Walmart workers staying home black friday

[CrimsonFox]

This implosion should be really fun to watch. :)

Daily News Finder (http://dailynewsfinder.com/2012/11/20/walmarts-nationwide-brace-for-black-friday-strike/)

[Izulde]

The low wages and crud employment conditions are definitely worth fighting against.

But whining about working on Thanksgiving? Suck it up, kiddies. You work retail. Working holidays is the name of the game.

[CrimsonFox]

I take it more like a really good strategy. You want to really hit walmart where it counts, do it on their biggest day. Maybe then they'd actually listen. And the fact that we are hearing about this already tells me they are trying to use this as a bargaining chip.

[Masked]

Walmart's just going to fire anyone who doesn't show up.

[B & B]

You couldnt pay me to go to Walmart on black friday.

[MacroGuru]

This isn't going to affect Wal-Mart...the issue is, it isn't really the Wal-Mart employees, some of them may be..but it is a labor union stirring the pot.

Wal-Mart's employees are not part of the union.

I used to train Wal-Mart electronics sales associates, let me put it this way. They know from the get go what they are getting themselves into for working there. They either nut up or get a new job. Turn over at Wal-Mart is high, because people do tend to nut up.

If you are working for them and didn't expect what you were getting, then you are naive.

[Passacaglia]

Doesn't seem like a good idea for them to actually be there protesting when Black Friday shoppers arrive.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Walmart's just going to fire anyone who doesn't show up.

Ding ding ding.

Talk about the ultimate in replaceable workers, this might be it. Requires less skill than fast food (at least they have to know how to run the fryer without burning themselves, or the building, down).

[molson]

I was wondering how much better the employment experience was at Target v. Walmart, since the perception seems to be that Target is the place you go if you feel too guilty to go to Walmart. But it appears they both treat their employees the same, except that Walmart's health insurance is better, and Target pays a little more if you become a salaried employee. If this is all true then Target is "worse" in a sense, because stuff is more expensive there, so you'd expect their employees to do better, all things being equal

Target vs. Walmart (http://reclaimdemocracy.org/walmart_target_better/)
Target vs. Walmart - Which One Is a Better Place to Work? - PayScale Resources (http://blogs.payscale.com/content/2011/05/target-vs-walmart.html)

If Target isn't really the anti-Walmart, who is? Where are the people who feel strongly about this stuff shopping? It doesn't seem like there's a lot of options left depending on where you live.

[Izulde]

Both jobs are soul-draining. Target usually has better eye candy in terms of the female employees that work there, but that's about the only benefit. I worked seasonal at Target one year and hated it. Of course things didn't get off on a good start when management lied to me about what department I'd be working in.

Most hilarious part? My first day was Black Friday.

[Matthean]

minimum hourly pay of $13 with the option of working full-time.

Talk about illusions of grandeur.

To be honest, you could sub in a number of retail places in for Walmart, and it would be the same result.

[Fidatelo]

I don't know about the US, but I think CostCo is pretty decent to their employees up here.

[stevew]

I was full time at Target at one point. I think I got 7.25/hour. This was roughly 2003

[CrimsonFox]

I don't know about the US, but I think CostCo is pretty decent to their employees up here.


Have heard very GOOD things about working at Costco vs the others.

[lungs]

I applied at Wal-Mart once and when they were on the verge of hiring me they told me I'd be stocking in the middle of the night. I politely declined and got a job somewhere else.

[BYU 14]

Have heard very GOOD things about working at Costco vs the others.

Have a friend that has worked for them for years, loves it and they pay really well.

[Lathum]

I have a hard time feeling sympathy for these people. If you don't realize you are dispensable labor it is your own fault. You are uneducated, unskilled, and easily replaced, you have no leverage.

You want a better job, go get an education, work hard, and make your own opportunities. The market clearly dictates what these people make, otherwise they would be making more.

[jeff061]

I remember in my grocery bagging days(hello Market Basket) Walmart paid consideratly more, relatively speaking, to do the same type of work. You were just treated like garbage. Everyone knew that and made their own choice.

Not sure if it's at all similar today, I don't know what $13 an hour equates to any more, but like the 90s seems to me decent pay for bagging and shelf stocking.

[CrimsonFox]

BUt what is it about the "being treated like garbage" at Walmart? The managers really make your life hell? LIke hostile environment type of shit?

Or is it just all cutting hours/changing schedules etc?

[Matthean]

I remember in my grocery bagging days(hello Market Basket) Walmart paid consideratly more, relatively speaking, to do the same type of work. You were just treated like garbage. Everyone knew that and made their own choice.

Not sure if it's at all similar today, I don't know what $13 an hour equates to any more, but like the 90s seems to me decent pay for bagging and shelf stocking.

Peak pay at Office Max for a cashier/floor associate is $12.47/h unless it got changed since I left. We had people in charge of opening and closing stores who made $10/h.

[molson]

I have a hard time feeling sympathy for these people. If you don't realize you are dispensable labor it is your own fault. You are uneducated, unskilled, and easily replaced, you have no leverage.

You want a better job, go get an education, work hard, and make your own opportunities. The market clearly dictates what these people make, otherwise they would be making more.

Ya, I don't have any particular hostility towards the unskilled workers or anything, but if they just make a little bit more, they're making as much as teachers. Just a little bit more than that, then the're making as much as most government employees with graduate degrees. Somebody has to be at the bottom. At $10/hour you have some roommates and you eat a lot of pizza. Most of us have done it, it's not the end of the world or a crippling existence.

[CrimsonFox]

Still sad that teachers make such low pay.

[molson]

Still sad that teachers make such low pay.

Certainly, they should make a lot more than Walmart employees.

[Marc Vaughan]

Ya, I don't have any particular hostility towards the unskilled workers or anything, but if they just make a little bit more, they're making as much as teachers. Just a little bit more than that, then the're making as much as most government employees with graduate degrees. Somebody has to be at the bottom. At $10/hour you have some roommates and you eat a lot of pizza. Most of us have done it, it's not the end of the world or a crippling existence.

To me that shows teachers as hugely underpaid - not that Walmart workers should get less .....

[Apathetic Lurker]

Ya, I don't have any particular hostility towards the unskilled workers or anything, but if they just make a little bit more, they're making as much as teachers. Just a little bit more than that, then the're making as much as most government employees with graduate degrees. Somebody has to be at the bottom. At $10/hour you have some roommates and you eat a lot of pizza. Most of us have done it, it's not the end of the world or a crippling existence.

Yes, most of us have done it but like you said, most of us had roommates to split the costs..Many of the ones in Walmart ARE the moneybags in the family and at 10/hr its not enough to take care of a family.Probably not even getting full time either. Figure about 250/wk after taxes. Pretty dead-end looking to me...

[jeff061]

That can lead you to a few conclusions about lifers at Walmart supporting their family, that they should get paid more isn't one of them.

[Raiders Army]

I have a hard time feeling sympathy for these people. If you don't realize you are dispensable labor it is your own fault. You are uneducated, unskilled, and easily replaced, you have no leverage.

You want a better job, go get an education, work hard, and make your own opportunities. The market clearly dictates what these people make, otherwise they would be making more.

I entirely agree other than the bolded part. If it were to say "The positions do not require an education, special skills, and the people are easily replaced. Consequently, they have no leverage." I'd agree completely. I think the problem here is that those uneducated, unskilled, and easily replaced people THINK they're not easily replaced. Hence the disconnect.

[panerd]

Ya, I don't have any particular hostility towards the unskilled workers or anything, but if they just make a little bit more, they're making as much as teachers. Just a little bit more than that, then the're making as much as most government employees with graduate degrees. Somebody has to be at the bottom. At $10/hour you have some roommates and you eat a lot of pizza. Most of us have done it, it's not the end of the world or a crippling existence.

(As a teacher) I don't mind people thinking teachers get paid the same as Walmart employees but I make about $50 an hour. Not sure what teacher is getting paid $15000-$20000 a year but it isn't happening around here and Missouri has some of the lower paid teachers in the country.

[Neon_Chaos]

They earn more than the average IT professional in India or the Philippines. Outsourcing jobs from the US to the third world will never fail to be lucrative for companies.

[britrock88]

(As a teacher) I don't mind people thinking teachers get paid the same as Walmart employees but I make about $50 an hour. Not sure what teacher is getting paid $15000-$20000 a year but it isn't happening around here and Missouri has some of the lower paid teachers in the country.

Normal full-time employees work 2000 hours per year or so... so are you at or near $100k? Or have you found a way to not do much outside of class time?

[JPhillips]

Social Darwinism is the new hotness.

[Matthean]

I entirely agree other than the bolded part. If it were to say "The positions do not require an education, special skills, and the people are easily replaced. Consequently, they have no leverage." I'd agree completely. I think the problem here is that those uneducated, unskilled, and easily replaced people THINK they're not easily replaced. Hence the disconnect.

Add in the mentality if they simply work hard and be a good employee, they will be rewarded with advancement. I was caught in this trap for years. I have a cousin who is going through this as well.

[Young Drachma]

Social Darwinism is the new hotness.

:+1:

[Edward64]

(As a teacher) I don't mind people thinking teachers get paid the same as Walmart employees but I make about $50 an hour. Not sure what teacher is getting paid $15000-$20000 a year but it isn't happening around here and Missouri has some of the lower paid teachers in the country.
I was going to comment about this discrepancy. Avg pay for public school teachers probably hover around $45K to $55K. When you factor in benefits etc. there is no way Walmart employees per above are paid same as teachers, not even close.

[INDalltheway]

As a person that has worked in retail for the past 3 Black Fridays, it isn't about working the holiday, it all revolves around moving the time stores open every year. My first Black Friday we opened at 4am on Friday - no big deal, actually fun. The next year we opened at midnight, still not a huge deal, but certainly moving in the wrong direction. This year we open at 9pm on THANKSGIVING. That is not OK with me. There are two days a year where I don't think anyone should step foot in a retail store and that is Thanksgiving and Christmas. The way things are going stores wont even be closing on Thanksgiving.

[molson]

Social Darwinism is the new hotness.

How much an hour do you think a new, unskilled Walmart employee should make? Do you think everyone else below the middle class should be bumped up the by same % (if we had a means to do that), or is the injustice here just that Walmart employees aren't closer to everyone else in salary?

My point was just that some teachers, a lot of lower level office workers with degrees, a lot of semi-skilled workers in blue collar jobs aren't making THAT much more than people at Walmart - especially if Walmart employees got what they, and some others, think they deserve. Are people really concerned about the gap between those workers? A Walmart worker should be proud of moving onto a higher paying job, or going to school to be a teacher or whatever else, and a higher salary is part of that. Many people make those transitions.

It seems like the perceived injustice is just that there's just a bottom. Like the existence of close-to-minimum-wage jobs itself is an injustice. Should we just make minimum wage $20 or $25/hour so millions of jobs of different skill levels can crowd around that and everything can be more "equal" for them, and that there's no distinct bottom (because millions of more people are in it)?

[molson]

Southeastern Ohio sees most teachers start at around 24K.

I make 60K with 15 years and a master's degree. Figuring a 40 hour week and that puts me at about $40/hour. Putting it more to how much I actually work, it's probably about $32/hour.

And $13/hour full time would put Walmart workers at $27k/year (full time), higher than new southeastern Ohio teachers, Idaho teachers for sure, and I'm sure some other rural teachers. And it'd be in line with what a lot of new college graduates get in offices. I made $21k/year in my first job in NYC in 2000 - that'd be right around $27/year today with inflation - and that was in NYC, with a degree. I'm sure a lot of posters here would consider that abject poverty and societal injustice, and maybe I'm naive and it was, but somehow I managed to pay the bills, and go out on weekends, and take the bus up to Boston all the time. And I managed to get out of there and takes a lot of steps upward in salary. I don't criticize Walmart workers or any other workers for trying to get whatever they can, good for them if they can get it. I just don't think it's some huge injustice that people make under $13/hour for an unskilled job that you don't need any education for.

[stevew]

As a person that has worked in retail for the past 3 Black Fridays, it isn't about working the holiday, it all revolves around moving the time stores open every year. My first Black Friday we opened at 4am on Friday - no big deal, actually fun. The next year we opened at midnight, still not a huge deal, but certainly moving in the wrong direction. This year we open at 9pm on THANKSGIVING. That is not OK with me. There are two days a year where I don't think anyone should step foot in a retail store and that is Thanksgiving and Christmas. The way things are going stores wont even be closing on Thanksgiving.

sounds like you work for the jerk store

[JonInMiddleGA]

The way things are going stores wont even be closing on Thanksgiving.

Unless you're planning to force the internet to close on Thanksgiving, you're right, because stores who aren't smart enough to open are going to lose a major opportunity.

I believe the stat I saw last week was that between 1/4th and 1/3rd of all "Black Friday" sales occurred before midnight last year. I suspect that figure will approach half either this year or next.

It's not a day, it's a weekend.

[PilotMan]

<------ Is working Thanksgiving and 350 miles away from his family. Same for Christmas.

[PilotMan]

It is what it is. I am just happy to get people where they want to go.

[JPhillips]

How much an hour do you think a new, unskilled Walmart employee should make? Do you think everyone else below the middle class should be bumped up the by same % (if we had a means to do that), or is the injustice here just that Walmart employees aren't closer to everyone else in salary?

My point was just that some teachers, a lot of lower level office workers with degrees, a lot of semi-skilled workers in blue collar jobs aren't making THAT much more than people at Walmart - especially if Walmart employees got what they, and some others, think they deserve. Are people really concerned about the gap between those workers? A Walmart worker should be proud of moving onto a higher paying job, or going to school to be a teacher or whatever else, and a higher salary is part of that. Many people make those transitions.

It seems like the perceived injustice is just that there's just a bottom. Like the existence of close-to-minimum-wage jobs itself is an injustice. Should we just make minimum wage $20 or $25/hour so millions of jobs of different skill levels can crowd around that and everything can be more "equal" for them, and that there's no distinct bottom (because millions of more people are in it)?

My problem is less an absolute dollar amount than an attitude by a few here that low skilled workers don't deserve any dignity or respect. People shouldn't be thought of as disposable.

[JonInMiddleGA]

People shouldn't be thought of as disposable.

So you'd prefer that we deny reality, just operate under some delusion? What a strange planet you inhabit.

[JPhillips]

Just can't imagine Jesus saying, "Some people need to understand they are disposable."

[JonInMiddleGA]

Just can't imagine Jesus saying, "Some people need to understand they are disposable."

Reality check: we're all disposable in terms of the big earthly picture.

There isn't anyone wandering the planet today that, upon their death, the earth stops turning on its axis.

On a lesser scale, there isn't anyone -- economically, socially, whatever -- whose absence would cause a seismic shift either.

Relevance is a nice bit of fiction that we like to delude ourselves into believing so that we keep putting one foot in front of the other, but that's what it is: delusion (and perhaps no small measure of hubris).

[molson]

My problem is less an absolute dollar amount than an attitude by a few here that low skilled workers don't deserve any dignity or respect. People shouldn't be thought of as disposable.

Some people could improve their tone, sure, but it's just a matter of how the sentiment is expressed. I imagine for most parents, liberal and conservative alike, if their kids dropped out of college the first semester and then worked at Walmart for 10 years, they'd be pretty disappointed. They might even be really angry. That disappointment is a mild expression of the same point - that the lower jobs don't carry much dignity and respect. They're still humans with value and potential, but Walmart's pretty much the bottom of the employment barrel. (though higher up than breaking into houses for a living or something) The bottom of anything is never going to be a pretty picture. I'm sure there's jobs in Sweden and Norway that parents wouldn't want their daughter's new boyfriend to have.

[ISiddiqui]

Just can't imagine Jesus saying, "Some people need to understand they are disposable."

Jesus doesn't really seem to matter to anyone in our capitalist system (unfortunately).

[JPhillips]

Some people could improve their tone, sure, but it's just a matter of how the sentiment is expressed. I imagine for most parents, liberal and conservative alike, if their kids dropped out of college the first semester and then worked at Walmart for 10 years, they'd be pretty disappointed. They might even be really angry. That disappointment is a mild expression of the same point - that the lower jobs don't carry much dignity and respect. They're still humans with value and potential, but Walmart's pretty much the bottom of the employment barrel. (though higher up than breaking into houses for a living or something) The bottom of anything is never going to be a pretty picture. I'm sure there's jobs in Sweden and Norway that parents wouldn't want their daughter's new boyfriend to have.

For me that's more about reaching potential. There are some people that can't do better than jobs at the bottom, but that doesn't mean these people are less worthy of respect. The hardest working guy at my college is a facilities worker. I've never thought he's inherently worth less than I am because his paycheck isn't as high.

[DanGarion]

Just can't imagine Jesus saying, "Some people need to understand they are disposable."

You don't have to be religious to not think that way either.

[SackAttack]

As a person that has worked in retail for the past 3 Black Fridays, it isn't about working the holiday, it all revolves around moving the time stores open every year. My first Black Friday we opened at 4am on Friday - no big deal, actually fun. The next year we opened at midnight, still not a huge deal, but certainly moving in the wrong direction. This year we open at 9pm on THANKSGIVING. That is not OK with me. There are two days a year where I don't think anyone should step foot in a retail store and that is Thanksgiving and Christmas. The way things are going stores wont even be closing on Thanksgiving.

That's my major issue with it. When BB made the move to midnight last year, I hate hate HATED the faux "oh god I'm so sorry we're doing this to you" last year from corporate, knowing full good and fucking well that not one of those executives were setting foot in a store - any store - to work alongside the line level employees whose holidays they had just neutered.

If you feel your line level employees' pain, you need to ante up and show that you're willing to bear that burden with them.

If you're sitting at home sipping wine and enjoying your Thanksgiving while the college kids working for your company are having to show up for work at 6 pm on Thanksgiving because you're opening the store at 8, then be honest about it. Say "Fuck you, I got mine and we're doing this so my stock options will be worth more" not "I'm so sorry I have to do this to you."

You won't be any less hated, but at least your employees won't look at you as a TWO-FACED asshole.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I've never thought he's inherently worth less than I am because his paycheck isn't as high.

So you want to pay him the same amount for distinctly different work requiring distinctly different skills?

Or maybe this way: do you want to pay the same for filet mignon as you pay for 70% lean ground beef?

[JPhillips]

No, but I treat the guy with respect and believe, at least temporarily, we'll be a lesser organization when he leaves. I don't spend my time telling people he's disposable because he's a first generation immigrant without much education.

[JonInMiddleGA]

No, but I treat the guy with respect and believe, at least temporarily, we'll be a lesser organization when he leaves.

Okay, so that brings us back to the part where you're just kidding yourself. That's cool insofar as it goes I guess, just so long as you don't try to codify your delusion it doesn't seem to impact me if you walk around with it.

[CU Tiger]

That's my major issue with it. When BB made the move to midnight last year, I hate hate HATED the faux "oh god I'm so sorry we're doing this to you" last year from corporate, knowing full good and fucking well that not one of those executives were setting foot in a store - any store - to work alongside the line level employees whose holidays they had just neutered.

If you feel your line level employees' pain, you need to ante up and show that you're willing to bear that burden with them.

If you're sitting at home sipping wine and enjoying your Thanksgiving while the college kids working for your company are having to show up for work at 6 pm on Thanksgiving because you're opening the store at 8, then be honest about it. Say "Fuck you, I got mine and we're doing this so my stock options will be worth more" not "I'm so sorry I have to do this to you."

You won't be any less hated, but at least your employees won't look at you as a TWO-FACED asshole.

Are the two mutually exclusive, though?

Can the evil rich executive not genuinely wish he didn't have to make all those employees work the hours, but also realize that if the competition does it and he does not that he will lose market share, profit, and share value?

When I owned my company I openly told my on call employees, I'm sorry but it comes with the job. I know it sucks, I did it for years until I didn't have to any more. That said, I worked hard to get to where I dont have to do it any more. Pay your dues and one day you will be there also. Miss a call out one time and you are fired though.

It didnt mean I didnt value them as a person. It meant that their chosen position (I didnt force them to work that job, they could have chosen others) had those hourly requirements. As unfortunate as it was some customers needed service at inconvenient times and to stay competitive in the market we had to offer that service.

[molson]

I'm assuming the anti-working on thanksgiving crowd never stopped at a gas station on thanksgiving, or watched a football game?

I used to love working on thanksgiving and christmas day when I worked at a nursing home in high school. i got time and a half from my $7.75/hour salary, which was pretty decent spending money for a kid who didn't have to pay for his housing or food.

[Izulde]

Personally the times I've had to work holidays in retail I've never felt the company was evil for doing it. It's the way the world works and furthermore, as someone with very limited transportation options and hours with which to go out and get and do stuff, I very much appreciate those places that are open on holidays and am at least a little more likely to frequent them than those that are not.

