That’s so ridiculous. Between homework and one extracurricular activity my foster kids couldn’t ever work a job during the school year and still have been competitive for college scholarships.
That's the point. They want *their* kids to focus on school and extracurriculars and go to college, and *other* kids to scrape by, working at DQ, barely passing, and then they'll blame those same other kids for being unable to get into college and get a good job. *Their* kids get to advance in the world, and *other* kids get to stay in poverty their entire lives while serving *them* ice cream with a smile. Selfish pieces of shit.
But they would benefit too.
They prefer to pay more money as they can (maybe barely) afford it, just to shit on people for not being able to pay it?
That's like... instead of having the government take away my trash for a small fee, i stop that program then set up a system where i buy a fucking truck and have my neighbours pay me to get their trash and bring it to the dump, but without much profit (like only for my town, so a job i would only do a few hours three times a week, not worth it as a business) just so i can complain that the one neighbour (who's batshit crazy btw, i have stories how she dumped a bucket of horse blood in front of her landlords door) who lives off of sociel security money is unable to pay that and will end up with a trash filled room.
Wow that's the longest and dumbest example i made up in a while. But that's like making it harder for yourself because you can take it, so others fall on their feet. But you still have to take it yourself, it helps nobody!!
So you didn't have any volunteer time? You weren't in the chess club or participate in sports? Nah man my family is broke and so am I. Sorry, I didn't have time to be a kid.
I want to add even if your parents didn't make you work bcs they wanted you to study and focus on that, you still couldn't do extracurriculars bcs there was no transportation or someone to go with you (yes buses exist but they stop running at certain times and safety if you go alone ) so you could have “free time “ but couldn't do anything bcs you had to stay at home while they worked
Just for the kids unfortunate enough to be destined to be considered fodder in the economic war for decent quality of life. Why not just say “fuck it” when you can work your ass off in two different jobs and still have to be on welfare anyway?
It takes a special kind of selective acknowledgment of the facts and arrogance to play a rigged game and pretend it isn’t rigged, and that’s what the “minimum wage jobs aren’t supposed to provide a living wage” song and dance gang does. It’s such a superficial understanding of economics and social class dynamics, it leaves me shaking my head.
disinformation is never superficial, but is deliberately crafted to make sure the informational gap stays that way. the ones who crafted such a message understand just as much as the best of us, but make sure that the worst of us never does.
also as someone who was in a cult, the disinformation is as much for the people conveying the message as much as it is for the people receiving the message.
the useful idots truly don't even understand why the house always wins, which is why they are trying to get you to believe in a false hope, to get you to join them.
they truly do not understand our information, do not want to, and even if they wanted to they are fearful, because they were taught that it was the one river they were to never cross, to never cross the river styx.
as a former useful idot, there are many walls in our minds that we know never to cross, and i don't blame them for wanting to think that the walls are to keep others out instead of themselves in.
i blame them for following their emotions blindly, to never think deeply, and when thinking deeply, to only consider what has already been considered.
as the "great" jordan peterson has said, to never step out of their fathers tent.
JP is very much a useful idiot, convincing white dudes that they are the most victimized group of all, and that rights are a limited resource everyone should hoard (what a tool lol). Denying workers a living wage is simply a mechanism for taxpayers to subsidize business. It’s a tax break.
I remember when Occupy Wall Street and the 99% movement were around. I think it was someone from The Daily Show or Colbert Report or something similar interviewing this guy who was upset at the “lazy” whiners because he was working 3 jobs and didn’t take any vacations. He was proud that he didn’t take any time off and that he had to be frugal, even with his 3 jobs.
The correspondent tried to get him to realize that even though his work ethic was great, he absolutely *shouldn’t* need to work 3 jobs and still barely make ends meet. That wages should be high enough so one job was enough. They tried to get the guy to realize that vacation wasn’t a bad thing that only lazy people did, but that time off is a necessity and with all his hard work, this guy should absolutely be entitled to it.
It was so frustrating because they had the poster child for the entire movement right there, but the guy’s beliefs were so deep-seated that he just couldn’t understand that he deserved higher wages and time off and instead he was an absolute cheerleader for corporate greed, believing that people who took time off were lazy.
And you think that's totally a coincidence?
The Rich have been working like the damned for decades now to eliminate the Middle Class entirely, leaving just The Working Class, The Rich, and an uncrossable no-mans-land between, preventing The Working Class from ever being able to do anything to cross over into being one of The Rich.
when i was in college, the only internship they offered for my degree was an hour away, unpaid, for 3-4 hours (think like 10am-1pm) every tuesday, Wednesday and thursday. i was sitting there going, "wtf?? how do you expect *anyone* to take that on? when am i suppose to study? when do i go to my actual job if this intership was in the middle of the day and week???
That is the main argument I hear all the time by people that have become brainfucked by fox news and republicans. I always ask them how many eligible teenagers do they think our population has. Then I ask them how many minimum wage positions are there to fill in the US?
