The biggest reason by far workers can't support themselves is they don't care...

[kaz]

Regarding wal-mart, McDonalds and other discussions going on across the board, there is one thing that is overwhelmingly clear. Workers need to invest in themselves by getting an education, training, working harder, working longer and paying attention to detail. Those are how they make more money, and that is their job, not taxpayers and not their employers. However, the simple ability to support themselves is more basic than that. First, my background.

I have managed people starting about six months after I graduated college in 1988. For the next 20 years, I spent about half doing two stints in GE Management (GE Information Services, GE Power Systems, GE Capital, GE Consumer Finance) and the other half in management consulting (Booz Allen, et al). Since 2009, I have bought 5 businesses. I spun two off and merged the other three and run those as a single business.

Any worker other than extreme cases of retardation or mental illness, any worker could support themselves if they do one thing. Care. Of the hundred or so people I've fired in my career, they had repeated chances and their shortcomings were well within their ability. But they made the same stupid mistakes over and over and over. My low skilled workers now have to be closely managed and their work double checked by people who do care. No matter how poor a choices workers have made in the past, if they get a job and go every day and care about the quality of their work and reliably double check it before passing it on to someone else, they would quickly earn enough to support themselves.

It's indisputable fact to anyone with any real management and business experience.

What you're saying is that millions of the jobs we have in retail in this country are not real jobs but are rather the punishment for those who through some sort of inadequacy on their part deserve to suffer.

That is sheer elitist contempt for the dignity of honest labor.

I'd thank you for that contribution to the discussion, but it's a pile of

 

[kaz]

I believe you are engaging with a strawman because you have read so much between the lines of what I wrote

Really? That's why I put it in red for you. Explain how what I did (on purpose to demonstrate the point) is different than what you did.

Right, the fiscal conservatives, socons, republican libertarians and moderate "RINOS" who disagree on everything are groupthinking, while liberals who agree on everything are critical thinkers who all through independent research and analysis all arrived at the same answer for everything.

Keith Olbermann is an idiot, stop believing everything he tells you.

Although I see the point you are trying to make, I rarely hear anyone quoting the left. The frequency is higher on the right, given the prevalence of FOX and right wing radio. Are you ready to move on?

Bam! This is what I was trying to get you to say. The left, who agree on every issue are independent thinkers. That's the difference. Gotcha, sheep.

 

[Vox]

Really? That's why I put it in red for you. Explain how what I did (on purpose to demonstrate the point) is different than what you did.

Although I see the point you are trying to make, I rarely hear anyone quoting the left. The frequency is higher on the right, given the prevalence of FOX and right wing radio. Are you ready to move on?

Bam! This is what I was trying to get you to say. The left, who agree on every issue are independent thinkers. That's the difference. Gotcha, sheep.

plus it is always the left quoting somebody on FOX and running with it

and then they claim they don't watch it

 

[NYcarbineer]

Regarding wal-mart, McDonalds and other discussions going on across the board, there is one thing that is overwhelmingly clear. Workers need to invest in themselves by getting an education, training, working harder, working longer and paying attention to detail. Those are how they make more money, and that is their job, not taxpayers and not their employers. However, the simple ability to support themselves is more basic than that. First, my background.

I have managed people starting about six months after I graduated college in 1988. For the next 20 years, I spent about half doing two stints in GE Management (GE Information Services, GE Power Systems, GE Capital, GE Consumer Finance) and the other half in management consulting (Booz Allen, et al). Since 2009, I have bought 5 businesses. I spun two off and merged the other three and run those as a single business.

Any worker other than extreme cases of retardation or mental illness, any worker could support themselves if they do one thing. Care. Of the hundred or so people I've fired in my career, they had repeated chances and their shortcomings were well within their ability. But they made the same stupid mistakes over and over and over. My low skilled workers now have to be closely managed and their work double checked by people who do care. No matter how poor a choices workers have made in the past, if they get a job and go every day and care about the quality of their work and reliably double check it before passing it on to someone else, they would quickly earn enough to support themselves.

It's indisputable fact to anyone with any real management and business experience.

What you're saying is that millions of the jobs we have in retail in this country are not real jobs but are rather the punishment for those who through some sort of inadequacy on their part deserve to suffer.

That is sheer elitist contempt for the dignity of honest labor.

I'd thank you for that contribution to the discussion, but it's a pile of

Maybe if you paid your people more you'd get better quality people.

 

[kaz]

What you're saying is that millions of the jobs we have in retail in this country are not real jobs but are rather the punishment for those who through some sort of inadequacy on their part deserve to suffer.

That is sheer elitist contempt for the dignity of honest labor.

