At least your four year old daughter isn’t saying to fat people in the store checkout line “you know, you should eat less” in a concerned/helpful tone (fat people here are few and far in between).
Apparently, she also believes all adults do pullups and that it’s a big thing for them. I don’t know why my wife blames me for that.
Sounds like my little niece. She was begging her adult sister for toys and things. She said “no we can’t just buy you everything you want.” The child was pensive for a moment and asked “why don’t you guys just make more money?”
~6.6 million unemployed people in America. Unless we’re to believe these people don’t live within range of a farm, Walmart, or McDonalds, it tracks to me that A LOT of people think certain jobs are beneath them. And that’s just the unemployed ones. What % of middle class+ people do you know whom you GENUINELY believe would pick tomatoes out of a field or work a McD grill to pay their bills? Personally my % isn’t nearly high enough to say a lot wouldn’t do it.
When I came back from my honeymoon my 2 female friends (whom listen to nearly exclusively rap music) had noticed my daughter picked up a new word. A word they would laugh at every time she (2yrs old) would say it. Imagine my surprise when I’m in the bread aisle at Walmart in a not so great part of town and she yells it.
Could you pay your bills picking tomatoes? I’m not asking rhetorically as I don’t know how much it pays.
MY bills? Absolutely not. The bills you have when you’re TRULY living as sparingly as you can? Absolutely yes.
We already discussed this, are the wages paid by said farms, McDonald’s, or Wal-Mart > the $ they receive and would lose in Federal and State benefits?
If the answer is that the wages are not greater than the benefits they receive than why would they work for those dollars?
Economics Types even qualify unemployment.
Some of those unemployed people are Frictionally Unemployed.
It’s winter in the US, so farm workers could be temporarily unemployed, jobless until growing season.
Others could be seasonal hires at Walmart, now unemployed, after work hours were reduced after the busy Holiday Season ended.
Or Structurally Unemployed, like a burger flipper dude who just got replaced by a burger flipping robot.
I think it would be hard for someone in your circumstances, I’m not saying you personally, to accept that. I mean, imagine earning a particular income working a job that might be easy as far as physicality is concerned and then having to work harder for less.
Like many people, I worked all sorts of shitty jobs from elementary and high school through college and beyond. If someone told me when I was 19 that I was going to be stuck washing dishes for min wage until I died (no retirement fund for dishwashers) I would have turned to a life of crime.
It’s not cooks getting replaced, it’s cashiers. Cooks may still be necessary, but you can order your shit on a kiosk.
I thought this place would be all a-twitter over the SOTU address… As is my tradition, I ain’t gonna watch it.I know whats going on because I follow whats going on…
Will the money saved go to the cooks’ wages?
Fuck no…
Not sure about your state, but here we get ~6 months of unemployment before it runs out. Is the farm wages higher than unemployment? Probably not. Is it higher than unemployment that ran out? I’d sure hope so.
And while I seem to be sticking on unemployed people as that’s the easiest to quantify, I’d say it extends to a lot of Americans. I’ve known a number of people who came from money and wouldn’t dream of working something like as ghastly as a fast food job or manual labor.
Was your issue with my statement that we disagree on what “a lot of Americans” means, or that you don’t believe any Americans think certain jobs are beneath them?
I’m not referring just to unemployment benefits, which varies from state to state. I’m talking about the collective set of benefits an American can obtain for being unemployed or even underemployed. Things like SNAP, WIC, etc… These benefits phase out as you earn money. So, if you take a minimum wage job you can and likely will lose certain benefits. Your financial situation doesn’t change, but now you’re working.
Do you see what I’m saying? There’s a breakeven and until income reaches a certain point, there is no monetary benefit to taking some of these jobs in the short term. Long term is a different story and a different conversation.
My original disagreement was not so much a disagreement as a question on your statements accuracy.
I personally don’t think the statement, which is often repeated, is accurate and I believe the BLS data I provided supports that.
Do some American’s feel this way, sure. Do American’s generally feel this way or do a lot of American’s feel this way? I don’t think so.
Not sure about your state, but in mine I’m not aware of any benefits that phase out when going from unemployed → min wage job. At least in my experience of spending the vast majority of my life dreaming of beating the poverty line while being surrounded almost exclusively by people in the same boat.
Maybe some niche benefits Im not aware of though.
I’ll admit there’s a good chance my view is swayed by years of anecdotal instances. Entirely possible not as many people feel that way as I think. Maybe I’m just really good at finding/being related to them
Americans should feel entitled. We have been told this is the greatest nation to ever have existed. We can now openly say this is not a shithole country. We see banks and corporations get bailouts. We see the same few people running for office, supported by the same few people. So why shouldn’t the average American think he should be able to live a decent life relative to this country’s standards if he puts in 40 hours or more a week at his job?
I often hear people say things like, “how much does someone think they should get for flipping burgers or stocking shelves.” Well, if no one wanted to work in fastfood all of those people who own franchises would lose. The companies would lose. Shareholders would lose. All of the suppliers would lose. TV would lose advertising. Any charities they support would lose.
Is it too much for someone who is providing a valuable service that affects so many to want to earn a decent wage? If you can’t afford to pay an extra 25 cents for a burger then you can’t afford to pay what you’re paying now.
And if there weren’t immigrants to flip burgers, the wages for flipping burgers would increase until:
–Enough Americans chose to take the jobs
–It became economically advantageous to automate the jobs
–Some combination of the above two options
–The resulting price of the burger was too high for enough people to afford it to stay in business.
I’m fine with any of those.
When I flipped burgers it was only Americans working there. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of min wage workers are American citizens. Wait staff gets an even lower min wage and I have yet to be waited on by an immigrant.
Another one bites the dust…
How do you know this for sure? Are immigrants only non whites who speak bad English? Or do you interrogate wait staff?
“Do you want lemon in your water”
“What country are you from?”
