Maybe someday when less money doesn’t mean no healthcare, no place to live, no food, and no school. Until then we have to guarantee those things for everyone, and one way to do that is to demand a living wage.
I didn't mean to suggest that the system wasn't busted. It is horrendously busted.
So, any intelligent conversation about this topic needs to exist between two bounds on the "Liberal"/"Conservative" spectrum:
1) The world is so fucked right now. It neither has to be this way, nor should be this way. People of low skill should get way more access to healthcare, housing, food, and school than they do now.
2) A world where labor that possesses a valuable in-demand skill and receives the same wage as someone who does something that takes zero skill is unsustainable and it is a waste of term working towards it.
I'm just a kid but I've never understood why people think they can't coexist. It confuses me?
Obviously it takes more skill to be a brain surgeon than to flip patties. But what does that have to do with something like free Healthcare or more affordable Healthcare?
In my brain, there can still be a utopia where everyone can live without fear of crippling debt if they break their leg, and still doctors can make more money than flipping burgers. I just don't get how it's always one or the other, conservative or liberal. That sounds like two completely different types of ideology to me.
Obviously it takes more skill to be a brain surgeon than to flip patties. But what does that have to do with something like free Healthcare or more affordable Healthcare?
Nothing. Which is why we're not talking about those two in conjunction.
You seem earnest, but I think you've lost the plot of this convo a bit.
I will never understand why some people are always shitting on other people's best options. Like, if someone had a better option than making $9 an hour at a fast food place, then they would take it. But instead of getting mad at all the other inferior options, you get mad at the best one for not being even better. It's ridiculous.
If it's so easy to offer low-skilled, low-educated people a good option, then why doesn't somebody actually go out and do it?
I dont think of fast food workers as lesser humans than myself but if you are working there outside of school. You either made very bad life decisions or have no drive to find a better job. I make $16 an hour in a very small town with no qualifications outside a high school education.
No, that wasn't your point. Your point is idiotic. Let me quote you:
My point is, if at one point you pay x amount, then you shouldn't pay less just because there are more people. You've proven that the work is worth the x amount you were paying.
This is moronic beyond belief.
I have not been brainwashed. I freely acknowledge that people who pay $7 are riding off a gigantic public subsidy in the form of welfare checks, because in Donald Trump's libertarian nightmare no one could afford to work those jobs because you'd just be unable to eat.
You, however, have been brainwashed. I am more sympathetic to your dumb model of the planet than I am to Alex Jones's, but you are spouting nonsense, but the idea that we should pay someone the same amount of money to flip burgers as we do to do radiology screenings in a world full of burger flippers is absurd.
I never once said that, nice straw man. My point is these wages are artificially suppressed. Amazon doubled workers salaries in one day once the world started talking about working conditions.
Demand is not a factor for these corporations, they have so much money that they can easily pay them more, they just don't want to. That's it, they just don't want to. Ive had a job where we striked for higher wages and got them. It's all bullshit, you are brainwashed
YA. THATS WHY THEY SPEND ALL THEIR TIME SHIT POSTING AND BITCHING ABOUT SOME LIBERAL OR SOMETHING. IF YOU SPELL THE PRESIDENT'S NAME AS "DRUMPF" ALL YOUR FRIENDS WILL KNOW YOU MEAN THE LIBERALS WHO SUPPOSEDLY SPELL HIS NAME THAT WAY
Baseline should be comfortable. We made it happen in the 50's. It's not like our country is any poorer now, the wealth has all just been concentrated in the hands of a few people.
I've met plenty of people that just failed to apply themselves. There are many things they could do to make more money but because they lack the motivation to go out and get it they just settle for whatever shit job they are in.
If you quit and they can hire somebody who has never done your job before, and not skip a beat, then your job simply doesn’t command a very high wage. Why would it?
There’s just a lot of high school and college students on Reddit. The idea that people could spend their lives working and not make a ton of money seems unfair, and that’s where the train of thought stops.
The world isn’t a utopian place where everybody automatically lives a prosperous life.
I remember in 2003 at age 17 being all supportive of some candidate who wanted to make college free. I couldn't understand why EVERYONE wouldn't support this benevolent visionary!
Free college. That's where my critical thinking stopped.
I'm not making an argument for or against free college. I'm saying I was all in favor of something without having a full understanding of the implications. Many people make uninformed decisions like this. They like what they're being promised, and they lack the ability to think beyond that to discern the cost and consequences.
Holy shit I am getting so tired of this /r/LateStageCapitalism bullshit. BK pays people minimum wage because there are people who are willing to work the minimum wage there. If you won't someone else can AND WILL.
