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I could live quite well on $18 an hour. Hmm. Especially if my partner made the same amount. That would be.. very nice.
So you live in North town, have no kids, 1 bedroom apartment....?
EDIT--- I don't intend that to sound bad. I'm sure there are people who can live comfortably on 18/hr. But, I'm also sure that most people cannot live comfortably on that amount of money.
After taxes, thats ~12/hr. Then throw in some kids and your expenses double. How about your out of pocket health care? New(er) car?
Sub-$20/hr is good for a non-skilled job for 20-somethings working their way through college. It is NOT a living wage for a career.
[quote=m73m95;21182216]So you live in North town, have no kids, 1 bedroom apartment....?/[quote]
You are going to remain single for a very very long time. Attitude is everything and yours needs adjusting. There are many people in this nation right now that would give everything they have to secure the $15 an hour job you sneer at. There is an entire sector of society that looks down its nose at a lowly mechanic. (I am not one of them). Instead of insulting others, being rude etc... why don't you try doing SIDE work in addition to that disgusting, $15 an hour job? Take the job and print up some business cards through Vista Print (first order is free). Hand them out every freaking place you go. Offer services that can be easily handled by going to the customer's house or place of work. Design a website or get a friend to do it for you in which you agree to answer car trouble questions for $10 a pop. Take PayPal and credit card payments on the site. Make sure the site highlights your expert training and credentials.
Stop whining and insulting others and make your life work. That is what normal people do.
And another thing M7395... since you have all this training and all of your equipment and tools, why not open your own shop. Locate a cheap garage to rent (I imagine right now there are many to choose from), drive to city hall, buy a business license after making sure the desired location is zoned for mechanic work, choose a name for the business, print up business cards at Vista Print and some fliers. Take the horrible $15 an hour job at first... work your mechanic shop from 5 pm to 10 and every weekend all day long... hire a mechanic and do a straight split commission with him and let him work the shop Monday through Friday from 7am. to 5 pm.
There are solutions other than slamming an entire city, and the posters here who tried to offer you support and ideas. Quit whining and start finding solutions. It's the only way out of this economic mess America is in... so. just. do. it. If you are a single dad with YOUNG children needing care, offer a free room and board to a college student in exchange for her/him watching the kids when the shop is open at night and on weekend. Do a background check of course. OR let them come to the shop with you.Design a small play area and let them go at it. I was a single mother from the time my son was two.. and I always found solutions... you have to make life work. Just. do. it.
Yeah, I like to live it up. I have electricity AND water AND a roof over my head.
I should be ashamed. There are starving kids in other......well, down the street.
Yeah, there are those things in other cities, but why make the excuse? I'm not happy about it, and you shouldn't be either. Its time for something to happen here.
Every single one of us works for a casino, in one way or another. Even if you work at discount tire, you're providing tires for people who then drive to a casino to work. But, I think the regular population of Vegas has let the casino industry go to far. They treat us like shyte, and expect us to grovel at their feet. The "balance" has gone from the relationship. When it comes down to it, they need us just as much as we need them.....anyway....
Dealerships are hard to get into. You usually have to know someone...especially in this town.
Private shops are paying less and less.... supply and demand. There are so many out of work mechanics, that they can pay $15/hr and still find people to work there.
Being "skilled" means nothing anymore. I went to school for 3 years, was ASE certified, and at one time had over $30k in tools....so I could make $20k a year?
If you feel that you are worth $25 an hour, just go for it and open your own shop. What better time than now?
[quote=SouthernSarah;21183023][quote=m73m95;21182216]So you live in North town, have no kids, 1 bedroom apartment....?/
Quote:
You are going to remain single for a very very long time. Attitude is everything and yours needs adjusting. There are many people in this nation right now that would give everything they have to secure the $15 an hour job you sneer at. There is an entire sector of society that looks down its nose at a lowly mechanic. (I am not one of them). Instead of insulting others, being rude etc... why don't you try doing SIDE work in addition to that disgusting, $15 an hour job? Take the job and print up some business cards through Vista Print (first order is free). Hand them out every freaking place you go. Offer services that can be easily handled by going to the customer's house or place of work. Design a website or get a friend to do it for you in which you agree to answer car trouble questions for $10 a pop. Take PayPal and credit card payments on the site. Make sure the site highlights your expert training and credentials.