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

The Waltons' value -- $89.5 billion in 2010 – is equal to the worth of the 41.5% of families at the lower end of the income ladder, according to an analysis (http://www.epi.org/blog/inequality-exhibit-wal-mart-wealth-american/) by Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute. That comes out to 48.8 million households. seems reasonable

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

dola

it's interesting that what the market will bear for unskilled labor is shrinking due to a growing population yet what the market will bear for executives is growing because there are fewer corporations

[Marc Vaughan]

it's interesting that what the market will bear for unskilled labor is shrinking due to a growing population yet what the market will bear for executives is growing because there are fewer corporations

The laws of economics indicate both salaries should be decreasing because there are more people chasing fewer roles in both areas .... the diference being that executives either:

(1) Set their own salaries and people are inclined to be kind to themselves
(2) Are paid according to what industry 'averages' are and no company wants to think of themselves as 'below' average which tends to push the salary for executives upwards as they attempt to persuade themselves they have the best executive available etc.

[Sun Tzu]

I worked at Best Buy as a PCHO (computers) manager in the mid-2000's. I worked Black Friday every year from 2004 to 2006. Back then, we openned around 4am every year, and even that was rough. Now I hear Big Blue opens up at 9pm on Thanksgiving? Ouch.

I successfully made the transition from retail to corporate M-F/9-5 jobs in 2007, and every year I thank my lucky stars that I don't have to work on this awful day anymore. My Wife and MIL occasionally do the Black Friday shopping thing, but I think I'm scarred for life after working retail for three of them. Just...awful.

[molson]

seems reasonable

If the Waltons' were half as successful as they were I don't think that would automatically translate into double wages or whatever for Walmart employees. (though there would be a lot less tax revenue, even less if corporations were taxed fairly) There's not a fixed amount of money in the United States.

[Bobble]

The Waltons' value -- $89.5 billion in 2010 – is equal to the worth of the 41.5% of families at the lower end of the income ladder, according to an analysis by Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute. That comes out to 48.8 million households.

I want to post s John-Boy Walton joke here but I couldn't come up with a good one. Too much tryptophan...

[JonInMiddleGA]

Protesters set up picket line outside Atlanta Wal-Mart | www.ajc.com (http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/protesters-set-up-picket-line-outside-atlanta-wal-/nTDTq/)

The link headline is different than the headline currently on the AJC website. It reads:
Protestors at Walmart pushed aside by vehicle

Basically an SUV nudged a few of them out of the way around 9 this morning. No injuries, no further incident reported.

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

The laws of economics indicate both salaries should be decreasing because there are more people chasing fewer roles in both areas .... the diference being that executives either:

(1) Set their own salaries and people are inclined to be kind to themselves
(2) Are paid according to what industry 'averages' are and no company wants to think of themselves as 'below' average which tends to push the salary for executives upwards as they attempt to persuade themselves they have the best executive available etc.
right. my point was poorly articulated. the logic i worked through in my head was fewer corporations = fewer qualified execs hence more competition for said execs. that's assuming execs have some skill that can only be acquired through ojt. which appears to be the case


i always go back to wegmans as an example. it's a supermarket and one of the best companies in america to work for. they've also been aggressively expanding so wages and benefits can't be the death knell they're claimed to be

[molson]

i always go back to wegmans as an example. it's a supermarket and one of the best companies in america to work for. they've also been aggressively expanding so wages and benefits can't be the death knell they're claimed to be

They pay their cashiers an avg of $8.54/hour, and their customer service people an average of $9.93/hour.

Wegmans Hourly Pay | Glassdoor (http://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Wegmans-Hourly-Pay-E3042.htm)

I still think the "company that pays their unskilled workers way more than Walmart" doesn't really exist, but stores like Target try to perpetuate that myth as a marketing strategy.

[JPhillips]

Wegman's kills Walmart on benefits:

Health. Wegmans currently pays about 85 percent of healthcare costs for about 16,000 full-time employees (part-time employees working more than 24 hours per week are eligible for single coverage healthcare). As the healthcare landscape changes, with traditional group healthcare coverage shifting to other formats such as high-deductible insurance plans, Wegmans will monitor the situation using two primary filters, Gerry said. “Before we move in any direction we ask what the impact on our budget is, and what is the impact on our people’s budget?”

Work. Wegmans employees also enjoy a long list of additional benefits such as:

Dental Coverage
401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
Wegmans Retirement Plan
Scholarship Competition
Paid Time Off
Medical Spending and Dependent Care Reimbursement Accounts
Life Insurance
Adoption Assistance

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

and the avg gets skewed due to the number of part timers/ summer hires etc. i have a friend that's worked in the bakery since high school. idk how much she makes but she's never looked for another job

here's a fun experiment. go to that same site and look at the company reviews for wegman's/walmart

[Raiders Army]

My oldest son worked last night from 7 PM to 3 AM as a cashier for Walmart. He said it was a great time and it didn't seem like work.

[molson]

I was reading once how historically (not sure of the time frame), U.S. workers are 6-10 times more productive than Indian workers who were on the same equipment, creating the same products. The consensus is that the difference was working conditions.

Of course, the difference between Walmart and Wegman's isn't U.S/India level of difference. I wonder though, if there's ever been a study of how much more economically valuable Wegman's employees are compared to Walmart employees. I bet the difference are pretty minimal once you have U.S. laws and regulations about worker condition and minimum wage applying to everyone. But presumably, Wegman's is going to get the unskilled workers with more experience, who are more reliable, etc. And that's important to some consumers (though I can only remember a handful of times in my life where I came across a noticeably bad cashier, and I think those people were new.) And Walmart gets the less desirable unskilled workers that are left over. And those are the ones who are threatening to strike, and who everybody feels sorry for, and who are being mistreated. Of course, the interesting thing is, if Walmart suddenly started giving their employees Wegman's style benefits, the caliber of their employee would presumably improve, meaning all the bottom-of-barrel workers that rely on Walmart now would have to go to the new bottom anyway, whoever that would be.

Though, I bet the experience working at Walmart, Wegmen's, Target, etc, varies a ton based on what franchise you're in. The local evil "management" (probably making $40k/year) probably have a huge impact on working conditions.

[Vince, Pt. II]

(As a teacher) I don't mind people thinking teachers get paid the same as Walmart employees but I make about $50 an hour. Not sure what teacher is getting paid $15000-$20000 a year but it isn't happening around here and Missouri has some of the lower paid teachers in the country.

As someone who would start with a leg up in CA based upon further education credit on the pay scale, I still wouldn't make much more than $50k if I were to get back into teaching. Which puts me at $25/hr at only 40 hours per week. When you factor in the actual time spent working, it's more like $15-18/hr.

Edit: I gotta get better at figuring out where the discussion has actually gotten before chiming in.

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

it's just business models. one is "we will cut costs (and margins) at every opp. and through sheer volume we will make gdp level profits'

vs

'you will pay a little more for atmosphere and employees without cattle tags on their ears'

[SackAttack]

Are the two mutually exclusive, though?

Can the evil rich executive not genuinely wish he didn't have to make all those employees work the hours, but also realize that if the competition does it and he does not that he will lose market share, profit, and share value?

When I owned my company I openly told my on call employees, I'm sorry but it comes with the job. I know it sucks, I did it for years until I didn't have to any more. That said, I worked hard to get to where I dont have to do it any more. Pay your dues and one day you will be there also. Miss a call out one time and you are fired though.

It didnt mean I didnt value them as a person. It meant that their chosen position (I didnt force them to work that job, they could have chosen others) had those hourly requirements. As unfortunate as it was some customers needed service at inconvenient times and to stay competitive in the market we had to offer that service.

Honestly, go pound sand. If it isn't important enough for you to work the day alongside your employees, it isn't important enough to fuck them over for.

The minute the words "so I wouldn't have to do it anymore" leave your lips, it stops being about "This is an important day for the business and this sacrifice is necessary for the survival of the business" and more about "Fuck you, I got mine."

If it were about the survival of the business, your little speech there wouldn't be "I worked hard to get to the point where I didn't have to do it anymore." You'd be right there working alongside your employees saying "Let's push through this and get to tomorrow; it will all be worth it at the end of the season."

It's easy to be callous and say "you're replaceable," but at some point you hit the level where your employees say "Go for it" and suddenly you've got no staffing on this holiday that's so important that you didn't have to work it, but your peons did. That doesn't seem to have happened to Wal-Mart this year, but that doesn't mean it never will.

[molson]

Honestly, go pound sand. If it isn't important enough for you to work the day alongside your employees, it isn't important enough to fuck them over for.

The minute the words "so I wouldn't have to do it anymore" leave your lips, it stops being about "This is an important day for the business and this sacrifice is necessary for the survival of the business" and more about "Fuck you, I got mine."

If it were about the survival of the business, your little speech there wouldn't be "I worked hard to get to the point where I didn't have to do it anymore." You'd be right there working alongside your employees saying "Let's push through this and get to tomorrow; it will all be worth it at the end of the season."

It's easy to be callous and say "you're replaceable," but at some point you hit the level where your employees say "Go for it" and suddenly you've got no staffing on this holiday that's so important that you didn't have to work it, but your peons did. That doesn't seem to have happened to Wal-Mart this year, but that doesn't mean it never will.

It's not just the people dealing with customers on the front lines that works hard. There was a lot of support staff in my office whining about working the day after Thanksgiving - but none of them will be in there Saturday and Sunday, like I will to get something filed for Monday. Everybody's job has different demands and time requirements and degrees of flexibility. A stadium concession guy has to work the Thanksgiving football game, but someone who works in the human resources department probably doesn't. That's not "unfair", that's just two different jobs. And I'm not sure which non-Thanksgiving-working employee you have a problem with in your situation, but if its a top executive, odds are he or she is working on Thanksgiving in some capacity, just not at the cash register.

[panerd]

Normal full-time employees work 2000 hours per year or so... so are you at or near $100kz? Or have you found a way to not do much outside of class time?

I don't work close to 2000 hours. Eight hour days times 200 days is 1600 hours. I have been in for sixteen years and have found the people my age that need to put in more than a half hour after school (our school day is seven and a half hours) just don't know how to allocate time or feel the need to keep reinventing the wheel. Again I am not advocating for lower pay but also get annoyed with the teacher who feels the need to pull the "whoa is me I would make 200000 as a babysitter for what I do!" It's a good job that I enjoy and see no need to play the no respect card all the time... all that does is annoys the non teachers.

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

Jesus doesn't really seem to matter to anyone in our capitalist system (unfortunately).
WRONG

Prosperity Theology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology)

Jesus wants you to be filthy stinkin rich

[Galaxy]

They earn more than the average IT professional in India or the Philippines. Outsourcing jobs from the US to the third world will never fail to be lucrative for companies.

The interesting part is these workers don't realize that there is this thing called the internet, led by a big giant named Amazon-who are investing A LOT of money and energy in building it's delivery system (same-day delivery, anyone?). Wal-Mart has a new battle on it's handle with online and scalable logistics.

[Galaxy]

seems reasonable

Point being?

Honestly, go pound sand. If it isn't important enough for you to work the day alongside your employees, it isn't important enough to fuck them over for.

The minute the words "so I wouldn't have to do it anymore" leave your lips, it stops being about "This is an important day for the business and this sacrifice is necessary for the survival of the business" and more about "Fuck you, I got mine."

If it were about the survival of the business, your little speech there wouldn't be "I worked hard to get to the point where I didn't have to do it anymore." You'd be right there working alongside your employees saying "Let's push through this and get to tomorrow; it will all be worth it at the end of the season."

It's easy to be callous and say "you're replaceable," but at some point you hit the level where your employees say "Go for it" and suddenly you've got no staffing on this holiday that's so important that you didn't have to work it, but your peons did. That doesn't seem to have happened to Wal-Mart this year, but that doesn't mean it never will.

Please...life isn't fair, and CU Tiger has put in the time, risks, and passion to build a successful business (perhaps the most stressful and time-consuming challenge one could do). If employees don't want to work on Thanksgiving or Holidays, then they are free to a) go some place else. b) start their own business. c) find a new line of work.

[Buccaneer]

Please...life isn't fair, and CU Tiger has put in the time, risks, and passion to build a successful business (perhaps the most stressful and time-consuming challenge one could do). If employees don't want to work on Thanksgiving or Holidays, then they are free to a) go some place else. b) start their own business. c) find a new line of work.

I greatly admire people who start their own business because I know how much time, effort and stress it takes. That's why I never could do it because I chose to have an equal balance between life and work. I know lots of small business owners here and in California and the amount of hours they work are insane, esp. early on or during busy seasons when they have to be there when staff is late or doesn't show up. It's easy to be a cubicle worker (like me) or a show-up-and-get-paid employee or an internet/gaming junkie compared to one that starts and builds a business when their living/lifestyle depends on it. And if they are successful, then should get the rewards for the hard work and not be penalized for their success; however, there things that must be done if such an owner wants to stay successful or in business.

I believe that if I chose not to be a manager (at work) or run my own business, then I can't be that critical of those that do. Those shoes I chose not to walk in.

[Galaxy]

And if they are successful, then should get the rewards for the hard work and not be penalized for their success; however, there things that must be done if such an owner wants to stay successful or in business.

CU Tiger seems to have done the right things to build a successful business (one that was valuable enough for someone to buy it), whether you agree with his decisions or not. It's up to the employees-especially ones who are new to the company and their positions who haven't paid their dues like the current employees-to decide if they want that job and all that comes with it.

The reality is Monday morning quarterback at a worker over an entreprenuer or manager's decisions is always short-sighted, as you might don't see all the behind-the-scenes stuff that went and continues to go into a successful operation.

[SackAttack]

Please...life isn't fair, and CU Tiger has put in the time, risks, and passion to build a successful business (perhaps the most stressful and time-consuming challenge one could do). If employees don't want to work on Thanksgiving or Holidays, then they are free to a) go some place else. b) start their own business. c) find a new line of work.

"If you want to be treated with some semblance of humanity, go start your own business. If you want to work for me, I'm going to fuck you over and then tell you "but I feel really badly about it!"

Is that about the size of it? I don't have to like how you as the business owner treats me as an employee, but I will respect you much more (even if I hate you at the same time) if you're honest about your motivations.

And I repeat: if what you're doing to your employees is shitty enough that you feel honest remorse but also feel it to be necessary to the survival of the business, then what you are doing is CRITICAL ENOUGH THAT YOU NEED TO BE ON THE FRONT LINES, TOO. Otherwise what you're saying is that you aren't invested enough in your own business, which you put in the time, risk and passion to build, to be there on what's ostensibly the most important business day of the year to ensure its success. You're saying that the responsibility for success or failure is entirely on the people you are engaged in fucking over. That's not, long-term, a recipe for good business. See: Kmart. Treat people like shit and cut corners long enough, and eventually that's what your business becomes.

If you're doing it for competitive reasons but don't feel remorse? Then either don't say anything at all aside from "here are our holiday hours", or be honest about it: "Our stockholders expect this, and I'm a major stockholder. Deal with it."

If you really feel that 'go work somewhere else' is a viable response for someone who objects, then you'll have no issue with the potential response from your workforce after you say that.

And if the business will survive and thrive without fucking your employees over for four or eight hours of sales, then what benefit have you derived by pissing those employees off? They won't recommend you to people who might be looking for work, and the turnover rate in retail is decently high anyway. What you're relying on then is the high school kid who doesn't know any better.

Look around at any dedicated tech forum and ask them what their feelings on Best Buy are, and they'll probably slag on the workforce, and that's exactly why. Because the worship of the almighty dollar means business practices that lead to high turnover, and holiday creep is just one of those practices.

When your workforce IS your competitive advantage against, say, Amazon, making your business decisions in such a way that the negative impacts fall on those employees is a great way to make sure that you lose the battle against digital storefronts.

[Izulde]

Sack, get over it. Bitching about working on Thanksgiving is whatever. You don't like it? Don't work retail.

Suck it up, buttercup.

[JonInMiddleGA]

When your workforce IS your competitive advantage against, say, Amazon,

Except that in no manner, way , shape, or form describes Walmart.

But maybe I've just lost the stream of the discussion here.

[Lathum]

Is that about the size of it? I don't have to like how you as the business owner treats me as an employee, but I will respect you much more (even if I hate you at the same time) if you're honest about your motivations.

.

You are really misguided here.

If anything you should be grateful for providing you with a job that puts food on your table and keeps your house lighted and warm.

[ISiddiqui]

Of course one can say the owners should be grateful for their employees providing them with money that puts food on their table and keeps their house lighted and warm ;).

[Lathum]

Of course one can say the owners should be grateful for their employees providing them with money that puts food on their table and keeps their house lighted and warm ;).

not really. You can hire more employees, if the owner screws up and goes out of business it costs multiple people their livelihoods.

[ISiddiqui]

And then those employees are responsible for the owner's livelihood. He can't do it without workers - how in the world did we get the point where we can't understand that but we go on and on how workers should be grateful to even have a job (though I kind of wonder if this is what the folks who wanted an 8 hr workday went through)?

[Izulde]

And then those employees are responsible for the owner's livelihood. He can't do it without workers - how in the world did we get the point where we can't understand that but we go on and on how workers should be grateful to even have a job (though I kind of wonder if this is what the folks who wanted an 8 hr workday went through)?

Frankly, the jobs that don't require much in the way of skills -should- be grateful to even have a job. They're easily replaceable.

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

Point being?
i too worry that one day my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandchildren will have to get a real job. and the thought sickens me

[Chubby]

"If you want to be treated with some semblance of humanity, go start your own business. If you want to work for me, I'm going to fuck you over and then tell you "but I feel really badly about it!"

Is that about the size of it? I don't have to like how you as the business owner treats me as an employee, but I will respect you much more (even if I hate you at the same time) if you're honest about your motivations.

And I repeat: if what you're doing to your employees is shitty enough that you feel honest remorse but also feel it to be necessary to the survival of the business, then what you are doing is CRITICAL ENOUGH THAT YOU NEED TO BE ON THE FRONT LINES, TOO. Otherwise what you're saying is that you aren't invested enough in your own business, which you put in the time, risk and passion to build, to be there on what's ostensibly the most important business day of the year to ensure its success. You're saying that the responsibility for success or failure is entirely on the people you are engaged in fucking over. That's not, long-term, a recipe for good business. See: Kmart. Treat people like shit and cut corners long enough, and eventually that's what your business becomes.

If you're doing it for competitive reasons but don't feel remorse? Then either don't say anything at all aside from "here are our holiday hours", or be honest about it: "Our stockholders expect this, and I'm a major stockholder. Deal with it."

If you really feel that 'go work somewhere else' is a viable response for someone who objects, then you'll have no issue with the potential response from your workforce after you say that.

And if the business will survive and thrive without fucking your employees over for four or eight hours of sales, then what benefit have you derived by pissing those employees off? They won't recommend you to people who might be looking for work, and the turnover rate in retail is decently high anyway. What you're relying on then is the high school kid who doesn't know any better.

Look around at any dedicated tech forum and ask them what their feelings on Best Buy are, and they'll probably slag on the workforce, and that's exactly why. Because the worship of the almighty dollar means business practices that lead to high turnover, and holiday creep is just one of those practices.

When your workforce IS your competitive advantage against, say, Amazon, making your business decisions in such a way that the negative impacts fall on those employees is a great way to make sure that you lose the battle against digital storefronts.

You at Best Buy vs Amazon

Advantage: Amazon

Argument Fail

[Galaxy]

"If you want to be treated with some semblance of humanity, go start your own business. If you want to work for me, I'm going to fuck you over and then tell you "but I feel really badly about it!"

Is that about the size of it? I don't have to like how you as the business owner treats me as an employee, but I will respect you much more (even if I hate you at the same time) if you're honest about your motivations.

And I repeat: if what you're doing to your employees is shitty enough that you feel honest remorse but also feel it to be necessary to the survival of the business, then what you are doing is CRITICAL ENOUGH THAT YOU NEED TO BE ON THE FRONT LINES, TOO. Otherwise what you're saying is that you aren't invested enough in your own business, which you put in the time, risk and passion to build, to be there on what's ostensibly the most important business day of the year to ensure its success. You're saying that the responsibility for success or failure is entirely on the people you are engaged in fucking over. That's not, long-term, a recipe for good business. See: Kmart. Treat people like shit and cut corners long enough, and eventually that's what your business becomes.

If you're doing it for competitive reasons but don't feel remorse? Then either don't say anything at all aside from "here are our holiday hours", or be honest about it: "Our stockholders expect this, and I'm a major stockholder. Deal with it."

If you really feel that 'go work somewhere else' is a viable response for someone who objects, then you'll have no issue with the potential response from your workforce after you say that.

And if the business will survive and thrive without fucking your employees over for four or eight hours of sales, then what benefit have you derived by pissing those employees off? They won't recommend you to people who might be looking for work, and the turnover rate in retail is decently high anyway. What you're relying on then is the high school kid who doesn't know any better.

Look around at any dedicated tech forum and ask them what their feelings on Best Buy are, and they'll probably slag on the workforce, and that's exactly why. Because the worship of the almighty dollar means business practices that lead to high turnover, and holiday creep is just one of those practices.

When your workforce IS your competitive advantage against, say, Amazon, making your business decisions in such a way that the negative impacts fall on those employees is a great way to make sure that you lose the battle against digital storefronts.