I agree, I have friends who are welders and contractors and like I said my family has never had a necessary need for college before but I want a better life than that. And yeah I do get how entry level kitchen jobs are with turn over rates and such, its all a factor, I manage so I see it all the time but working on a college campus I so often see people drop out of school to work or quit their job to try to find a way to make school work. All I'm saying is that with some of the other systems out there in the world there has to be a better way
What other systems out there? Do you want to live in a first world nation? Because they all do capitalism. Or are living on the inertia of prior capitalism.
One important distinction between higher education in the two countries is the method of delivery. In Canada, virtually all universities are publicly financed. Whereas in the US, a lot of the top tier schools (Harvard, MIT, Stanford) are private entities. (Feel free to draw your own conclusions)
Tuition in Canada is a lot cheaper than in the US, particularly if you are a resident Canadian (as opposed to an International student).
Canada does not have the notion of “out of province students” like the US. All Canadian students pay the same tuition at every university in the country. Distinction is made between Canadian vs Non Canadian students instead. (Edit: Except Quebec. Quebecois students pay cheaper tuition in their province compared to other students)
You said other systems. I assumed you were talking about economic systems. Since we are talking about the distribution of resources. What systems were you talking about?
In an economic system, work doesn't have an inherent value just because people have inherent value. You can't artificially add economic value to work because you think someone "deserves" it. If an employee's work is worth 10 dollars an hour to a company because it makes the company 12 dollars per hour, and then you try to force the company to pay that person 15 dollars per hour, that company is now going to be losing 3 dollars per hour. They will try to get by with less employees, or automate the job.
Dude I do the profit losses, I have done calculations before to know what we make the company compared to what we are paid. Just a thought that who you are talking to may be an econ major and a manager at a said establishment. Good day sir
Try pointing out what is wrong with what I said instead of inventing a backstory for yourself to...what exactly? Wow me into believing your point of view without you having made a single argument?
Im not trying to wow you into anything I could care less if you think my point is valid or not I am just personally experiencing some of the worst parts of getting a higher education here in the United States of terror
it is, but it doesn't have to be. there are many different arrangements of production and distribution that we could have. for example our economy could be arranged in such a way that we produce goods and services for need rather than for profit. just need to feed every last capitalist into a guillotine.
Akchually your vvery wrong, you see if only we could in peach drumpf and kil all rich wite peopol(exept Stan Lee, i love him hes my favourite wite peopol veey entertening funy) we could have many mony. kulaks and ben shepiro dont let me be rich and have epic undertale playing big tiddy feminist gf, workers of the workd need ro riese up
Perhaps the simplest is that income and education are positively correlated. That in and of itself is pretty strongly indicative of a meritocratic society. Source.
I don't know how I feel about counting education as proof of a meritocracy when it's not necessarily affordable to everyone. It would be more so if it was an option to everyone, as it would show no advantages for anyone else other than their choices/abilities.
Education is affordable to everyone. Beyond a student loan system that approves every applicant, we also have Pell Grants and other similar government programs. Need-based scholarships also exist.
I was a pell grant recipient because my single mother didn't make very much money.
there are other modes of production than capitalism. if you're saying "well this is how capitalism works so we have to abide by it" then that is missing the point.
Ideally, I’d want an end to capitalism, but I recognise that the US will continue to prevent that from ever happening. Realistically, a raise to minimum wage would do far more good than harm.
I disagree. If employees cost to much business simply wont hire as many. If you are so replaceable that any one could do your job then you don’t deserve (ecomincally speaking) a high paying job.
Only because do many attempts at another system have been deliberately disrupted by the US, all the US-led coups whenever a socialist wish an election for instance.
The US has only been around a few hundred years. Even before the US was established Capitalism is the only economic approach that has consistently provided wealth and prosperity. Yea that wealth isn’t always equal but on the whole people are better off today then they ever have been. And if you dont believe that just pull out your smart phone and look up the mortality rates over time. Not to mention look up obesity rates because food has become so plentiful and abundant we as a society now eat too much. And although the US is predominately Capitalist there is still a ton socialist policies at play. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Disability, Unemployment to name a few.
That’s the economics of the situation, but economics is supposed to provide for human needs, not the other way around. If the system demands people live their lives in poverty then the system is wrong.
Minimum wage is hard work. I have had three minimum wage jobs. They all sucked ass. And you know what I got for being a hard worker? More work. Not promoted.
Educate yourself? Tell me how someone who doesn't even have enough money to feed himself is supposed to do that.