Stop whining and insulting others and make your life work. That is what normal people do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SouthernSarah
And another thing M7395... since you have all this training and all of your equipment and tools, why not open your own shop. Locate a cheap garage to rent (I imagine right now there are many to choose from), drive to city hall, buy a business license after making sure the desired location is zoned for mechanic work, choose a name for the business, print up business cards at Vista Print and some fliers. Take the horrible $15 an hour job at first... work your mechanic shop from 5 pm to 10 and every weekend all day long... hire a mechanic and do a straight split commission with him and let him work the shop Monday through Friday from 7am. to 5 pm.
There are solutions other than slamming an entire city, and the posters here who tried to offer you support and ideas. Quit whining and start finding solutions. It's the only way out of this economic mess America is in... so. just. do. it. If you are a single dad with YOUNG children needing care, offer a free room and board to a college student in exchange for her/him watching the kids when the shop is open at night and on weekend. Do a background check of course. OR let them come to the shop with you.Design a small play area and let them go at it. I was a single mother from the time my son was two.. and I always found solutions... you have to make life work. Just. do. it.
Not sure where to begin here....However, you did a lot to prove my point.
Quote:
why don't you try doing SIDE work in addition to that disgusting, $15 an hour job?
I'm not saying that people that work $15/hr jobs are disgusting, or bad or wrong. That's why I edited my post.
The point of the story is, with the cost of living in this part of the US, you shouldn't be standing up for, and defending a job that pays $15/hr. City Center cost $58 BILLION to build....yet its employees don't have health care (Well, I can't speak for management, but I know several dealers and servers that work on the strip, and every one of them pays for their own health care).
There is a LOT of money in this city, and the locals seem to be happy getting less and less of the cut.
As for me personally.... I never said I wasn't making it. I never once complained, or felt sorry for myself for the position I'm in, so where you got that, I have no idea. I do make the best of it. I am sticking up FOR the people making $15/hr. I want to help them. If you think living a happy life means working 80 hours a week to make ends meet, then good for you. I do not.
Physically, could I live on $20/hr.... of course. If it came to it, I could LIVE without any money. The point is, this is America. The richest country on the planet earth, and every single day, we are told what we can live without. What the middle class doesn't really need. I, quite simply, refuse to accept that my contribution means any less to society than a CEO's.
I choose to live in Summerlin, because that is where the best schools are for my daughter. What comes with that is a higher cost of living. I have no cable tv. I have no BMW (My car was made in 1985). I have slow internet. I have very few minutes on my cell phone that's a few years old. DO NOT, even for one second think that I am snubbing my nose at the people that work a $15/hr job. I snub my nose at the people who think that all I should make is $15/hr.
If you're happy making 3rd world wages, then good for you. I live in a country that has a Constitution that starts with the words "WE THE PEOPLE". Not "We the corporations", or "We the Wall Street", or "We the 1%". I am middle class, and I'm proud of it. I don't want to be wealthy. I don't want to be in the 1%. I want to be happy. I want to be comfortable when I send my daughter to school that she'll get a good education, and be in a safe environment. I want to go on a vacation every now and then. I don't want to worry about losing my house, or doing into massive debt because I get cancer, or break a leg.
I had a thought the other day. Nevada has extremely low taxes for corporations. Low environmental standards. Cheap housing too.....We're so close to California, why don't those large corporations move here?
Schools.
We have the highest drop out rate in the nation. Our schools are ranked 48th in the nation for test scores.
What employees of a corporation would move their family to a place with a failing school system....and more cuts on the way? We have crappy museums. No "culture" to speak of.
You wonder why there are no jobs here.... look no further than the state government you (Not YOU personally....YOU as the people of Nevada) elected. Lay off teachers, police. Cut funding to education, and building projects.....but we cannot raise Steve Wynns taxes?
You wonder why there are no jobs here.... look no further than the state government you (Not YOU personally....YOU as the people of Nevada) elected. Lay off teachers, police. Cut funding to education, and building projects.....but we cannot raise Steve Wynns taxes?
We can't raise Stevie's taxes! He's a JOB CREATOR! Oh noooes! If we raise his taxes, he'll move his casinos, girder by girder, brick by brick, to Macau.
Las Vegas is the worst... The education system sucks... The jobs barely pay anything and the crime rate is absurd..
You look like a fool when you talk in absolutes. Just sayin'!
I feel pretty safe here. You get what you want out of education. Really! If you are a good parent you can supplement your child's education by, reading...learning at home. The magnet schools here are top notch. The job search is competitive but I believe those working hard enough will make it just fine.
And...these are issues all cities deal with right now.
...The point of the story is, with the cost of living in this part of the US, you shouldn't be standing up for, and defending a job that pays $15/hr. City Center cost $58 BILLION to build....yet its employees don't have health care (Well, I can't speak for management, but I know several dealers and servers that work on the strip, and every one of them pays for their own health care).
