If you're working for minimum wage your financial problems are yours alone

[martybegan]

well, do you argue that their choices up to that point have something to do with where they are now?
For example, If instead of going into the navy and earning my degree when I was 18 I had decided to stay home and party like my friends did. Would I still have been retired from one good job right now, collecting a retirement that is honestly more than according to statistics the average person makes working, and working at a second career now that again pays about twice what the average national average is for yearly income. Or would I be like them and still working for the average yearly income with no expectation of retiring until social security comes along.
At the time I made that decision, any of my friends could have done the same, and ended up the same as me some 40 years later, but their decision 40 years ago is why they are not in the same position as I am.
Ive never worked harder than any of them, I dont think I have had as tough a job as some of them, but the degree and the initiative puts a lot of weight behind you during your working years.
Yes, for many their bad choices are why they are minimum wage workers today.

Just looking for bad choices a person has made as an explanation of why they are a failure is really not very helpful, to the person or to society. Only when we look for root causes of those bad decisions do learn what can be done to prevent them.

Except we do nothing to prevent them anyway.

In a way I consider myself fortunate due to my upbringing. I was raised in your typical two parent family household, went to church on Sunday, went to a Catholic school most of my life, had a stay at home mother in case I got into trouble, a situation many of us had years ago as children.

My father played the major role in teaching me how to work. He was a bricklayer and I started working with him at the age of 11 years old. During the summer evenings and all weekend, I would carry clamps of bricks to my father, mix cement, fetch necessary tools to keep the job going, and coming home a filthy mess from head to toe. He paid me one dollar per hour.

My father had a full time job as a bricklayer which is why I mostly worked with him in the evenings when he got home, had dinner, and we headed to a side job of his. As I got older, I was able to produce more work and got raises from my father, but very little raises at that. My parents seldom just handed over money. You had to do something for it in exchange.

Kids raised in single-parent households didn't have such upbringing. Yet who besides Republicans promote two parent families? In the black community, the out-of-wedlock birth rate is over 70%. Nobody seems to want to do anything about it. So of course those kids know nothing about working until they quit school or graduate and get their very first job.

If most of the failures we have been discussing had your family background, they would not be failures. Solving the problems of education, drugs, crime, mental health, unemployment, dependency, and economic growth all starts with the child and the family. Fix that and you fix it all. Unfortunately, solving social problems are the most difficult problems a nation faces. Our social welfare system is not geared to fix the problems, just maintain the status quo. The Left and Right are so far apart there really isn't much hope at the present time.

I disagree. I want to take you back to the Republican debates for the presidential nomination involving Newt Gingrich. Newt understood that not all people are college material. Our education system should teach children about manual labor--especially those who were brought up in families I just mentioned.

He was heavily criticized by the left for expressing the opinion that kids should work. They brought up slave labor, child labor, working for next to nothing, the whole ball of wax. I agreed with Newt because when I was a kid in school, we had such a program. Instead of sitting in useless study halls and gym, we were allowed to work at the various schools in the area and actually earn our first paycheck. I had to wake up extra early, go to a school, empty out trash cans, raise the US flag, burn the trash I collected, sweep the halls and so on.

Yes, kids should work and kids should study and parents should not expect their kid making C's and D's to go to college but all this does not address the underlying problems. Unless we address the underlying problems, nothing will change.

If kids are to do well in school, the first requirement is self esteem. They have to believe they can or they won't try and they need encouragement from parents or those that fill the roll of parents. Parenting classes for single mother should be a requirement for any financial support. 50% of the childcare between the ages of 2 and 8 consist of caging the children in cribs, playrooms or planting them in front of TV for most of the day. These years are the most important years for developing self esteem, learning the basic skills needed for school, and developing social skills. Fix the young kids and we'll fix most of America's problems. Ignore them, and problems will get worse.

Raising self esteem has been tried, i.e. the "everyone gets a trophy" method of teaching/parenting, and we see what that has gotten us. Precious snowflakes that can't deal with contrary opinions, or criticism, or anything else in the real world.