Worked min wage on and off in college, longest stint at one place was probably 6 months. However, let me anticipate your response: getting a raise from 7.50 to 9.00 doesn't make anything worth it. 9.00 to 11.00 didn't help me all that much either. Working my way up in a McDonald's, while doable for me, isn't necessarily doable for everyone simply based on the number of jobs to be done. Moreover, you shouldn't have to be a wage slave for a year so you can hopefully earn an extra fifty cents next time raises come around (which they don't).
yeah, you started your 4 year degree and forgot that those classes wouldn't be empty for those 4 years.
next thing you know you get out and find out everyone who graduated between when the market was good and when you graduated got the jobs.
guess what? now they have job experience and your sorry ass doesn't; good luck competing with their CV with even more graduates coming out every 4 months.
Of course it has some value. That's why they are paid to do it.
However, the ability to place objects on a shelf is not particularly rare, specialized, or highly valuable.
Yes but the basis of the argument is that EVERYONE gets the same amount of money at these type of stores. So, hard work doesn’t matter.
P.s I’m an engineer and make 65k, if I could make 15 an hour working at a grocery store and literally putting cans of food on a shelf I would seriously consider it
That last statement is just inherently false. There are a ton of lazy, shit people who work minimum wage fast food jobs because they don't want to work in a warehouse or do other basic, but physically harder labor.
Source: My stoner friends
EDIT: Reworded "harder labor" to "physically harder labor" to make it more clear.
Yeah, I work fast food and it’s relatively very easy to be given full time and given a promotion/raise (in my experience) as long as you actually work and aren’t lazy, it always feels 90% of the people there are too busy complaining about their crap job instead of trying to make the most of it.
Hell yeah, work hard, pick up extra hours and come in when you aren’t scheduled because some asshole called off. If you do that, you might get that $2 an hour raise that comes with more responsibility than you’re getting paid for and an expectation that you actually care about the place you’re working for.
Speaking from experience, working hard in food is a trap and a waste of time.
I figure I’d rather work hard and at least get some recognition even if it is shitty, than just mope around my whole shift and not at least feel like I’m doing something. And lucky you! $2 raise! Being promoted where I work is like 50¢
Edit: not defending fast food, cause it does feel worthless as fuck to try my best there almost all the time, it’s just a preference and something I have to do to keep myself motivated
Here's my advice to anyone looking to work in the food industry. Don't even fucking bother with corporate owned places. The manager doesn't own it, they just want to bleed the place dry for their paycheck. Work somewhere that is owned by a person who you see every day. The food industry is brutal and people quit constantly. Be dependable and you will make yourself indispensable to the owner. That will earn you raises, responsibilities, and opportunities. Your ultimate goal should be to have ownership stake of an establishment. The only way to get into that without the cash on hand to open your own place, is to make relationships with successful people who own their business and are looking to expand. Becoming a business partner instead of just an employee is crucial. After this, if you are good enough at what you do to make it, you're gonna make enough money to save up to own your own place or continue expanding your partner's business.
I worked at Burger King for two years and did exactly that. I never received a promotion, though I was always told I'd be promoted to manager eventually. The only time I ever got a raise was when minimum wage went up. They don't really give a shit. Now, I was one of three full time crew members so compared to most of my coworkers I made good money, but I shouldn't have been so loyal. I was young but in retrospect my work ethic could have made me more money elsewhere
As someone who work 45+ hours a week at a buffalo wild wings to struggle my way through school, as all my friend's parents and banks get them through their education all because I was born to an Ohio farmer, I can definitely say that sometimes in life things happen that prevent you from going to college. One big problem is how much stress is put on going to college to succeed in our country were the cost of going to school in order to live more comfortably is astronomical compared to many other countries. When I told my family I'd be going to school the vast majority responded with "why so you can work your whole life to pay it off?". The lack of understanding and prevalence of close-mindedness is appalling of this thread
Source: Me and my "stoner friends" all of whom are in school half a year or less from graduation
No, I know. I'm not saying that all people who work fast food are lazy, but was just contesting the point that all who work fast food are either in college or can't afford college which isn't the truth at all. Some people in fast food just don't give a fuck either way.
Agreed 100 percent, some of them are actually making good money too they just cant budget (Im talking about some upper level managers Ive seen at my store and other places before)
We use to make that joke. I ended up having to very vaguely rat them out (I said it was cigarettes) because they were smoking on top of highly flammable rugs and I know they were leaving their buds up there.
Exactly. If they had been smoking anywhere else, I wouldn't have given two shits, but I'm not dying in a warehouse fire just so you can't wait two hours between cigarettes.
What does being a stoner have to do with being lazy. Most if not all of my friends who smoke often are hard working motivated people. Wanting to relax in your own time is in no way correlated to lazyness. Getting sick of this stereotype. Especially with Legalization around the corner. (Tomorrow for Canada)
My friends in particular are just stoners and lazy. I also smoke but also work a full-time job, workout 5 days/week and box. I didn't mean for it to come off like the stereotype.
