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You are not living in "reality" if you think an entry level job is going to support you and your family. When you were in high school did your parents tell you to go get a job as a manager at the bank or a doctor in a hospital to earn some spending money. Or perhaps they told you to get a job at Mcdonalds? There are lots of "jobs" out there. When you are an adult with adult needs, You don't settle for an entry level job to support your adult lifestyle. Its ok for extra money, but not your sole source of income.
You are creating your own facts to suit your narrative. Back in the 60s, 70s and 80s, those who weren't particularly educated or skilled could find a job in a factory, which paid a middle class wage that was enough to support a family. Such jobs would be what were considered entry-level jobs in those days, but it was the norm that if business owners were to hire workers, they should pay them a living wage. Back then, there were altruistic businessmen such as Henry Ford, who believed that he needed to pay his workers enough to buy his own cars.
Of course, these types of entry-level jobs are gone many decades later, and they have been replaced with jobs that require equal skill, such as fast food and retail, but pay significant less. Companies such as McDonalds, Walmart, Burger King and others have risen while other companies have fallen. These are eminently profitable companies who have the means of paying their workers a living wage, but choose not to. Instead, their executive level staff receives compensation well beyond their particular skill levels and market worth.
You still haven't answered my question: who gets to determine what is a "real job" vs. a "fake job". Does this particular deliberation go in front of an arbitrator such as Mr. Viking? Who anointed you the king of determining one's compensation?
Not sure how you compare a factory job to Burger King. I don't think kids in the 60s,70s and 80s, were thinking career job, we got it made. I am quite sure they continued on with there education or moved on to a "real" job. Factory jobs had lots of different jobs inside. The floor sweeper did not make as much as the welder. If you need to ask if you got a "real" job, chances are you don't have one. If your not making enough to pay your bills, with a reasonable chance for moving up with better pay in the immediate future, you don't have a "real" job. What you have is work. Don't get me wrong, work is good. You earn extra money and get to work on your job skills. I am quite sure even Henry Ford did not pay his unskilled help the same as his skilled workers. Even when I didn't go to college after high school, I knew I needed to learn a "skilled trade", if i wanted more then minimum wage. Then I got married and had kids, bought a house and got a better car. The same road map my dad taught me, I gave to my son. Funny it still works. He bought a 2009 car two years ago and bought his first house last year. He didn't do nor expect to do it on minimum wage.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Quote:
Originally Posted by goldenrule2
You are creating your own facts to suit your narrative. Back in the 60s, 70s and 80s, those who weren't particularly educated or skilled could find a job in a factory, which paid a middle class wage that was enough to support a family. Such jobs would be what were considered entry-level jobs in those days, but it was the norm that if business owners were to hire workers, they should pay them a living wage. Back then, there were altruistic businessmen such as Henry Ford, who believed that he needed to pay his workers enough to buy his own cars.
Of course, these types of entry-level jobs are gone many decades later, and they have been replaced with jobs that require equal skill, such as fast food and retail, but pay significant less. Companies such as McDonalds, Walmart, Burger King and others have risen while other companies have fallen. These are eminently profitable companies who have the means of paying their workers a living wage, but choose not to. Instead, their executive level staff receives compensation well beyond their particular skill levels and market worth.
You still haven't answered my question: who gets to determine what is a "real job" vs. a "fake job". Does this particular deliberation go in front of an arbitrator such as Mr. Viking? Who anointed you the king of determining one's compensation?
You cannot compare the work of a factory machinist or even assembly-line worker to McDonalds. Those manufacturing jobs that have gone away required skills that were far more than pressing the picture of a Big Mac on a cash register and handing the change that the machine calculates and displays for you. The factory workers were mostly trained on the job, but had to be able to learn it and produce at the required level of accuracy and speed or be fired.
Who gets to determine what is a "real job" vs. a "fake job" is the market in the area at the time. McDonalds is paying minimum wage ($9.19) for example at the local airport. Back 6-7 years ago in our
suburban city the McD was paying $11 because they couldn't find people to work there. Many of the employees were the spouse of immigrants working at Microsoft that were bored staying home all day.
Now that Mom & Dad are no longer buying the kids a new car when they turn 16, those kids who want money have to compete with older people that are desperate for those jobs so there is no need to pay so much. Business is not a social welfare agency. They have to pay as little as possible to maximize profits.
Factory work requires more skill than McDonald's. It takes far more skill to assemble a Boeing Dreamliner, Caterpillar construction vehicle, or GM/Toyota truck than flipping burgers.