 

[AntonToo]

I wonder GrampsM, if slavery wasn't illegal would you also be the guy making threads about how being a slave is your own damn fault?

You are a fucking idiot and I welcome the moderation. Fuck off

So you wouldn't? Right?

So there you go, you are in perfect position to understand why some wouldn't want near-slave wages to be legal.

It wouldn't matter. Many places can't get Americans to work for the minimum wage now.

I doubt what you say but if I were in their shoes I wouldn't blame them. Did you know that in the last thirty years 86% of all the increase in wealth went to the upper 1%?

The poor bastards should either organize a union and sit down or just quit doing a damn thing. The rich can't do shit without a bunch of poor and average people working for them. Most rich people have trouble wiping their own asses.

In a free country, you can be whatever you desire. You don't have to be poor and you don't have to work for minimum wage your entire life.

Immigrants come to this country barely knowing enough English to get by with ten bucks in their pockets. Yet through a lot of hard work, some get educated and get good jobs. Many work night and day to save for their own business; some even buying into franchises.

But native born Americans just can't seem to figure that out. Why?

There is a selection bias.

There are 7 billion people in the world and a few that are willing to leave everything familiar behind and move to lands foreign have a track record of willingness and ability to do something about their status quo.

 

[Maryland Patriot]

"Wealth is not for everybody". Yup...only a few should have it. The rest should eek by struggling every inc. Classy.h of the way. Only in america will you hear this. Classy.

I had no idea that the United states was the only country in the world that had poor people.
As far as wealth not being for every one? Not true, there is not a single person born in this country that does not have the same opportunity to one day be considered wealthy.
I think what you meant to say was that exhibiting personal responsibility and working toward a goal of wealth through education and hard work is not for everybody.
Why should society be responsible for paying anyone's bills

 

[danielpalos]

rational choice theory. the right complains our poor are not really poor enough by true, third world, capital standards.

No they don't...

yes, they do.

Are you one?

i am on the left; i am liberal enough to not care how much the poor or the rich, pay in taxes.

I know, it was a rhetorical question.....

Your words give you away.....

the right Only cares how much the poor, don't make.

 

[danielpalos]

Slavery existed because plantation owners were to damn lazy to do any work.

No, it existed because of liberals.....

it wasn't supposed continue after 1808. All Persons born on US soil are citizens and have natural rights enforcible at law.

 

[danielpalos]

If you're working for minimum wage, you're working, and deserve a decent wage.

Is that what working is all about, what one deserves and not what their labor is actually worth?

value can be subjective.

 

[danielpalos]

I wonder GrampsM, if slavery wasn't illegal would you also be the guy making threads about how being a slave is your own damn fault?

You are a fucking idiot and I welcome the moderation. Fuck off

So you wouldn't? Right?

So there you go, you are in perfect position to understand why some wouldn't want near-slave wages to be legal.

It wouldn't matter. Many places can't get Americans to work for the minimum wage now.

Well then NOT "many-places" in America are currently employing around 8-10 million people that make under $9 an hour, how does that change the discussion?

And there are a lot of places that can't find Americans to work for that money. How many fast food restaurants do you see without a HELP WANTED sign inside and even outside of a building?

social services is paying around fourteen dollars an hour, by comparison. rational choice theory always applies.

 

[kaz]

Your boss didn't kill your ambition.
Your boss didn't make you fail your education.
I didn't kill your ambition.
I didn't make you fail in school.

If you're an adult working for minimum wage it is YOUR irresponsible choices that led you there.

I wonder GrampsM, if slavery wasn't illegal would you also be the guy making threads about how being a slave is your own damn fault?

You are a fucking idiot and I welcome the moderation. Fuck off

So you wouldn't? Right?

So there you go, you are in perfect position to understand why some wouldn't want near-slave wages to be legal.

It wouldn't matter. Many places can't get Americans to work for the minimum wage now.

Well then NOT "many-places" in America are currently employing around 8-10 million people that make under $9 an hour, how does that change the discussion?

There are a lot of useless people who didn't finish school, don't work hard, get away with everything they can, don't reliably show up for work. I've owned five businesses. Two of them employed minimum wage workers and the majority of them ended up getting fired. A few worked out and we started paying them more.