Honest about your motives? Businesses are in business to make money. Not sure what is hidden about this motive. People are not owed jobs, and businesses do not exist to "create" jobs. They exist to create products and services, and generate revenue and profits. Always have, always will. Businesses today are doing more with less, and thanks to the rapid advances in technology on all fronts, doing more without employees, a trend that will continue to only get bigger.

Amazon vs. Best Buy highlights the point. People window shop at Best Buy, then buy on online where prices are cheaper. If Best Buy hired the best employees (which would put them at a greater cost disadvantage), they still would lose out on what the majority of people shop for: best price. The internet also makes information available at the tip of your fingers, so people already have done their research when buying a product-for the most part.

I guess it depends on what you consider what you treating employees shitty, especially in CU's example.


i too worry that one day my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandchildren will have to get a real job. and the thought sickens me

The wealth of the Waltons is irrelevant.

[Drake]

My wife is an RN. She worked on Thanksgiving.

Sick people suck. ;)

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

The wealth of the Waltons is irrelevant.
well, it's somewhat relevant. this is a thread about walmart. unless you're talking about some bigger philosophical idea. in which case i agree with you.

We're all working together; that's the secret --Sam Walton

[sterlingice]

In 1980, Judge Smails saying "the world needs ditch diggers" to Danny made him a jerk.

You are really misguided here.

If anything you should be grateful for providing you with a job that puts food on your table and keeps your house lighted and warm.

Today, we're trying to moralize this as a Dickensian world with a social Darwin context. Wow.

SI

[molson]

I think what some people find annoying is the characterization of this country as being a handful of rich people with golden rocket cars who never lift a finger, and then there's a rest of us who thanklessly toil to do their evil bidding. That was what the OWS was all about, to try to both isolate the evil "1%", and pretend the rest of us are in the same boat together (the 99%). But that's just ridiculous. A lot of people are rightfully proud of their middle class/upper middle class place in society and what they did to get there. You can travel the world, own property, take vacations, spend a lot of money on entertainment, eat at fancy restaurants, drive a good car, build a retirement nest egg, etc, all without being an evil billionaire. We're a long way from Dickensian times. Which is great, labor laws and regulations have done amazing things for our standard of living. But fact you have to work on holidays and that the healthcare plan isn't great) But that's not really in line with the degree of whining. working in Walmart isn't like working in an Indian factory or something. It can "suck" by 2012 standards (though it hasn't really been articulated here as to how, except for the

I think you're hearing from a lot of people in this thread who like their jobs now, used to work in the Walmarts/etc, and are really happy not to anymore. They weren't happy at Walmart, so they worked towards other jobs. Whereas some current Walmart employees are similarly unhappy, but they're approach is different - they're instead trying to shame Walmart into turning its unskilled positions into middle-class type job, without having to do anything differently themselves. It's just a completely different mindset.

And ya, not everybody can get out of Walmart and move up. That's not a huge injustice. Some people are more successful than others and as a result, they live better lives. That fact PISSES some people off. But I don't think a different labor law here or there will eliminate that fact, unless you had a complete economic revolution and we all had exactly the same amount of the pie regardless of our talent or contribution. That's a lot of people's "ideal", I don't understand it myself, but certainty no country has ever pulled it off.

If Walmart's doing something particularly evil they should be called out on it, and legislature can respond, or if there's enough public scrutiny they could change the practice on their own. But the complaint seems to be more general, that it's a shitty place to work. No shit. The reason it's a shitty place to work is relative, it's because it's one of the worst places to work compared to other jobs. But it's the job that requires the least skill to work there, so of course it's at the bottom. Would "justice" here really entail Walmart employees doing just as well as teachers, police, insurance adjusters, IT staff, etc? Part of the reason Walmart jobs seem so shitty is that a lot of middle-class jobs are really awesome by comparison.

Also, I noticed that Wegman's was open on Thanksgiving. So can we throw them into the "evil corporation" pile yet?

[TroyF]

"If you want to be treated with some semblance of humanity, go start your own business. If you want to work for me, I'm going to fuck you over and then tell you "but I feel really badly about it!"

Is that about the size of it? I don't have to like how you as the business owner treats me as an employee, but I will respect you much more (even if I hate you at the same time) if you're honest about your motivations.

And I repeat: if what you're doing to your employees is shitty enough that you feel honest remorse but also feel it to be necessary to the survival of the business, then what you are doing is CRITICAL ENOUGH THAT YOU NEED TO BE ON THE FRONT LINES, TOO. Otherwise what you're saying is that you aren't invested enough in your own business, which you put in the time, risk and passion to build, to be there on what's ostensibly the most important business day of the year to ensure its success. You're saying that the responsibility for success or failure is entirely on the people you are engaged in fucking over. That's not, long-term, a recipe for good business. See: Kmart. Treat people like shit and cut corners long enough, and eventually that's what your business becomes.

If you're doing it for competitive reasons but don't feel remorse? Then either don't say anything at all aside from "here are our holiday hours", or be honest about it: "Our stockholders expect this, and I'm a major stockholder. Deal with it."

If you really feel that 'go work somewhere else' is a viable response for someone who objects, then you'll have no issue with the potential response from your workforce after you say that.

And if the business will survive and thrive without fucking your employees over for four or eight hours of sales, then what benefit have you derived by pissing those employees off? They won't recommend you to people who might be looking for work, and the turnover rate in retail is decently high anyway. What you're relying on then is the high school kid who doesn't know any better.

Look around at any dedicated tech forum and ask them what their feelings on Best Buy are, and they'll probably slag on the workforce, and that's exactly why. Because the worship of the almighty dollar means business practices that lead to high turnover, and holiday creep is just one of those practices.

When your workforce IS your competitive advantage against, say, Amazon, making your business decisions in such a way that the negative impacts fall on those employees is a great way to make sure that you lose the battle against digital storefronts.

Sorry man, when I was a supervisor, I was the dream supervisor. Not just saying that because of ego or anything else. I respected my employees. I cared about all of them and showed it. I never put myself above them and would answer the phones with them when it was needed.

That said, when it came to working on holidays or the weekends or the night shift, I did feel bad for them. I truly did. The reason is I did it for many years. In other words, I did get mine. I worked hard for the right to have those days off. I also worked hard for the extra responsibility and I also received that. I'm not going to write another paragraph stating what all that was, but that responsibility wasn't all roses.

So yeah, I did care that some of the people who worked under me ended up working on holidays or strange hours at times. They worked while I ate a Christmas dinner a time or three. If you want to think of me as a scumbag who didn't give a crap, more power to you. If you work retail, you know what that means.

As someone else said, the world changes and as a store owner or exec you have to adjust, even if you don't want to. 15 years ago, the same guy who made you work on Thanksgiving probably would have thought that was horrible and something he wouldn't be a part of. I seem to remember Best Buy losing some stores over the past couple of years and having some financial problems. Imagine how much that would be compounded by being closed when other stores selling the same wares are open.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that if they made the decision to close the stores on Thanksgiving night, that many employees would be out of jobs because of the revenue lost. While i don't condone what corporate execs are doing in this day and age, it's pretty damned simplistic to paint them all as uncaring dicks.

[Galaxy]

well, it's somewhat relevant. this is a thread about walmart. unless you're talking about some bigger philosophical idea. in which case i agree with you.

We're all working together; that's the secret --Sam Walton

You made absolutely no point with it. You just stated the Waltons are worth this much, then added nothing else to the conversation.

[SackAttack]

Troy? You. Are. Missing. The. Point.

I'll use small words: If the store needs the sales, by all means open. Stay home. Eat. Know that you are (fuck it, I can't do this entirely in single-syllable words) prioritizing your family life over the business you allegedly worked so hard to build.

You are eating turkey while your wage slaves work to save your business, since it's so critical to be open on Thanksgiving or else your business might fail.

Hey. It's cool. You're the owner. Set the hours, say "deal with it."

Do not fucking patronize me or any of your other employees by saying, effectively, "I feel bad that I'm doing this to you, but I'm better than you because I busted my ass so you do the scut work while I enjoy turkey."

It's one thing to say "I busted my ass, I earned this." Great! You're out of retail, Troy; I don't know if you've noticed in the last ten years, but retailers are cutting corners where they can to compete with online, and part of that is in terms of the workforce. They've cut back on full-time, on supervisory positions, on really any path up. So somebody can be out there, right now, busting his ass every bit as hard as you did, but has no way to move up into a position where he's "got his."

And you're sitting there moralizing that, hey, you earned it. Getting to enjoy the holiday is a perk that the "better people" deserve, but not the kids working their way through college, or people who don't have a degree, or people who have two degrees but can't find work elsewhere. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

If you seriously think that it's legitimate to both paint the day as so crucial that the hourly employees have to work the day but the execs can enjoy the day off, and that you're somehow better than the people who are in the shoes you were in back in the day because you busted your ass and that makes everything okay, then yeah. You're a dick.

And, frankly, that describes 90% of the people in this thread.

"You should be happy to have a job"? Really?

Well, fuck. Let's bring back the days of the robber barons and the company stores. You should be happy to have a job. So what if it means you die in hock to the company you work for and your heirs have to go to work for the company to pay off your debt? They'd invent a time machine, go back in time, and jumpstart a family fortune if they were worth anything.

[SackAttack]

Sack, get over it. Bitching about working on Thanksgiving is whatever. You don't like it? Don't work retail.

Suck it up, buttercup.

Hey, sweet cheeks, I'm not in retail anymore. This year's shenanigans don't affect me personally.

You know what? They're still bullshit.

[molson]

Know that you are (fuck it, I can't do this entirely in single-syllable words) prioritizing your family life over the business you allegedly worked so hard to build.

You are eating turkey while your wage slaves work to save your business, since it's so critical to be open on Thanksgiving or else your business might fail.


Why would the company be better off if some manager was running the cash registers on the holidays instead of the cashiers that are trained to do that? Your argument is symbolic and emotional, but you're trying to present it as practical. A manager could go sit at reception and work the phones too. That might be a worthwhile, "see, we're all in this together!" kind of message, but it would be kind of phony and patronizing. The manager wouldn't be any better than the receptionist at performing that job (and probably would be a lot worse unless he was trained how to do it.) He certainly wouldn't be selling his family out or anything by not doing it. If I was a retailer and I was working on Thanksgiving and some manager in the company, on that day only, was working the cash registers just to show how darn important it was, I'd wonder, "who's this douche?"

Edit: And working on a holiday isn't this universal horrible thing for all people. Some people are perfectly fine with it, and in fact seek out the heavy holiday-season hours, including on the holidays themselves. If you're happy with working a ton around and on the holidays, retail (or a hospital) might be a decent fit for you as you're working your way up. And plenty of professionals work holidays too - medical staff, police, people working football games and concerts, me when I have something due the week after the holidays. If you absolutely definitely want every holiday off, those would be odd job choices.

[mauchow]

If people worked on a Holiday they'll celebrate it at a different time that day or maybe the next day off they have.

[Chubby]

Troy? You. Are. Missing. The. Point.

I'll use small words: If the store needs the sales, by all means open. Stay home. Eat. Know that you are (fuck it, I can't do this entirely in single-syllable words) prioritizing your family life over the business you allegedly worked so hard to build.

You are eating turkey while your wage slaves work to save your business, since it's so critical to be open on Thanksgiving or else your business might fail.

Hey. It's cool. You're the owner. Set the hours, say "deal with it."

Do not fucking patronize me or any of your other employees by saying, effectively, "I feel bad that I'm doing this to you, but I'm better than you because I busted my ass so you do the scut work while I enjoy turkey."

It's one thing to say "I busted my ass, I earned this." Great! You're out of retail, Troy; I don't know if you've noticed in the last ten years, but retailers are cutting corners where they can to compete with online, and part of that is in terms of the workforce. They've cut back on full-time, on supervisory positions, on really any path up. So somebody can be out there, right now, busting his ass every bit as hard as you did, but has no way to move up into a position where he's "got his."

And you're sitting there moralizing that, hey, you earned it. Getting to enjoy the holiday is a perk that the "better people" deserve, but not the kids working their way through college, or people who don't have a degree, or people who have two degrees but can't find work elsewhere. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

If you seriously think that it's legitimate to both paint the day as so crucial that the hourly employees have to work the day but the execs can enjoy the day off, and that you're somehow better than the people who are in the shoes you were in back in the day because you busted your ass and that makes everything okay, then yeah. You're a dick.

And, frankly, that describes 90% of the people in this thread.

"You should be happy to have a job"? Really?

Well, fuck. Let's bring back the days of the robber barons and the company stores. You should be happy to have a job. So what if it means you die in hock to the company you work for and your heirs have to go to work for the company to pay off your debt? They'd invent a time machine, go back in time, and jumpstart a family fortune if they were worth anything.

You're missing the point buttercup.

Your superiors who are eating Thanksgiving dinner at home EARNED that right. They didn't wake up at the age of 16 as the VP of blah blah blah at Best Buy.

I work retail, I worked Thanksgiving. Would I rather be home? Of course. Was it the end of the world since I've worked every Thanksgiving since I was 16? Nope. If/when I move up into a position that I get that day off am I going to "take one for the team and work the front lines"? Nope, because I put my time in and earned that day off.

Instead of acting like you are oppressed and working in the coal mines in 1920 suck it up and work it like a man and MAYBE in the future you won't have to work those holidays because you'll have gotten promoted and earned it or you got off your lazy ass and got a different job if you hate your current one so much

[TroyF]

Troy? You. Are. Missing. The. Point.

I'll use small words: If the store needs the sales, by all means open. Stay home. Eat. Know that you are (fuck it, I can't do this entirely in single-syllable words) prioritizing your family life over the business you allegedly worked so hard to build.

You are eating turkey while your wage slaves work to save your business, since it's so critical to be open on Thanksgiving or else your business might fail.

Hey. It's cool. You're the owner. Set the hours, say "deal with it."

Do not fucking patronize me or any of your other employees by saying, effectively, "I feel bad that I'm doing this to you, but I'm better than you because I busted my ass so you do the scut work while I enjoy turkey."

It's one thing to say "I busted my ass, I earned this." Great! You're out of retail, Troy; I don't know if you've noticed in the last ten years, but retailers are cutting corners where they can to compete with online, and part of that is in terms of the workforce. They've cut back on full-time, on supervisory positions, on really any path up. So somebody can be out there, right now, busting his ass every bit as hard as you did, but has no way to move up into a position where he's "got his."

And you're sitting there moralizing that, hey, you earned it. Getting to enjoy the holiday is a perk that the "better people" deserve, but not the kids working their way through college, or people who don't have a degree, or people who have two degrees but can't find work elsewhere. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

If you seriously think that it's legitimate to both paint the day as so crucial that the hourly employees have to work the day but the execs can enjoy the day off, and that you're somehow better than the people who are in the shoes you were in back in the day because you busted your ass and that makes everything okay, then yeah. You're a dick.

And, frankly, that describes 90% of the people in this thread.

"You should be happy to have a job"? Really?

Well, fuck. Let's bring back the days of the robber barons and the company stores. You should be happy to have a job. So what if it means you die in hock to the company you work for and your heirs have to go to work for the company to pay off your debt? They'd invent a time machine, go back in time, and jumpstart a family fortune if they were worth anything.

Seriously? You are comparing this to slave workers or serfdom? Cmon man. When did I ever say I was better than someone else? Oh, because I said I earned my time off? No, I don't feel that makes me better, but it does give me perks. You benefit from some perks too. You working in Best Buy makes more than someone working at Subway. (I worked at Subway for two years by the way) does that make you a better person than they are?

FWIW, I read your comments exactly as you intended. You think an exec can't feel bad for forcing you to work if he doesn't work himself. I responded right to that point. It's a simplistic viewpoint. But you want the memo to say "FU losers, I'm going to laugh at you while drinking your blood (err, my wine). Go to hell, all of you"

I'm sure when one of the people who got that email forwarded it to the media that would look really good, right? You are asking them to do something they couldn't do if they wanted to. You are also giving your assessment of what emotions they feel or don't feel when you have no flippin clue what exactly is going through their heads. I'm not a cheerleader for corporate execs, but that attitude is insulting and unfair.

I hope you do get to run a business someday. You might be a wonderful boss because you will obviously care about your employees. On the other hand, when one of your employees comes up to you and says "I should get the same things you get because you aren't better than me," I will await your response anxiously.

[SackAttack]

Seriously? You are comparing this to slave workers or serfdom? Cmon man. When did I ever say I was better than someone else? Oh, because I said I earned my time off? No, I don't feel that makes me better, but it does give me perks. You benefit from some perks too. You working in Best Buy makes more than someone working at Subway. (I worked at Subway for two years by the way) does that make you a better person than they are?

Fallacious comparison. Keep trying, though.

On the other hand, when one of your employees comes up to you and says "I should get the same things you get because you aren't better than me," I will await your response anxiously.

And, yet...what we're talking about here isn't a company car or an annual bonus. We're talking about HAVING THANKSGIVING DINNER WITH ONE'S FAMILY.

You're seriously arguing on behalf of executives taking that away from their employees, even employees who have been with the company 20 years, because they somehow earned Thanksgiving off by being better than the others.

You're dismissing slave labor or serfdom, but the thing is, when you bring in the "you should feel fortunate blah blah" argument, that's EXACTLY what you're arguing for. Once you establish that argument, it becomes easier to justify further predations against your labor force.

We're cutting part-time hours to give those hours to full-timers instead? Whatever, scrub. You should feel lucky to have a job.

We're changing the health policies available for full-time employees to purchase as a class with their fellow full-timers to stuff that covers less or costs more? Whatever. They should feel lucky to have a job.

We're changing the availability policy so that instead of being able to both work here and go to school (TO BETTER YOURSELF LOL PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE A DEGREE), you have to choose between either school or working here? Whatever. You should feel lucky to have a job.

Seriously. Troy, I don't give a shit how much you busted your ass or what you think you deserve of what you've got. Good for you. I mean that honestly.

But this idea that it's okay to take away what few perks your employees enjoy because they somehow haven't busted enough ass is conceited, head-up-your-ass bullshit. And if you seriously think that it's socially or morally justifiable for the higher-ups to take from the people below them because 'they got theirs,' then I don't even know what to say to you that wouldn't land me in the box.

[cuervo72]

I guess my question would be...why the hell would you still be in retail, Sack?

[MrBug708]

I liked working the holidays. The day doesn't make it special, what you do does and you can do it whenever, like Canadian Thanksgiving. My last job wouldn't let me work it because I would get paid so much

[SackAttack]

I guess my question would be...why the hell would you still be in retail, Sack?

I'm not. That doesn't mean I can't call bullshit on this.

[molson]

Thank god for the evil corporate dive bar here in town that's open Thanksgiving and Christmas nights. I've had some good times there over the years. I imagine the bartenders do really well that night.

[TroyF]

Fallacious comparison. Keep trying, though.



And, yet...what we're talking about here isn't a company car or an annual bonus. We're talking about HAVING THANKSGIVING DINNER WITH ONE'S FAMILY.

You're seriously arguing on behalf of executives taking that away from their employees, even employees who have been with the company 20 years, because they somehow earned Thanksgiving off by being better than the others.

You're dismissing slave labor or serfdom, but the thing is, when you bring in the "you should feel fortunate blah blah" argument, that's EXACTLY what you're arguing for. Once you establish that argument, it becomes easier to justify further predations against your labor force.

We're cutting part-time hours to give those hours to full-timers instead? Whatever, scrub. You should feel lucky to have a job.

We're changing the health policies available for full-time employees to purchase as a class with their fellow full-timers to stuff that covers less or costs more? Whatever. They should feel lucky to have a job.

We're changing the availability policy so that instead of being able to both work here and go to school (TO BETTER YOURSELF LOL PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE A DEGREE), you have to choose between either school or working here? Whatever. You should feel lucky to have a job.

Seriously. Troy, I don't give a shit how much you busted your ass or what you think you deserve of what you've got. Good for you. I mean that honestly.

But this idea that it's okay to take away what few perks your employees enjoy because they somehow haven't busted enough ass is conceited, head-up-your-ass bullshit. And if you seriously think that it's socially or morally justifiable for the higher-ups to take from the people below them because 'they got theirs,' then I don't even know what to say to you that wouldn't land me in the box.

Look, could you do me a favor maybe? Just one. Stop saying I have said "you should be thankful you have a job" I haven't. Not once. NOT ONE SINGLE TIME. I took offense at you bashing execs and assigning them emotions and rules because you have to work when you don't want to.

You won't like me though, because if I were in Best Buys shoes and I looked at the sales charts, I would absolutely be open. Sorry, I would.

I'm also sorry, but if you have worked 20 years in retail, you know the drill. Or you should. Times have changed. Best Buy cannot compete if it isn't open when it's competitors are. It can't. Period. The execs didn't do this because they were desperate to do it, they did it because of two things:

1) Their competitors did it
2) It worked, people came and spent

I'm not saying you should be thankful to have a job. I am saying if you don't like the situation, you are limited to getting a promotion where you don't have to or getting the hell out of the industry. Theater workers have worked on Christmas Day for years. If you get a job at the theater, you kind of know that's what you will be dealing with. If you don't like it, move on. It's really that simple.

