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You hold individuals responsible for not taking responsibility for their own choices and failures. You seem to refuse to acknowledge that businesses can do no wrong. That's a double standard.
I sure you’ll have no problem putting up the post numbers where I have done as you claim. Give it a shot.
And you might want to fix your double negative. The way you’ve written it, it doesn’t mean what you think it does.
Isn't working at Disneyland the same as working at a McDonalds or equivalent, an entry level job until you can qualify for something better?
Employment opportunities that offer enough compensation to pay one's own way and secure one's own future have declined over the last fifteen years, due to having reached the automation- and globalization-related inflection point discussed earlier in the thread. Furthermore, business has exploited strong political support from the right that has been used to support policies and practices that obstruct low-wage workers moving beyond what used to be the first rung on a career ladder. As a result, jobs at McDonald's and Disneyland that previously were the realm of entry level workers are now well within the realm of work workers of all ages take to feed their families.
This is to be expected. If there are fewer opportunities in the labor market for people looking to support their families, overall, and substantially fewer such opportunities for those at the lower end to advance themselves to the next level, then whatever opportunities there may be that one might want to try to claim are, conceptually, "below" the lower end become the lower end of the spectrum of jobs for people looking to support their families. In essence, political forces that have allowed business to "optimize" itself relatively unchecked are responsible for the secondary effects of their policies (i.e., this tumult at the lower end of the labor market) just as much as they try to take credit for the primary effects of their policies (i.e., corporate profits soaring at an annualized rate of almost 15%).
It is very important to rise above myopic fixation on the fact that the job is at McDonald's or Disneyland, and rise above myopic fixation on what jobs we're talking about, and focus on what's truly important: Finding and addressing the root causes. This is something business, itself, has known and capitalized on for over a century, going back to Sakichi Toyoda's "5 Why's" method.
Why can't these people pay their own way and secure their own futures? (They're working at Disneyland.)
Why don't they work different jobs that pay better? (Opportunities of that sort do not exist in sufficient numbers for people with such skills.)
Why don't opportunities of that sort exist in sufficient number for people with such skills? (Business optimization has caused an inflection point related to automation and globalization, leaving behind far fewer living wage jobs at that skill level.)
Why can't these people do more skilled work? (Obtaining such skills require resources that these people don't have and cannot acquire without being more skilled already.)
Why can't these people acquire the necessary resources to become more skilled? (Institutionalized poverty cycles in society, and to the extent that such resources do become available, what results is a down-grading of another band of work from living wage jobs into poverty wage jobs.)
That last bit of the analysis, underlined above, is critical. If people act responsibly in their analysis of the situation, and dig down to the root cause, we find that society has allowed to be created a new trap within the trap. We hear that in this forum all the time now, the very valid advice to think carefully about getting into IT, a field that used to translate into guaranteed living wage employment for life, now reduced to the same risk as working as a cook at KFC, i.e., that business optimization has reclassified such work from living wage work to poverty wage work.
It may stroke the egos of those who aren't caught in the trap to cast aspersions upon those who are, but beyond ego-stroking such perspectives have no merit in the context of honest and forthright analysis.
So: How does root-cause analysis help us? It informs us about what we really need to do to fix the problem:
Breaking the institutionalized cycles of poverty (i.e., we must take steps as a society to ensure that socio-economic status at birth is no longer a reliable predictor of socio-economic status as an adult);
Prevention of additional downgrading of work from living wage work to poverty wage work;
Restoration of living wages to bands of work that have previously been downgraded, enough to ensure there are sufficient living wage opportunities within the labor market for the complete cross-section of skill levels appropriate for society;
Provisions within society to support correction of any difference between the need for skilled workers and the availability of skilled workers in the labor market.
The biggest stumbling block to this is that people view this as a political solution when, as you can see above, it is strictly a scientific solution based on application of root-cause analysis, operations research, and management science.
You are constantly putting down individuals, yet, you seem to refuse to acknowledge that businesses can do no wrong.