I'd thank you for that contribution to the discussion, but it's a pile of

Maybe if you paid your people more you'd get better quality people.

Strawman, yawn.

 

[kaz]

Maybe if you paid your people more you'd get better quality people.

Actually, to add onto this, you're right, but in a way that demonstrates my point not yours.

My business is a combination of three businesses I bought over the last 4 years and merged and I run them together. I'd never had a staff reduction though, we'd filled some needed positions. We grew revenue by about 1/3 last year. Our staff cost as a percent of revenue was still too high, but we were struggling to get the work done. Clearly we'd picked up a lot of dead wood with the acquisitions.

We'd been discussing some low performers. We'd documented and trained and put their feet to the fire, but they still didn't care. They'd improved while the spotlight was on, then go back to their sucky ways. The concern was though that many of them had been with the businesses I bought for decades and there was concern in the management team we'd lose too much knowledge of their businesses if they left.

After beating our heads against the wall all last year, I decided in January we were going to lay off our crappy staff and give our best staff raises. We were constrained to pay our best staff better because as I said our overall staff costs were too high. But I decided I wanted to go ahead.

We started the process over the next few months of putting poor performers on notice and getting rid of them. In the end, we laid off about 25% of our staff and gave about 25% of the staff raises, some of them substantial. My management team was split, about half were for doing it and half thought that even though they were low performers, the work would pile on the good staff and we'd lose too much knowledge of businesses and customers we'd acquired. The results? It was a resounding success.

1) The top staff were happy they got raises

2) The work got easier rather than harder. One person after another told me they were concerned to let that much staff go, but they realized as time went on, they were actually impeding the work, they weren't just low performers

3) Morale improved and people were less frustrated

4) Revenue is on pace to be up another 50% this year.

In the end, we didn't have to hire one new person and we are doing more work easier.

So it is true, raises are good. As long as you shit can the useless crap who show up for work every day and don't care. There seriously ended up being no downside to this.

 

[hipeter924]

What you're saying is that millions of the jobs we have in retail in this country are not real jobs but are rather the punishment for those who through some sort of inadequacy on their part deserve to suffer.

That is sheer elitist contempt for the dignity of honest labor.

I'd thank you for that contribution to the discussion, but it's a pile of

Maybe if you paid your people more you'd get better quality people.

Well it is what you get when you undercut your employees, and encourage a culture of squeezing people. People don't take it seriously because at the end of the day it is just a job, they have no real enthusiasm in the work because they know that they are being squeezed by their high and mighty employer (and that their boss doesn't care about them). It used to be different, then most businesses turned to outsourcing and cheap labour. There is a reason why people don't want the jobs you are offering Kaz, the jobs suck (whether they are low rank or middle management).

Manufacturing in a few decades will consist of technicians pushing buttons, fixing equipment, and getting robots to do things; so those jobs you are talking about are on the way out. Even in retail employees are being replaced by self-service, e-commerce, and eventually robots (though it might take a lot longer to get some that talk and move well enough) .

 

[Vox]

Maybe if you paid your people more you'd get better quality people.

Actually, to add onto this, you're right, but in a way that demonstrates my point not yours.

My business is a combination of three businesses I bought over the last 4 years and merged and I run them together. I'd never had a staff reduction though, we'd filled some needed positions. We grew revenue by about 1/3 last year. Our staff cost as a percent of revenue was still too high, but we were struggling to get the work done. Clearly we'd picked up a lot of dead wood with the acquisitions.

We'd been discussing some low performers. We'd documented and trained and put their feet to the fire, but they still didn't care. They'd improved while the spotlight was on, then go back to their sucky ways. The concern was though that many of them had been with the businesses I bought for decades and there was concern in the management team we'd lose too much knowledge of their businesses if they left.

After beating our heads against the wall all last year, I decided in January we were going to lay off our crappy staff and give our best staff raises. We were constrained to pay our best staff better because as I said our overall staff costs were too high. But I decided I wanted to go ahead.

We started the process over the next few months of putting poor performers on notice and getting rid of them. In the end, we laid off about 25% of our staff and gave about 25% of the staff raises, some of them substantial. My management team was split, about half were for doing it and half thought that even though they were low performers, the work would pile on the good staff and we'd lose too much knowledge of businesses and customers we'd acquired. The results? It was a resounding success.

1) The top staff were happy they got raises

2) The work got easier rather than harder. One person after another told me they were concerned to let that much staff go, but they realized as time went on, they were actually impeding the work, they weren't just low performers

3) Morale improved and people were less frustrated

4) Revenue is on pace to be up another 50% this year.

In the end, we didn't have to hire one new person and we are doing more work easier.

