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Just adding more skills to your roster doesn't mean you will get paid more. The number of college graduates that I know working normal jobs that anyone with a HS diploma can get is staggering.
Somebody has to do these lower paying jobs, they should be able to live as well.
If one doesn't major in something useful, they are not going to find a job that pays well. College education itself is no guarantee of a good paying job.
I went to art school, but I never had a job in art. The closest I came was working for a commercial photographer as a lab tech. I learned electronics in the Navy, and took some additional electronics when I got out. I was a bench tech in a TV and Audio repair shop for a number of years, working on commission.
After a few years I took a job as a tech at an oceanographic engineering company. While there, I got several promotions, including Field Service Tech, and ended up in the Marketing Department as a Sales Administration Supervisor (my boss told me he liked my writing skills!). I learned everything I know about marketing and sales while there, and also about how a small manufacturing business runs. I leaned about material handling, planning and production and even a bit about inventory control. I learned about accounting and Letters of Credit (a payment instrument) and invoicing and shipping. All this in six years.
That was probably more valuable than a college education.
After six years, I was laid off when we ran into some hard times. Within a couple of months I was hired as Sales Administration Supervisor at a division of Scientific Atlanta. I had seven ladies working for me there, and my boss was the Marketing Manager.
After that, I was an Applications Engineer for another company, and I traveled a lot in that position.
If they want workers, and can not pay them a decent wage so those workers can support themselves, then maybe they should not be in business in the first place. Companies, like those cited, would love to find people who would work for $8 an hour, and then they complain that they can not find qualified people. Quality and skilled people cost money, you can not expect to pay slave wages and get talented people.
Businesses don't exist to "provide" you a lifestyle. That's ALL up to you. If someone can't make anything of themselves they should just eat a bullet, it's better for everyone. You are ALL about the village right? Then you'd support anything that makes the village stronger, that means culling the weak willed loafers.
I'm wondering if there was no welfare would these folks still be "settling" for these jobs long term ?
If one is disabled and they are limited in that way I feel for them , but it gets tiring seeing people with multiple kids getting welfare and then working min wage .
At one of these $15 hr protests in L.A a while back this lady said she had 4 kids and just can't make it on min wage and that if she made $15 hr she wouldn't need welfare . Maybe if she didn't have 4 kids she wouldn't need welfare .
If one doesn't major in something useful, they are not going to find a job that pays well. College education itself is no guarantee of a good paying job.
I went to art school, but I never had a job in art. The closest I came was working for a commercial photographer as a lab tech. I learned electronics in the Navy, and took some additional electronics when I got out. I was a bench tech in a TV and Audio repair shop for a number of years, working on commission.
After a few years I took a job as a tech at an oceanographic engineering company. While there, I got several promotions, including Field Service Tech, and ended up in the Marketing Department as a Sales Administration Supervisor (my boss told me he liked my writing skills!). I learned everything I know about marketing and sales while there, and also about how a small manufacturing business runs. I leaned about material handling, planning and production and even a bit about inventory control. I learned about accounting and Letters of Credit (a payment instrument) and invoicing and shipping. All this in six years.
That was probably more valuable than a college education.
After six years, I was laid off when we ran into some hard times. Within a couple of months I was hired as Sales Administration Supervisor at a division of Scientific Atlanta. I had seven ladies working for me there, and my boss was the Marketing Manager.
After that, I was an Applications Engineer for another company, and I traveled a lot in that position.
Your experience doesn't mean everyone will get those same opportunities. The college degrees that I'm referring to aren't useless by today's standards. (Two people with bachelors in Electrical Engineering come to mind as well as another friend with a Masters in Business Administration). That's just off the top of my head.
This whole "Just get a better job!" solution isn't always viable for everyone. Not everyone is afforded this. Also, like I said. SOMEONE has to do the lower skilled work. These people should be able to live reasonably as well.
For example, taxpayers subsidize Walmart's labor costs by billions a year. Food Stamps pick up the difference between what Walmart pays and what it actually costs to feed people. Section 8 picks up the difference in cost of housing. Ditto with medical care...
"The company, and specifically the several Walton family members who control it, receive an estimated $7.8 billion per year in tax breaks and taxpayer subsidies."
As their profit the year before was $16 billion, it would mean cutting into that. But still leaves them with $8 billion.
Anyway, unless the Democrats can pull off a miracle, cutbacks are coming in these programs that support the working poor..
Seems the least we could do is insist that employers cover their labor costs which is what it costs their labor to live on.
$15/hour will mean a Big Mac will cost another dime but it will mean the person making it will be able to pay the rent and buy dinner for her own family.
Except working at McDonalds was never meant to be a job for a person supporting a family, but you know that.
The question should be "why are people trying to make a very low level job pay enough to support a family on"?
Answer that one and you might be on to something...
Those wages are earned. Walmart is pulling in billions in profits a year off the work of a lot of low-paid people.
The idea that individuals can bargain with corporations on their own is ridiculous. That's why we have laws. That's why we have a Constitution. If there were no labor laws, the wealthy would work us like serfs.
Now that the unions have been gutted, our only protection is the rule of law and that's on shaky grounds these days.
Good grief, we have a Supreme Court Justice who ruled that a truck driver should have frozen to death while waiting for the company fix-it service to rescue him because that was company policy.
Good grief. Not only forcing people at gunpoint to pay above fair market value is an evil thing to do, but you also shoot yourself in the foot.
If your skill doesn't provide more than $15 value, you will become unemployed! In short, you priced yourself out of job.
It doesn't get more ridiculous than this! So, great work! No wonder you work the minimum wage.
Last edited by lifeexplorer; 05-31-2017 at 10:41 AM..
If you pay is so low that your employees have to be subsidized by the rest of us, maybe you need to be in a different business that doesn't require handouts to your employees.
Your experience doesn't mean everyone will get those same opportunities. The college degrees that I'm referring to aren't useless by today's standards. (Two people with bachelors in Electrical Engineering come to mind as well as another friend with a Masters in Business Administration). That's just off the top of my head.
So you make your own opportunities. Move to where the jobs are, study further, get certifications if that will make you more marketable, etc.. I've done all of this as needed. My wife arrived in the US with an overnight bag and $50 in her pocket at age 22. By the time she was 30, she had her Masters' in Engineering and was making over $100K. She recently crossed the salary line to north of $150K - with English as a second language. What's your excuse again? Why are people dying to get into this country? Maybe because of the opportunities here? Anything else on top of that head you'd care to share?
Quote:
Originally Posted by wolf39us
This whole "Just get a better job!" solution isn't always viable for everyone. Not everyone is afforded this. Also, like I said. SOMEONE has to do the lower skilled work. These people should be able to live reasonably as well.
With their cell phones, hoopty earrings, coiffed hair, leased cars, manicured nails, Saturday night at the club, money for lottery tickets, cigarettes and weed, five kids wearing Jordans and playing xBox at home, etc.? There's always a path to "better" if one applies one's self wisely. It involves hard work and sacrifice, not the participation trophies many were raised with.
Businesses are not a social program, they're investments with positive returns expected. Paying someone $15 an hour to toss pickles is not part of that.
Bussineses with 50 or less should have a choice of paying workers a federal minimum wage of $10.50 an hour or a State living wage. Individuals who make tips as a salary should be paid $8 an hour or pay workers a living wage. There should be know Federal Minimum Wage outside of having 2 wages for businesses mentioned above. States should determine a liveable wage based off of average cost of living for a single person in their State.
With living wages extra $2 for a postsecondary certificate or associates degree. Extra $4 for a bachelor's degree. An extra $6 for a Master's or higher an hour.
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