There is a LOT of money in this city, and the locals seem to be happy getting less and less of the cut. ... I am sticking up FOR the people making $15/hr. I want to help them. If you think living a happy life means working 80 hours a week to make ends meet, then good for you. I do not.
Physically, could I live on $20/hr.... of course. If it came to it, I could LIVE without any money. The point is, this is America. The richest country on the planet earth, and every single day, we are told what we can live without. What the middle class doesn't really need. ... I have no cable tv. I have no BMW (My car was made in 1985). I have slow internet. I have very few minutes on my cell phone that's a few years old. DO NOT, even for one second think that I am snubbing my nose at the people that work a $15/hr job. I snub my nose at the people who think that all I should make is $15/hr.
If you're happy making 3rd world wages, then good for you. I live in a country that has a Constitution that starts with the words "WE THE PEOPLE". Not "We the corporations", or "We the Wall Street", or "We the 1%". I am middle class, and I'm proud of it. I don't want to be wealthy. I don't want to be in the 1%. I want to be happy. I want to be comfortable when I send my daughter to school that she'll get a good education, and be in a safe environment. I want to go on a vacation every now and then. I don't want to worry about losing my house, or doing into massive debt because I get cancer, or break a leg. ... Lay off teachers, police. Cut funding to education, and building projects.....but we cannot raise Steve Wynns taxes?
I agree with you 100%. There has been a concerted effort in this country to reduce the standard of living of the middle class. It's especially ironic in a place like Clark County that depends so heavily on tourism. Would Las Vegas be Las Vegas if the only people spending money were foreign nationals and high rollers?
I find that very hard to believe. My steelworker father squirreled away a small amount of his hard-earned money to travel to Las Vegas every two or three years to live the dream. He loved those vacations (never more than a week) and his buddies who did the same thing did, too. You'd have a hard time making me believe that Las Vegas would have the reputation it has today had those people been frozen out of the opportunity to visit -- as so many people are now -- for the very reasons so well articulated by m73m95.
I just love the messages that m73m75 is getting that he should start his own business or work a second job (oh, yeah, we can all be "Wealth Managers" in our spare time). Why is it OK that a person has to take on the huge responsibility of owning his or her own business in order to make a living wage? Why is it a crime to want to take care of a family that one can actually spend time with and not be neglecting them for an 80-hour workweek? I have a feeling that people who think you can raise kids on $15/hr. (even with both parents working) have never tried doing it.
This country is in a mess. And the media love to say, "But these complainers can't even articulate what they want." I'll tell you what we want:
A fair settlement to the foreclosure problem.
Equity in paying taxes.
The reining in of lobbyists.
A Federal government that treats its lower-income citizens with as much respect as it treats corporations.
State and city governments that spend as much time improving schools as repaving roads.
Decent healthcare for all citizens without allowing insurance and drug companies to take a huge cut of every dollar.
Real help for people who are unemployed.
An opportunity for EVERY citizen to vote -- which means all these campaigns to make voting harder or impossible (that means you, Colorado that wants to keep deployed troops from voting!) have to be stopped.
I agree with you 100%. There has been a concerted effort in this country to reduce the standard of living of the middle class. It's especially ironic in a place like Clark County that depends so heavily on tourism. Would Las Vegas be Las Vegas if the only people spending money were foreign nationals and high rollers?
I find that very hard to believe. My steelworker father squirreled away a small amount of his hard-earned money to travel to Las Vegas every two or three years to live the dream. He loved those vacations (never more than a week) and his buddies who did the same thing did, too. You'd have a hard time making me believe that Las Vegas would have the reputation it has today had those people been frozen out of the opportunity to visit -- as so many people are now -- for the very reasons so well articulated by m73m95.
I just love the messages that m73m75 is getting that he should start his own business or work a second job (oh, yeah, we can all be "Wealth Managers" in our spare time). Why is it OK that a person has to take on the huge responsibility of owning his or her own business in order to make a living wage? Why is it a crime to want to take care of a family that one can actually spend time with and not be neglecting them for an 80-hour workweek? I have a feeling that people who think you can raise kids on $15/hr. (even with both parents working) have never tried doing it.
This country is in a mess. And the media love to say, "But these complainers can't even articulate what they want." I'll tell you what we want:
A fair settlement to the foreclosure problem.
Equity in paying taxes.
The reining in of lobbyists.
A Federal government that treats its lower-income citizens with as much respect as it treats corporations.
State and city governments that spend as much time improving schools as repaving roads.
