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Post by bobathon on Aug 11, 2018 6:16:36 GMT -5
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Post by Dave's Not Here Man on Aug 11, 2018 10:04:25 GMT -5
Can't really pin that on the grand wizard. As I might have mentioned somewhere along the line, I have my own opinion about a big reason why that is happening in at least one industry. I assume it varies from segment to segment and has to be somehow balanced or offset with growth (and declines) in those segments. Right now there doesn't seem to be any hard and fast figures on the pixels as much as the big picture. My guess is the big picture would show wages have been trending downward for quite some time. It comes as a result of years if not decades of declining consideration for the American worker by business and government alike. Of course, we have a stable genius POTUS with mystical powers, a great brain, the best words, knows the best people, so we should really just be patient and we'll be back in Kansas in no time.
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Post by bobathon on Aug 11, 2018 14:34:35 GMT -5
I don't disagree. It's all affected by a variety of variables. The caveat I might provide is "if you think the president has an impact in this realm".
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Post by minx on Aug 12, 2018 13:16:48 GMT -5
John is right - this has been going on for quite a while, but both parties have been playing Three-Card-Monte, so that we look at how many jobs may or may not be there, and not at the amount of money the actual jobs that do exist are paying.
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Post by Dave's Not Here Man on Aug 12, 2018 13:42:24 GMT -5
I've been looking through job ads hard for the past couple days. In my field, they are stretching out at about 18/hr. When I left my last "company" I worked for, I was making $25.hr which was in 2002.
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Post by minx on Aug 13, 2018 9:16:05 GMT -5
Don't forget the other 'hidden' wage cut - health insurance. Old company had a decent policy - nothing fantastic, but nothing bad either.
They switched to a high-deductible plan with a company who's in-provider network was half the size of the old carrier. Same premium price, but higher co-pays. So if you had any type of medical condition, you effectively took a pay cut.
I thank the insurance Gods every day that I am fortunate enough to have married a federal employee, and therefore have good health insurance, because otherwise, I'd probably be bankrupt.
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Post by No. 1 son on Aug 13, 2018 10:49:48 GMT -5
Don't forget inflation, the cruelest tax.
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Post by rally2xs on Aug 15, 2018 16:04:56 GMT -5
Two things are going on.
First, the employers are still finding enough help so that MOST of them aren't having to boost their wages in order to get someone to come and work for them. So, they don't boost their wages.
Second, there's still so many damned illegal aliens in society that will work for a dollar two ninety eight an hour, that once again, the employers don't have to compete very hard for employees.
I think this is a case of a lag in the system. Soon, there will be enough extra jobs not finding workers that employers _will_ have to offer more $$$ to fill them. And of course finding and booting every damned illegal in the country back where they came from would help immensely, the remaining workers would all expect fair wages instead of peanuts wages and cause employers to be forced to pay the fair wage instead of the peanuts wage that the illegals were getting.
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Post by bobathon on Aug 15, 2018 16:20:37 GMT -5
Keep fucking that chicken.
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Post by No. 1 son on Aug 15, 2018 16:26:38 GMT -5
Welcome back, Bob. We have missed you.
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Post by minx on Aug 15, 2018 16:37:14 GMT -5
When is this 'soon' that you speak of? All I hear is 'Patience, Grasshopper', but I see no wage growth.
I also don't see places like Amazon clamoring to build in places like rural Pennsylvania or Detroit - you know where there are people who really need jobs.
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Post by bobathon on Aug 15, 2018 17:00:01 GMT -5
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Post by rally2xs on Aug 15, 2018 23:55:00 GMT -5
When is this 'soon' that you speak of? All I hear is 'Patience, Grasshopper', but I see no wage growth. Yep. It could take a year or 2. As I think I said before, at one time or another, F Amazon. Amazon is not the "good" job, it's a sweatshop job. The sucky working conditions get an article or 3 written in some magazines or online attention practically every day. They are RETAIL. What you want for a good job is MAN----U----FACT----UR----ING. Building things. THOSE are the "GOOD" jobs. More factories must be built, it'd be nice to get rid of the business-suppressing income tax which would put rocket engines on that sector, but the recent tax cuts, esp. the 21% business tax instead of the 35% business tax, should help. It'd help quicker if it were 0% tho. But anyway, building more factories takes a while. Yeah, running the old one harder will help, too - 3 shifts, overtime, etc. - but we need some new ones building things that were built outside the country before. We could maybe start with the entire computer / cellphone / consumer electronics industry. Virtually none of that is built here, and it should be.