[Buccaneer]

Josh, I would hope that after all of these years, you wouldn't have grown so bitter and envious. All one can truly do is to do the best job you can in whatever situation one finds him/herself in.

I remember a couple of years ago, my section manager (very much a pointy-haired boss type) used the remaining travel/training budget to send himself to a training class that would have been very appropriate for me or one of my colleagues. Of course he got nothing out of it.

But there is no chance I would want to be in his shoes. If I were in his shoes, then I would have gone to the training (or stayed home from work on holidays, theoretically). But for those little "perks" (and of course, more pay), he is in a job in which 95% of it is horrible (compared to mine).

So let the big bosses, managers, whatever have their perks, pay and so-called prestige. I am lucky and fortunate not to be them.

[molson]

If people want to go out and spend money on the holidays (and they most definitely do), then in a free economy, those stores are going to be open. The only way to overcome that is through value and moral-based legislation that imposed particular views of what the holidays are supposed to mean on everyone else - including businesses, consumers, and workers that make money on the holidays. I think some states still have those (mostly involving Sundays and booze), but they're not too popular and are considered old-fashioned and puritanical.

[Lathum]

Sack, you seem to not be able to get past this concept that management thinks they are "better" and that is why they don't work those days when employees do.

It is just the nature of certain jobs that you work those days, and when you are hired you are told you may have to work those days. You then as the employee have a choice that you can either take the job subject to the employers terms, or you can not take the job.

Chalk me up as another who worked in restaurants and had to work those days also. It was no surprise to me. Had I chosen to not work those days I could quit and would have been easily replaced. Those are the breaks.

It was me who said they should be happy to have the job, and I stand behind that statement. The fact it those people are easily replaced. If that is a really you can't deal with then that is your own issue, and you have every right to feel the way you do, but doesn't change the fact.

[Buccaneer]

I don't think it's any different than what we have in IT, where I and many you work. Some of us are on stand-by for 24/7 systems (not me, thankfully) and if you are an employee dedicated to such systems, then you are required to work stand-by, which mean you can get called and have to work on a problem in the middle of the night, even on weekends. They do get extra pay but most of the IT managers do not work stand-by. They're home sleeping.

[Galaxy]

Fallacious comparison. Keep trying, though.



And, yet...what we're talking about here isn't a company car or an annual bonus. We're talking about HAVING THANKSGIVING DINNER WITH ONE'S FAMILY.

You're seriously arguing on behalf of executives taking that away from their employees, even employees who have been with the company 20 years, because they somehow earned Thanksgiving off by being better than the others.

You're dismissing slave labor or serfdom, but the thing is, when you bring in the "you should feel fortunate blah blah" argument, that's EXACTLY what you're arguing for. Once you establish that argument, it becomes easier to justify further predations against your labor force.

We're cutting part-time hours to give those hours to full-timers instead? Whatever, scrub. You should feel lucky to have a job.

We're changing the health policies available for full-time employees to purchase as a class with their fellow full-timers to stuff that covers less or costs more? Whatever. They should feel lucky to have a job.

We're changing the availability policy so that instead of being able to both work here and go to school (TO BETTER YOURSELF LOL PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE A DEGREE), you have to choose between either school or working here? Whatever. You should feel lucky to have a job.

Seriously. Troy, I don't give a shit how much you busted your ass or what you think you deserve of what you've got. Good for you. I mean that honestly.

But this idea that it's okay to take away what few perks your employees enjoy because they somehow haven't busted enough ass is conceited, head-up-your-ass bullshit. And if you seriously think that it's socially or morally justifiable for the higher-ups to take from the people below them because 'they got theirs,' then I don't even know what to say to you that wouldn't land me in the box.

Life isn't fair...get use to it.

[Young Drachma]

All I have to say is, this sounded a lot like listening to the Glen Beck program yesterday on the way to Colorado. It's sort of interesting how if you just repeat a narrative enough times, that you start to believe it because it not just reflects your thinking; but how you come to experience and interact with the world.

The hilarious irony is the people who are promulgating these ideas are pretty wealthy and the people consuming it usually aren't.

[molson]

All I have to say is, this sounded a lot like listening to the Glen Beck program yesterday on the way to Colorado. It's sort of interesting how if you just repeat a narrative enough times, that you start to believe it because it not just reflects your thinking; but how you come to experience and interact with the world.

The hilarious irony is the people who are promulgating these ideas are pretty wealthy and the people consuming it usually aren't.

What ideas are you talking about? A lot of the anti-corporate sentiment is very vague. What would you like to see Walmart and Target do differently, and should that be compelled by law or through public pressure? How much should they make an hour? Should they get every holiday off regardless of an economic and cultural appetite to spend money on those days? Without the details it just comes of as condescending. It's like if someone said you got all your ideas from Jon Stewart and then just knew how to regurgitate them as broad themes when you hear "Walmart" in a discussion. I don't think there's a ton of Glen Beck enthusiasts here who are just repeating the party line. I see much more of that generally (at least here) from the "corporations are evil" crowd. They're sure of the broad ideas about justice but never the specifics (except for the part about how retail corporations shouldn't be open on holidays.)

[molson]

Or, to try to put in a simple, practical way - the U.S. government sets a minimum level of acceptability when it comes to worker conditions, with minimum wage and labor laws. Some states exceed that and give their workers even greater protection. So the question is, morally and ethically, how much is a company required to go beyond that minimum guaranteed by the U.S. and the states?

If we all gave our answers, I bet they wouldn't even be that different, at a nuts and bolts level. I think there's just a different place people come from - some people are inherently "against" (or maybe just exceedingly suspicious of) corporations, and since there's enough different viewpoints around, they always find themselves at home in the "workers should have more" side of things, regardless of what the debate is or what numbers and facts we're talking about. Walmart workers could make twice as much as they do now and get free blowjobs every day, but if there was a labor dispute, people with that inclination are always going to be on the side of the workers And I think the people on the other side (where I admit I am) are kind of the same - they're inherently annoyed with workers complaining, and they're probably going to lean against them unless Walmart is anally raping every worker before they go home. But when it comes down to numbers and nuts and bolts of what companies should really be doing, I bet there's not a ton of difference between most people's views.

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

there is no fixing it. but you can be frustrated. you can point out the absurdity of it. did you know 96% of americans live within 20 miles of a walmart? that's nuts

frankly, i don't want it fixed. why prolong the inevitable? it's already knocking just floor it and wait till it shoots a rod

[Buccaneer]

Did you know that in many places, Walmart is the #1 employer, esp. in depressed areas that had lost businesses? Andersonville, CA is a good example of how Walmart saved that town economically. I'm sure there are other examples.

I'm not a defender of Walmart the store since you can count the number of times on two hands I've been in one the past 10 years. But a lot of consumers and the general population do depend on them.

[DaddyTorgo]

Did you know that in many places, Walmart is the #1 employer, esp. in depressed areas that had lost businesses? Andersonville, CA is a good example of how Walmart saved that town economically. I'm sure there are other examples.

I'm not a defender of Walmart the store since you can count the number of times on two hands I've been in one the past 10 years. But a lot of consumers and the general population do depend on them.

Not sure of anything about the tweeter, but some thoughts about the whole issue of walmart in general

Peter Suderman drops a truth-bomb on Walmart critics (with tweets) · lachlanmarkay3 · Storify (http://storify.com/lachlanmarkay3/peter-suderman-drops-a-truth-bomb-on-walmart-criti)

[cuervo72]

We have two Walmarts, but hardly ever shop in them. I'll go there every so often to look for things like Pokemon cards or toys or pool chemicals (or if in PA, Phillies gear). I might pick up a couple other things while I'm there. That's maybe once a quarter though (I don't shop much other than for food, and that I get either at the Food Lion around the corner or an independent market near work).

My wife makes a point to avoid Walmart. Doesn't like the general atmosphere (probably worth noting that we earn well above that average stated by Suderman). She prefers Target, or even better Kohl's. Really though, she does the bulk of her buying online.

We do belong to Sam's Club though, and will stock up on things like TP, PT, tissues, soap when we go there.

[Buccaneer]

While I can appreciate what they have done in a lot of communities, I still find their stores (of the few times I've been in there) pretty crappy and unweildly (sp?).

Adding onto what cuervo said, my wife does all of the shopping and she's been in Walmart less than I have. I guess we're big Target and Costco fans instead.

[PilotMan]

I had an epiphany while I was driving my 5 and a half hours home today. Most of life is time and circumstance. Seriously. Any person, any place. It's all time and circumstance. The idea that any person and rise above and become something great is one of the greatest fallacies in American culture. It's all being in the right place at the right time. A confluence of events cross and the opportunity is provided. That's all. Too many people on their high horses ranting about how great they are. If I had been born a a malnourished, Ethiopian kid, I'd never become who I am, all things being equal. I think that most of life is like that, we overestimate our real impact on the world.

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

oh, i know. i am poor. i live amongst other poor people. we are sandwiched between walmarts (you literally can't get in or out without passing one) cheap goods and jobs (ANY jobs) are good

BUT is it good in the grand scheme of things? we're just kicking the can down the road. we're not making it a better place for our children. how do we do that? big questions.

it's hard to argue with pragmatists. i come off sounding like a dirty hippie. but i don't think scratching out 70 years relatively unscathed is a success. life is hard but more importantly what's the point? every man for himself doesn't seem like a good way forward

it is interesting that most business tycoons turn to philanthropy in their latter years

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

I had an epiphany while I was driving my 5 and a half hours home today. Most of life is time and circumstance. Seriously. Any person, any place. It's all time and circumstance. The idea that any person and rise above and become something great is one of the greatest fallacies in American culture. It's all being in the right place at the right time. A confluence of events cross and the opportunity is provided. That's all. Too many people on their high horses ranting about how great they are. If I had been born a a malnourished, Ethiopian kid, I'd never become who I am, all things being equal. I think that most of life is like that, we overestimate our real impact on the world.

"The motions of Grace, the hardness of the heart; external circumstances.” – Pascal, Pensée 507

it's the epigraph from updike's rabbit run and probably my favorite quote

[Chubby]

Did you know that in many places, Walmart is the #1 employer, esp. in depressed areas that had lost businesses? Andersonville, CA is a good example of how Walmart saved that town economically. I'm sure there are other examples.

I'm not a defender of Walmart the store since you can count the number of times on two hands I've been in one the past 10 years. But a lot of consumers and the general population do depend on them.

Now why did that community lose those businesses? Surely it had nothing to do with a Walmart going up, did it? :devil:

[Edward64]

I had an epiphany while I was driving my 5 and a half hours home today. Most of life is time and circumstance. Seriously. Any person, any place. It's all time and circumstance. The idea that any person and rise above and become something great is one of the greatest fallacies in American culture. It's all being in the right place at the right time. A confluence of events cross and the opportunity is provided. That's all. Too many people on their high horses ranting about how great they are. If I had been born a a malnourished, Ethiopian kid, I'd never become who I am, all things being equal. I think that most of life is like that, we overestimate our real impact on the world.

I immigrated and became a naturalized citizen. I do agree with your example of being born an Ethiopian kid, not likely. Having lived in third world countries (dad was a diplomat) I do believe the US is one of the best places to live and truly is the land of opportunity.

I'm not sure how you define great, eliminating those extremes on both ends and assuming you mean middle to upper class life

If you were born/lived in the US, stayed out of trouble, went to vocational/college, didn't start a family too early, you can easily achieve the middle-class lifestyle.

If you were born/lived in the US, stayed out of trouble, went to vocational/college, didn't start a family too early, got lucky, was persistent, took some risks, you may achieve the upper class life.

[jeff061]

While luck is always involved, you can definitely effect how you take advantage of opportunity and how often those opportunities come. Some people get that chance and watch it sail by, others don't.

[molson]

The idea that any person and rise above and become something great is one of the greatest fallacies in American culture. It's all being in the right place at the right time. A confluence of events cross and the opportunity is provided. That's all. Too many people on their high horses ranting about how great they are.

This is one of the biggest debates and sources of animosity and the thing that people really feel personally - but don't you think that it's an extreme view? You really think there aren't any people of great talent in America who rise to great things? I don't think the other extreme - that everyone got everything they have on their own, and everyone who lacks anything must have screwed up somehow - has any basis in reality either.

I think the choices we make in this country have huge impacts on the lives we end up living, as does our talents. We just have different safety nets and different ranges for possible outcomes.

I guess I can see how it comes across "people on their hoses ranting about how great they are." But that comes from a place of defensiveness, really. You're telling them they didn't accomplish anything and it was all random chance. That's pretty harsh. People are offended when you tell them they were just born into something when they know they weren't. They're not always claiming the other extreme in response - that they rose from the gutter without anyone's help. But why is there so much resistance to give them just a little credit where there's evidence they made some good choices along the way? I bet you'd be proud of your 5 and a half year old if he or she accomplished great things. You'd also take some pride in giving him or her an environment from which his or her talents could be utilized. I wouldn't be offended by your expression of pride in that instance. In fact, I'd be proud of you for being a great parent, and your kids for their accomplishments. People do accomplish things with their talent and hard work. And people do blow opportunities and have less success as a result. I don't see how you can dispute that. Every situation is different. There's obviously people who party too much in college, drop out of school, and never have much of a career. Then there's people who drop out of college because they need to work to support a dying family member, and then they don't have much of a career either. Totally different situations.

[CU Tiger]

Honestly, go pound sand. If it isn't important enough for you to work the day alongside your employees, it isn't important enough to fuck them over for.

The minute the words "so I wouldn't have to do it anymore" leave your lips, it stops being about "This is an important day for the business and this sacrifice is necessary for the survival of the business" and more about "Fuck you, I got mine."

If it were about the survival of the business, your little speech there wouldn't be "I worked hard to get to the point where I didn't have to do it anymore." You'd be right there working alongside your employees saying "Let's push through this and get to tomorrow; it will all be worth it at the end of the season."

It's easy to be callous and say "you're replaceable," but at some point you hit the level where your employees say "Go for it" and suddenly you've got no staffing on this holiday that's so important that you didn't have to work it, but your peons did. That doesn't seem to have happened to Wal-Mart this year, but that doesn't mean it never will.

Ok, I'm not sure who or why you are angry, but I'm going to respond logically and not emotionally here.

I've been pretty open about what I do/did, but in case you have missed it , it wasn't retail. I owned a construction, contracting, and service business. So working a holiday only meant having the phone on and responding IF one of our customers needed service.

If you could resolve over the phone, great! If not you had to get in the truck I bought for you, and drive to their house in a uniform I bought for you and use tools I bought for you to repair their problem, and you got paid your hourly wage, PLUS a premium. And even if you didnt get a call you got $100 for being on call on a holiday.

Early on when I had no employees I ran all those calls myself. The first two years of our business I took 3 days off total in 2 years. I worked through first birthday parties, anniversaries, even my best friends wedding. So when things were running good and I had 40 plus employees I had my employees do the part of the job I didn't like. I told them when they interviewed it was a requirement. There were no surprises.

My employees and I had a trade arrangement I exchanged my money for their labor. Quite honestly by the time I sold out, my technicians were better equipped and had more practice and hands on skill than I did at repairing customer's problems. I was available by phone for any assistance needed and it wasn't unheard of for me to have to meet them at the office to get supplies, components out of inventory on a holiday. So FOR ME in MY INSTANCE it all depends on how you define work. Sure I may not be available at all times, but many many nights I didnt sleep while my employees rested comfortably because I didnt know if client X was going to pay me or if I was going to be able to make payroll that week. I didnt ask for anyone's sympathy on those nights and I didnt feel bad for the days when the roles were reversed for a few short hours.

It's not about "lucky to have a job" it is about if you do not do what the competition does your company will lose profit and market share and then you may not have a job. In my case if I didn't provide service to a customer and brand X did, they would get the business and if I repeatedly made poor business decisions like that I wouldn't be able to pay my employees.

I guess where we differ is it sounds like you feel like a holiday to enjoy with your family is some right or divine gift and to me it was a privilege. One I did without many, many times to get to the point where I could enjoy it.

The phrase sounds trite, bit for years I lived like very few others, so that in time I could LIVE like very few others. I do not and will not apologize for that.

I can't speak for everyone but for me, when I take a job I take it as a total package. There will be good and bad. As long as I get to enjoy the good I will choose not to bitch about the bad. When the scale swings too far to the bad side the whole sum is no longer worth it to me and I will find something else.

[molson]

I was reading this article about Obama's great passion - this issue of income inequality.

Now, Obama is many, many times more intelligent than I'll ever be (which of course, he took advantage of, along with an incredible drive and work ethic, to obtain incredible life success, something which I admire and doesn't at all offend me), so maybe I'm just missing something, but I never understand the stated approaches to combating this issue.

He talks about being moved by wealth disparity in developing countries during his travels, and I guess, sees the same thing here. So there's two primary ways he tries to address it.

1. (Modestly) higher taxes on higher income individuals. I don't know how this impacts income disparity at all and the article doesn't really explain it. It is definitely a response to income disparity, in that it's a way for all of us to benefit from the fact that some people do really, really well in the modern global economy, and I get it at that level. But it definitely doesn't make anyone earn less or earn more (unless the idea is to use increased revenue to quadruple the government work force and pay them all close to six figures or higher - but I don't think that's the goal, nor is it in the cards.)

2. Education. This one really puzzles me. Obama's big thing is he wants X more number of Americans to have at least one year of college education. Those with college educations make more, goes the reasoning, so if more people have education, more people will make more money. I don't think it works like that. Having more educated people doesn't increase the number of high paying jobs. It just means we'll have more Walmart employees with one year of college experience. We see this in the legal industry. I've ranted about student loans before - maybe the reason policy makers thinkg that people should be encouraged to borrow six figures to get gradate degrees is based on this same kind of thinking - "hey, lawyers make a lot, so if there's more of them, more people will be making a lot." That didn't work out. Instead, there's the same number of lawyer jobs (less, actually), but many, many more people with useless law degrees and massive debt. That drives down the wages of younger, less experienced attorneys since there's such a huge pool to draw from. And all of those people who couldn't make it in law will have that debt that will follow them around forever. They're part of the "hidden" income inequality equation. Maybe they'll eventually make $40,000 in some non-legal office job, but they'll have to pay $20,000 of it a year to their loan providers. That doesn't even show up in those income inequality charts. Maybe our society can be generally better in a lot of ways if its more educated, but that doesn't automatically translate into reducing income disparity. Finding our best and brightest and encouraging and even funding their education makes a ton of sense, to help encourage greatness and great accomplishments, but making sure everybody gets a year of psychology 101 at the local community college - whatever. That's not going to do anything. Except be a stimulus program for the higher education industry.

How fighting income inequality became Obama&rsquo;s driving force - The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-fighting-income-inequality-became-obamas-driving-force/2012/11/23/ab375434-3256-11e2-9cfa-e41bac906cc9_story.html).

[CU Tiger]

I had an epiphany while I was driving my 5 and a half hours home today. Most of life is time and circumstance. Seriously. Any person, any place. It's all time and circumstance. The idea that any person and rise above and become something great is one of the greatest fallacies in American culture. It's all being in the right place at the right time. A confluence of events cross and the opportunity is provided. That's all. Too many people on their high horses ranting about how great they are. If I had been born a a malnourished, Ethiopian kid, I'd never become who I am, all things being equal. I think that most of life is like that, we overestimate our real impact on the world.

And I disagree almost completely.
Barring the Ethiopian kid, which I suspect we have none of on this board. Let's talk about American children which I think most of us can relate to.

I wont bore you with "my life story" but suffice to say I didnt come from a pretty place. Single parent home, to gov't housing, to protective custody of the state, to a dozen foster homes, to legally emancipated at 15.

I was the first person in my family to graduate high school. Then college. Then I went to work for someone else and saw numerous mistakes they were making. Then I hated the way they treated me, so I decided to do something about it. Today I am 36 and for all intents and purposes "retired"...my kids have seen things I never dreamed of.

In my opinion far too many people accept unfortunate circumstances as fate and choose not to fight on. When I founded my company the first year I worked 3rd shift stocking at a BiLo and then yes the evil Wal Mart at night while I worked during the day. I never slept more than 3-4 hours a day. While I also went about educating myself on business and aspects I knew nothing about.

I'm sorry I had every excuse known to man and could have chosen to dive into drugs as an answer as a teenager. Actively wanted to several times because I knew it would be easier and take away the pain. But again I dont apologize for my attitude and I didnt expect anyone to feel sorry for me then.

Anyone in this country CAN change their circumstances.
Can everyone make Trump money?
Nope. Im not suggesting that.
But we could all work a little harder, a little more on whatever aspect of our life we are unhappy with.

If you dont like your job, did you submit a single resume to anyone today?
Did you try to learn a new skill today? If not then you choose to maintain where you are.

Some will argue they prioritize their family/kids/fun whatever over being a "slave" to a job. That is fine and maybe even noble, but it is still a choice. Not a fate.

[Lathum]

CU TIGER- You are a greedy money grubbing whore! You should have been in those trucks on Christmas filling up the gas along side the employess that you made work like slaves!!!

