Work ethic? low pay?

so long as companies pay bad wages.
Paid less? work less.
if you give me $6, I'm only going to give you $6 worth of grapes.
PAID LESS? WORK LESS.

 

And they will get their lawmaker buddies to lower or freeze minimum wage, because hey, those lazy fucks don't deserve it anyways

But, remarkably, considering who you are (as I recall), you're right. That's about all we can do about shit wages, is give shit work.

 

can't do minimum wage job, wonder why still making minimum wage 10 years later.

 

A bad work ethic doesn't just stop with you and the boss man, it effects every one else down the line.

 

Ehh most minimum wage jobs have no ladder to climb.

And if you do climb it, you climb to a shit job that feels like a minimum wage one, but makes what, twice minimum wage.... which really still isn't much. And then they've got you, you can't leave because you put all that time into getting a "better" position, but your life still sucks because of your shit job.

Fuck that. If they treat you like shit, work like shit, and leave as soon as you can.

I mean, I work for minimum wage, and go way above and beyond, but I do fun stuff.

 

nah, it's perfectly easy to leave a fast food management job. and it looks a lot better on your resume to have worked your way up a shitty ladder over a couple years than to have worked 15 minimum wage jobs over that time period.

besides, half-assing really doesn't hurt the company much if any; they'll cover whatever you're costing them some way or another. all it does is fuck over your coworkers, since they have to pick up the slack.

 

A bad wage ethic effects everyone down the line.

 

I'minmyunderwear...are you saying there has been and always will be low payed/low skilled jobs because there is low skilled people? I think there will always will be low payed jobs. $6 an hour? - that seems low even for unskilled work.

 

Minimum wage in the US, before taxes, is $7.25.

So, if you go to the store, they're all making 6 bucks an hour. If you go out to eat, they're all making 6 bucks an hour (and much less, if you're at a sit down restaurant where wages are adjusted to take tips into account). If you see janitors, or unskilled maintainence workers (ie. not hvac or plumbers or electricians or something special) they make 6 bucks an hour. If you see road crews, they make 6 bucks an hour. If you see trash men, they make 6 bucks an hour. Etc etc etc.

Then, those same people in cities make more money, some pizza delivery drivers make 20 bucks an hour here -- but they still come out on the bottom, because that's adjusted to crazy costs of living there. And they do much worse when it comes to benefits that they could get if it was true un-adjusted minimum wage, because it looks like they're doing okay.

And then, we all still have our heads up our asses about what the dollar's worth. I still think like I did when I was a little kid, as far as what salary is good, what a good price for things is, etc. But the reality is that shit costs like a third more, unless you buy the cheapest Chinese shit, which only further devalues the dollar anyways. Minimum wage isn't shit. And if your employer starts you at the minimum that they are legally allowed to pay you, they're a pretty shit employer, anyways.

The US has a sick obsession with simply putting in more hours, and consuming more caffeine and nicotine to make that possible, and more alcohol on the weekend to avert suicide, and living in increasing squalor because of our money not being worth shit, and then going back to work for another 60 hour week, like the way out of it's to work more. It's like buying a ticket for a lottery that literally does not pick a winner, but keeps all the money. Employers have become tyrants, and employees have stockholm syndrome. It's like the industrial revolution, except now employees beg for more.

OOOOH YEAH, I'M A BAAAAD WAGE SLAVE, PUSH THAT CREDIT CARD FARTHER UP MY ASS

 

that's not really what i was saying, but it's probably pretty much true, at least for the foreseeable future.

there have been and will be low skilled jobs because there are things that need done that don't take a lot of skill. those jobs don't pay much because anyone can do them, so it's kind of a supply and demand thing as far as pay rate.

i don't think most people working minimum wage jobs are necessarily unskilled. most are young people just starting out who have yet to work their way up. a lot are people who have a second job for a little extra money. a lot are just lazy, or don't particularly value high wages, and never bothered to try and get a better paying job. and a few are just unskilled, but even totally unskilled people can get a substantially better than minimum wage job if they work hard enough.

$6 an hour (after taxes; like roor said, federal minimum wage is $7.25, and rising faster than inflation, and most states have even higher minimums than that; i think it's $7.85 here) isn't terrible for being the lowest legal pay. it's more than enough for a single person to live off of, which is really all i would expect the lowest paying jobs to cover.

 

It's only rising that fast because it had stagnated for a very long time.... I think it was like three bucks, a decade ago (thinking of a poster I see every so often, advising employees of minimum wage at various times, in english and spanish). Even if there had been no inflation, it's hard to live on 7.25, how can you even afford to exist at three dollars an hour?

Maybe it was even four. I mean if I and/or my family was hungry and I couldn't make any money, and someone offered me a job at 3/4 dollars an hour, I'd strip their car sooner than take that job. If you take it you just get slowly poorer and too exhausted to take any other route out of it.