The problem exactly as Grampa said is theirs. We want reliable workers and we pay them to keep them. But you can't make useless idiots who do things like beg for other people's money on message boards give a shit.

What's even worse are when you want them not to be able to get any job at all by increasing minimum wage when they can't keep a job because they aren't worth the minimum wage we have now

 

[danielpalos]

No adult american should be working for 9bucks an hour so its good to see those jobs unfilled.

there should be no unfilled positions; those jobs just don't pay enough.

 

[kaz]

You are a fucking idiot and I welcome the moderation. Fuck off

So you wouldn't? Right?

So there you go, you are in perfect position to understand why some wouldn't want near-slave wages to be legal.

It wouldn't matter. Many places can't get Americans to work for the minimum wage now.

Well then NOT "many-places" in America are currently employing around 8-10 million people that make under $9 an hour, how does that change the discussion?

And there are a lot of places that can't find Americans to work for that money. How many fast food restaurants do you see without a HELP WANTED sign inside and even outside of a building?

social services is paying around fourteen dollars an hour, by comparison. rational choice theory always applies.

You pay people not worth $7.25 an hour $14 an hour and let's see where "rational choice" leads you

 

[danielpalos]

Says anyone with half a brain cell. Its good to see those jobs unfilled. If businesses struggle to fill positions that is good.

So you're OK with cutting EBT in half to,start? Then to zero?

Cool....

this is why I believe in unemployment compensation, simply for being unemployed on an at-will basis in our at-will employment States.

 

[danielpalos]

Says anyone with half a brain cell. Its good to see those jobs unfilled. If businesses struggle to fill positions that is good.

That is correct, it is good, because if they can't find labor, they need to increase their wage offer without unions and government regulation. That's the natural supply and demand process.

But as long as we keep letting foreigners into this country to take our jobs, that will never happen.

We could be generating revenue with a market friendly work visa, instead of merely wasting money enforcing a porous border.

 

[danielpalos]

I believe in govt assistance for anyone working 40 hours per week for minimum wage. One cannot survive on that or pay a bill.

Exactly! The goddam rich Republicans are the only ones who even give it a thought. I'd like to see how that bunch or elitist horse's asses would make it on what they pay their drivers or gardeners. They'd more than likely load up a .38 and blow their fuckin' brains out......if they could hit their heads.

Your comment takes me back to something my father told me when I was a kid.

If you give a poor person a million dollars, chances are, they will be poor in just a few years. But if you take all the money away from a millionaire, he will become a millionaire once again because he knows how he did it the first time.

Wealth is not for everybody. In fact, books have been written on how lottery winnings actually ruined people's lives.

maybe, maybe not, in modern times. what if, everyone who gets a million dollars also gets an appointment with a financial planner? that is the Only problem with EBT cards; they cannot be used with financial planners.

 

[danielpalos]

Your boss didn't kill your ambition.
Your boss didn't make you fail your education.
I didn't kill your ambition.
I didn't make you fail in school.


If you're an adult working for minimum wage it is YOUR irresponsible choices that led you there.

You DO know that thete are highly intelligent college graduates who can not find work because there is none, right?!

You do realize that through masdive overregulation, fiscal irresponsibility, poor policies, and legislation that has not only made it easier to take jobs out of the country but they have all but forced some companies to do so, right?

Equal protection of the law regarding the concept of employment at will, should solve this simple, capital problem: unemployment compensation simply for being unemployed in our at-will employment States.

 

[danielpalos]

For minimum wage employers don't expect productivity...so its fair. Low productivity low wage. One works as hard as they get paid.

That's not entirely true. Depending on the job/employer pay isn't always based on productivity. There are some that any raises given are given to everyone based on a pay scale for the type of position held and length of employment.

I believe in govt assistance for anyone working 40 hours per week for minimum wage. One cannot survive on that or pay a bill.

Usually minimum wage jobs don't offer 40 hours per week anymore. Most are only part-time.

why is there any distinction for benefits purposes, between full and part-time? prorata is a capital concept.

