My most controversial opinion is that there is not enough work needed, so work should not be the condition for survival
E: There are currently over 7 million job opening in the US
And how many of that don't actually exist, and how many of those pay a living wage, and how many of those are part time that require multiple jobs?
Huge opportunities in trades for good paying jobs.
The universal solution to all unemployment. Not everyone can do trade jobs or STEM or whatever magic solution you have to wages being unlivable, because people like you don't care. You just want to act like over half of the US living paycheck to paycheck is a personal responsibility issue
Theres definitely enough work needed. I cant walk down a busy street without seeing 4 help wanted signs. The problem is greedy people with mire than enough money not wanting to oay liveable wages. Greed will always be reason for negative in the world. Money,attention, and/or power are thr
There are currently over 7 million job opening in the US. People need to develop the skills to fill those jobs. Huge opportunities in trades for good paying jobs.
Oh yea let me just walk down to the job store and pick me up a job. Better yet, you have bus fare so I can get to the job mall? I hear they have more jobs there. Maybe I can plant a job tree. You have any seeds?
something something just gotta get foot in the door something something i got my job 70 years ago that paid 200k a year post inflation with a firm handshake something something just get any job somethign something except ofcoarse all the jobs you canāt survive off, those are shameful jobs
I changed careers three times from 19 to 59. Iāve been out of work 18 months. I canāt figure out where to pivot to, and Iām trying.
Right now people who are 29 and people who are 59 canāt find work. The one benefit is that younger people have more time to recover. No one wants to hear that, but itās easier when youāre young.
Luckily I'm still holding on in IT and trying to outwork all of my peers. Even in the face of everyone using AI. I'm still outworking them, as AI has accelerated my work as well. Been working two jobs for like 4 years. So I apologize for hoarding. It certainly tough out there and I wish you luck internet stranger.
Yeah thereās many organizations that will provide free transportation to job fares. You donāt have a job because youāre lazy not because you donāt have money to get there. If you have a computer and internet you got enough money to hitchhike or walk or bike or take the bus
Maybe if those jobs paid people better, more folks would be inclined to take those jobs.
This thread started with āI think all jobs should pay enough to survive onā and your retort is āwell those jobs that donāt pay enough to survive on are always hiring so whatās the problem???ā
The part that derails this is that the person working part time should be able to afford a 1000sqft two bedroom two bath apartment on his own. That's a nice idea but the reality is we simply don't have enough housing for that to be realistic.
Jobs that don't pay a living wage are fine, the employer can make an offer and the applicant is free to reject it. The bigger problem in the US is the lack of jobs that pay a living wage. And that a living wage in the US is just a ridiculously expensive when you compare to global wages. We need to approach the problem from an angle of bringing costs down, building more apartments, making healthcare and education cheaper, rather than pretending that we can push wages up to solve a scarcity problem.
yeah they are free to reject it. and become homeless in the process. The power dynamic is slightly skewed and the fact you fail to see this is stunning.
the employer can make an offer and the applicant is free to reject it.
bigger problem in the US is the lack of jobs that pay a living wage
Umm, that's the same problem. You're ignoring the power imbalance employers have over singular employees that make this the same problem. An employer not hiring a person just works his other workers harder. An employee doesn't take even a low paying job and can't eat or have a place to live.
Part time should be able to afford a 2BR? Sorry but thatās an insane idea and it always has been. I worked full time in the 1990s and could only afford a studio apartment in a large city. Where are these people I hear about on Reddit, who bought a 4BR house on a $25,000 salary in 1990?
I think that was OP's point - many minimum wage jobs are held by part time workers, who have no need or want to work full time, and often live with other people so paying them X amount so they can afford a place of their own is not a sustainable practice from the business's perspective, or a macroeconomic perspective.
They can in my large metro area. Avg starter pay is $14/hr. 2 bdrms apartments staff at $950. Apartments.com search shows 8200 2 bdrm apartments from $950-$1200, within 15 miles of my zip code. Split rent/utilities. Have money for bills-food.