Factory work requires more skill than McDonald's. It takes far more skill to assemble a Boeing Dreamliner, Caterpillar construction vehicle, or GM/Toyota truck than flipping burgers.
Are you usually this intellectually dishonest, or just during this conversation? While a truck is, without question, a more complex entity than a Big Mac, the job of an assembly worker during the process is much more simplified. The assembly line worker isn't drafting the schematic of the truck, nor programming the complex electronics that are involved in the assembly of the product. The assembly line worker at Ford is simply repetitively completely the one (or few) tasks that is assigned to them during the production of the car. The concept is similar at any fast food establishment, where multiple people are involved in the creation of the final product . For you to compare the process at two different points in production and to simplify the job description of one of the job's is complete nonsense, and you aren't going to pull that garbage on me..
Are you usually this intellectually dishonest, or just during this conversation? While a truck is, without question, a more complex entity than a Big Mac, the job of an assembly worker during the process is much more simplified. The assembly line worker isn't drafting the schematic of the truck, nor programming the complex electronics that are involved in the assembly of the product. The assembly line worker at Ford is simply repetitively completely the one (or few) tasks that is assigned to them during the production of the car. The concept is similar at any fast food establishment, where multiple people are involved in the creation of the final product . For you to compare the process at two different points in production and to simplify the job description of one of the job's is complete nonsense, and you aren't going to pull that garbage on me..
Are you usually this intellectually dishonest, or just during this conversation? While a truck is, without question, a more complex entity than a Big Mac, the job of an assembly worker during the process is much more simplified. The assembly line worker isn't drafting the schematic of the truck, nor programming the complex electronics that are involved in the assembly of the product. The assembly line worker at Ford is simply repetitively completely the one (or few) tasks that is assigned to them during the production of the car. The concept is similar at any fast food establishment, where multiple people are involved in the creation of the final product . For you to compare the process at two different points in production and to simplify the job description of one of the job's is complete nonsense, and you aren't going to pull that garbage on me..
Those must be some fancy burgers to require more than one person to build them.
Quite a few factory jobs went over seas for a more favorable environment for the employer. Now you want to make unskilled jobs disappear by dictating wages. Labor is a major cost to doing business. There are lots of restaurants on very thin margins as is. Yet as we hear so often, We need to make things "fair". I guess closing down a business is just collateral damage in the war to be "fair".
Those must be some fancy burgers to require more than one person to build them.
Sigh... have you ever worked at a fast food establishment? If not, you are operating from a position of ignorance. But I guess in some circles that is seen as a positive, as you can demagogue this issue until the cows come home.
There is more to a Big Mac than just flipping the burger. There is the cooking of the meat, the bun, the condiments, lettuce, tomato, the assembly of the burger itself. And it is certainly not the only job within the restaurant. These are jobs that require an above-average ability to multi-task.
I think the worst part about this entire discussion is that I'm wasting my time talking to a bunch of people who think that they are "successful" in this world solely because of their own hard-work, work ethic and that being born into privilege didn't have anything to do with their good fortunes in life. Life isn't black-and-white, fellas. There are shades of grey, especially in the 21st century, where you just can't demagogue this issue continuously and expect to be taken seriously. These are workers at these establishments who have roughly the same skill and talent levels as those who used to be part of the factory assembly-lines many decades ago. The only difference is, those people were paid a living wage.
And I'm still waiting to hear back: who is the ultimate arbitrator on what a real job vs. a fake job is? Does this deliberation take place in front of the Wise Sages of City-Data?
Quite a few factory jobs went over seas for a more favorable environment for the employer. Now you want to make unskilled jobs disappear by dictating wages. Labor is a major cost to doing business. There are lots of restaurants on very thin margins as is. Yet as we hear so often, We need to make things "fair". I guess closing down a business is just collateral damage in the war to be "fair".
Again, you are intentionally obfuscating the issue. McDonalds, Burger King, Wendys and other fast food establishments are not operating on thin margins. These are extremely profitable entities who continue to make money hand over fist while forcing the U.S. government to subsidize their own profitablity. If you are referring to Mom and Pop restaurants, these establishments have a carve-out - and will continue to have a carve-out - to pay their employees below state and federal minimum wages.
And besides, paying your workers poverty wages and then complaining that you can't pay the bills should call for a re-evaluation of your business model. If the totality of your business model is predicated on paying poverty wages to your employees to stay in business, your business may deserve its day of reckoning. The fault of the shuttering of the restaurant should lie with the business owner for not developing a more effective business model to mitigate any external changes in the environment, not its workers for demanding a wage increase as the cost of living in the United States continues to increase.
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