 

[danielpalos]

For minimum wage employers don't expect productivity...so its fair. Low productivity low wage. One works as hard as they get paid.

That's not entirely true. Depending on the job/employer pay isn't always based on productivity. There are some that any raises given are given to everyone based on a pay scale for the type of position held and length of employment.

I believe in govt assistance for anyone working 40 hours per week for minimum wage. One cannot survive on that or pay a bill.

Usually minimum wage jobs don't offer 40 hours per week anymore. Most are only part-time.

You have no idea what I would give to have a part time job for a month or two right now.
my hours for the last 3 months have been 65 to 75 hours a week, I have been working 7 days a week this entire 3 month period, I am typing this right now at 1:48am from my desk at work. Why you ask? because we are having a hard time finding people to fill the spots that we have empty right now for staff. The work is out there, the problem is that people are too picky. Yes I need to work and yes I want to work, but God forbid that the hours are on a midshift, or they include weekends, you dont expect people to give up their weekends just to have a $43.00 an hour job do you? that wouldn't be fair at all. So these positions go unfilled and people like me get screwed with having to fill in the hours.. on the bright side, thats roughly 30 hours a week of overtime. My complaints are fairly silent on payday.
I dont like these hours but the thought of being unemployed right now is not a thought that I entertain with much glee.

there are no unfilled positions; only positions that don't pay enough. please stop with the wealth, chauvinism.

 

[danielpalos]

I wonder GrampsM, if slavery wasn't illegal would you also be the guy making threads about how being a slave is your own damn fault?

You are a fucking idiot and I welcome the moderation. Fuck off

So you wouldn't? Right?

So there you go, you are in perfect position to understand why some wouldn't want near-slave wages to be legal.

It wouldn't matter. Many places can't get Americans to work for the minimum wage now.

Well then NOT "many-places" in America are currently employing around 8-10 million people that make under $9 an hour, how does that change the discussion?

There are a lot of useless people who didn't finish school, don't work hard, get away with everything they can, don't reliably show up for work. I've owned five businesses. Two of them employed minimum wage workers and the majority of them ended up getting fired. A few worked out and we started paying them more.

The problem exactly as Grampa said is theirs. We want reliable workers and we pay them to keep them. But you can't make useless idiots who do things like beg for other people's money on message boards give a shit.

What's even worse are when you want them not to be able to get any job at all by increasing minimum wage when they can't keep a job because they aren't worth the minimum wage we have now

some people should be getting unemployment compensation so you won't have to work as hard at HR.

 

[danielpalos]

So you wouldn't? Right?

So there you go, you are in perfect position to understand why some wouldn't want near-slave wages to be legal.

It wouldn't matter. Many places can't get Americans to work for the minimum wage now.

Well then NOT "many-places" in America are currently employing around 8-10 million people that make under $9 an hour, how does that change the discussion?

And there are a lot of places that can't find Americans to work for that money. How many fast food restaurants do you see without a HELP WANTED sign inside and even outside of a building?

social services is paying around fourteen dollars an hour, by comparison. rational choice theory always applies.

You pay people not worth $7.25 an hour $14 an hour and let's see where "rational choice" leads you

only lousy capitalists say that. if they don't want to work, they should be getting unemployment compensation to not waste your time.

 

[Flopper]

Just looking for bad choices a person has made as an explanation of why they are a failure is really not very helpful, to the person or to society. Only when we look for root causes of those bad decisions do learn what can be done to prevent them.

Except we do nothing to prevent them anyway.

In a way I consider myself fortunate due to my upbringing. I was raised in your typical two parent family household, went to church on Sunday, went to a Catholic school most of my life, had a stay at home mother in case I got into trouble, a situation many of us had years ago as children.

My father played the major role in teaching me how to work. He was a bricklayer and I started working with him at the age of 11 years old. During the summer evenings and all weekend, I would carry clamps of bricks to my father, mix cement, fetch necessary tools to keep the job going, and coming home a filthy mess from head to toe. He paid me one dollar per hour.