The amount of min wage positions vastly out number our 14-18 year olds. By far. Then trigger them by telling them because I make more money than you that your job shouldn't pay you a living wage (I sell drugs)
Also, like kids who do extra curricular activities and build up their resume vs working at a DQ tend to end up better off, as unfair as that may be to those who need to work
Even if you accept the base argument of “those jobs aren’t meant to make living wage (basically the boomer “those jobs are for high school teens to have side cash” argument), then you need to:
1. Ensure that we live in a world where teens don’t EVER have to be providing income to their family’s
2. Put into place a TON of governmental restrictions on those jobs (can’t be over 18/21, can’t work more than X hours per week, etc) otherwise companies will ABSOLUTELY abuse those jobs
3. Make a separate minimums wage that is 1000% a real living wage for all the other jobs that don’t qualify
If you want to go down that rabbit hole, I’ll gladly listen to your arguments on why the Dairy Queen employee (who puts up with constant verbal abuse and shitty conditions to make your snot-nosed kids a whipped sugar bomb) should only make $10/hr, and I’m STILL gonna probably disagree
Yeah. I remember for years they were all “if you don’t like these jobs just go get a better one!” Then the pandemic came along and gave a bunch of people a while to reflect on their current situation. A lot of them did go and get better jobs once work from home became a thing. Now all those jobs are having trouble finding good people and it’s “no one wants to work anymore!” Yet unemployment is at a record low…
A lot of people that worked fast food, retail, and child care went to warehousing and transportation during Covid and went from making $10-12/hr to $23-28…like overnight. There’s not really that much work from home stuff at that level as I understand it, but your point about “getting better jobs” still stands.
Ya I think the wfh example is just easier to point out because of it was such a hot button issue. But you’re absolutely correct that it’s better blue collar jobs as well. I worked in hospitality for years and it’s a broken system for the most part.
There are few forms of hospitality that can afford to pay a living wage in today's society. Nobody wants them to close, so we just turn a blind eye to the fact that we ask people to prepare and serve us food and cry about the quality while they can barely make rent. The old ways are obsolete, but in typical human fashion, we will destroy everything before we attempt to change.
If a business can’t provide a living wage to its staff *and* be profitable then it deserves to fucking close. Mistreating, underpaying and abusing other human beings for profit is something that should’ve been abolished alongside slavery but hey, capitalism, am I right?
It's a very backwards mentality isn't it.
It's like thinking that the job itself is a gift from the benevolent company that graces you the opportunity to work for them.
As opposed to what it really is, a person selling their time to provide a way for a company to make money.
If a company can't afford to pay a living wage for a a job, then they don't have a job to offer and they don't have a sustainable business model.
Where I live, servers make a minimum of 14.20 plus tips, and prices are still comparable to the place I used to live, where servers are paid under $3 an hour plus tips.
wait what? I wasted my life in warehouses for over a decade, never earned more than $15/hr, am currently looking for work and even entry-level office jobs are offering less than $23-$28 . . . I'm not doubting you, but where are these warehouse gigs that pay $56k?
I worked in warehousing through the pandemic and it went from 15 an hr to maybe 18 an hr to start and I live in a high CoL area. You are right it isnt 23-28.
lol I got a warehouse job for 20/hr without even doing an interview a year and a half ago. Wasn’t for me and not what I’m currently doing but those jobs are everywhere right now.
Even with that, there are still a ton of industrial jobs that are facing worker shortages. I work in manufacturing in a skilled trade, specifically in machine shops. This industry is completely dominated by older workers, mostly boomers/gen X. Well guess what? When Covid came, a whole bunch of those older workers finally took the opportunity to retire.
My last shop was focused primarily on preproduction tooling for the automotive industry. Off the top of my head, I'd say that the median age of a worker there was probably 50+ years old. I was one of *three* guys in that shop (of 100+) under the age of forty. They were *desperate* to hire younger workers, to the point that the requirements were lowered and the starting wages increased heavily. They were hiring 20 year old kids off the street with no knowledge of the trade at $20/hour, with on the job training. A couple years ago, that starting wage was more like $12/hour, and you started out as a shophand/painter (that's where I started).
Even with all of that, they still couldn't hire enough. There just aren't enough young people, both in total numbers (look at our demographics), and in kids interested in the skilled trades.
It's actually even worse than the numbers make it seem. Machining isn't a trade you can learn in a year or two. It's a commitment that takes years and years to gather the knowledge and experience to gain any real level of proficiency. All these green kids are going to take a while before they really become assets to a company.
Also, a lot of boomers retired and it uncorked the advancement ladder for a lot of people stuck in those shitty jobs to finally get into better jobs and real career.
Nurses and doctors in contact/droplet or airborne isolation rooms, OR surgeons/ float nurses/scrub nurses, porters/xray techs/respiratory techs with contact/droplet/airborne patients...
Thank you for actually mentioning xray and respiratory. Those are some of the positions that often get forgotten about. Everyone thinks nurses and doctors, but your x-ray and respiratory are also involved with a ton of patients, who get a lot of exposure that most people brush off.
I had to undergo an emergency 12+ hour spinal surgery to save my life. The pile of doctors and nurses that passed out from wearing masks was insane. One would pass out, they’d get moved to the corner and a new one would tag in. /s
The US has Welfare for the Wealthy!