Good point. I've been very critical of the immoral advocacy and amoral perspectives that other posters in this thread have expressed, but I don't make it personal, "putting down individuals" as you described it. I focus my comments on the ideas shared, assessing and appraising the perspectives and the advocacy, not the people. What you're pointing out here begs the question as to whether there is some correlation between holding those offensive perspectives and being unwilling to discuss the issue without making it personal.
You are constantly putting down individuals, yet, you seem to refuse to acknowledge that businesses can do no wrong.
Here is post #315:
Quote:
Originally Posted by TaxPhd
There’s no double standard. Individuals blame anything and everything for their lack of success. CD is full of such threads.
Businesses do make changes. Every day. Why would you believe otherwise?
If you read what I responded to, my claim was that both businesses and individuals are doing the same thing - playing the blame game.
Now, I know that reading carefully can be challenging, but please try to do so when you accuse me of something, because your claim of my having a “double standard” is simply false, and is in no way supported by evidence.
If you read what I responded to, my claim was that both businesses and individuals are doing the same thing - playing the blame game.
Now, I know that reading carefully can be challenging, but please try to do so when you accuse me of something, because your claim of my having a “double standard” is simply false, and is in no way supported by evidence.
Care to take another crack at it?
Fair enough. Another issue was I was using "you", as opposed to the C-D community in general.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,925 posts, read 81,979,720 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wit-nit
Isn't working at Disneyland the same as working at a McDonalds or equivalent, an entry level job until you can qualify for something better?
For those sweeping up litter, selling cotton candy, managing the lines at the rides, even ride operators yes. They have far more requirements for grooming and behavior toward guests than fast food workers, so people in those jobs must be Disney fans and enjoy working there to handle it at that low pay. On the other hand, they do have many employees making good money, Industrial engineers, "Imagineers", accountants, machinists, electricians, head chefs, construction managers.
It is very important to rise above myopic fixation on the fact that the job is at McDonald's or Disneyland, and rise above myopic fixation on what jobs we're talking about, and focus on what's truly important: Finding and addressing the root causes. This is something business, itself, has known and capitalized on for over a century, going back to Sakichi Toyoda's "5 Why's" method.
Why can't these people pay their own way and secure their own futures? (They're working at Disneyland.)
Why don't they work different jobs that pay better? (Opportunities of that sort do not exist in sufficient numbers for people with such skills.)
Why don't opportunities of that sort exist in sufficient number for people with such skills? (Business optimization has caused an inflection point related to automation and globalization, leaving behind far fewer living wage jobs at that skill level.)
Why can't these people do more skilled work? (Obtaining such skills require resources that these people don't have and cannot acquire without being more skilled already.)
Why can't these people acquire the necessary resources to become more skilled? (Institutionalized poverty cycles in society, and to the extent that such resources do become available, what results is a down-grading of another band of work from living wage jobs into poverty wage jobs.)
No rebuttal from them I see. Some of us get the message loud and clear. But others choose to not care one whit about others. They don't care the least bit about the root causes. Its easier to blame those less fortunate rather than address the root causes.
For those sweeping up litter, selling cotton candy, managing the lines at the rides, even ride operators yes. They have far more requirements for grooming and behavior toward guests than fast food workers, so people in those jobs must be Disney fans and enjoy working there to handle it at that low pay. On the other hand, they do have many employees making good money, Industrial engineers, "Imagineers", accountants, machinists, electricians, head chefs, construction managers.
In discussions such as these, I'd imagine we're always doing an apples to apples comparison. MW to MW workers. Office jobs to office jobs. McDonalds also has people working in corporate. One person likes her job working in HR at McDonalds.
At Walmart many make minimum wage. I've either met folks who moved to Bentonville Arkansas to work for Walmart HQ, or were told about them through contacts. One guy is a millionaire working as a DBA (database admin... between good salary, low cost of living, and investments). Another person does marketing. You have several IT positions to boot. For those that work at WM HQ (not at the stores), their salaries are 10 to 20x their mortgages, so even though that part of Arkansas ain't the most hip, trendy, desirable, etc., they still get sushi, and have their basic amenities well covered.
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