My father had a full time job as a bricklayer which is why I mostly worked with him in the evenings when he got home, had dinner, and we headed to a side job of his. As I got older, I was able to produce more work and got raises from my father, but very little raises at that. My parents seldom just handed over money. You had to do something for it in exchange.

Kids raised in single-parent households didn't have such upbringing. Yet who besides Republicans promote two parent families? In the black community, the out-of-wedlock birth rate is over 70%. Nobody seems to want to do anything about it. So of course those kids know nothing about working until they quit school or graduate and get their very first job.

If most of the failures we have been discussing had your family background, they would not be failures. Solving the problems of education, drugs, crime, mental health, unemployment, dependency, and economic growth all starts with the child and the family. Fix that and you fix it all. Unfortunately, solving social problems are the most difficult problems a nation faces. Our social welfare system is not geared to fix the problems, just maintain the status quo. The Left and Right are so far apart there really isn't much hope at the present time.

I disagree. I want to take you back to the Republican debates for the presidential nomination involving Newt Gingrich. Newt understood that not all people are college material. Our education system should teach children about manual labor--especially those who were brought up in families I just mentioned.

He was heavily criticized by the left for expressing the opinion that kids should work. They brought up slave labor, child labor, working for next to nothing, the whole ball of wax. I agreed with Newt because when I was a kid in school, we had such a program. Instead of sitting in useless study halls and gym, we were allowed to work at the various schools in the area and actually earn our first paycheck. I had to wake up extra early, go to a school, empty out trash cans, raise the US flag, burn the trash I collected, sweep the halls and so on.

Yes, kids should work and kids should study and parents should not expect their kid making C's and D's to go to college but all this does not address the underlying problems. Unless we address the underlying problems, nothing will change.

If kids are to do well in school, the first requirement is self esteem. They have to believe they can or they won't try and they need encouragement from parents or those that fill the roll of parents. Parenting classes for single mother should be a requirement for any financial support. 50% of the childcare between the ages of 2 and 8 consist of caging the children in cribs, playrooms or planting them in front of TV for most of the day. These years are the most important years for developing self esteem, learning the basic skills needed for school, and developing social skills. Fix the young kids and we'll fix most of America's problems. Ignore them, and problems will get worse.

Raising self esteem has been tried, i.e. the "everyone gets a trophy" method of teaching/parenting, and we see what that has gotten us. Precious snowflakes that can't deal with contrary opinions, or criticism, or anything else in the real world.

That's dumb. No praise at all is better than giving kids praise for doing nothing or failing. People seem to think self esteem can only be build by the parent but the fact is anyone who cares for the child can do it, parent, neighbor, teacher, or babysitter. The steps are simple but like real childcare it takes time.

• Give children choices
• Don't do everything for them
• Don't gush or offer insincere praise; kids can detect insincerity.
• Assign age-appropriate chores.
• Don't draw comparisons between children.
• Don't call children names and never use sarcasm to make a point.
• Spend one-on-one time with the child.

It sounds simple but it can take the patience of Jove. It's worth the time because it can make a huge difference in the future of the child.

 

[Flopper]

So you wouldn't? Right?

So there you go, you are in perfect position to understand why some wouldn't want near-slave wages to be legal.

It wouldn't matter. Many places can't get Americans to work for the minimum wage now.

Well then NOT "many-places" in America are currently employing around 8-10 million people that make under $9 an hour, how does that change the discussion?

And there are a lot of places that can't find Americans to work for that money. How many fast food restaurants do you see without a HELP WANTED sign inside and even outside of a building?

social services is paying around fourteen dollars an hour, by comparison. rational choice theory always applies.

You pay people not worth $7.25 an hour $14 an hour and let's see where "rational choice" leads you

Keep in mind we're not talking about a lot of people making minimum wage. Only about 4% of all hourly paid workers, including full and part time are paid minimum wage or less. I have never heard of a serious proposal to take minimum wage directly from $7 to $14. It is usually implemented in steps by states over a period of years. It has a minimal impact on the economy as well the workforce. By the time the federal government raises the federal minimum wage most states have already raised their minimum wage and most workers are making well above both state and federal minimum wage. We spend way too much time arguing over it.