(sarcasm)

[Young Drachma]

Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - NYTimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/magazine/skills-dont-pay-the-bills.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&smid=tw-share) Saw thison tumblr with the below reaction, thought it was worth adding to this convo as it represents the other perspective.

But he lets it all collapse at the end, after pointing out rightly that the so-called skills gap isn’t a skills gap at all. “Trying to hire high-skilled workers at rock-bottom rates is not a skills gap,” a study from the Boston Consulting Group noted. Skilled, educated workers, many of whom have debt out their ears from getting said education, are expected to work for $10 an hour?

“It’s easy to understand every perspective in this drama,” Davidson writes, but as usual he finds it much easier to relate to the bosses than to the workers.

Which is perhaps why Davidson takes “weakened unions” as a fact of life, rather than a result of years and years of sustained attacks on unions from all angles, from the courtroom to Congress to the shop floor. “The social contract has collapsed” is a passive-voice monstrosity that masks the reality that the workers kept up their end of the bargain and indeed conceded time and again (witness the Hostess story for a perfect example). The contract didn’t collapse of its own weight, it was violated again and again.

Davidson could find experts and a boss to quote, but couldn’t go find, say, a union manufacturing worker to discuss, say, the last twenty or thirty years of attempts by the bosses to force down wages, turn pensions into 401(k)s, cut back on healthcare contributions, and lay off workers entirely to ship jobs to China.

The last paragraph, where Davidson’s argument collapses entirely as he lets the boss steer him into the neoliberal blogger’s favorite hobbyhorse, is really special. Education is the problem! Education will save us! He conveniently neglects to mention that $10 an hour starting salary from just the previous page. Hell, I’m surprised that he didn’t find a way to outright blame teachers’ unions for the fact that “too few graduate high school with the basic math and science skills that his company needs to compete.”

As Seth Ackerman pointed out, “competitive” wages is a stick applied to workers by neoliberal writers and opinion leaders to remind the proles of their place. The wage that Davidson’s pet boss is offering is uncompetitive even in a country where real wages are debased—nobody will take the jobs he’s offering at the pay rate he’s offering them.

Yet Davidson, who wholeheartedly believes in free markets, has to find something else to blame for the failure of employers to offer a wage that workers will take. Enter the favorite punching bag of the well-educated pundit class: public schools.

You see, if those schools were just cranking out workers with the right math and science skills, we’d be able to compete! (Which, in this case, means “get workers to take lousy $10 an hour jobs”.)

Here’s the thing: if public schools were actually graduating close to 100% of the students they taught with the precise math and science skills that Davidson and his pet boss want, they’d still be “competing” for the same lousy $10 an hour jobs. In fact, the glut of skilled workers would most likely push those wages down, because even though, as Price pointed out, the “shortage” of skilled workers hasn’t seen a rise in wages for those skilled jobs, we most certainly have seen downward pressure on wages as unemployment has remained high.

In other words, we don’t need more educated workers until we have the good jobs to offer them.

Education is a great thing for its own sake. I want to see free higher education for all who want it. But even without the millstone of student debt around the necks of young people, $10 an hour jobs are not going to fix the economy. As Heidi Shierholz, Natalie Sabadish and Hilary Wething at the Economic Policy Institute pointed out in a recent report, young people still have few opportunities, face high unemployment and even higher underemployment.

But that’s a scary thought, and so even though Davidson starts off heading in that direction, he screeches to a halt and turns off down the reliable path of calling for “education”, never mind that his conclusion almost completely contradicts the points he’s made earlier in the piece.

Because if he were going to open up a real discussion about low wages and skilled workers and outsourcing, he’d perhaps have to admit that the market solutions he favors won’t fix these problems. ]

[mckerney]

Did you know that in many places, Walmart is the #1 employer, esp. in depressed areas that had lost businesses? Andersonville, CA is a good example of how Walmart saved that town economically. I'm sure there are other examples.

I'm not a defender of Walmart the store since you can count the number of times on two hands I've been in one the past 10 years. But a lot of consumers and the general population do depend on them.

Of course the people depend on Walmart. Once they move in, cause locally owned business to shut down, kill more jobs than they bring in and depress wages people don't really have much of choice but to shop there.

[TroyF]

I'll add in to CU Tiger here.

I didn't grow up poor. Middle class, house in the burbs, etc.

I had a lot of other issues that helped cause me to fail early in my life. I made A LOT of mistakes, thankfully none involving drugs or alcohol.

I started a job in college as a call center tech. Supported sound cards. I received 6 promotions in 3 years and supervised agents making a really good salary. I ended up leaving to move back to Colorado after 8 years of the job. It's funny, because I still remember asking for advice to people on this board when I did it. (I moved back for my grandfather)

Anyway, I moved back in August of 2001. You probably remember what happened a few weeks later. I worked as a temp in an HP call center, worked at a start up and then went to my current job. The very first time I traveled for my current job to a workshop, I remember sitting in a room with over 300 people and coming to the realization that I was LOWEST on the totem pole.

Seriously, I was essentially a glorified secretary. I again received promotions and raises. As I said earlier in the thread, we went through a massive restructuring and I was spared in it. So I work at a terrific job making a solid wage and am happy.

Is this all ME? Of course not. I am NOT indispensable and I know it. I AM thankful I have a job I like and I work very hard. There are so many people I would have to thank for being in the position I am in now. When I started, I worked for the dream boss who never took credit for anything I did and gave me tons of chances. Had I worked for anyone else in the company, I would not have had those chances.

On the other side, without having some large ego or thinking I'm a living God, is it ok to think that maybe I did something to earn this too? I mean, I\ve did it twice now. Started from the bottom worked my way up to a good paying, happy position. Is that ALL circumstance?

I realize that I can hit the bottom any second. I also know that I can be happy with anything. If I lose my job, my house, or my possessions, I know I can still be happy and I am not scared of having to try it again. Maybe the third time I start from bottom I will fail. I don't think I will, but s*it happens, right?

Either way, this is my long winded way of saying circumstance plays a part in our lives, but we also have to see opportunities, work hard, build relationships, keep the bridges gasoline free, and take risks to get what we want. Blaming it all on circumstance is too easy.

(one note, I'm talking about most Americans here. Obviously, I'm a poor kid in Africa or the son of a rice farmer in China, or God forbid a female in Saudi Arabia I am much more limited. I realize this and am thankful every day that I am where I am.)

[TroyF]

Of course the people depend on Walmart. Once they move in, cause locally owned business to shut down, kill more jobs than they bring in and depress wages people don't really have much of choice but to shop there.

This, of course, is garbage.

Local businesses can adapt. In some cases they have. In other cases, they tried to compete with Wal Mart on Wal Marts terms and were crushed. What people don't realize is that most of those businesses were struggling before Wal Mart ever arrived. If it isn't Wal Mart, it was going to be something else. A Super Target, an outlet store, a chain grocery store.

In a capitalist society, it's about adaptation.

And to say Wal Mart destroys the economy and kills more jobs than they bring in is insanity. If the community really felt that way, they never have to shop at Wal Mart in the first place. Wal Mart would go out of business instead of the local business. Yes, Wal Mart has better prices because they have tons of pull. On the other side, as many have said in this thread, you don't have to go to Wal Mart. I haven't been in a Wal Mart in close to a year.The goods and services I need are provided by others at comparable prices.

[JPhillips]

I don't think you can achieve much without hard work, although you can be born into a life where minimal or no achievement still leaves you with a great deal of money. I also think luck plays a major role for most people that are high achievers. It doesn't diminish the work, but it does mean that success isn't simply about putting your nose to the grindstone. Admitting that luck played a large role in my life doesn't mean I don't bust my ass to maximize my opportunities.

[sterlingice]

I had an epiphany while I was driving my 5 and a half hours home today. Most of life is time and circumstance. Seriously. Any person, any place. It's all time and circumstance. The idea that any person and rise above and become something great is one of the greatest fallacies in American culture. It's all being in the right place at the right time. A confluence of events cross and the opportunity is provided. That's all. Too many people on their high horses ranting about how great they are. If I had been born a a malnourished, Ethiopian kid, I'd never become who I am, all things being equal. I think that most of life is like that, we overestimate our real impact on the world.

I think there are two pieces to the equation: broadly called "skill" and "luck". At any time, one has opportunities and that all flows from luck. The wide range of opportunities one has may be determined by what you have done: skills (i.e. if you have a college degree, the whole realm of "college degree required" jobs is open to you whereas if you do not, it isn't). However, the specific ones you get are determined by luck (it happens company X needs skill Y today or something as silly as HR recruiter X likes font Y on your resume so you don't get thrown off the pile whereas someone else's does for a similarly trivial reason).

I think arguing that "I made my opportunities" is a fallacy- that opportunity was there and you took advantage of it. So, while it could be simple semantics, I think there is a mistake made in moving it from the luck side of the ledger to the skill side. However, you had the skills to take advantage of the lucky situation you found yourself in. There is a significant confluence of both skill and luck and I think to deny either is dangerous.

One other theme I've seen here a lot: why is risk taking a virtue? I mean, as a society: what do we gain by someone taking a risk (without knowledge of their success or failure)?


I don't think you can achieve much without hard work, although you can be born into a life where minimal or no achievement still leaves you with a great deal of money. I also think luck plays a major role for most people that are high achievers. It doesn't diminish the work, but it does mean that success isn't simply about putting your nose to the grindstone. Admitting that luck played a large role in my life doesn't mean I don't bust my ass to maximize my opportunities.

EDIT: Or mostly what was said in the post right before mine in a lot fewer words.

SI

[JPhillips]

This, of course, is garbage.

Local businesses can adapt. In some cases they have. In other cases, they tried to compete with Wal Mart on Wal Marts terms and were crushed. What people don't realize is that most of those businesses were struggling before Wal Mart ever arrived. If it isn't Wal Mart, it was going to be something else. A Super Target, an outlet store, a chain grocery store.

In a capitalist society, it's about adaptation.

And to say Wal Mart destroys the economy and kills more jobs than they bring in is insanity. If the community really felt that way, they never have to shop at Wal Mart in the first place. Wal Mart would go out of business instead of the local business. Yes, Wal Mart has better prices because they have tons of pull. On the other side, as many have said in this thread, you don't have to go to Wal Mart. I haven't been in a Wal Mart in close to a year.The goods and services I need are provided by others at comparable prices.

Destroys the economy is too much, but killing jobs is a part of the Walmart model. They can provide a greater number of goods at lower prices due to increased efficiency. Part of that increased efficiency is fewer workers than what would be needed for a comparable number of products at small shops.

[CU Tiger]

I don't think you can achieve much without hard work, although you can be born into a life where minimal or no achievement still leaves you with a great deal of money. I also think luck plays a major role for most people that are high achievers. It doesn't diminish the work, but it does mean that success isn't simply about putting your nose to the grindstone. Admitting that luck played a large role in my life doesn't mean I don't bust my ass to maximize my opportunities.

I agree with this, and hope my post didn't come off as counter to it.

The only thing I will add, some are born to circumstances where they can achieve higher without working as hard. For some, a "homerun" success will be much lower than others based solely on where they started.

Hard work is not a guarantee of success, but I've never known any successful people that weren't among the hardest working ones I know with the exception of those born into circumstance. So if you weren't born with it, and you want it. You have to work your azz of for it.

[molson]

One other theme I've seen here a lot: why is risk taking a virtue? I mean, as a society: what do we gain by someone taking a risk (without knowledge of their success or failure)?



As a society, risk-takers bring about innovation. And the society is always going to benefit if there's a lot of risk-takers because some of those risks are going to pay off and we'll have Google or whatever. But an individual level, it's probably much less of a virtue, and more of a personal choice.

[Buccaneer]

Of course the people depend on Walmart. Once they move in, cause locally owned business to shut down, kill more jobs than they bring in and depress wages people don't really have much of choice but to shop there.

I was talking more about the cases where there were next to nothing left in the towns/counties before Walmart moving in.

I also believe the internet did much, much more to cause locally owned (brick and mortar) businesses to close than Walmart. Walmart, I have read in some cases, have been used as an economic stimulus in places in anchoring nearby businesses.

[cougarfreak]

I had an epiphany while I was driving my 5 and a half hours home today. Most of life is time and circumstance. Seriously. Any person, any place. It's all time and circumstance. The idea that any person and rise above and become something great is one of the greatest fallacies in American culture. It's all being in the right place at the right time. A confluence of events cross and the opportunity is provided. That's all. Too many people on their high horses ranting about how great they are. If I had been born a a malnourished, Ethiopian kid, I'd never become who I am, all things being equal. I think that most of life is like that, we overestimate our real impact on the world.

There is some luck. But, for the most part, American society has traditionally offered more mobility upward than any society in the world. And our poor are exponentially better off than other country's poor. If working on thanksgiving is the biggest crime you have to gripe about, then I think you have a pretty good life.

[JPhillips]

There is some luck. But, for the most part, American society has traditionally offered more mobility upward than any society in the world. And our poor are exponentially better off than other country's poor. If working on thanksgiving is the biggest crime you have to gripe about, then I think you have a pretty good life.

But our social mobility has been decreasing for decades and is now lower than most of Europe and Canada.

I'd much rather be poor in Scandinavia than here.

[PilotMan]

In defense of my argument, I have no recollection of making this post last night.

[CraigSca]

Destroys the economy is too much, but killing jobs is a part of the Walmart model. They can provide a greater number of goods at lower prices due to increased efficiency. Part of that increased efficiency is fewer workers than what would be needed for a comparable number of products at small shops.

But that's classic economics. In the short term, it is incredibly hard for the worker, but in the long term it's in the greater good for the society. I mean, do we get rid of the cotton gin, loom, steam engine, etc., because they reduced the need for workers? These tools and efficiencies continue to grow our economy and create newer tools for the future.

[JPhillips]

I'm not arguing against it, I'm just pointing out that the assertion is correct.

[Marc Vaughan]

What ideas are you talking about? A lot of the anti-corporate sentiment is very vague. What would you like to see Walmart and Target do differently, and should that be compelled by law or through public pressure? How much should they make an hour? Should they get every holiday off regardless of an economic and cultural appetite to spend money on those days?

For myself I'm not anti-corporate I'm pro-people. I believe corporations and governments exist for the benefit of the people within society, if they fail to act in their best interests then they need to be encouraged to resync with that interest whatever it is.

As such I'd like to see laws in place which protect employee's from their corporations dancing aruond the existing legislations to minimise their costs at the expense of worker benefits.

For example many corporations in the US appear to prefer part-time workers to full-time workers, this is purely because they gain in various areas because part-time workers appear to have even less protection than full-time workers and also often don't gain access to medical insurance etc.

As such I'd personally like to see 'ObamaCare' extended so that society didn't attach medical care to employment. This would make the system more efficient (economies of scale presuming the free-market purchasing of drugs is allowed to operate which isn't the case for Medicare etc. presently) and cheaper overall while also ensuring a fairer and more balanced system imho.

On top of that I'd like to see more protection for people in employment in terms of notice periods before sacking and an improved minimum wage.

(I don't know if its present in the US or not but I also believe in some protection/incentive to protect public holidays - say enforcing a minimum wage multiplier (when I was a kid it was always time and a half back home) on those days - that dissuades companies who don't truly need staff in from pulling them in, but also rewards the staff who have to work)

And to say Wal Mart destroys the economy and kills more jobs than they bring in is insanity. If the community really felt that way, they never have to shop at Wal Mart in the first place. Wal Mart would go out of business instead of the local business. Yes, Wal Mart has better prices because they have tons of pull. On the other side, as many have said in this thread, you don't have to go to Wal Mart. I haven't been in a Wal Mart in close to a year.The goods and services I need are provided by others at comparable prices.

The problem with this is that humans are inherantly lazy, selfish and bad judges of the long term effects of their decision making.

In the short-term for most people shopping at chains is 'good' because it saves them money and time .... it may be bad in the long term however its encouraged a small monoploy of retailers to survive which means there is next to no competition for employee's between them (ie. poor wages/benefits).

You can see similar things with smokers, for the longest time before large campaigning against it people 'knew' it was bad for them - but in the short term they couldn't see the harm and so ignored it.

I don't know the full effect of Walmart in the US - however in the UK similar stores actually cost the community and government more than they bring in because the government effectively subsides them for each of their minimum salary employee's whether through benefits.

[stevew]

Anyone watch that Rockefeller/Frick/Carnegie/Edison/JP Morgan/Westinghouse thing yesterday on History?

Pretty sure big business was always cunts, but it's a lot harder to murder people these days(hello Pinkertons)

[stevew]

Maybe we still do kill people

Alleged shoplifter dies after being subdued by Walmart workers | www.ajc.com (www.ajc.com/news/news/crime-law/alleged-shoplifter-dies-after-being-subdued-by-wal/nTFPx/)

[sabotai]

Anyone watch that Rockefeller/Frick/Carnegie/Edison/JP Morgan/Westinghouse thing yesterday on History?

Pretty sure big business was always cunts, but it's a lot harder to murder people these days(hello Pinkertons)

The Men Who Built America. I watched it and the history in it, especially in the dramatic scenes, is really inaccurate. Not that those people were saints or anything, but the real history is far more interesting than that mostly fictional miniseries showed (much like with everything else The History Channel makes)

[stevew]

Yeah, I'm sure it was heavily flared for the dramatic.

[AENeuman]

Now why did that community lose those businesses? Surely it had nothing to do with a Walmart going up, did it? :devil:

Nope, the paper mill shut down (wife's hometown). The transition from a manufacturing/farming community to a service one has been very hard for shasta county. The success of walmart brought in a giant shopping center with over a 1000 jobs. These jobs are not great, but what they offer is an opportunity out of the meth culture.

On the other hand the movie theater at the shopping center closed down, so i guess we can blame netflix and on demand for killing ma and pa businesses ;)

[Chubby]

Nope, the paper mill shut down (wife's hometown). The transition from a manufacturing/farming community to a service one has been very hard for shasta county. The success of walmart brought in a giant shopping center with over a 1000 jobs. These jobs are not great, but what they offer is an opportunity out of the meth culture.

On the other hand the movie theater at the shopping center closed down, so i guess we can blame netflix and on demand for killing ma and pa businesses ;)

There's always an exception to the rule. Your example is far from the norm.

[molson]

Our downtown department store back in the day sucked a hell of a lot more than Walmart. I'm sure there were some great city department stores too, but I think history has exaggerated how amazing they were generally. There's a reason people abandoned them as soon as they could.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Our downtown department store back in the day sucked a hell of a lot more than Walmart. I'm sure there were some great city department stores too, but I think history has exaggerated how amazing they were generally. There's a reason people abandoned them as soon as they could.

Testify.

[AENeuman]

There's always an exception to the rule. Your example is far from the norm.

No really, as technology and preferences change, so do businesses.

Tell me, what's the first name of your travel agent? Your favorite bookstore for readings? Your butcher? Favorite record store? The name of that family who owns that pager store? That great place to get film developed?

The device you used to reply to me has killed more jobs than Walmart.
The fact that your device has also created jobs, is, I'm guessing, far from the norm.

[Buccaneer]

No really, as technology and preferences change, so do businesses.

Tell me, what's the first name of your travel agent? Your favorite bookstore for readings? Your butcher? Favorite record store? The name of that family who owns that pager store? That great place to get film developed?

The device you used to reply to me has killed more jobs than Walmart.
The fact that your device has also created jobs, is, I'm guessing, far from the norm.

Very nice examples. This is fun, how back shall we go? To the proverbial buggy whip? I personally know several owners of mom and pop stores in my local downtown (where I have worked for over 20 years). Thing is, they do not sell sundries, groceries or hardware. They instead are selling coffee, frozen yogurt, pb&j and an independent phone store.

[cuervo72]

Alcohol, man. Alcohol is where it's at. That and like Bucc says, frozen yogurt.

[JonInMiddleGA]

They instead are selling coffee, frozen yogurt, pb&j and an independent phone store.

You have a peanut butter & jelly store?

[cuervo72]

Heh. I wondered that too. But, if some of it is "home-made" or specialty, I guess I could see it. Not too different from our local orchard store which sells all sorts of jams, ciders, fruit butters, etc. Maybe combine that with fresh-baked bread, who knows.

[Buccaneer]

You have a peanut butter & jelly store?

Yes and you wouldn't believe the speciality flavors they have. PB & Jellies Downtown Colorado Springs (http://activerain.com/blogsview/2498153/pb-jellies-downtown-colorado-springs)

To my list above, I also need to add a long time specialty ice cream store, a spice shop and a new one that sells flavored oils and vinegars (I think, haven't been in that one yet).

The point is that all of these are catering to the new demographics and except for the ice cream shop, all stores that wouldn't have existed 20 years ago. Walmart will become archaic, just like JCP and the malls have. But I just read that Walmart are now opening up boutique grocery stores, probably competing with the awesome Whole Foods.

[Buccaneer]

There's always an exception to the rule. Your example is far from the norm.