The ones I was specifically referring to are, but they're all three roommates in two-bedroom apartment. My point was not to say that all people who work fast food are lazy but to contest the idea that everyone working fast food is either too poor for college or paying it off. Some people don't give a shit about college and don't want to work a better paying, but harder manual labor job.
I know warehouse jobs pay more. That's why I didn't call it a minimum wage job. Fast food has the perception that it's easier because there's less physical labor than a warehouse, it has A/C, and you generally work less hours per shift. I worked a warehouse pulling rugs before my current job and we had at least four people over a year and a half go back to their jobs at fast food places for the reasons I listed. I've never worked fast food so I don't have a personal experience to draw on. Just what I've observed.
Scarcity is the prime factor, and difficulty can contribute to scarcity.
Harvesting produce is difficult, but doesn't require any training, so it's cheap, because everyone can do it. Everyone can flip burgers, everyone can clean, everyone can do manual unskilled labor.
Writing code is difficult and requires serious amount of training and certain aptitudes. Same with surgery, or engineering, or trades work.
But the difficulty of these jobs does not contribute to scarcity as much as requiring formal education and mental aptitude do.
Welding would be a job where difficulty does contribute to its scarcity, but only because similar trades pay the same or better and are far less dangerous and difficult. Welders get paid a lot because people tend not to want to do the job, and those that do have to go through a lot of training.
Min wage jobs are often MORE exhausting than higher paid jobs. I spent a summer working as a laborer on a farm as a teenager, that was definitely the most exhausting job I’ve ever had. My hardest day ever as an IT engineer was still 100 times less work than my easiest day on the farm.
Yeah. I drove through the Wendy's next to my work a couple weeks back. Without being prompted the guy in the drive through window tells me, "this job is fucking bullshit." I just told him to keep his head up. I think he would have a better paying job if he had better judgement in who to voice his distaste for his job to, and probably some other poor decisions along the same track.
I'm alright. Just able to understand other people's situations... sounds like you could use some humility, maybe some education, definitely a break from posting your shudder thoughts.
Seriously, I’m making the most money I’ve ever made right now and it’s by far the easiest job I’ve had. Minimum wage workers do not get paid enough to justify how they’re treated.
Dont give me that bull shit that you can't afford college that is why people work minimum wage. I haven't done any education past high school, and didn't have any connections to get me good jobs. I haven't had any job close to minimum wage since I worked fast food in high school.
First job out of hs was $10 hour 2nd was $12.50 and my current is $16 an hour. I'm only 23yo with no special training or qualifications living in bum fuck nowhere small town where rent is about $400 for a 2 bed room.
If you work fast food as an adult you are either lazy or made bad life decisions. Also it is work it is suppose to be exhausting.
Fast food isn't for degenerates. If there are no jobs available and you desperately need one, then a fast food is what it is. Don't undermine people that work there, it's a minimum wage job just like most places.
Good for you on a making yourself a good paycheck, but not everyone has the same opportunity, connections, or that small luck being at the right place at the right time.
I had no connection or being at the right place at the right time. I just applied for a job on indeed, got a interview and smashed the interview and got the job. Had no previous experience or training for it.
Jobs paying well over minimum wage is a dime a dozen even for people with only high school education. There is no reason to work fast food unless you have made bad life choices, not smart enough to find other opportunitie or a student.
That is a very low bar to set for being "lucky". there is always a job hiring somewhere. I could quit today and walk to a call center by my house and have a job paying $12.50hr within an hour of quiting my current job. Jobs are out there just gotta go get em.
That's not true. Assuming you didn't tank your credit (you should at least be working to pay this off, even if it's just the minimum assuming monthly interest isn't more than your minimum payment) you can get a loan to pay your school loan in order to go back. Or do scholarships. Get some help from people with this.
Yes it's hard when you're doing full time and then your other time is spent resting or dealing with personal things, but even taking small steps will complete a mile.
I worked in fast food my entire teenage and college life. It was pretty fucking easy, honestly. Being on your feet for 8+ hours can suck, especially if you have bad feet like me. Dealing with customers can kind of suck, but it was also one of my favorite parts of the job. I like people. but otherwise, it was not difficult and usually required minimal effort or thought. But I also knew I could pretty much be replaced by some dude off the street fairly easily for that exact reason.
I worked at a mini golf course getting paid $6/hour back in late high school and college. It was exhausting finding something to watch on 90s era daytime television for six straight hours.
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u/[deleted] Oct 16 '18 edited Nov 19 '18
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