Decent healthcare for all citizens without allowing insurance and drug companies to take a huge cut of every dollar.
Real help for people who are unemployed.
An opportunity for EVERY citizen to vote -- which means all these campaigns to make voting harder or impossible (that means you, Colorado that wants to keep deployed troops from voting!) have to be stopped.
I didn't post anything about working a second job. I tried it for a while and I will never do it again. One full time job is good enough. So we both agree on that.
As far as starting or opening your own business...Why not take responsibility of your own life? Why depend on someone else? You call it a "huge responsibility" as if its not worth doing or its too much work involved. Sounds like pure laziness. If you wont even invest in yourself, why should a person/corporation invest?
You don't just start up a business just for the money("living wage") like you put it. You do it for the passion, drive, experience, freedom, family, ideas and to have something to possibly pass on to your kids. Its the same reason why me and my wife have done it. We both didn't just want to be wage slaves all of our lives. Her being a 11 year property manager and myself, 12 year active duty Air Force. Spending time away from the kids is inevitable with our careers. My wife is working late evenings and sometimes weekends and I'm in Afghanistan currently. So we both decided that if we are going to be away from family, its better to do it on our own terms working for ourselves.
We both experience getting passed over on promotions, not getting the raises we deserved or risk being unemployed due to down sizing and the economy. With so many variables hanging around, why not take charge before its too late. By the middle of next year we will have our property management company in full swing along with 2 medium sized apartment complexes. This is something that was at least 2 years in the making. All of the research, studying, time...etc. Yes it is a lot of hard work but it also was a lot of HARD WORK for Wynn, Steve Jobs(RIP), Dell, Amazon owners, Ebay owners as well. Most of them invested in themselves putting in long hours before they even made a dime.
So basically they put in the long hours to build a company then have to hire workers that don't want to do the same?
I agree with you 100%. There has been a concerted effort in this country to reduce the standard of living of the middle class. It's especially ironic in a place like Clark County that depends so heavily on tourism. Would Las Vegas be Las Vegas if the only people spending money were foreign nationals and high rollers?
I find that very hard to believe. My steelworker father squirreled away a small amount of his hard-earned money to travel to Las Vegas every two or three years to live the dream. He loved those vacations (never more than a week) and his buddies who did the same thing did, too. You'd have a hard time making me believe that Las Vegas would have the reputation it has today had those people been frozen out of the opportunity to visit -- as so many people are now -- for the very reasons so well articulated by m73m95.
I just love the messages that m73m75 is getting that he should start his own business or work a second job (oh, yeah, we can all be "Wealth Managers" in our spare time). Why is it OK that a person has to take on the huge responsibility of owning his or her own business in order to make a living wage? Why is it a crime to want to take care of a family that one can actually spend time with and not be neglecting them for an 80-hour workweek? I have a feeling that people who think you can raise kids on $15/hr. (even with both parents working) have never tried doing it.
This country is in a mess. And the media love to say, "But these complainers can't even articulate what they want." I'll tell you what we want:
A fair settlement to the foreclosure problem. This will be tricky. What about all the people who already lost homes, short sold or still hanging on barely? Where do they fit in the settlement? My wife was over 150k under water when we met. We short sold the house and moved on. If there is no judgement in the next couple of years then I believe that would qualify as a fair settlement. If not...oh well.
Equity in paying taxes. I'm all for the 100% flat tax
The reining in of lobbyists. Get rid of them. We dont need them. Like someone else said...Legal bribery.
A Federal government that treats its lower-income citizens with as much respect as it treats corporations. More needs to be done but what? If someone is collecting unemployment, welfare, medicare, medicaid, section-8...What more do we give them?
State and city governments that spend as much time improving schools as repaving roads. This argument needs a thread all by itself. So much can be said about the public school system but it comes down to the parents. We not only need a better school system but we need better parents.
Decent healthcare for all citizens without allowing insurance and drug companies to take a huge cut of every dollar. I still need to read up on the Obama Care. I have been hearing good and bad about the program...mostly bad.
Real help for people who are unemployed. Job skills training is already out there. 99 weeks of unemployment is plentiful. Im sure there are other alternatives but I cant think of any. A direct hire program is all that is missing. A government program that directly places an unemployed person in a job even is the company was not hiring. Sounds like whoever foots the bill for this will receive a huge bill.
An opportunity for EVERY citizen to vote -- which means all these campaigns to make voting harder or impossible (that means you, Colorado that wants to keep deployed troops from voting!) have to be stopped. !@#$% Colorado!!!
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Just sayin'!
Sounds like whoever foots the bill for this will receive a huge bill.