One last reply. I know the place you live and would agree that in cities of eroding tax base and older demographics, it is comparatively tough to gain an entrepreneur startup across a wide spectrum of markets. What there are would be fragile and impacted by a chain coming in. In newer markets where there are population and tax revenue growths, as well as a younger demographics, chains like Walmart (and the like) only add (not necessarily replace) to a relative abundance, creating more consumers for all levels and types of products.

[stevew]

Maybe we still do kill people

Alleged shoplifter dies after being subdued by Walmart workers | www.ajc.com (www.ajc.com/news/news/crime-law/alleged-shoplifter-dies-after-being-subdued-by-wal/nTFPx/)

Speaking of which...what are y'alls experience with dealing with the asset protection teams(if you've worked retail). I found them to be pretty thuggish on occasion...unsurprising they killed someone. Gotta get those shoplifter apprehensions or you'll get fired.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Yes and you wouldn't believe the speciality flavors they have. PB & Jellies Downtown Colorado Springs (http://activerain.com/blogsview/2498153/pb-jellies-downtown-colorado-springs)

Well I'll be damned.

That might be one of the strangest things (retail division) I've ever come across. It makes a little more sense after seeing they've got a few other deli type items & sandwiches on the menu, but still.

[stevew]

There's a PB&J section on campus, but it's part of a larger quick snack stand. I should probably try it at some point. I'm kind of surprised it survives as a stand alone type place. I'm sure it's probably good as hell.

[Galaxy]

Of course the people depend on Walmart. Once they move in, cause locally owned business to shut down, kill more jobs than they bring in and depress wages people don't really have much of choice but to shop there.

Okay...did small businesses really pay more than Wal-Mart does?




On top of that I'd like to see more protection for people in employment in terms of notice periods before sacking and an improved minimum wage.


Minimum wage just pushes the prices of things up, and get a dog chasing his tail situation, and can even eliminate jobs.

a spice shop and a new one that sells flavored oils and vinegars (I think, haven't been in that one yet).


This must be the "hot" thing these days-especially the olive oil store-because I see them all popping up like weeds around my region.

[Buccaneer]

Well I'll be damned.

That might be one of the strangest things (retail division) I've ever come across. It makes a little more sense after seeing they've got a few other deli type items & sandwiches on the menu, but still.

It's not the South, Jon. :lol:

[Marc Vaughan]

Okay...did small businesses really pay more than Wal-Mart does?
In many cases when I was younger - yes they would pay more than chain stores, this was largely down to (1) individual ethics from owners, (2) lack of information regarding what the 'going rate was', (3) a personal connection from the person controlling wages to the employee's.

Minimum wage just pushes the prices of things up, and get a dog chasing his tail situation, and can even eliminate jobs.
Thats an interesting perspective ... I can understand that it can "price out" some manufacturing jobs because it would make it more expensive than importing similar items from abroad, but it also gives workers increased spending power which in turn generate jobs.

Unfortunately in these 'global' times economics is more a religion than a science with most practitioners taking their 'stance' and no one truly knowing the cause and effects involved beyond the obvious effects on individual workers of removing/reducing their rights/pay which is what I'm arguing on.

(personally my stance is that 'trickle down' economics is obvious 'bunk' as the companies/people at the top are more than happy to pool money rather than reinvest it (case in point the $bn which apple has on hand) whereas workers will generally spend whatever they earn (within reason) and therefore paying people better is a bigger stimulant of the economy than tax breaks for the rich).

[JPhillips]

From a review of minimum wage studies:

A significant body of academic research has found that raising the minimum wage does not result in job losses even during hard economic times. There are at least five different academic studies focusing on increases to the minimum wage—including increases ranging from 7 percent to 12.3 percent made during periods of high unemployment—that find an increase in the minimum wage has no significant effect on employment levels. The results are likely because the boost in demand and reduction in turnover provided by a minimum wage counteracts the higher wage costs.

Similarly, a simple analysis of increases to the minimum wage on the state level, even during periods of state unemployment rates above 8 percent, shows that the minimum wage does not kill jobs. Indeed the states in our simple analysis had job growth slightly above the national average. [...]

All the studies came to the same conclusion—that raising the minimum wage had no effect on employment.

[Marc Vaughan]

One other thing its worth mentioning is that in many countries minimum wage jobs are actually costing tax payers money .... I can't give details for the US because I'm not 'versed' in things here.

But in the UK minimum wage jobs cost the tax payer money because the government ends up subsidizing the individuals undertaking them in various ways - ie. housing subsidy, social security payments etc. to ensure that they can survive on that salary.

In the US I'm sure the same is true - whether this is through health costs when uninsured minimum salary workers go to hospital or through food stamps and suchlike.

As such allowing corporations to exploit their staff in this manner is actually a subsidy by society to the corporation (and wholly anti-capitalist if you subscribe to that viewpoint).

Please note that I'm not 'kicking' companies for doing this, they're maximizing their profits which is to be expected - I am however saying that it shouldn't be allowed because its not good for society as a whole, its the fault of the law/politicians who have allowed it to happen.

PS - In a similar manner many people here will probably revolt at the idea of the removal of mortgage tax deductions seeing them as a benefit to themselves when in reality they're a subsidy for banks who can because of them charge higher rates of interest to consumers .... subsidised by tax breaks from the government ...
The problem with any such changes obviously is the 'short-term' effect of people who have already committed to them under the existing terms, I would hope that any changes implemented would be 'forward looking' - ie. not applicable for mortgages which are already in effect, but time will tell.

[Young Drachma]

One other thing its worth mentioning is that in many countries minimum wage jobs are actually costing tax payers money .... I can't give details for the US because I'm not 'versed' in things here.

But in the UK minimum wage jobs cost the tax payer money because the government ends up subsidizing the individuals undertaking them in various ways - ie. housing subsidy, social security payments etc. to ensure that they can survive on that salary.

In the US I'm sure the same is true - whether this is through health costs when uninsured minimum salary workers go to hospital or through food stamps and suchlike.

As such allowing corporations to exploit their staff in this manner is actually a subsidy by society to the corporation (and wholly anti-capitalist if you subscribe to that viewpoint).

Please note that I'm not 'kicking' companies for doing this, they're maximizing their profits which is to be expected - I am however saying that it shouldn't be allowed because its not good for society as a whole, its the fault of the law/politicians who have allowed it to happen.

PS - In a similar manner many people here will probably revolt at the idea of the removal of mortgage tax deductions seeing them as a benefit to themselves when in reality they're a subsidy for banks who can because of them charge higher rates of interest to consumers .... subsidised by tax breaks from the government ...
The problem with any such changes obviously is the 'short-term' effect of people who have already committed to them under the existing terms, I would hope that any changes implemented would be 'forward looking' - ie. not applicable for mortgages which are already in effect, but time will tell.

We don't have many guaranteed benefits as the UK does, so people are happy these kinds of roles are out there, which is why neoliberal tax policy screams things like "if a man wants to work 80 hours a week, why shouldn't he be able to?" Without asking the fundamental question "who the fuck wants to work 80 hours a week?" Some strong libertarians are anti-minimum wage and will argue it as though it's common sense.

It's easy when there's no cap on what you might earn, but if the likely end result is him earning in 80 what he'd have earned in 40 without the costs of what he'll pay for -- nevermind the social and societal implications of his working this many hours -- not going down, then it's hard to really get on the whole "train to economic prosperity" when it's clearly a top-down, hand-to-mouth existence that negates people with whom we effectively think are lesser thans with no gumption or desire.

[molson]

From a review of minimum wage studies:

"There are at least five different academic studies focusing on increases to the minimum wage—including increases ranging from 7 percent to 12.3 percent made during periods of high unemployment"

In order for the law to compel what Walmart workers are demanding, we'd have to raise the minimum wage 93%.

[DaddyTorgo]

In order for the law to compel what Walmart workers are demanding, we'd have to raise the minimum wage 93%.

I don't think many people here are saying that what the Walmart workers are demanding is realistic, but that being said - have you looked at the "minimum wage" recently? The minimum wage in most places is pathetic - it certainly hasn't kept up with inflation.

Particularly given the lack of stable hours in minimum wage type jobs that can often prohibit you from getting a second job, combined with the likelehood that you won't be a full-time minimum wage worker, it's almost functionally impossible to live on a minimum wage income in many parts of the country.

So is it really "minimum wage" then?

And yes, everyone can cherry pick states with decent minimum wage laws, or low costs of living to say that it is possible. But that ignores the reality - that you have minimum wage jobs everywhere. So sure...you can live on minimum wage in rural Alabama or Indiana. But what about the janitor making minimum wage cleaning office buildings in Philadelphia or New York City? Obviously they make it work somehow (thankfully I've never had to experience it, and haven't given it as much thought as I should have to be honest), but you know they're not putting away any money for retirement, or for their kids education or anything. So they're effectively socioeconomically trapped. Which is shitty. That's not what the "American Dream" is about.

I've been there. I've worked for minimum wage (when I was in HS). I worked retail (Starbucks) for 9 years, as both a frontline employee, and later as salaried management.

[molson]

I don't think many people here are saying that what the Walmart workers are demanding is realistic

I'm not so sure of that. The descriptions of the Walmart employee experience here is pretty much only described in exaggeration - with talk of "slavery", "cattle", "dickensian times." in reality, Walmart employees make more than minimum wage. How much more people think they should make, I actually have no idea. I don't think the world would end if minimum wage was raised 15%, even 20%. I think you could make the argument that would convince me that that was totally appropriate. But I don't even think that would impact the hourly rates of almost all Walmart workers. And I don't think it would make life all that much easier for the janitors in NYC and Philadelphia (though it might help some, I don't know how many of them make minimum wage now). So I get the sense that what people are calling for is a much greater increase than that, they just do it terms of symbolism rather than numbers.

If we're just debating a 12% increase in minimum wage (that was the high end of the study that said minimum wage doesn't hurt employment), I won't argue very hard against that. But that wouldn't change anything Walmart does, it wouldn't end the "slavery" there, it wouldn't shut down all the stores on Thanksgiving, it wouldn't stop the Waltons from having billions of dollars. So, I think what people are really in favor of is something MUCH more dramatic, it's just not often expressed specifically. I get that a small minimum wage increase is just a small step rather than the idea, but let's think big, what would you REALLY want if the legislature was filled of people like you ("you", meaning anyone)? (I'm interested in stuff like that because my own answer to that is pretty boring. I'd make some aggressive tweaks in some targeted areas, but on the whole, I think our economic system is a very good one and I definitely don't want to tear it down or anything.)

[SteveMax58]

Raising the minimum wage, like any tax break or subsidy, will simply change where the cost is borne for such wage but it will mean businesses will move more & more of their "work" to their non-hourly employees (otherwise known as "managers").

It may not be the case with a Walmart type of company (who is subject to much closer public scrutiny), but it certainly is the case for companies that are less publicly visible. Or, in many other cases, a large company (like a Walmart sized but perhaps not retail) will simply outsource more of their entry level type of work to smaller companies that will bear the risk of calling (as an example) every technician, representative, etc. a "manager" and simply give them unrealistic jobs for 40 hours. So they will forgo hiring 2-3 min wage workers in exchange for the "managers" that will put in 50-60 hours at only a marginal % above the min wage hourly when calculated @ 40 hours.

It all comes back at some point, but the higher you make a minimum wage, the more you are propping on less people in the short term. Like anything, it will eventually balance itself out in the market but will cause some pain in the short term as companies resize, re-evaluate the impact(s), etc.

[DanGarion]

I laugh at anyone that thinks raising the minimum wage would solve any problems. When you raise payroll, that money has to come from somewhere, 99% of the time it's coming out of the customer by charging higher prices. Oh shit that means people need more money to buy stuff, well let's raise the minimum wage again. Face it minimum wage isn't meant to give someone a livable wage.

[JPhillips]

So if raising the minimum wage won't benefit the workers lowering it shouldn't hurt them. Why not have a one cent minimum wage. Think of how low prices will be then!

[DaddyTorgo]

I laugh at anyone that thinks raising the minimum wage would solve any problems. When you raise payroll, that money has to come from somewhere, 99% of the time it's coming out of the customer by charging higher prices. Oh shit that means people need more money to buy stuff, well let's raise the minimum wage again. Face it minimum wage isn't meant to give someone a livable wage.

On a more philosophical level though - shouldn't that be exactly what it's meant for? (and putting aside for the moment the specifics of what we mean by "living")

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

it'll just turn into a race to automate and move labor offshore. the big box stores would all turn into giant vending machines stocked by robots

[DanGarion]

On a more philosophical level though - shouldn't that be exactly what it's meant for? (and putting aside for the moment the specifics of what we mean by "living")

Philosophically yes. But I don't think philosophy and money mix. In a perfect world everyone should be able to make enough to live, but I don't really think the type of free market we have in the US strives for that, it's meant to maximize the profits of the investors and those in charge of the company, while employing people at wages just high enough to get them to work there. It's not really the companies priority to worry if their employees are able to live at the wages they pay. The responsibility comes down to the employee.

[DaddyTorgo]

Philosophically yes. But I don't think philosophy and money mix. In a perfect world everyone should be able to make enough to live, but I don't really think the type of free market we have in the US strives for that

Which IMO is disgusting, and we as a society ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

[DanGarion]

Which IMO is disgusting, and we as a society ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

I don't disagree with you. But at the same time this is why we aren't Europe.

[Buccaneer]

Which IMO is disgusting, and we as a society ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

Then you have no clue as to what it means to have freedoms and liberty. It means that anyone in or coming to this country can have "success" (however they term it) without regards to parentage, social class or governmental restrictions. Sure it's harder for some compared to others, that's human nature, but the opportunity is there (esp. in these modern times). Restricting a floor (like in price controls) means you have to restrict a ceiling and when you start doing that, then you're back to only those with privilege will be able to succeed. Give everyone the opportunity to succeed and the freedom to fail and you would be surprised at the diversity of ideas, products and dreams that can be acheived. Restricting failure would also mean restricting success and that we cannot allow in this country.

[DaddyTorgo]

Then you have no clue as to what it means to have freedoms and liberty. It means that anyone in or coming to this country can have "success" (however they term it) without regards to parentage, social class or governmental restrictions. Sure it's harder for some compared to others, that's human nature, but the opportunity is there (esp. in these modern times). Restricting a floor (like in price controls) means you have to restrict a ceiling and when you start doing that, then you're back to only those with privilege will be able to succeed. Give everyone the opportunity to succeed and the freedom to fail and you would be surprised at the diversity of ideas, products and dreams that can be acheived. Restricting failure would also mean restricting success and that we cannot allow in this country.

Honestly, I'm not even going to bother.

[stevew]

From my experiences at some low wage job type fields.

Most minimum wage workers are basically worthless. They steal their paychecks and can't be counted on for anything. What you'd love to do is to be able to pay them about half of the minwage, and instead give an extra 3-4 dollars an hour to people that actually work hard/have skills that are important(though obviously not a high wage skill). Instead you have to pay the dredges 7/hour, and you can only really pay the "better" workers a few dollars more a hour for that. Those people eventually leave for a better job, and you're on a constant cycle of dealing with headaches and stress to replace your good workers.

For example-Shitty stoner dishwasher who you have to hover over in order to get any kind of production will make min wage. Your best grill cook might make minwage plus $2. Typically I'd make minwage plus $3 or so to get everyone to accomplish the tasks. You burn out quickly when you're doing a third of someone else's job.

Anyways, it all just sucks.

[sterlingice]

Isn't that the problem of not finding the right people, not how much crappy stoner guy is paid? You still have tasks enough for 2 people: one dishwasher and one cook. Paying the cook more doesn't mean the dishes get done any better

SI

[Drake]

Our downtown department store back in the day sucked a hell of a lot more than Walmart. I'm sure there were some great city department stores too, but I think history has exaggerated how amazing they were generally. There's a reason people abandoned them as soon as they could.

As a guy who grew up in a crappy little Midwest town, this was my experience. (Still is, in fact, where the two grocery stores in town are owned by the same guy.) When Walmart came in, most of the local mom-and-pops died...and no one complained. They'd been gouging the fuck out of us for years.

That doesn't seem like such a big deal now, but if you're a 65 y.o. on a fixed income who can't drive and the internet doesn't exist yet, WalMart meant maybe you *could* afford to eat and have your meds this month.

The debate going on in my town right now is to let Walmart expand into a full-sized store (we still only have one of the hometown varieties) that has groceries. The dickhole who owns the grocery stores has been doing everything he could for years to block it because he says it would drive him out of business.

I say that when I can stop at the store in the university town where I work and buy the same shit 40% cheaper than you claim to be able to sell it, then you don't deserve to keep your business. You're gouging us. We all know it. You're living off the old folks and those who don't have a reason to drive 30 miles to get groceries.

[Galaxy]

I laugh at anyone that thinks raising the minimum wage would solve any problems. When you raise payroll, that money has to come from somewhere, 99% of the time it's coming out of the customer by charging higher prices. Oh shit that means people need more money to buy stuff, well let's raise the minimum wage again. Face it minimum wage isn't meant to give someone a livable wage.

The other thing to remember is also the added expenses that come up increasing minimum wages such as payroll and unemployment taxes.

So if raising the minimum wage won't benefit the workers lowering it shouldn't hurt them. Why not have a one cent minimum wage. Think of how low prices will be then!

Hyperbole a bit, don't you think?

it'll just turn into a race to automate and move labor offshore. the big box stores would all turn into giant vending machines stocked by robots

It will just accelerate the movement to online shopping and the declining role of big box stores.

Which IMO is disgusting, and we as a society ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

I guess it depends on everyone having a living wage. How does that work? Pricing is relative to demand and supply and purchasing power, so is there really such a thing as a "livable" wage if everyone had one?

Isn't that the problem of not finding the right people, not how much crappy stoner guy is paid? You still have tasks enough for 2 people: one dishwasher and one cook. Paying the cook more doesn't mean the dishes get done any better

SI

I would argue that the skill level required of a cook is a bit higher than a dishwasher.

[Buccaneer]

Wouldn't expect any less because history proves it. There are many millions of examples of success by all kinds of people that wouldn't have occurred anywhere else. The system works.

But you, I and anyone else here can make a difference in people's lives this season by donating time, money and resources to others...instead of waiting for a system to do it for you.

[JPhillips]

Hyperbole a bit, don't you think?

But if every raise of the minimum wage hurts the economy why not lower it to the extreme? If you believe that raising it hurts the economy why wouldn't lowering it to one cent be beneficial?

[JPhillips]

Then you have no clue as to what it means to have freedoms and liberty. It means that anyone in or coming to this country can have "success" (however they term it) without regards to parentage, social class or governmental restrictions. Sure it's harder for some compared to others, that's human nature, but the opportunity is there (esp. in these modern times). Restricting a floor (like in price controls) means you have to restrict a ceiling and when you start doing that, then you're back to only those with privilege will be able to succeed. Give everyone the opportunity to succeed and the freedom to fail and you would be surprised at the diversity of ideas, products and dreams that can be acheived. Restricting failure would also mean restricting success and that we cannot allow in this country.

How do you explain social mobility being greater in most of Europe and Canada than in the U.S?

[DaddyTorgo]

Wouldn't expect any less because history proves it. There are many millions of examples of success by all kinds of people that wouldn't have occurred anywhere else. The system works.

But you, I and anyone else here can make a difference in people's lives this season by donating time, money and resources to others...instead of waiting for a system to do it for you.

Disagree with your first point, as JPhillips noted. Our relative social mobility is pretty shitty compared to Europe, and even Canada.

Agree fully with your second.

The sad fact though, is that Americans are mostly lazy. They won't get off their asses and make a difference themselves in most all cases - they'd rather write a check and have someone else do it for them. Which is why developing a system to help is not some "big evil" that you like to paint it as.

[BrianD]

I guess it depends on everyone having a living wage. How does that work? Pricing is relative to demand and supply and purchasing power, so is there really such a thing as a "livable" wage if everyone had one?


Then you have no clue as to what it means to have freedoms and liberty. It means that anyone in or coming to this country can have "success" (however they term it) without regards to parentage, social class or governmental restrictions. Sure it's harder for some compared to others, that's human nature, but the opportunity is there (esp. in these modern times). Restricting a floor (like in price controls) means you have to restrict a ceiling and when you start doing that, then you're back to only those with privilege will be able to succeed. Give everyone the opportunity to succeed and the freedom to fail and you would be surprised at the diversity of ideas, products and dreams that can be acheived. Restricting failure would also mean restricting success and that we cannot allow in this country.

I expect these point to be skipped over, but they seemed worth highlighting. Propping everyone up to a "livable wage" causes higher demand for products, and inflation. This inflation will exist until enough people fall off the bottom end and become poor again. The only way to combat that is to limit how much can be earned so that rich people can't afford to pay more and allow the inflation to happen. As much as it sucks to say that some people will have to be poor in any functioning economy, it really is true.

[DaddyTorgo]

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/7/45002641.pdf

The report finds the U.S. ranking well below Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Spain in terms of how freely citizens move up or down the social ladder. Only in Italy and Great Britain is the intensity of the relationship between individual and parental earnings even greater.