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Post by bobathon on Aug 16, 2018 2:51:59 GMT -5
New factories are highly automated. Those good old high paying assembly line jobs are not coming back, they live elsewhere now. The past you long for never existed and isn't coming back.
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Post by minx on Aug 16, 2018 8:52:12 GMT -5
Rally, where do you buy the shit you need to live? I mean it doesn't magically appear at your door, you know - RETAIL workers have to pack it if it's being shipped to you, and if you go to a physical store, a RETAIL worker has to help you.
Working retail is a difficult job, and I for one am pretty sick of people acting like retail workers are too stupid or lazy to get a 'real' job. You are correct, their working conditions suck. So where is your Almighty Trump to help them, get them better wages and working conditions? Without retail workers, our country truly would collapse - you can manufacture all the widgets you want, but without a retail worker or warehouse worker, your product ain't going nowhere fast.
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Post by rally2xs on Aug 17, 2018 5:00:22 GMT -5
New factories are highly automated. Those good old high paying assembly line jobs are not coming back, they live elsewhere now. The past you long for never existed and isn't coming back. Bullshit. US auto industry plants are highly automated, and 1000's of people tromp in and out of 'em every day, building cars. There might not be as many as there used to be, but there are still "some", and we can make up for that in America by having more manufacturing plants. We can do that because, being automated, they're making things for less $ per item that they're manufacturing. We can do that because of the tax cuts.
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Post by bobathon on Aug 17, 2018 6:36:47 GMT -5
Hey, Kool-Aid! You forgot to say "Amen" at the end of that.
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Post by rally2xs on Aug 17, 2018 6:56:46 GMT -5
Rally, where do you buy the shit you need to live? I mean it doesn't magically appear at your door, you know - RETAIL workers have to pack it if it's being shipped to you, and if you go to a physical store, a RETAIL worker has to help you. Working retail is a difficult job, and I for one am pretty sick of people acting like retail workers are too stupid or lazy to get a 'real' job. You are correct, their working conditions suck. So where is your Almighty Trump to help them, get them better wages and working conditions? Without retail workers, our country truly would collapse - you can manufacture all the widgets you want, but without a retail worker or warehouse worker, your product ain't going nowhere fast. Its nothing about the quality of retail workers. Its retail work. It's always a crap job. There's only 3 types of businesses that create wealth - wealth being something tangible that you can sell - and they are farming, mining, and manufacturing. Of these, Mining and Manufacturing are the big kahunas. I've read of coal miners getting $95K / yr. Yeah, they work like dogs, and take risks, but they get paid, big time. You don't do that stocking shelves at Walmart. 20 years ago the Auto workers, the unionized ones, anyway, were making $35 / hr plus time and a half for overtime, of which there was lots. They took home 6 figures. That's manufacturing jobs. They can do that because they are producing wealth. Amazon doesn't produce wealth, it just moves it around. Big difference. And that difference is that the big money is in manufacturing.
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Post by bobathon on Aug 17, 2018 7:44:23 GMT -5
How does a crap job become a crap job, rally? Who controls that? Why should there even *be* crap jobs?
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Post by rally2xs on Aug 17, 2018 10:48:56 GMT -5
How does a crap job become a crap job, rally? Who controls that? Why should there even *be* crap jobs? Competition controls it. When you have a job that virtually anyone can do, or learn to do quickly, the competition for that job amongst workers is intense. There are lots of people applying for the job. The employer can usually find someone that will take the job for the low wages he's offering. Its when the job takes a lot of skill that causes only a few people to be able to do it that the workers can begin to be choosy about who they work for. They work for the place that offers the most money / hr. In manufacturing especially, it becomes easier to unionize, too, so that figures into the ability of employers to offer low wages. Don't want to work in a crap job? Either join a union, or become unusually skilled at something. But the answer to the question is supply and demand. Supply can be diminished by working in a field that requires skills that fewer people have, or the supply can be diminished by unionization. A bright spot can exist even for the crap jobbers if the economy so heats up that there isn't enough people to do even the crap jobs. That's what we're shooting for with tax cuts that bring jobs back from overseas. Create so many jobs that its difficult to find even people to stock shelves and flip burgers. Then the wages for those jobs will go up too. We're not there yet. We probably could get there easily by rounding up every damned one of the 20 million or so illegal aliens and sending them back where they came from, the actually US citizens would be all that could be hired, and there wouldn't be enough of them. Employers would have to raise wages, or they'd have to figure out how to do the same thing with machines. Happy thing there is that once someone gets a job, it might be a little cushy where they get to keep the machine working, say picking oranges, rather than climbing up and down ladders picking the oranges themselves. Etc... but it is still supply and demand...