 

yeah, $3 is not enough to live on. although i don't think it was quite that bad. it's been about 10 years since i started working jobs that minimum wage actually applied to (farm work before then) and at that point the minimum wage was $5.15, at least in this state.

actually, this inspired me to google, and here's the actual minimum wage history: http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/chart.htm

 

Ahh, that's better than I thought.

Given that it's primarially for non english speakers, it's possible that the poster I'm thinking of is listing something else.

But still, I think about what its like making 7 bucks now, and as I suppose it's kept up with inflation and then some, 5 sounds pretty bad, just the same. I work half time and couldn't even pay the rent if I didn't have help, much less go to school, or drive a car, or anything else. If I worked full time I would make enough for rent, food, clothes, and..... that's about it. I would have no transportation, and surely nothing like internet, or anything like that. I have expensive medication, and I'm sure I would be in real trouble as far as that goes. And I wouldn't have ANY way of paying for school or anything like that, which would mean I'd be living paycheck to paycheck, hand to mouth, for ever, with no way of climbing up.

Then again, due to said medication, I have a special case, because homelessness is really not an option. If I did have that option, I would have liked a chance to bum around the country in the modern "anarchist" vagabond fashion just for funsies, but it's not possible for me. to up and leave as necessary. I am in a somewhat limited situation compared to most in that respect. But then, I don't think anyone should ever HAVE to do things like that, so my opinion on wages stands, in that regard. And recall that it's generally not legal, and you might spend a night in jail (or a lot more, if you're unlucky in nowheresville) if you do try to live freely, and camp out or whatever. "vagrancy" is still an illegal thing, which means, basically, that if you don't have your "papers" in order, and you look at a cop wrong, you're in the slammer.

So, some places you can't make a living wage, and it's illegal to take it (obviously, and rightly) and it's ALSO illegal to live such that you don't NEED that wage. What the fuck?

That's it, I'm done with my rant. Maybe.

 

yeah, the whole it's-illegal-to-be-unemployed thing is just totally ridiculous.

you would be able to pay for school though. anyone can get student loans no matter how much or how little money they make (assuming they haven't been caught smoking a joint, in which case they might as well just give up on life). hell, i've known a few people who didn't work just because they were too lazy to do so, so they enrolled in school for a semester instead and got a $4000 loan to live off of even though they didn't actually bother going to any classes.

 

They will be hounded by creditors for the rest of their lives. I have a student loan that needs paying, though I actually went to classes, and the creditors will not leave me the hell alone no matter how many times I inform them that I am unemployed.

 

yeah, i didn't say it was a smart way to go about things, just that it's something people do.

 

Lol.... I know some people like that. When they fuck up school and start burning out at life, a lot of upperclassmen throw it all away and take a few semesters of loans, and go to the second day of class with something close to the intent of going to the third, and then party on their loans for the rest of the semester.

But going to school can literally put you in debt for ever, as has been said. I suppose if I didn't have the excellent support that I do, I would probably consider my credit rating a lost cause, and simply take out every loan possible, and not pay for anything, because the point is existing well. Once the knowledge is in your head, they can't repossess school.

There's a huge fucking student loan game, where schools charge more and more, and the government(s) pay less and less to schools, and pay a little tiny bit more to individuals to make you feel lucky for getting personal student aid (despite the fact that I'm pretty sure education should be a right), and the government and their lackeys give out HUGE amounts of loans for things that their OTHER lackeys are charging waaaaay too much for.

This is such a great thread. It's totally open ended, for any kind of soapbox-perched whining you please. And individual hasn't found it yet, either.

 

If you do not mind dealing with the public, supermarkets will hire you to work in the Deli/Meat departments for up to ten dollars an hour. Much higher than minimum wage.

 

Nope
"The CHART OF THE DAY shows that after adjusting for inflation, the federal minimum wage dropped 20 percent from 1967 to 2010, even as the nominal figure climbed to $7.25 an hour from $1.40, a 418 percent gain. "

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...fails-to-beat-inflation-chart-of-the-day.html

Depends on where you live, how far you must drive to work, cost of utility's, rent, insurance, car payment etc...

While I would say it wouldn't be impossible (in some states) to get by on minimum wage, saying it's "more than enough" is a stretch man.

 

And in most situations, it's sure as hell not enough to climb OUT of a minimum wage situation. It's just enough that you can eat, but not enough that you can have extra, and so not enough that you can try new things, or take risks, like moving or not having a job for a while, or anything like that.

Or even have leisure, if you're a regular pot smoker and want the internet, and to have a car, rent, food, maybe a gym membership.... not quite the american dream, but a comfortable life? No, you can't afford anywhere near that on minimum wage. Maybe if you work on the side but have a cushy situation. But generally, no.

Minimum wage is, by the way, about a thousand dollars a month. That's not shit, as far as actual expenses for a month go.