For instance, according to the OECD, 47 percent of the economic advantage that high-earning fathers in the United States have over low-earning fathers is transmitted to their sons, compare to, say, 17 percent in Australia and 19 percent in Canada.

According to the OECD report, the main cause of social immobility is educational opportunity. It turns out that America's public school system, rather than lifting children up, is instead holding them down.
Another big factor in social mobility is inequality, the report finds. The greater a nation's inequality, the harder it is for its children to improve their lot.

That confirms findings by other researchers. "The way I usually put this is that when the rungs of the ladder are far apart, it becomes more difficult to climb the ladder," Brookings Institution economist Isabel Sawhill tells HuffPost. "Given that we have more inequality in the U.S. right now than at any time since the 1920s, we should be concerned that this may become a vicious cycle. Inequality in one generation may mean less opportunity for the next generation to get ahead and thus still more inequality in the future."

There are things governments can do to reduce inequality, the OECD points out. Progressive tax systems and social programs help reduce income inequalities between parents "so that their descendants' income would converge more quickly."

Perhaps more realistically for this country, given the current political climate, higher short-term unemployment benefits can reduce the effect of socioeconomic background on student achievement, the reports says.

All in all, the OECD report is an ugly reality check for a country that has historically seen itself as uniquely rewarding of talent; as a place free of the sorts of rigid social structures that led so many generations of immigrants to leave Old Europe.

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

The other thing to remember is also the added expenses that come up increasing minimum wages such as payroll and unemployment taxes.
versus gov't subsidies for the working poor.

i'm enjoying this thread but... we have growing population and a shrinking economy and it isn't walmart's fault

[ISiddiqui]

According to the OECD report, the main cause of social immobility is educational opportunity. It turns out that America's public school system, rather than lifting children up, is instead holding them down.

I think this much should be obvious. The super local concept of education ends to really screw over kids in poor areas, as their property tax per pupil isn't nearly enough to educate kids as well as in rich areas. Yes, money doesn't cure everything in education, but it does damn well help a lot.

Another big factor in social mobility is inequality, the report finds. The greater a nation's inequality, the harder it is for its children to improve their lot.

Also seems a bit obvious. When the ladder is so large to climb, it gets quite a bit harder to do it.

[Buccaneer]

There was a milestone in my last post. Did it at Starbucks on my iPhone. You can teach an old dog new tricks!

My overall point is that there will always be the poor (however society defines them), no matter what kind of system you create. History constantly shows that either we have half rich/half poor or few rich/most poor. We have personal responsibilities to others but one can look around and celebrate the success of those in our communities, like the PB&J and other mom/pop shops mentioned earlier - some are even run by immigrants or first-generation Americans, and yes, even the giants like Walt Disney and Steve Jobs.

[ISiddiqui]

The issue is when the rich and poor are seperated by such chasms. The income inequality of the US was FAR lower in the 1950s, 1960s than it is now - and that is causing significant issues.

[BrianD]

The issue is when the rich and poor are seperated by such chasms. The income inequality of the US was FAR lower in the 1950s, 1960s than it is now - and that is causing significant issues.

If we define this as a problem that needs to be fixed, we really only have two options.
1) Raise taxes and expand social programs.
2) Break up large companies and force more competition for customers and employees.

I'd love to see us focus more on #2.

[ISiddiqui]

If we define this as a problem that needs to be fixed, we really only have two options.
1) Raise taxes and expand social programs.
2) Break up large companies and force more competition for customers and employees.

I'd love to see us focus more on #2.

I don't necessarily see it as an either/or question, however.

OTOH, the powers the be don't really want to hear about #2 as they are the ones that give lots of money ;).

[molson]

How do you explain social mobility being greater in most of Europe and Canada than in the U.S?

Because the U.S. is home to the world largest, most successful, and most globally relevant corporations (the last one is a big difference between now and the 50s, and corporations now have most of the world to profit from), which has created a class of super-duper rich. If we woke up tomorrow and those super-duper rich had have as much as they had today, but the rest of us all had the same, people would be a lot happier. I have no idea why, but they'd be a lot happier. (even though our government would take a huge revenue hit). And if we took our 100,000 richest families and plopped them in Sweden with the same income and wealth, Sweden's social mobility/wealth inequality charts would look "bad" too even if everyone else continued with the same life.

I think the other factor is that as the world shrinks and everyone else becomes more and more "Western-style", the individuals in the U.S. middle class are less as less special. We think wealth inequality in the U.S. is so horrible but we are perfectly OK with global wealth inequality. We are still in the 1%, but we're losing our grip on it a bit.

[molson]

I think this much should be obvious. The super local concept of education ends to really screw over kids in poor areas, as their property tax per pupil isn't nearly enough to educate kids as well as in rich areas. Yes, money doesn't cure everything in education, but it does damn well help a lot.



The education thing isn't obvious to me at all, we talked about this a few pages ago and Young Dark Cloud posted a good article talking about this. Doesn't better education just lead to better educated Walmart employees who can maybe chat about the Roman Empire as they're ringing people up?

[Buccaneer]

The issue is when the rich and poor are seperated by such chasms. The income inequality of the US was FAR lower in the 1950s, 1960s than it is now - and that is causing significant issues.

Sure, it's called greed (for those that are rich - and something about a camel and a needle) and envy (for those that are not).

I would counter that there are FAR more opportunities and record of successes for people of all races and color now than there were in the 1950s and 1960s. Even some that have become incredibly rich, which would have been unthinkable 50-60 years ago.

[DaddyTorgo]

Sure, it's called greed (for those that are rich - and something about a camel and a needle) and envy (for those that are not).

I would counter that there are FAR more opportunities and record of successes for people of all races and color now than there were in the 1950s and 1960s. Even some that have become incredibly rich, which would have been unthinkable 50-60 years ago.

Unfortunately this only goes back to 1967, but as you can clearly see, the facts do not support your belief.

<TABLE class=wikitable><TBODY><TR><TD>1947</TD><TD>0.413</TD><TD>(estimated)</TD></TR><TR><TD>1967</TD><TD>0.397</TD><TD>(first year reported)</TD></TR><TR><TD>1968</TD><TD>0.386</TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD>1970</TD><TD>0.394</TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD>1980</TD><TD>0.403</TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD>1990</TD><TD>0.428</TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD>2000</TD><TD>0.462</TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD>2005</TD><TD>0.469</TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD>2006</TD><TD>0.470</TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD>2007</TD><TD>0.463</TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD>2008</TD><TD>0.467</TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD>2009</TD><TD>0.468</TD><TD></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_US_Gini_Coefficient_for_Household_Income_(1967_-_2007_).png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/The_US_Gini_Coefficient_for_Household_Income_%281967_-_2007_%29.png

[molson]

I wonder if anyone's tried to evaluate social mobility in a way that excludes a consideration of the super-rich. Your odds of growing up lower class and joining the U.S. super-rich are very remote. But your odds of growing up lower class and having U.S. super-rich kind of wealth in Europe are even less remote because they don't have as many people with that kind of wealth. It's easier to get close to the Euro 1% because that group doesn't have as much. But what are are the U.S. v. Europe odds of growing up lower class and then making it to the middle class, or growing up in the middle class and making it to the upper middle class? Those are the more relevant questions I think.

[Young Drachma]

Social mobility and inequality: Upper bound | The Economist (http://www.economist.com/node/15908469)

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs - NYTimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

[Young Drachma]

I wonder if anyone's tried to evaluate social mobility in a way that excludes a consideration of the super-rich. Your odds of growing up lower class and joining the U.S. super-rich are very remote. But your odds of growing up lower class and having U.S. super-rich kind of wealth in Europe are even less remote because they don't have as many people with that kind of wealth. It's easier to get close to the Euro 1% because that group doesn't have as much. But what are are the U.S. v. Europe odds of growing up lower class and then making it to the middle class, or growing up in the middle class and making it to the upper middle class? Those are the more relevant questions I think.

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc113/Dynasty_DC/income.png

[cuervo72]

Another thing I'll throw into the mix here - which supports Bucc's assertion that people still do come here for opportunity - is something that I see here at work. I don't know what the exact percentage is, but a good number of my fellow technical contractors aren't originally from here. They came here from overseas (actually, saw some of that at my last job too, in higher ed). I'm assuming that like me, they are making wages that are quite decent (and actually probably better than mine in some cases).

Now, the problem is -- why are they leapfrogging people who have been here? How much of it is a failing of our educational system, and how much is a failure in personal initiative?

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

buncha bjorn's pulling themselves up by the wooden clog-straps

[Young Drachma]

Another thing I'll throw into the mix here - which supports Bucc's assertion that people still do come here for opportunity - is something that I see here at work. I don't know what the exact percentage is, but a good number of my fellow technical contractors aren't originally from here. They came here from overseas (actually, saw some of that at my last job too, in higher ed). I'm assuming that like me, they are making wages that are quite decent (and actually probably better than mine in some cases).

Now, the problem is -- why are they leapfrogging people who have been here? How much of it is a failing of our educational system, and how much is a failure in personal initiative?

A strong combo of both, me thinks. Cultural factors obviously play a huge part in this, but we're talking about a country with a billion people too. So there's that.

[sterlingice]

I would argue that the skill level required of a cook is a bit higher than a dishwasher.

But that wasn't the problem presented. "1) I can't pay my cook more and 2) the dishes don't get done" are two different problems. If it was "I can't pay the cook so I get crappy cooks because I have to pay my dishwasher more" would be one thing. But "I can't pay the cook so I get a crappy dishwasher" is a non-sequitur just as was pointing to the differences in skill levels between a cook and dishwasher. What does the cook's pay have to do with getting dishes washed?

SI

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

i read something the other day about how there's more vacant homes in the u.s. than there are homeless. that seems like something schoolchildren will read about in 500 years and laugh at

[molson]

Of course, the Dutch quintiles are much closer together than the U.S. quintiles, so when it's measured relative to other Dutch and Americans it's hard to get a sense of what kind of social mobility we're talking about. Going from the Dutch 2nd quintile to the Dutch 4th quintile probably involves finding some change on the street. Even if it required incredible hard work and years in school to make that jump. A similar jump in class in the U.S. would be really dramatic and be a huge payoff for your success. We definitely have some things we could learn from some European economies, and especially European governments, I'm just not sure how much of it is as desirable as it appears. I've heard that sentiment expressed from some European IT guys when I worked around them a few years ago. Europe has more people muddled around the middle but in the U.S. a brilliant IT guy can more quickly make a bunch of money. The experience is probably way different for a cook or a factory worker, of course.

[sterlingice]

buncha bjorn's pulling themselves up by the wooden clog-straps

:D

SI

[ISiddiqui]

The education thing isn't obvious to me at all, we talked about this a few pages ago and Young Dark Cloud posted a good article talking about this. Doesn't better education just lead to better educated Walmart employees who can maybe chat about the Roman Empire as they're ringing people up?

Are you seriously indicating that better education doesn't lead to higher paying jobs?

[Buccaneer]

DT, I am not disputing income inequality, never have. The greedy and envious will take care of itself in the end. All I was stating was looking at the opportunities and successes that many people have acheived over the past 50-60 years.

[molson]

Are you seriously indicating that better education doesn't lead to higher paying jobs?

Yes. I think it's a dangerous fallacy to believe education alone creates higher-paying jobs. I talked about this a while ago when it comes to the legal profession. Lawyers make money, so the government subsidizes loans in higher amounts to create more lawyers. But that doesn't increase the number of legal jobs, it just increases the number of unemployed lawyers who work at walmart.

The exception to this might be where education creates jobs in the global economy that didn't exist before. But run-of-the-mill education doesn't do that. An MIT education does. I'd be all for the government getting out of the educational loan business and instead going into the merit scholarship business. Find the best and brightest wherever they are, regardless of their family income level, and make sure their superior talent is being developed. For the masses, no, I don't think education alone creates higher paying jobs. (Edit: Though maybe, better lower education facilitates finding that superior talent - I can see that, but the goal I think should be making sure the superior talent is located, not making sure the masses have two years of community college.)

[ISiddiqui]

Yes. I think it's a dangerous fallacy to believe education alone creates higher-paying jobs.

Maybe not on an individual basis, but as a whole, those who are more educated tend to make far more money than those who are not. Those with college degrees made more, per person, than those with only high school degrees.

[DaddyTorgo]

DT, I am not disputing income inequality, never have. The greedy and envious will take care of itself in the end. All I was stating was looking at the opportunities and successes that many people have acheived over the past 50-60 years.

You're trying to use a argument based on anecdotes in a statistical discussion though.

It's akin to saying "Well I know Player X is a great hitter...man have you seen the way he swings and the HR he hit last week?" when Player X has a batting average below the Mendoza line and 1 HR all year.

Look...I'm not arguing that there aren't many successes over the last 50-60 years, and that some percentage of them weren't achieved by people who clawed their way up from nothing. I'm just saying (with an assist from Young Drachma's post there) that those anecdotes are not telling the story of the vast majority of folks.

[DaddyTorgo]

Yes. I think it's a dangerous fallacy to believe education alone creates higher-paying jobs. I talked about this a while ago when it comes to the legal profession. Lawyers make money, so the government subsidizes loans in higher amounts to create more lawyers. But that doesn't increase the number of legal jobs, it just increases the number of unemployed lawyers who work at walmart.

The exception to this might be where education creates jobs in the global economy that didn't exist before. But run-of-the-mill education doesn't do that. An MIT education does. I'd be all for the government getting out of the educational loan business and instead going into the merit scholarship business. Find the best and brightest wherever they are, regardless of their family income level, and make sure their superior talent is being developed. For the masses, no, I don't think education alone creates higher paying jobs. (Edit: Though maybe, better lower education facilitates finding that superior talent - I can see that, but the goal I think should be making sure the superior talent is located, not making sure the masses have two years of community college.)

The logical extension to this though is that the government has to ensure a uniform standard of education for all children to get them to the point where they can do a "mass evaluation of talent."

I do agree with you though as far as getting into the merit scholarship business.

[molson]

If greater class mobility relative to existing classes is desirable, (we want to make it easier for lower class people to enter the middle class), isn't one half of that equation trying to figure out how to make it easier to drop from the middle class to the lower class? I guess higher estate taxes is one way to do that - but how much is the middle class leaving behind anyway and is it really a problem that they do? Is there any other ways? Stronger middle-class drugs? Or do we really want to go for it and make it easier to drop from the upper class to the lower class? THERE higher estate taxes could definitely have more of an effect. Still, they have advantages besides inheritance of course. It seems odd to try to neuter advantages that parents give children, but that's definitely 1/2 of the equation that isn't talked about near as much as the other 1/2. Does Europe do anything in particular to make it so much easier to drop classes? (Or is it just that the classes are closer together so the movement there is really pretty irrelevant.)

[Coffee Warlord]

Are you seriously indicating that better education doesn't lead to higher paying jobs?

It's been answered, but I'd like to add - it's not that simple.

More people getting a college education means there are more people theoretically eligible for higher paying jobs. The availability of higher paying jobs, however, remains a constant. Thus, you'd see more people getting into bigger piles of debt, with an even more cramped job market.

Not everyone needs to go to college - it's a needless and major expense for many people, who simply are either uninterested or incapable of going into a career that would require it. Nor does having a degree in a field make you qualified to hold a job in that field - it merely proves you could sit through 4+ years of questionably related classwork. First Rule for every college grad starting their first career-type job: They Don't Know Shit. It's why entry level jobs get paid peanuts - employers need to figure out who can learn, and who simply suck.

Yes, it's easier to get a foot in the door with that degree, but in reality, they are barely more qualified than they were 4 years ago without the degree. We as a country have gotten into this mindset that you can go nowhere without a degree, when it simply ain't true. Throwing more people into college solves nothing, and arguably causes more harm.

[Buccaneer]

You're trying to use a argument based on anecdotes in a statistical discussion though.

It's akin to saying "Well I know Player X is a great hitter...man have you seen the way he swings and the HR he hit last week?" when Player X has a batting average below the Mendoza line and 1 HR all year.

Look...I'm not arguing that there aren't many successes over the last 50-60 years, and that some percentage of them weren't achieved by people who clawed their way up from nothing. I'm just saying (with an assist from Young Drachma's post there) that those anecdotes are not telling the story of the vast majority of folks.

From GazelleIndex (not sure of the date, it sounds recent)

Despite the corporate push for supplier diversity, the public policy focus on small businesses, and notwithstanding the fact that 50% of the nation’s 27 million small firms are owned by minority or women entrepreneurs, there is remarkably little information on small business capacity and performance.

Today, there are 5.8 million minority-owned businesses and their number increased by 600% over the last 15 years. They comprise 20% of all small businesses, create 7.6 million jobs and employ 5% of the workforce. Their employment capacity has grown so significantly that if all their employees were minorities, they would now provide jobs for 18% of the minority workforce.

[molson]

Those with college degrees made more, per person, than those with only high school degrees.

That's true, but I don't think it follows that more people with college degrees alone creates higher paying jobs. Unless those degrees are in "starting Google" or something.

[CrimsonFox]

I haven't actually looked for anything about this but did the big protests actually happen? Were some walmarts without workers?

[Young Drachma]

I haven't actually looked for anything about this but did the big protests actually happen? Were some walmarts without workers?

No, not really. It was largely (and always) a protest made of up a few hourly people and lots of union folks who weren't working for Walmarts. No one who has a job and needs the money like that could afford to be seen as a troublemaker. NPR did an interview with a few hourly associates who were picketing, but ...that wasn't really a common thing.

[Young Drachma]

“Costco’s average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam’s Club. And Costco’s health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco “it’s better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder.” Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street’s assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street’s profit demands. Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco’s customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers’ expense. “This is not altruistic,” he said. “This is good business.”

How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart - New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/business/yourmoney/17costco.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

[Buccaneer]

and Costco is a very cool store.

[Galaxy]

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/7/45002641.pdf

The report finds the U.S. ranking well below Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Spain in terms of how freely citizens move up or down the social ladder. Only in Italy and Great Britain is the intensity of the relationship between individual and parental earnings even greater.

For instance, according to the OECD, 47 percent of the economic advantage that high-earning fathers in the United States have over low-earning fathers is transmitted to their sons, compare to, say, 17 percent in Australia and 19 percent in Canada.

According to the OECD report, the main cause of social immobility is educational opportunity. It turns out that America's public school system, rather than lifting children up, is instead holding them down.
Another big factor in social mobility is inequality, the report finds. The greater a nation's inequality, the harder it is for its children to improve their lot.

That confirms findings by other researchers. "The way I usually put this is that when the rungs of the ladder are far apart, it becomes more difficult to climb the ladder," Brookings Institution economist Isabel Sawhill tells HuffPost. "Given that we have more inequality in the U.S. right now than at any time since the 1920s, we should be concerned that this may become a vicious cycle. Inequality in one generation may mean less opportunity for the next generation to get ahead and thus still more inequality in the future."

There are things governments can do to reduce inequality, the OECD points out. Progressive tax systems and social programs help reduce income inequalities between parents "so that their descendants' income would converge more quickly."

Perhaps more realistically for this country, given the current political climate, higher short-term unemployment benefits can reduce the effect of socioeconomic background on student achievement, the reports says.

All in all, the OECD report is an ugly reality check for a country that has historically seen itself as uniquely rewarding of talent; as a place free of the sorts of rigid social structures that led so many generations of immigrants to leave Old Europe.

I think it's a bit tough to compare Canada, Australia, and Nordic countries to the US in terms of demographics and population. How do you define social mobility? The wealthy in Europe tend to be long-time family businesses and big businesses.


But that wasn't the problem presented. "1) I can't pay my cook more and 2) the dishes don't get done" are two different problems. If it was "I can't pay the cook so I get crappy cooks because I have to pay my dishwasher more" would be one thing. But "I can't pay the cook so I get a crappy dishwasher" is a non-sequitur just as was pointing to the differences in skill levels between a cook and dishwasher. What does the cook's pay have to do with getting dishes washed?

SI

Got it.
I think this much should be obvious. The super local concept of education ends to really screw over kids in poor areas, as their property tax per pupil isn't nearly enough to educate kids as well as in rich areas. Yes, money doesn't cure everything in education, but it does damn well help a lot.



Also seems a bit obvious. When the ladder is so large to climb, it gets quite a bit harder to do it.

I never bought into the whole spend more money on education stuff. We spend a big sum of money compared to the majority of nations per pupil on education. We need better parents, period. Parents who will actually be nvolved in their child's education, and maybe make better decisions for themselves and their children. Also, the one-size-fits-all approach to education needs to go. You could spend a million dollars per child, and the results would likely be the same.



2) Break up large companies and force more competition for customers and employees.

I'd love to see us focus more on #2.

How does this work? Anyone is free to start a company. It's the government that puts up barriers.



The income, or wealth, inequality concept is rather simple I think-technology and globalization. Now, you can sell your products and services to people all around the world, and therefore you will increase your own income and wealth due to the marketplace size. Working wages won't change because of that, because they have no equity interest in the company.

Technology has also made companies leaner, more agile, and connected like never before.

Are you seriously indicating that better education doesn't lead to higher paying jobs?