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Post by bobathon on Aug 17, 2018 11:06:45 GMT -5
Impossible to fix, Kool-Aid.
Unless we had something like a livable minimum wage. But then some rich goober couldn't buy another 300 foot yacht (delivery and flagged offshore to avoid the sales taxes, donchaknow). We have to starve people so rich goober can "sail" the seas. So, tough rocks, eh.
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Post by rally2xs on Aug 17, 2018 15:05:07 GMT -5
Impossible to fix, Kool-Aid. Unless we had something like a livable minimum wage. But then some rich goober couldn't buy another 300 foot yacht (delivery and flagged offshore to avoid the sales taxes, donchaknow). We have to starve people so rich goober can "sail" the seas. So, tough rocks, eh. Politics of envy. That's the left.
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Post by bobathon on Aug 17, 2018 15:20:11 GMT -5
Politics of a decent human civilization, you elitist wannabe.
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Post by minx on Aug 18, 2018 10:46:05 GMT -5
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Post by rally2xs on Aug 18, 2018 11:21:06 GMT -5
Politics of a decent human civilization, you elitist wannabe. Rob from the rich and give to the poor makes decent fiction, but is otherwise criminal activity.
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Post by rally2xs on Aug 18, 2018 22:50:33 GMT -5
Well... somewhere in there it says that an economist commented that he doesn't understand what's going on there. Neither do I. It shouldn't be happening that way. The economist says it should be happening the way I've said it should. Sooo... I dunno, can't explain it, but its unusual.
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Post by bobathon on Aug 19, 2018 6:05:19 GMT -5
Politics of a decent human civilization, you elitist wannabe. Rob from the rich and give to the poor makes decent fiction, but is otherwise criminal activity. Civilization isn't free. Do you want one or not?
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Post by rally2xs on Aug 19, 2018 7:13:05 GMT -5
Rob from the rich and give to the poor makes decent fiction, but is otherwise criminal activity. Civilization isn't free. Do you want one or not? Want one where you don't have to violate any of the 10 commandments. Income taxes are stealing. We didn't have them for the 1st approximately 130 years and had roads, bridges, libraries, hospitals, etc. Its just that the rich were paying for everything because the country was being run on consumption taxes, and they were the ones with enough money to consume at the levels necessary to finance the USA. They didn't like that so the finagled the rest of the country to adopt the income taxes with lies about it only being a few percent that would be paid only by the rich, etc. Of course they knew the were lying, but just like the O'care lie, the public got screwed.
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Post by rally2xs on Aug 19, 2018 7:18:12 GMT -5
Well... somewhere in there it says that an economist commented that he doesn't understand what's going on there. Neither do I. It shouldn't be happening that way. The economist says it should be happening the way I've said it should. Sooo... I dunno, can't explain it, but its unusual. And then again, one might have to leave Ames, Iowa for the pot of gold. Got this off a post in Facebook: "CSX is hiring again for Trackmen starting pay 28.16 hr with benefits. Traveling is a must with paid expenses. Apply online" Again, retail jobs, as mentioned in the article, are crap jobs. Those were the jobs that the lady in the article was trying to exist on. They were crap jobs back in the day - my Mom lost her manufacturing job, started working at a local big box store, and said, "Screw it" and went to college and got to be a teacher. More money and way better working conditions. Dad always did have a manufacturing job and made good money. But working retail was the way to be poor, even back then.
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Post by bobathon on Aug 19, 2018 9:00:31 GMT -5
WE start from agreeing that WE all want a society. Then WE have to decide what priorities WE have for this society WE fund. Why do you hate America?
E pluribus unum
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