So it is true, raises are good. As long as you shit can the useless crap who show up for work every day and don't care. There seriously ended up being no downside to this.

would it have been unionized workers or a government -run entity - forget about improvement.

you were able to achieve it ONLY BECAUSE IT IS A PRIVATE BUSINESS.
and not a big corporation as well - those are inefficient behemoths like government is

 

[NYcarbineer]

Maybe if you paid your people more you'd get better quality people.

Actually, to add onto this, you're right, but in a way that demonstrates my point not yours.

My business is a combination of three businesses I bought over the last 4 years and merged and I run them together. I'd never had a staff reduction though, we'd filled some needed positions. We grew revenue by about 1/3 last year. Our staff cost as a percent of revenue was still too high, but we were struggling to get the work done. Clearly we'd picked up a lot of dead wood with the acquisitions.

We'd been discussing some low performers. We'd documented and trained and put their feet to the fire, but they still didn't care. They'd improved while the spotlight was on, then go back to their sucky ways. The concern was though that many of them had been with the businesses I bought for decades and there was concern in the management team we'd lose too much knowledge of their businesses if they left.

After beating our heads against the wall all last year, I decided in January we were going to lay off our crappy staff and give our best staff raises. We were constrained to pay our best staff better because as I said our overall staff costs were too high. But I decided I wanted to go ahead.

We started the process over the next few months of putting poor performers on notice and getting rid of them. In the end, we laid off about 25% of our staff and gave about 25% of the staff raises, some of them substantial. My management team was split, about half were for doing it and half thought that even though they were low performers, the work would pile on the good staff and we'd lose too much knowledge of businesses and customers we'd acquired. The results? It was a resounding success.

1) The top staff were happy they got raises

2) The work got easier rather than harder. One person after another told me they were concerned to let that much staff go, but they realized as time went on, they were actually impeding the work, they weren't just low performers

3) Morale improved and people were less frustrated

4) Revenue is on pace to be up another 50% this year.

In the end, we didn't have to hire one new person and we are doing more work easier.

So it is true, raises are good. As long as you shit can the useless crap who show up for work every day and don't care. There seriously ended up being no downside to this.

Your fairytale aside, corporate America isn't getting rid of workers so they can pay their other workers more.

 

[hipeter924]

Maybe if you paid your people more you'd get better quality people.

Actually, to add onto this, you're right, but in a way that demonstrates my point not yours.

My business is a combination of three businesses I bought over the last 4 years and merged and I run them together. I'd never had a staff reduction though, we'd filled some needed positions. We grew revenue by about 1/3 last year. Our staff cost as a percent of revenue was still too high, but we were struggling to get the work done. Clearly we'd picked up a lot of dead wood with the acquisitions.

We'd been discussing some low performers. We'd documented and trained and put their feet to the fire, but they still didn't care. They'd improved while the spotlight was on, then go back to their sucky ways. The concern was though that many of them had been with the businesses I bought for decades and there was concern in the management team we'd lose too much knowledge of their businesses if they left.

After beating our heads against the wall all last year, I decided in January we were going to lay off our crappy staff and give our best staff raises. We were constrained to pay our best staff better because as I said our overall staff costs were too high. But I decided I wanted to go ahead.

We started the process over the next few months of putting poor performers on notice and getting rid of them. In the end, we laid off about 25% of our staff and gave about 25% of the staff raises, some of them substantial. My management team was split, about half were for doing it and half thought that even though they were low performers, the work would pile on the good staff and we'd lose too much knowledge of businesses and customers we'd acquired. The results? It was a resounding success.

1) The top staff were happy they got raises

2) The work got easier rather than harder. One person after another told me they were concerned to let that much staff go, but they realized as time went on, they were actually impeding the work, they weren't just low performers

3) Morale improved and people were less frustrated

4) Revenue is on pace to be up another 50% this year.

In the end, we didn't have to hire one new person and we are doing more work easier.

So it is true, raises are good. As long as you shit can the useless crap who show up for work every day and don't care. There seriously ended up being no downside to this.

Your fairytale aside, corporate America isn't getting rid of workers so they can pay their other workers more.

In fact it is getting rid of jobs altogether, as with mechanization and outsourcing they are usually not required. That is the truth behind the fairytale, we are in the next round of mass industrialization, people that don't adapt are cast aside and become poor; no matter how hard they work, or how well educated they are.

 

[kaz]

I'd thank you for that contribution to the discussion, but it's a pile of

Maybe if you paid your people more you'd get better quality people.