Maybe not on an individual basis, but as a whole, those who are more educated tend to make far more money than those who are not. Those with college degrees made more, per person, than those with only high school degrees.

Define what a better education is. Getting a degree in history or art may be nice, but it certainly won't make you a valuable commodity like someone with a STEM degree and skills.
Colleges and universities offer undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in practically anything these days, and almost everyone among the younger generations are getting undergraduate degrees, along with an ever-increasing supply of graduate degrees. Having a undergraduate degree is not the competitive advantage that it used to be, it's what you have in it (and frankly, in some circles, from where you have from) that matters. Get a degree in computer science or accounting, and you should have zero problems in finding a good job right out of college.


How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart - New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/business/yourmoney/17costco.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)


Are Costco and Wal-Mart really anything similar, besides being retailers? Isn't this like comparing a BMW to a Chevy? Different markets, business models, and products/services?

[Young Drachma]

Define what a better education is. Getting a degree in history or art may be nice, but it certainly won't make you a valuable commodity like someone with a STEM degree and skills.
Colleges and universities offer undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in practically anything these days, and almost everyone among the younger generations are getting undergraduate degrees, along with an ever-increasing supply of graduate degrees. Having a undergraduate degree is not the competitive advantage that it used to be, it's what you have in it (and frankly, in some circles, from where you have from) that matters. Get a degree in computer science or accounting, and you should have zero problems in finding a good job right out of college.



The Myth of STEM Labor Shortages | The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy (http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2701)

http://popecenter.org/assets/STEM_3.jpg


The “education crisis” myth - Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/2012/01/30/the_education_crisis_myth/)

The fact is, while our cash-starved schools would obviously benefit from more resources, and while better schools clearly couldn’t hurt our society, there’s no empirical, data-based reason to believe that improving our schools would reverse the trend of America losing high-tech jobs to slave-labor nations like China.

Without a change in tax and tariff-free trade policies that economically incentivize companies like Apple to keep moving production to cheap labor havens overseas, the only “education” that will bring those jobs back is the kind that indoctrinates high-tech American workers to compete with Chinese workers by accepting the horrific labor conditions those Chinese workers experience.

Based on the New York Times’ own reporting on Apple, that means an education system in America that teaches our workers to simply accept being paid $17 a day, to work six days a week in 12-hour shifts and to live in crowded dormitories so that they can be stampeded into the factory at any hour of the day. It means, in short, an education system that tells Eric Saragoza to shut up and accept the employer’s draconian demands.

Not surprisingly, the curriculum for this new education system is already being championed by the very political and media realms that originally constructed the Great Education Myth. In Congress, a group of senators is proposing to eliminate overtime protections for vast swaths of the America’s high-tech workforce in the name of competing with China. In state legislatures, lawmakers are looking to weaken child labor statutes, also in the name of competition.

And on the New York Times Op-Ed page, Thomas Friedman implies that Americans are lazy and declares that “average is over” and that “everyone needs to find their extra” — elite-speak for the notion that Americans, who already log some of the longest workdays in the world and who are already among the planet’s most productive laborers, must work even harder than they already do.

What Scientist Shortage? : CJR (http://www.cjr.org/reports/what_scientist_shortage.php?page=all&print=true)

[Marc Vaughan]

But you, I and anyone else here can make a difference in people's lives this season by donating time, money and resources to others...instead of waiting for a system to do it for you.

I try to - I've helped several people learn programming over the years, some of whom have stuck at it and are now professional developers, some of whom didn't.

The problem as I see it is that people only have the 'time' to better themselves if they have spare time - if they're working 80 hours a week at minimum wage to cover living costs then thats not a life containing 'opportunity' thats subsistence waiting for an illness or other unavoidable issue to drag into the gutter ...

[Buccaneer]

Marc, one of my favorite things to do is to donate money to help pay for specific prescriptions for needy families. I don't nor should I know what kinds of medicines but my donations do go for that need.

[Warhammer]

I have to agree with Galaxy.

While in Ohio for Thanksgiving, I found out my sister in law is pregnant with another baby. This makes for her 3rd child by the age of 25 with two different fathers. She works at Wal-Mart, and her husband works there as well. These are not managers, they work in the deli. She alone has racked up $30k in student loans and she is not close to getting a degree, all without having to pay a dime in tuition! Her husband has a similar track record. Between the two of them, they will have a total of 5 kids with 5 different parents, only two of the kids have the same mother/father combination!

Throwing more money in education won't fix this. Parenting was lacking here, as their mother kept giving them whatever they wanted without forcing them to do anything for it. They have the latest cell phones, all paid for by their parents. Insurance? Mom and dad. My mother and father in law can barely make their own ends meet, much less provide for this deadbeat couple. I am sure they are not alone in this country. When my wife's parents die, they will have no clue what to do.

This girl's husband has decided he will run for President next year. He wants to run as part of the libertardian party (no, he was not joking).

[Marc Vaughan]

There was a milestone in my last post. Did it at Starbucks on my iPhone. You can teach an old dog new tricks!
I keep meaning to figure out how to pay in Starbucks with my phone - but haven't bothered yet ...

My overall point is that there will always be the poor (however society defines them), no matter what kind of system you create. History constantly shows that either we have half rich/half poor or few rich/most poor. We have personal responsibilities to others but one can look around and celebrate the success of those in our communities, like the PB&J and other mom/pop shops mentioned earlier - some are even run by immigrants or first-generation Americans, and yes, even the giants like Walt Disney and Steve Jobs.

I agree its still possible to pull a 'rags to riches' story, but its far more difficult than it should be in most countries - often some like the UK are heading in the wrong direction imho by making it harder for the less well off to better themselves by increasing charges for education etc.

(I don't know if I'd have achieved half of what I have from a career perspective if I'd been born a decade or two later - I'd like to think I'm a hard worker, but without the opportunity to learn programming my opportunities would have been restricted hugely)

Also remember many of the 'rags to riches' opportunities in the old days comprised of people setting up stores which now would have no chance competing against the massive corporations in retail today or advancing technology which today will run into huge patent issues very quickly ... the world is becoming far more restrictive to innovation and social climbing imho.

[Marc Vaughan]

Marc, one of my favorite things to do is to donate money to help pay for specific prescriptions for needy families. I don't nor should I know what kinds of medicines but my donations do go for that need.

Thats really cool - out of interest how do you go about doing this?

PS - My belief is that medical treatment is a 'right' for anyone and shouldn't be down to donations/charity from individuals but something which everyone in society contributes towards (including entities such as corporations).

[Buccaneer]

Marc, I fully believe it is possible but it has to be something new and different in such a society where things are changing so fast. In the old days (like 10 years ago), you could've spent 5 years developing a game before coming to market, now it's down to 60 days (or something like that). Selling PCs or groceries or delivering newspapers are not where it's at, one has to be more nimble in the age of short attention spans. Come to think of it, what I have seen in startup businesses (retail) is a shorter lifespan. They do well at first because it's something new and different but then people quickly get tired of it faster than ever. I wonder, though, if everything will become micro-transactions?

[Buccaneer]

Thats really cool - out of interest how do you go about doing this?

PS - My belief is that medical treatment is a 'right' for anyone and shouldn't be down to donations/charity from individuals but something which everyone in society contributes towards (including entities such as corporations).

Go look for something like this in your community http://www.ecusocmin.org/MentalHealth.aspx

[SteveMax58]

But if every raise of the minimum wage hurts the economy why not lower it to the extreme? If you believe that raising it hurts the economy why wouldn't lowering it to one cent be beneficial?
It would be beneficial for finding the true value of workers just like letting the housing market find its true bottom.

In either case, there are ebbs & flows that will enable the true value to come about. And what is true value? Its the cost of the workforce that can afford to do the job.

If you truly offered 1 cent an hour, this would not be possible to recoup in today's cost structure. So you'd be joking if you put a job out for that as the worker would need to spend money to make less money. Clearly, that will not get any workers unless there are workers who can truly live on 40 cents a week minus their fuel, rent/housing, food costs.

But it does mean that rather than being forced to pay $7/hr + for the rest of eternity to a new employee...a company could offer $5/hr and get somebody willing to work at that rate. That worker may be very well located (i.e. lives next to the business) with minimal living costs, or have whatever reason they might have for working at that rate. Perhaps they have zero skills that are relevant but willing to start out for some period of time to garner experience to be worth $7, 8, or more an hour.

Perhaps the company starts every entry level position at such a rate & determines some people are worth $12/hr but they aren't willing to start everybody at that rate due to the complexities involved with firing people. But said company rewards hard work & does this (as policy) for 90 days until such time they feel confident that they have a proper gauge of the new hire.

Lots of reasons that no minimum wage is beneficial. The problem (as others in this thread have pointed out as well), is that collectively we want to pretend that everybody making min wage is somehow supposed to be on par with Bill Gates philosophically. And another point I feel is missed in all of this is the entire point of employment is to help the company that is paying you. If you arent worth that much to them, you are simply creating a subsidy via inflation & forcing the competitive hand of a business.

[Marc Vaughan]

How does this work? Anyone is free to start a company. It's the government that puts up barriers.

This is frequently not the case for various reasons:

(1) Economies of scale, no 'startup' can realistically compete against Publix/Walmart in that area because of the huge economies of scale which are in place for those corporations.
(please note personally I'm not actually in favour of breaking up Walmart etc. - just ensuring they treat their employee's decently)
(2) Patents, its near impossible for a 'startup' to break into many areas of technology because of existing patents on obvious items which prevent their reuse by others - as an example even a huge corporation such as Google has had problems moving into the telephone arena with Android because of such things.
(3) Agressive pricing/forcing rivals out of business - its fairly easy for a huge corporation to run at a loss in a small region/specific area of business in order to remove potential competition.
(4) Restrictive target audience for sales; in the UK in the 'old days' each farm could sell to supermarkets and negotiate a reasonable price - today only a handful of large supermarkets exist which means the farmer either takes the price they're offered or lets the crop rot in the field.

Most issues imho come down mainly to corporations having adapted to globalisation far more quickly than governments have .... as such they've exploited loopholes and maximised their opportunities while governments haven't realised the dangers inherant in them doing so (or in some cases the people in government were complicit in this as they made money from the changes in society).

The income, or wealth, inequality concept is rather simple I think-technology and globalization. Now, you can sell your products and services to people all around the world, and therefore you will increase your own income and wealth due to the marketplace size. Working wages won't change because of that, because they have no equity interest in the company.
Thats why personally I'd advocate some form of taxation to ensure that companies operating in a country pay a decent amount of money to the government in that country rather than play clever tax loop holes to avoid doing so.

This would involve some sort of sales or transaction based tax being brought into being with the aim being to avoid the situation such as a company like Apple who pay minimal tax in the US but having HUGE sales revenue ...

[Marc Vaughan]

If you truly offered 1 cent an hour, this would not be possible to recoup in today's cost structure. So you'd be joking if you put a job out for that as the worker would need to spend money to make less money. Clearly, that will not get any workers unless there are workers who can truly live on 40 cents a week minus their fuel, rent/housing, food costs.
There was a scheme recently in the UK (now relented I believe after protests) where people were forced to work for free in order to retain their benefits ... the idea was well intentioned (ie. teach long term unemployed to work again, give them training) .... however as usual corporations exploited the situation to effectively give themselves a rolling stock of 'free employees' and actually remove paying jobs.

Perhaps they have zero skills that are relevant but willing to start out for some period of time to garner experience to be worth $7, 8, or more an hour.
This pre-supposes that there will be jobs paying $7, 8 or more an hour always ... if corporations are allowed to fully maximise profits then eventually those jobs will also decrease in value and salary as more and more people chase fewer and fewer job positions.

[cuervo72]

Nurses man, nurses.

Anectdata, sure. But my brother, cousin, and I might be a decent microcosm of different elements of this discussion.

Our grandfather was your stereotypical son of immigrants - first generation from Italian parents, grew up in South Philly. After the death of my great-grandfather, he went to live/study at a school for orphans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girard_College) (well, for those w/o fathers at least). The school impressed upon him the importance of a strong education, and of a good work ethic.

My dad and elder aunt didn't go to college, but worked hard as an ironworker and a geriatric nurse, respectively. Certainly not high-paying jobs, but tough, honest work. In my dad's case, good enough to afford a modest single-family home in the suburbs. My aunt unfortunately divorced (husband was gay), and my cousin split time between my aunt's apartments and his dad's place.

Anyway, back to my generation. I was labeled as "smart" very early on, school came easy, and college was considered a foregone conclusion. Went to a good school, graduated with an engineering degree, and (with significant help from a friend it should be noted) entered the workforce soon after graduation making more after a couple of years than my father ever had. It may not be doing anything that pushes the envelope and I probably fell short of my potential, but I consider myself to be very lucky to be where I am (and with further luck would like to stay there). I think I'm a little higher on the ladder now than I was growing up.

My brother - while a smart kid - had more trouble in school (learning disability that went unlabeled, we think). Had to fend for himself in his early 20s when my parents divorced and sold the house. He didn't go to college immediately, but eventually enrolled in CC (while working jobs like the tool dept at Sears, etc) and then nursing school, graduating in his 30s. He's now an OR nurse who can (and seemingly does) work as many hours as he wants, and will probably never be out of a job for very long.

My cousin is no dummy either, but I question his choices and his work ethic. His education lists a CC and a 4-year college, though I don't think he finished his degree (I could be wrong). He's one of those people who lists "School of Hard Knocks" as part of their education. With a major of "Freelance Gynecology." Yeah, he's a comedian. No, literally - he is trying to break into comedy by making the rounds on the Philly/Jersey comedy circuit. In his late 30s. I believe he is recently back on unemployment, having lost his restaurant gig. Hopefully he won't have to resort to (as has been alleged) stealing from my grandfather or skimming from his mother's bank account again.


Three similar backgrounds with three different paths, three different outcomes. Different mixes of luck, circumstance, and work ethic.

[molson]

This pre-supposes that there will be jobs paying $7, 8 or more an hour always ... if corporations are allowed to fully maximise profits then eventually those jobs will also decrease in value and salary as more and more people chase fewer and fewer job positions.

But isn't the "Cotsco/Wegman's argument" that these companies would actually be MORE successful if they paid their employees more?

[Desnudo]

How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart - New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/business/yourmoney/17costco.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

Interesting article that talks about comparing Costco and Walmart

Why Can't Walmart Be More Like Costco? - The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/26/why-can-t-walmart-be-more-like-costco.html)

[SteveMax58]

This pre-supposes that there will be jobs paying $7, 8 or more an hour always ... if corporations are allowed to fully maximise profits then eventually those jobs will also decrease in value and salary as more and more people chase fewer and fewer job positions.
Well, we have to pre-suppose that because if there is not an economic reason to pay somebody $7/hr then there is no shortage of people to do an equivalent job as the new hire. This pre-supposes a new hire is considered a somewhat valuable talent (as $7/hr talent goes I guess). But it doesn't preclude a business from creating a menial labor type of position (fetching carts, sweeping the sidewalk, etc.) by forcing a wage that cannot be easily justified.

I started out in a very similar place. Started in retail with zero skills (and I mean zero) and a minimum wage, worked hard & got into a management role eventually. It was a modest wage even as a manager but then, it wasn't very difficult to find people just like me (much as I begged to differ at the time). I had some potential but I certainly didnt have marketable value to a business beyond "I work hard & I'm kinda smart".

Eventually I realized that retail was not my thing & got into communications. Improved my skills exponentially thru self study & willingness to take on challenges and earn a reasonable living. Some would say a very good living. But the point is that along my way I met a lot of people that did not have the desire or motivation to do the things I did. Maybe it was boring for them or just too much effort without seeing the immediate payoff. The only thing I knew was that knowledge gained could not be taken away from me so I continued to absorb as much as I could get exposed to.

And I guess the point of it all is that I'm not a genius but I'm also not lucky in the sense that I just stumbled into where I am today (which is by no means everybody's definition of success...but it is the definition of social mobility of at least 2 income brackets). There is a reason I am able to make the better living I can now as opposed to what I made years ago making minimum wage with no formal education and those reasons are because I put forth real effort where others did not. Maybe they werent as capable but thats still not something that gets solved by simply increasing the money they are given.

Now, as much as I'm not for putting artificial caps/minimums on wages, I am much more in favor of putting in discussing what society should (philosophically & practically) do regarding basic services & care. But wages & societal service minimums are a 2 different topics in my mind.

[cartman]

But isn't the "Cotsco/Wegman's argument" that these companies would actually be MORE successful if they paid their employees more?

Not the companies, but their shareholders. But Costco's stock performance doesn't support that line of thinking.

EDIT: Sorry, misread your post. Yes, that is the Costco's approach. Paying your employees more and giving them better benefits is good for the company. Leads to reduced turnover (less spent on employee training), reduced employee theft (not as much shrinkage to eat), and happier employees which is manifested in consumer satisfaction.

[Young Drachma]

Interesting article that talks about comparing Costco and Walmart

Why Can't Walmart Be More Like Costco? - The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/26/why-can-t-walmart-be-more-like-costco.html)

Walmart's Internal Compensation Documents Reveal Systematic Limit On Advancement (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/walmarts-internal-compensation-plan_n_2145086.html)

[Galaxy]

Also remember many of the 'rags to riches' opportunities in the old days comprised of people setting up stores which now would have no chance competing against the massive corporations in retail today or advancing technology which today will run into huge patent issues very quickly ... the world is becoming far more restrictive to innovation and social climbing imho.

This is frequently not the case for various reasons:

(1) Economies of scale, no 'startup' can realistically compete against Publix/Walmart in that area because of the huge economies of scale which are in place for those corporations.
(please note personally I'm not actually in favour of breaking up Walmart etc. - just ensuring they treat their employee's decently)
(2) Patents, its near impossible for a 'startup' to break into many areas of technology because of existing patents on obvious items which prevent their reuse by others - as an example even a huge corporation such as Google has had problems moving into the telephone arena with Android because of such things.
(3) Agressive pricing/forcing rivals out of business - its fairly easy for a huge corporation to run at a loss in a small region/specific area of business in order to remove potential competition.
(4) Restrictive target audience for sales; in the UK in the 'old days' each farm could sell to supermarkets and negotiate a reasonable price - today only a handful of large supermarkets exist which means the farmer either takes the price they're offered or lets the crop rot in the field.

Most issues imho come down mainly to corporations having adapted to globalisation far more quickly than governments have .... as such they've exploited loopholes and maximised their opportunities while governments haven't realised the dangers inherant in them doing so (or in some cases the people in government were complicit in this as they made money from the changes in society).


Thats why personally I'd advocate some form of taxation to ensure that companies operating in a country pay a decent amount of money to the government in that country rather than play clever tax loop holes to avoid doing so.

This would involve some sort of sales or transaction based tax being brought into being with the aim being to avoid the situation such as a company like Apple who pay minimal tax in the US but having HUGE sales revenue ...

This is frequently not the case for various reasons:

(1) Economies of scale, no 'startup' can realistically compete against Publix/Walmart in that area because of the huge economies of scale which are in place for those corporations.
(please note personally I'm not actually in favour of breaking up Walmart etc. - just ensuring they treat their employee's decently)
(2) Patents, its near impossible for a 'startup' to break into many areas of technology because of existing patents on obvious items which prevent their reuse by others - as an example even a huge corporation such as Google has had problems moving into the telephone arena with Android because of such things.
(3) Agressive pricing/forcing rivals out of business - its fairly easy for a huge corporation to run at a loss in a small region/specific area of business in order to remove potential competition.
(4) Restrictive target audience for sales; in the UK in the 'old days' each farm could sell to supermarkets and negotiate a reasonable price - today only a handful of large supermarkets exist which means the farmer either takes the price they're offered or lets the crop rot in the field.

Most issues imho come down mainly to corporations having adapted to globalisation far more quickly than governments have .... as such they've exploited loopholes and maximised their opportunities while governments haven't realised the dangers inherant in them doing so (or in some cases the people in government were complicit in this as they made money from the changes in society).


Thats why personally I'd advocate some form of taxation to ensure that companies operating in a country pay a decent amount of money to the government in that country rather than play clever tax loop holes to avoid doing so.

This would involve some sort of sales or transaction based tax being brought into being with the aim being to avoid the situation such as a company like Apple who pay minimal tax in the US but having HUGE sales revenue ...

1 & 4) I completely disagree. I think it's much easier, and cheaper, to start a business these days. The internet, smartphones, technology, social media, have open the floodgates. Pick up the Four-Hour Work Week (don't let the title fool you). Innovation is a subjective concept, as I believe good marketing and sales is a big part of your business plan. You need to be clever, and offer something different from the retailers. It could be the marketing, service, product, price, or whatever angle you have.

2) No company is going to go after a small start-up over patents. It would be a very bad move from a PR standpoint. Not going to happen.

4) I think it's a two-way street. Grocery stores need farms just as much as farms need them.

[JPhillips]

There are plenty of "companies" that exist solely to file patent lawsuits. It's a real problem.

[Galaxy]

There are plenty of "companies" that exist solely to file patent lawsuits. It's a real problem.

A big company like Google is not going to go after a 3-person start-up-until they become a real threat.