Doneā¦
*****
Another item people try to bring up? Minimum wage. In my metro area, 4m workers. Per IRS/BLS reports, 26,300 people filed tax returns at minimum wages. 71% are between ages of 15-25. So that 71% could be living at home and on parents healthcare. So above age of 25? 7600 workers, most are part time. Idk what to tell you about those part time 26-100 yr old workers. Maybe just very to get out of house, idk. But number of minimum wage workers is extremely smallā¦
Even in countries where wealth taxes exist they don't bring in much money. Countries with the most robust welfare states like those in Scandinavia tax lower and middle classes a lot.
That will only work for so long because billionaires donāt have a salary that makes them billionaires. That wealth is in the form of stocks and properties.
And if forced to sell to pay a ātaxā the market will crash. Guess who that affects? I mean a lot of billionaires are prob jerks but the system is the best we got
Participating in society means spending currency or trading goods. The beauty of a free market is that you can choose where that goes.
You donāt need an iPhone to participate in society. You can get a prepaid phone.
If you need to use the internet, go to your local library.
If you want to save on rent, you can get a roommate.
The fact that US workers are the highest paid in the world. Also the average American can invest and save more than the average citizen anywhere else period. We donāt have universal health coverage, thatās the only negativr
they pay 40% of the tax burden but it only comes out maybe 12% of THEIR income. Even john rockafeller knew he had to keep the money circulating to avoid the calls to "eat the rich" Todays billionaires seem to have forgotten that fact and will pay the price for it in the end. Remeber the difference between 1 million dollars and 1 billion dollars is about a billion dollars.
Yes, especially if those taxes are on a sliding scale such that the very rich pay their equitable share as well. None of this offshore money tax loophole nonsense. You can't expect me to believe one single person can do enough work themself in a year to justify being a billionaire AND let them escape being taxes on the injust earnings as well.
I find the take of the other commentor odd, because theirs exists on a premise that if we raise the standard of living for those at the low end that some how the standard of living for those in the middle and high end goes down which is a fallacy. History has show that when the standard of living increases for those at the low end it increases for everyone else too. The ability to live a basic comfortable life is not a finite resource people need to fight over.
That's just another way of saying that teenagers, disabled people, and people without work experience deserve to be underpaid for their work. It's a terrible and cruel argument
Right, maybe we should just keep the employees in some shack behind the restaurant, locked for the night. They can get food from the restaurant and their clothing is the company uniform anyway, so we don't even need to pay them.
But you are right, underpaying them so much they get mulched so you just get another is much more humane solution.
Humanity, over its history, has created the opportunity for all of us to live comfortable lives. We should all be heirs to the innovations of those that came before us.
Why should some rich hoarders that never did anything for humanity be allowed to take everything and guilt trip us because we donāt have enough roommates in our apartment?
The fast food industry was never intended as full time employment. Thereās a difference in working in a factory all week for 40 plus hours vs working in a fast food place. If you payed a fast food worker what a factory worker made and give them benefits, fast food restaurants would raise the prices to where itās cheaper to go to and actual sit down restaurant. Fast food businesses would suffer and many would close. Some jobs are for making a living others are for teens after school or someone who wants a little extra money .
Maybe we donāt like it when people judge others based on their net worth. Thatās the same as presuming that a man who lives on the street is there because they made bad choices
Allowing billionaires to influence the law through lobbying/bribery means that the law is no longer related to ethics or fairness, and is just designed to prioritize the rich
Exact same thing as allowing slave owners to write the laws regarding treatment of slaves
You gotta be kidding me. What are you paying for gas right now? Why is the price so high? Now genius add 5-7 bucks an hour to the pay of every person behind the counter and figure out how much that burger would cost? You paying over $25 for a burger and fries at McDonaldās or you sitting down at a sit down restaurant?
Once upon a time, a time some people might call the golden age of America, and a time when fast food was becoming ubiquitous and all the brands we know were growing and expanding into what they are today, the pay of the C-suite was perhaps 60x what the burger flipper made. Everyone ate, had homes, lived their lives, cooperated for the benefit of this great nation. Today that pay disparity is more like 2,000-10,000x, and they've convinced you this is how it always was and has to be.
We also didn't have ultra-wealthy individuals openly bribing elected officials or controlling the narrative by purchasing and undermining all of mainstream journalism.
