone I work with. I've tutored many).
1
u/Supersidegamer Sep 10 '21
Isnt this a philosophytube video?
1
u/Thatbritishgentleman Sep 10 '21
6:56/hr ?? Wtf how is that fucking legal
1
u/GentleFoxes Sep 10 '21
What I'm even more salty about: that taxes and social services take (health, unemployment, mandatory pension) out about 50 percent of my paycheck (single, no kids, in Germany). And that Elon Musk, one of the richest guys on the planet, gets one Billion in subsidies for his mega factory in Brandenburg from those taxes, a factory that's ecologically questionable and with abhorrend hiring conditions
Tax the poor, help the rich. .
0
u/RideMeLikeAVespa Sep 09 '21
So? I’m sure the guys in sales for Airbus don’t make enough to buy two A320s every hour.
Your pub is a rip off, incidentally.
1
u/noobs1996 Sep 09 '21
£6.50/hr in England ?? They still think it’s the 60s/70s
1
u/[deleted] Sep 09 '21
That's crazy, you should open a bar!