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You should organize and bargain for better wages. You have a better chance of getting a raise and better benefits that way than depending on politicians to pass legislation within the next 20 years.
We did at one time. They were called unions and since the unions have disappeared, so have decent wages.
Although this attitude makes for great slogans, this is such a simplistic view of the world that it is unworkable.
First, nobody can do it entirely on their own.
Let’s take education. To have a functioning, technological society we need a certain level of education, and that costs money. It costs about $10,000/Student a year for operating expenses for K-12, and if you really want to pay your way, you would need to pay an additional amount to pay for the bond debt service required to build the schools. Call it $15k a year, all inclusive. Higher ed is a bit more expensive, once you back out state support, because it requires more equipment and more highly trained educators.
How many first graders can come up with $15,000? Sure, you can argue that the parents should pay, but that doesn’t really help. How many young couples can pay $30,000 a year, assuming 2 kids?
Your simplistic pay-for-yourself system requires that people pay a crippling amount for basic education before they possess the skills to earn any of the money to do that.
Education and training are a societal need, and a societal investment that is best spread across everybody.
You could arbitrarily draw the line between K-12 and higher-ed, but that is foolish too. Now you have an investment of $180,000 in a kid to get them out of high school, but you make college/trade school so expensive that they are unable to do it, therefore are unable to really contribute as a tax paying member of society.
A libertarian, Randian, right-wing conservative political philosophy inevitably results in a small number of people with inherited wealth completely dominating a larger underclass of uneducated, unskilled rabble who are prevented from ever contributing to society or having decent lives.
That is both immoral, as well as impractical and unworkable.
It is far better to provide people with the tools to invest in themselves in terms of education, and of course the means to feed and cloth themselves. In my mind, the best way to do this is free, or nearly free, education/training while at the same time allowing people to earn enough to pay for basics. I am not sure that $15/hour is the right figure. Maybe the right figure is $11, maybe it is $17. It certainly isn’t $8 or whatever fed minwage is at the moment.
$15k for k-12? That's not the norm. That is not average. So right off the bat you use extremes, not a good case.
So who is going to pay for this free education? By making it free, usually those teaching positions pay will drop and then who will want to teach? Is the gov't going to pay for education, 90-100% of it? So our taxes will increase, causing more burden? Nothing is free. And what if someone wants that $15k per year education for their first grader? Now it's free, what is the trade off? Possibly an education that is below average of what we have now?
Also, your "libertarian, Randian, right-wing conservative" bit is radical to say the least.
Well, there's ways and ways to think about that. What if you won the lottery? That's money you didn't exactly earn, yet would you turn down 2 million dollars if it meant you could retire sooner, open your own business, or send your kids to college?
Likewise, if you were in an end of the world situation and you had to decide to compromise your ideals or die, which would you do? Or less extreme, would you take government help if it meant your kids would eat?
There's the pragmatic approach as well. If you're going to medical school to be a doctor, would you go to school full time, work part-time and live in subsidized housing so you could get through school faster? Or would you rather work full time, pay full rent, and only be able to go to school part time so you weren't relying on the government for help?
If you get through medical school faster, you can start helping people sooner, sometimes years sooner. That's a lot of people you could be helping by taking help yourself.
We all set our standards and we all decide at which point we'll give on them. I'm in subsidized housing now and this isn't a deal breaker for me because I knew it was a stepping stone to getting a place of my own that I couldn't achieve any other way. Yet I quit a good paying job once after the training period was over because I decided I couldn't and wouldn't hassle people to pay debts they owed the way we were expected to harass them. That created a lot of hardship, some of which I'm still living with, but I've never regretted it.
The thing is, it's great to say you wouldn't do this or you would do that. But if someone else is taking a different approach, say taking food stamps so they can eat or Section 8 housing so they can get off the street, that doesn't mean they're doing the wrong thing any more than you are. I just think you need to have a little more compassion for people who are caught up in these situations. Maybe talk to them and learn their stories. And remember, hind sight is 20/20 and no matter how much people talk about previous "bad decisions", there is no way at all to go back in time and change those decisions. All you can deal with is what's happening now and in the future.
I may need to have more compassion, or I may need to be harder on people. Depends on the situation. I've seen people who have been handed a tough burden and pull themselves out and move on to great things. I've also seen people who have been handed too many opportunities and have gone down due to being lazy and selfish. People take advantage of handouts and many more times than not, it hurts them more than it helps.
Perfect example is earning $2,000,000 or winning $2,000,000. We all know who has a better chance of keeping that money after 5 years, and most likely continuing to grow.
I make just under $20/hr and I find that reasonable given age, skills and qualifications, but I cannot afford to live on my own unless I wanted to live paycheck by paycheck with no savings in the city I am. So in a way I feel that I should be making more.