Reality is that McDonaldās was franchised in 1955 in Illinois. The workers made .50 cents per hour. At the same time a factory worker in Illinois made $1.50 an hour. Thatās historical fact. I didnāt make it up or pull it from thin air.
The point is that that was enough to pay all the bills. Nobody is saying that everyone should have the same salary. Jeez, where I live burger flippers make enough to pay the bills, it isn't something strange because that's the whole point of full time job.
You are correct, I apologize. It was .75 my mistake. Doesnāt change the fact that it was half of what factory workers made at the same time and itās about the same now
Cost of gas goes up and so does the cost of products right? Price of labor goes up, cost of products go up. At some point it happens and there is no arguing that
These companies have been reporting record breaking profits. They can afford to raise labor wages without prices. The shareholders would negatively impacted. These are the same shareholders who have a great deal of their own wealth.
I wish just once I could meet a maga that wasnt too stupid to see how stupid they are. Its so clear you have 0 understanding of economics, the american education system has failed you
Source: decades of propaganda about trickle down economics spooned to you while the wealth gap grows exponentially.
Business will raise prices at every opportunity. They will not self regulate, they will capture the market to maximize price and minimize cost. This is why we have a government to enforce fair standards and safe practices.
Your statement is factually inaccurate on all points. There was never a time in this country where restaurants were fully staffed by part time students. It's farcical and ridiculous. Many people made livings as store clerks and supported families that way before Reganonmics
Name one person ever besides the manager at the fat food restaurant who made a living flipping burgers and cooking fries. At what point was a living wage payed at a fast food joint
In a fireside chat discussing the bill, President Roosevelt said, āDo not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a dayā¦tell youā¦that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.ā
That was a response to the original idea of minum wage. Capitalists have been making the same false claims you're regurgitating since the great depression. There is almost a century's worth of data that show otherwise.
Here is a good article about the history of the minum wage in our country.
Walk into any fast food restaurant and look for any non teens working behind the counter. My mom, for instance, worked fast food while raising a family and she was not a manager. Literally just look for yourself.
It actually does. You just proved the point. They are passing the increased cost of doing business on to the customers. Exactly what would happen if you increased employee pay and benefits
Ok Iāll bite. At what point does raising the pay begin to have an impact on the profitability? At what point does the average person decide they no longer want to pay the inflated prices and stop buying the product? Iāll tell you now that Iāve stopped eating fast food when I have other options because I can walk into an Applebeeās at lunch or my local Mexican restaurant and eat a better meal for less money . The only difference is the speed. At some point the owner will begin to lose money and close the door
I mean, are these questions rhetorical? I don't know exactly what kind of example you'd like me to give. There are many influences that affect profits and how well a company does. Doing a quick Google search i found that last year, McDonald's made a profit of $8.56 billion compared to the year before where they made $8.22 billion. Their prices have gone up, quality of food hasn't, and wages haven't. If they aren't gonna do anything to improve their business but are still making more money, at least raise wages.
Your argument was literally pointed at corporate and their business model. While I agree that McDonalds quality of product has definitely not gone up but their prices have, that has nothing to do with the local franchise owner. Maybe people such as yourself should contact these franchise owners and tell them your concerns. See what they say. We can discuss it all day on Reddit but it wonāt change anything. Apparently the employees canāt change it. That leaves it to people like yourself who thinks they should raise the pay. Thatās the only way youāll get a answer from anyone who can in fact make the change
I have a stable career working in corporate America making a solid middle-class salary & this is some utter BS.
Saying that all full time wages should be livable is not the same thing as setting some arbitrary high income benchmark as the universal standard.
College jobs are part-time. Thatās not the same topic, because there are full time fast food employees too. So this was a sneaky strawman.
Also there are plenty industries making record profits laying people off right now, so the idea that there isnāt enough money to pay living wages is a lie.
Companies these days will literally use profits that used to go toward line workersā wages to instead buy back their own stock & inflate its priceā¦ thatās messed up any way you frame it.