Well it is what you get when you undercut your employees, and encourage a culture of squeezing people. People don't take it seriously because at the end of the day it is just a job, they have no real enthusiasm in the work because they know that they are being squeezed by their high and mighty employer (and that their boss doesn't care about them). It used to be different, then most businesses turned to outsourcing and cheap labour. There is a reason why people don't want the jobs you are offering Kaz, the jobs suck (whether they are low rank or middle management).

Manufacturing in a few decades will consist of technicians pushing buttons, fixing equipment, and getting robots to do things; so those jobs you are talking about are on the way out. Even in retail employees are being replaced by self-service, e-commerce, and eventually robots (though it might take a lot longer to get some that talk and move well enough) .

How's the kool-aid?

 

[kaz]

Your fairytale aside, corporate America isn't getting rid of workers so they can pay their other workers more.

Of course they are. Not just that, but since you choice to make it binary you're wrong about that just like you are about everything else.

It is interesting when you have the chance to talk to someone who actually is what you oppose, you have no questions for me and you don't want to have any actual discussion, all you do is endlessly repeat your Democratic party talking points just like you do when you're talking to anyone else. It's why your ideology goes nowhere. Knowledge isn't an objective.

 

[hipeter924]

Maybe if you paid your people more you'd get better quality people.

Well it is what you get when you undercut your employees, and encourage a culture of squeezing people. People don't take it seriously because at the end of the day it is just a job, they have no real enthusiasm in the work because they know that they are being squeezed by their high and mighty employer (and that their boss doesn't care about them). It used to be different, then most businesses turned to outsourcing and cheap labour. There is a reason why people don't want the jobs you are offering Kaz, the jobs suck (whether they are low rank or middle management).

Manufacturing in a few decades will consist of technicians pushing buttons, fixing equipment, and getting robots to do things; so those jobs you are talking about are on the way out. Even in retail employees are being replaced by self-service, e-commerce, and eventually robots (though it might take a lot longer to get some that talk and move well enough) .

How's the kool-aid?

Where's the robots? Found one:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDJc1NoGg2g]Robot Replaces Workers At Fast Food Restaurant - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Mr Natural]

Why should workers care when all their employers want to do is find a way to get rid of them?

 

[thereisnospoon]

kaz, there's really not a lot of work out there. And some areas are just simply dying.

Around the Great Lakes area, there's just nothing going on. A little bit of shale drilling and that's it. But all that money leaves the area.

And people just don't want to leave the area they grew up in, the area their parents grew up in, the area where all their friends and relatives are, the area their wife is from, the area they went to school in.....

I understand it. I left Cleveland in 1977. Used to be one the best places in the Country until the mid/late 60s. High-Paying Jobs, low cost of living, big enough City to find things to do but not so big that you felt claustrophobic.....

I left because I could see the handwriting on the wall. dimocrap scum took over. And they FUCKED the City up.

Dennis Kucinich was Mayor and he got into a pissing contest with Diamond Shamrock over something. My buddy's wife worked there as a Chemical Engineer. Hot as a firecracker, too

So Diamond Shamrock said, "FUCK YOU" and left for Texas. They offered to let her go with them but he wouldn't move. Divorce.

Not only that, but HUNDREDS of Companies left the Area. BIG ones. Cleveland lost 300,000 Steel Jobs ALONE between 1970 and 1990.

I was there. I was at Republic Steel as a Security Guard when I walked in on the Executive VP (He ran that Division) sitting at his desk LITERALLY crying.

I mean LITERALLY. A grown man..... Crying

I kinda reached down toward my Gun and asked him, "Are you okay, Sir?"

He didn't see me and I kinda startled him... So anyway, not to bore you but this is FACT.

He had just gotten back from a meeting with the Union. He told them, "Look guys, we have to modernize. The Japanese are killing us."

The Union Thugs refused of course. They said, "You do that and we'll Strike and shut you down." Which for a Steel Company is catastrophic. He even promised, in writing, that there would not be ONE LAYOFF.

The refused to budge.

That's when I moved to Florida. Shortly after. The plant was shut down within the year.

dimocraps and their minions. scum of the Earth.

Things could have been done, compromises could have been reached... But typical of dimocraps, they only care about what they want and if the working man and woman get caught in the middle? Tuff shit.

I hate dimocraps.

And they're the ones responsible for all the SHIT that's gone down in the last four decades.

So I'm just saying, there ain't a lot of work out there anymore.

And with dimocraps in charge.... There ain't gonna be. Not for the kid just starting out. Not when you need a College Degree to be a Bank Teller. Not everybody has a Mommy and Daddy that can afford to pay for a College Education so their little darling can work at the Bank Drive Up Window.

Times are tough, and dimocraps are the reason why.

