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Walmart overtook IBM as the #1 employer in the 80's. McDonands quickly pushed IBM to the #3 spot. Yum Brands came along and pushed IBM to # 4. This all happened 25-30 years ago.
Most US workers have never been particularily skilled. For a blip in time many were able to live a modest middle class life despite this. The world changed.
The writing has been on the wall for decades.
How has sitting around expecting government to fix this been working for you?
How has advocating the building of a better society been working for me? Not very well, thanks to people who view improving society to be an inherently terrible thing to do with no coherent explanation. It's very depressing.
In the year 2015 maybe about 25% of all jobs pay at a rate that allows full time workers to get government benefits. Even if the current people who are working in these jobs get training and move out of the low wage workplace someone else will take their place. So the argument that low wage workers just need to get more skills and education to move up does not really help the situation. Face it, no matter who is working in these jobs at any time, a large number of jobs in America pay under $10 an hour. And these are the jobs that are growing in today's economy. If you want a job, these are the jobs the typical American can get. And they are not jobs for kids and senior citizens anymore. Lots of the folks working at McDonalds are bring up a family on that job's income.
So, who should pay for the government benefits for the 25% of households whose primary bread winner is making $8 an hour or less than $20K a year?
Is it the responsibility of the employers of low wage labor? Or every taxpayer? Or should we just eliminate things like Food Stamps, reduced lunches at school, Medicaid, government paid housing, etc. for people who work?
Remember, someone is going to be doing these low wage jobs regardless of the hopes and dreams of people in them today.
The employer should ask if they are married and have family before hiring.
If the pay is not enough then the employer should not offer them a job.
Use 133% of FPL which is food stamp eligibility.
Also make people only interview for jobs that pay enough so they do not have to be on food stamps.
Rather than penalize the employer put the mandate on the person instead.
No, freemkt, but their employees failure to improve themselves is the employee's problem to deal with..alone.
If a specific individual improves their skills or improves themselves, it will have no impact on the issue we are talking about. I am not talking about individuals improving their skills but instead, what our government and society should do about the large number of workers in America who are making an income that gives them a large number of government handouts. Who pays for it?
I am talking about the mass of people who are doing these jobs, not an individual who may try to move out of the low wage job market. As soon as someone moves out of a low wage labor job two more will move into these jobs. The percentage of Americans doing low wage work that are trying to support a family on the low wages goes up and up every year. Who is responsible for paying the cost of the food stamps, etc?
The percentage of the total population getting government paid welfare benefits to subsidize their low pay, such as food stamps, goes up and up.
I have had zero desire to manage minimum wage workers ever since I worked literally flipping burgers. But I have no marketable job skills and no money to go back to school to get those skills.
Take free online classes--there's thousands of them. Google "MOOC" (Massive Open Online Classes).
Sign up to volunteer in your community. If you're already working full-time minimum wage, then volunteer a couple evenings a week and a bit on the weekend. There's where you pick up additional job skills.
Expecting the government to force your employer to pay you more is not the key to success.
If a specific individual improves their skills or improves themselves, it will have no impact on the issue we are talking about. I am not talking about individuals improving their skills but instead, what our government and society should do about the large number of workers in America who are making an income that gives them a large number of government handouts. Who pays for it?
I am talking about the mass of people who are doing these jobs, not an individual who may try to move out of the low wage job market. As soon as someone moves out of a low wage labor job two more will move into these jobs. The percentage of Americans doing low wage work that are trying to support a family on the low wages goes up and up every year. Who is responsible for paying the cost of the food stamps, etc?
Simple. Tell the the employer to fire them and make them look for jobs with salaries high enough they don't need to be on government handouts.
Put the onus on the employee.
The illegals don't get government handouts. They seem to find work and can live just fine in America and even have enough money left over to send home vis Western Union.
How has advocating the building of a better society been working for me? Not very well, thanks to people who view improving society to be an inherently terrible thing to do with no coherent explanation. It's very depressing.
There is so much money investted in keeping things the way they are.
Why would we want to share our multi trillion dollar corperate profits with our employees in better training or society in taxes? Multi trillion is not enough money for the top.
Instead of raising minimum wage, they should lower the cost of living.
The robots will help with that. Sadly, I think the world is about enter a period of extended severe overpopulation in relation to jobs. Unless the robots kill us all or wars eliminate a large portion of the human population, we're entering a period where for hundreds of years there will simply be thousands of people for each available job. Maybe with some space elevators we could ship people off world to colony ships sent out for nearby star systems, but that would still take decades to have an effect even if we worked at breakneck speeds toward the goal starting now.
The employer should ask if they are married and have family before hiring.
If the pay is not enough then the employer should not offer them a job.
Use 133% of FPL which is food stamp eligibility.
Also make people only interview for jobs that pay enough so they do not have to be on food stamps.
Rather than penalize the employer put the mandate on the person instead.
Before there was Dave Ramsey there was Larry Burkett; I regard the two as similar in many ways.
Burkett wrote and spoke (on radio) about personal finance, largely targeted toward Christian audiences. One of his principles was that employers (at least Christian employers) should not hire family breadwinners for jobs that did not pay enough to adequately support a family. I never heard or read anything he said abut food stamps but I think he probably would have agreed with you.
The illegals don't get government handouts. They seem to find work and can live just fine in America and even have enough money left over to send home vis Western Union.
The illegals have actual goals. Support themselves and support their family in Mexico. Find a way and make it happen.
The workers here have no such goals. Spend the money. Blame the government/rich/Republicans.
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