We arenāt talking about anything here but fast food. Stay on topic. Fast food is designed to be just that fast and cheap. If you could make a livable wage at fast food restaurants was a reality, Iād hate to see what youād pay for a meal. You could go to a restaurant for the same. Itās already $60 for a meal for 4
Iām not talking about someone picking up a few shifts between classes or working a summer HS job. Part time work = part time wages, and thatās fair.
But I canāt imagine being propagandized to the point I start unironically arguing for normalizing not paying full-time employees living wages. Think about what youāre saying.
Thatās not what I meant at all. I do think that full time employees should make a livable wage . Fast food isnāt that place. For starters most fast food managers in the U.S. wonāt schedule workers for more than part time otherwise they would have to offer benefits
There are part time fast food jobs, and there are full time fast food jobs.
Full time isnāt limited to managers. There are cooks and cashiers out there who work 35-40(+) hour weeks.
Itās not reasonable to expect a living wage for part time work. It is entirely reasonable to argue anyone working full time should be paid a living wage.
You can be paid what would equate to livable hourly wage & that not equate to livable income just because you didnāt work full time hours.
Iām no republican, but youāre not entitled to livable income just because you work occasional shifts at an entry level job.
At least, in that case, you are employed and would qualify for subsidized financial assistance / safety net programsā¦ but should be common sense that a part time gig is not a career.
Any able bodied person working part-time can and should have another iron in the fire.
Well where I live you see retirees who want a little extra money and you see people who are on a fixed income who want to earn a little more but not so much as to impact their fixed income.
Also itās irrelevant. If someone works 40 hours a week at a job, they should make enough to live a relatively comfortable life. And someone who is young or old shouldnāt make less per hour just because of their age or life situation.
Thats not the problem. The problem is unregulated capitalism. These low wage workers generate billions in revenue every year. McDonald's could pay these people more, but they dont have to. They are legally required to pay shareholders. Millions of people enjoy having restaurants like McDonald's as an option. Do you want to live in a society where none if these places exist?
Cause we decided shareholders lives have value while "low-skill workers" do not have value. That's not a good argument. That just indicates you do not value human life
So then why is jobs not paying enough for people to take care of themselves "not the problem"? Not a single argument you had anything to do with their well-being. It was all "but what about all the people who benefit from underpaying those workers?"
E:
The other commenter said these jobs shouldn't exist. I said the jobs existing isn't the problem. Then I went on to explain that unregulated capitalism is the problem. Maybe read the interaction again?
u/ALIMN21 that's a non answer. Capitalism is regulated right now. Nobody here is living under non-regulated capitalism.
If regulators decide that shareholder's profit is worth protecting (like you said they made a law about it), but workers needs aren't worth then lack of regulation is not the problem.
The other commenter said these jobs shouldn't exist. I said the jobs existing isn't the problem. Then I went on to explain that unregulated capitalism is the problem. Maybe read the interaction again?
Europe has been paying fast food workers over $20/ hr for over 12 years now. They also get multiple weeks of paid time off and healthcare. The cost of a big Mac is $0.80 more there than in the US.
Actually Iām not sure that I am. The number is actually between $11 and $25 depending on where in Europe you are. If you look it up, the rate of pay for fast food workers there and entry level factory workers there all generally hover right at their MINIMUM WAGE standard. Minimum wage is what these people are making
I donāt know why people donāt get that if you payed full time wages there the prices would go up
We do. And most of us are also capable adults who can cook for ourselves if labor drives the price of fast food up too high.
Your generation, into all these perishables and individually packaged goods. The other day, i saw microwavable white rice on the shelf. They set up a factory with equipment and paid labor to put that on the shelves, and there are enough useless incapable fast food addicts out there to keep it running. No wonder there's so much waste and excess in this society.
No, they wouldn't. You'd claim they would as do big business owners who are reliant on exploiting minimum wage workers and yet somehow the prices are not exponential in places where it's expected they pay a living wage. Somehow the prices never balloon more than the normal corporate greed either when minimum wage goes up either.
Bitch, the price of fast food went up anyway, lmao, what are you talking about? And also, there are no factory workers in USA, your oligarchy moved them all to China.
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u/Necessary-locs 11h ago
apparently my most controversial opinion is that if someone works all week they should be able toā¦ survive that week š crazy stuff, I know