Sorry to bore you

Then you have idiot libs who claim that the US should have set up restrictive trade barriers and penal tariffs to protect US industries.
All of which is lunacy.
The unions which represented steel workers for instance, never wavered in their course. The managers thought it still was the 1960's when they had a lot of clout.
Their message "comply with our demands or we will shut you down"...What the union bosses ignored was the rest of the industrialized world was in competition for the same dollars. Companies that needed steel had choices on from whom and where to buy. Of course these firms would buy from the least expensive supplier.
And away we go.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Less time working, and more pay for jobs that require zero skills. That's the Democratic platform.

We need to educate our workforce for the jobs of tomorrow, not the jobs of yesterday. The days of growing up to work in your daddy's factory are long gone.

As a general rule, high tech jobs are not unionized. You know why? Because people with those skills are so few and far between they are in high demand and are paid accordingly.

If everyone in the workforce was highly educated, then employers in the high tech jobs of tomorrow would have the upper hand because they would have their pick of workers, and unions would be more necessary.

Instead of demanding more pay for jobs which require no skills, we need to hit the books.

Instead of demanding everyone pay for the medical insurance of people who choose to drop out of high school, we need to make bad choices come with a high penalty. One third of the involuntarily uninsured are high school dropouts, and yet the Obama and the Democrats are rewarding them with "free" health insurance.

That is the absolutely wrong direction to be going.

Nonsense.

The democratic platform has always advocated for employment and training programs designed to transition workers from the old economy to the new, in addition to providing funding sources for Americans to attend college.

Traditionally republicans have sought to defund these programs, to the detriment of the Nation.

The problem is that it is not the job of government to come up with social programs.
Programs that do not result in their intended purpose.
US Taxpayers have been saddled with hundreds of billions of dollars for job training programs, grants, tax subsidies, loan guarantees, etc. By now unemployment should be 4%...We should have a workforce that is up to date with current technology. There should be many times more educated people.
None of these items have come to fruition.
And yet, we have a president that has the gall to say "just give us one more chance. We'll fix it THIS time."..Right..
There is no more money to spend on "programs" that do not work..

 

[Seawytch]

Your fairytale aside, corporate America isn't getting rid of workers so they can pay their other workers more.

Of course they are. Not just that, but since you choice to make it binary you're wrong about that just like you are about everything else.

It is interesting when you have the chance to talk to someone who actually is what you oppose, you have no questions for me and you don't want to have any actual discussion, all you do is endlessly repeat your Democratic party talking points just like you do when you're talking to anyone else. It's why your ideology goes nowhere. Knowledge isn't an objective.

Only CEOs.

 

[Vox]

Your fairytale aside, corporate America isn't getting rid of workers so they can pay their other workers more.

Of course they are. Not just that, but since you choice to make it binary you're wrong about that just like you are about everything else.

It is interesting when you have the chance to talk to someone who actually is what you oppose, you have no questions for me and you don't want to have any actual discussion, all you do is endlessly repeat your Democratic party talking points just like you do when you're talking to anyone else. It's why your ideology goes nowhere. Knowledge isn't an objective.

Only CEOs.

gosh, you leftards are idiots.

how many CEOs of big corporations where the stupid graph is pertinent are in this country? 2000? 10000?

math ignorance is astounding

not that I object some control not over the actual payment for the CEO but over the conditions he/she can get - they can't ruin the company and still be untouchable, for example by today's rules.
which happens all the time.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Given that our military is the most collectivist institution in America, might you not want to rethink that indictment?

A patriot is collectivist; a sociopath is the ultimate individualist.

Bullshit.
our military is an autocratic institution necessary for the existence of this country becasue of it's very function. It is not FREE and it is not a society. It is a PROFESSION paid by a taxpayer
Such institutions are our servants, not the other way around.

The very existence of the necessary institutions serving the people has nothing to do with the way the civilian society is being built.

Got it?

Next.

You just admitted that collectivism is necessary for the existence of this country.

Thanks.

Wrong...Nice try though.
If you want collectivism, move to a country that has it.
Take your greed for what other people have earned with you.

 

[Samson]

Bullshit.
our military is an autocratic institution necessary for the existence of this country becasue of it's very function. It is not FREE and it is not a society. It is a PROFESSION paid by a taxpayer
Such institutions are our servants, not the other way around.

The very existence of the necessary institutions serving the people has nothing to do with the way the civilian society is being built.

Got it?

Next.

You just admitted that collectivism is necessary for the existence of this country.

Thanks.

Wrong...Nice try though.
If you want collectivism, move to a country that has it.
Take your greed for what other people have earned with you.

A country like, The Democratic Republic of North Korea