Truth be told everyone needs to be making more money, including minimum wage. But the lower and middle class all need pay raises. We are the groups that has seen stagnant wage growth yet we are seeing record productivity numbers and a giant GDP. That clearly is not getting to us...
As far as the housing argument goes, make these laws:
1) You can only own one property OR your second property being subjected to a huge, huge tax. Something needs to be done to curb people using real estate to grow their finances so people can get shelter which we all agree is a basic need. Many food staples have caps because they are considered needs, why not housing?
2) Only American citizens can OWN (own, you can still rent) land in the United States.
3) Ban services like AirBnB from main residences (exceptions for guest houses or ADUs).
That should fix that real quick. If you can make the tax policy so unfriendly for people who own more than one property, then that opens so much more supply so people don't have to rent for the rest of their life if they don't have to. It also gets foreign billionaires out of our real estate market. Also limit AirBnB to accessory units will still give housing supply without interfering with the rental market in a significant way, though as long as AirBnB exists it will interfere with the housing market.
Exactly, word of mouth gets you jobs. Just like any other business. What better way to make ma'ma happy than to make an extra $50-$100 in a few ours, and keeps him out of your hair for some peace and quiet(), and then go out for a nice dinner and a movie. Helps build the relationship, too. He's kill'n two stones with one bird.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Originally Posted by Humble and Kind
$15k for k-12? That's not the norm. That is not average. So right off the bat you use extremes, not a good case.
So who is going to pay for this free education? By making it free, usually those teaching positions pay will drop and then who will want to teach? Is the gov't going to pay for education, 90-100% of it? So our taxes will increase, causing more burden? Nothing is free. And what if someone wants that $15k per year education for their first grader? Now it's free, what is the trade off? Possibly an education that is below average of what we have now?
Also, your "libertarian, Randian, right-wing conservative" bit is radical to say the least.
That figure of $15,000 is a bit low for private schools in our area, they start at about $16,000 for K-6, more for higher grades and about $20,000 for high school. Looking at what our public school district is spending (all highly rated schools) $7,916 per student, and statewide it averages $9,000/student. The different comes in the form of voter approved school levies, and parental contributions to the PTA for purchasing additional equipment or supporting programs.
I may need to have more compassion, or I may need to be harder on people. Depends on the situation. I've seen people who have been handed a tough burden and pull themselves out and move on to great things. I've also seen people who have been handed too many opportunities and have gone down due to being lazy and selfish. People take advantage of handouts and many more times than not, it hurts them more than it helps.
Perfect example is earning $2,000,000 or winning $2,000,000. We all know who has a better chance of keeping that money after 5 years, and most likely continuing to grow.
I've seen those people who refuse to help themselves, too. I'm related to one of them. But not everyone is going to be like that and that's all I want people to remember.
I guess I'm just a little sensitive about it right now because so many people focus in on what I'm doing right now at this point in my life and say I'm not doing anything to improve myself, or say I didn't do enough to help myself earlier in life. But those people aren't seeing the times I did pull myself up and the hard work that I did do to get myself out of a hole, only to get knocked down again.
People see you at the time you're knocked down and they assume it's a permanent thing when the truth is, it takes time to work yourself out of poverty. It's not a "one day you're on the streets and make a decision to not be on the streets, and then the next day you're living in a house" type of thing. It can take years and years of work and effort to get to where others would think you're successful, but in the meantime, people consider you unsuccessful or unmotivated anytime you're not at the peak of success, even if you're actually working towards it.
$15k for k-12? That's not the norm. That is not average. So right off the bat you use extremes, not a good case.
Actually, I was pretty close. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 shows that ed spending per pupil is $12,509. So I was a bit high, but not too bad considering I wrote my original post from memory, without looking it up.
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So who is going to pay for this free education? By making it free, usually those teaching positions pay will drop and then who will want to teach? Is the gov't going to pay for education, 90-100% of it? So our taxes will increase, causing more burden? Nothing is free. And what if someone wants that $15k per year education for their first grader? Now it's free, what is the trade off? Possibly an education that is below average of what we have now?
I don’t really understand your rant, given that I was correct in the first place. You seem to think that providing a taxpayer funded public education for K-12 students is something new. I am not proposing anything different, and I am not trying to increase your taxes. I am simply pointing out current practice.
Going back to my original point, education is a good thing, it benefits society as a whole, and requiring young parent(s) to pay current expenditure rather than apportioning costs across all tax payers is impractical.
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Also, your "libertarian, Randian, right-wing conservative" bit is radical to say the least.
You are entitled to our opinion of course.
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), and then go out for a nice dinner and a movie. Helps build the relationship, too. He's kill'n two stones with one bird.
