Had to drop in on y'alls liberal playground here...... Just wondering if you are still proud of the agenda going forward at light speed. I know everything that is going wrong is Trumps fault. Just wondering though if anyone has noticed. Rapidly rising fuel costs. Rapidly rising food costs. Growing number of unanswered "Help Wanted" signs. Yeah, well from a personal business angle, we are to the point of begging building materials anyplace we can find them. And when we do find them they are four times the cost from this time last year. Construction is slowly imploding upon itself. Hope nobody needs a new garage or roof anytime soon...... My families favorite Friday nigh restaurant is only open with a limited schedule. They can't get help and when they do it is painfully inadequate. Heck, some days I can't get a Happy meal from the McDonald's drive through. As I understand it, this is not an isolated issue.. Yeah, I would say things are humming along quite nicely. I rather wonder if this isn't all pre-planned so the fed can step up and save us once again thereby cementing their grasp on every aspect of our lives. Just wanted to drop by and share in all this good news. Bad old Trump for orchestrating all of this chaos from Mar-a-Lago.
Actually I have missed you Mopar Dude. Didja ever think you'd hear me say I admire Liz Cheney? I know I didn't. All those men senators and she's the one with the balls. Go figure.
The cost to the restaurant is $86 for 40 hours of work. The customers must pay the rest of any employee's wages. No benefits, no vacation pay, no overtime pay. I would not only never work at this place, I would never eat there either.
Well, I don't know if I buy into the $2.15 plus tips. I do know it has long been industry standard that wait staff makes their true earnings on tips. I know my daughter lived quite well on tips at a truck stop diner for years..... But really there is a deeper set of issues here..... Being a server or wait staff is generally considered a position that is entering the workforce. We have to have those for people to educate themselves enough to earn more permanent and lucrative work..... If we all started at the top, then what would we have to work for?
The workforce, be it entry level or not, is going to gravitate towards better paying jobs. Even high school kids wouldn't work for wages this low if they could just go to McDonald's and make 10-12 bucks an hour. When you can't even attract unskilled teenagers to work for you, you might want to consider paying a wage that would attract employees. If you're not willing to do that, don't blame others for not wanting to work for you. As manufacturing in this country has all been shipped overseas so that these big businesses can pay a 7-year old Chinese girl $3 a day to assemble iPhones and then ship them back the the U.S. at a $1,000 a pop, we become more a service sector society than a manufacturing society. In other words, the predominant type of jobs are in the service sectors. We don't have enough entry level people to fill all of those jobs even as we have a huge shortage of good paying manufacturing jobs. Consequentially, people that are not entry level workers are forced to take these service sector positions. It's a race to the bottom any way you look at it. People make less money, they have less disposable income for things like eating out at restaurants, restaurant suppliers suffer, commercial real estate suffers, local businesses suffer, and it reverberates throughout the entire economy. Paying a living wage reverses that vicious cycle.
This I don't disagree with at all and I am afraid this is where the great left-right chasm falls..... I believe the free market economy can fix itself far better and faster than I believe any fed imposed agenda can do..... If you don't pay a fair wage, nobody comes to work and you are out of business. Simple as that. The imposition of a mandated agenda comes with long term consequences that quite frankly our political leaders by nature aren't forced to consider. We can print all the money we want. Who cares what the consequence of that action is in 2030? The free market established this is the greatest nation on earth. We don't need fences to keep people in.... Why throw the baby out with the bathwater now?
I have an upside to this situation that you may not have considered. I mean the building materials problem. My understanding is that because much of the construction industry was paused during the pandemic, there was little reason to stockpile lumber, sheetrock, singles, etc. Now that the pandemic seems to be abating, these building suppliers have to begin producing materials again and there is a lag time causing a spike in prices for what is available. Welcome to the well-known supply-and-demand side of Capitalism. It can be a bitch if you're on the wrong side of it but that's our system isn't it? Now the upside. My home value has skyrocketed. I was planning on selling this summer/fall and things couldn't be rosier. I will walk away with a huge profit after 22-year as I retire an move out west. Things couldn't have be better for me. If I decide to buy again, I will wait until the market bottoms out. I am never going to blame the economy for my financial situation. There is always opportunity if you know where to look for it and you're patient enough to wait.
You know, I was thinking about something along these lines the other day. Now that the Republicans are out of power, the deficit spending is suddenly the greatest issue on the planet. Yeah, nothing new there. Same old story every time. But one of their usual assertions is that "Our kids will be paying for our spending!" or some such drivel they don't really care about. Then I started thinking about that future generation and I bet that if you went into the future and asked them about their high-speed rail, their public transportation, their immaculate infrastructure and told them that we had invested in their future before they were born, just as our parents did, do you think that they would be resentful for appreciative? My guess is that they wouldn't give the money we spent a second thought because they grew up in a world that functioned and prospered.
Granted.... There is a lot that needs fixing. You don't think you and I can do a better job of that than a group of elected officials that no longer have to function in the world that the rest of us have to live in? surely you can see that.... It is easy to preach health reform when you have the finest health care in the nation. Or mandating salaries when your six figure salary is absolute..... And this isn't left or right that I am speaking of here. We entrust our future to people whose only genuine concern is either their next two or four years. And they have all been quite effective in manipulating us into choosing sides for them effectively eliminating any opportunity to arrive at a mutual consent. All the while the rest of the world watches us implode.
Your "facts" are exaggerated . . . the minimum working age is 16 years for factory workers in China, and the minimum wage in China is 1945 USD per year, and assemblers of Apple iPhones likely get paid better than that. Moroever, the only reason Apple prices their phones at $1000 is because we're stupid enough as a society to pay that. Finally, no one should limit their career potential to working for McDonald's. That job should pay less than $10 hourly, and should not be occupied by parents of dependents . . . it should be a stepping stone to better jobs, but far too many of us want to just cruise through life, instead of continually improving our skill sets and advancing our careers. THAT is the crux of the problem.
Laugh out loud. Of course there was a bit of exaggeration about the the Chinese girl's age. It is an old joke that just went over your head. I understand your lack of cultural references. If you think people are "limiting their career potential" because they opt to work at McDonald's, you are clearly missing the point. Nobody wants to work at McDonald's, they simply have no other options. It is often all that is out there. Instead of looking down on them and ridiculing them as lazy or whatever judgment you choose to go with and further pretending that your white privilege also extends to them, try being empathetic and look at the lack of opportunities and the social barriers that maybe you didn't have but they certainly do. Empathy. Such a simple concept for some and yet an unscalable wall for others.
I don't see that happening anytime soon. Some folks just think they are so much better than others. I managed a few gas stations and truck stops in my time and believe me those people that some look down on work their asses off. I told my own boss at the coin shop on more than one occasion that if he worked for me he'd be fired before the first day was over. He wouldn't have been able to handle it. Seriously.
Thinking you're better than others, certainly is at the heart of white supremacy. They think because they are white, they are somehow better than nonwhites, ALL nonwhites. No wonder they find a home in the Republican Party or whatever they are calling themselves these days. I live around a lot of farms and you see the bumper stickers supporting InfoWars, Rush Limbaugh, Trump, and then you hear their rhetoric and they sound so superior because they live on a farm that will be handed to them as it was handed to their fathers, and their fathers, on and on... Never once having to earn something outside of their little farm family. Never once having to make it on their own in society. I have no doubt that they work hard farming, I just don't need the superiority they inevitably bring to every situation. Especially considering what they inherit generation after generation while farmers of color were driven off of their land time and time again. Yeah, the air of superiority is all they know. I used to respect farmers until I got to know them. BTW They hate each other. I've had farmers tell me that.
Gawl dang can you guys get off this bandwagon..... This talk is our problem!!! What about those of us that started with nothing and built something that provides a fine living for nine area families? Those of us that signed six figure notes on the bed of our twenty year old barely running vehicle and worked to make something of it? f I were better than everyone else, I would have simply drained the company cash and closed the doors years ago. Is it unfathomable that a conservative minded person can build something that provides for many from the sweat of his own brow? Wake up.
You take issue with the way I characterize white supremacy? How am I wrong? Then you should be agreeing with me. Neither of us was born on a farm that our relatives handed down to us. I don't take issue with that arrangement, I just don't think they should walk around puffing up their chests feeling superior to those that weren't born with a silver shovel in their mouths. Is that so difficult to grasp?
Because I truly believe from my heart that the divisive talk as at the core of what is splitting our nation apart at the seams. And all the peripheral problems that are showing their ugly heads all stem from this poison.