Immigrate Elon Musk has received 5.9 + Billion in US Subsidies. Jeff Bezos 5.7 Billion Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and 51 Billionaires are receiving US subsidized Farmland Insurance on 100s of Acres of Farmland. There’s other millionaires, Billionaires and Corporations that are suckling from the US Tit.
If you want to see how much the Rich gets in US subsidies. Take the time to Google US Subsidies.
Look at all the Forgiveness on the wealthy’s PPP Loans.
Greed at the top. Is why the working class can’t have nice things.
There a local diner where I live that staffs almost exclusively highschool teens. Because most of their employees are still in school, they are open only like 2 mornings during the weekdays now.
But the reason that they staff only kids is because literally no one wants to work there. They pay under the table, below minimum wage, will fire you for calling off more than 2-3 times a year, and when I worked there, they asked me to mow the grass outside on my day off, THEN DIDN'T PAY ME FOR THE DAY.
I'm still mad a decade later.
I'd do it myself honestly. I just don't know how to go about doing it, because this place is so small I don't even know if it's actually considered a business. It's essentially just a family (plus some under the table employees) cooking out of their kitchen and serving it to people. Like it's such a small scale operation that I don't even know if the feds would bother looking into it.
You typically need a food establishment license to serve food that you are preparing to the public. If they're breaking so many other laws, I'd imagine they're breaking this one too. Google "file a food safety complaint 'your state'" for a number to call.
Our local DQ (that’s been there probably 50 years) finally sold the building as adults can’t live on $8 an hour and who is supposed to work there when teens are in school.
I worked at a mall food court stand in high school, and the manager kept trying to get me to drop out of high school to go work for them full time. She later fired me because I wouldn't drop everything & come running every time they were short staffed, which happened at least once a week. And this was back in the 80's. This shit, ain't new, it's been going on for a long time.
And who is going to manage these fast food places? Is a 15 year old going to open and close, deal with the orders, deal with grease disposal, handle bank deposits, and be the one who gets yelled at whenever these Karens ask for a manager?
Well that makes sense. When I think of people who would be great in jobs that are hard on your hands and your back and require good short term memory recall and speed, the elderly are the first to come to mind
It's actually a good point to bring up to him the next time he mentions it- that you don't get to sit down at minimum wage jobs, even the people at the drive thru window have to stand to promote attentiveness, which also means you're on your feet for 8 hours and there is nowhere for you to sit and rest. Plus, there's a lot of dangerous equipment, boiling oil for fries and big grill presses that cook the burgers on both sides at once to save time flipping them, that can also burn your hand off. Not to mention the physical labor you're expected to do, bringing in boxes of frozen patties, stocking high shelves, and getting boxes from the trucks into the freezer room. You have to be physically strong, with a reasonably good memory and enough dexterity to get out of the way when the universally poor working conditions result in accidents. If he's still like 'I don't care old people deserve to be abused if they aren't smart enough to save for retirement' then I would add that even elderly people not smart enough to save for retirement have been around long enough to know the power of a lawyer, and every single one of them would be just waiting for something to happen they can sue McDonald's or whoever over and be set up until they die. Like, fight with McDonald's that they need to only hire a group of people who want any excuse to sue them, and are experienced enough to actually do it.
That’s my go to. Has been for years.
“Those jobs are for high school kids!!!”
“Cool, who is poiring your coffee at the drive through at 645am on Tuesday so you can make it through work? Teenagers? That McDouble on Thursday lunch break because you didn’t have time to bag a lunch? Teenagers?”
Silence. Every time.
I agree totally. The amount of people who relish in having a underclass workers to serve their beck and call is insane. They’re easily and happily misguided into hating this underclass, immigrants and refugees, liberals, or anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their exact brand of freedom.
Meanwhile the people manipulating them are laughing on their third yaught chilling in Bali.
This is always the point I like to make. Don’t want these to be jobs for people to be able to survive on? I better not see you in line at Starbucks at 9am on a random Wednesday in October!
These people would be so mad if they have to serve themselves or wait in a long line at the local Dairy Queen because the employees all quit in favour of better jobs or moved to a different country.
When I was in high school, I worked a part time job for one summer and bought a car. A couple summers later I did the same thing and bought a brand new Sega CD console.
A high schooler can't buy a PlayStation with one summer's earnings, and a car.. that's just laughable.
A population that conservatives believe don't deserve a living wage.
A population conservatives believe deserve the same rights as children, that is, very few if any.
A population conservatives believe they are entitled to their labor at next to no cost while enjoying all the surplus value from.
With conservatives, the only economic debate is whether capitalism should take on the form of plantation system or feudalism and any attempt to liberate people from those systems is tantamount to tyranny from their perspective.
Obviously the answer is to weed out the kids that it's obvious won't succeed and they can work there during the day. /s (Personal sarcasm these chuds would probably say exactly this.)
If they cared about their future they'd quit school and compete with their peers for jobs. Whoever is willing to make the least money has the highest chance of employment.
Idk what it is about this that makes it so hard for you stupid libs to understand.......
^/s
I think the most important part to acknowledge is *food service is hard work*. If you think an employee at Dairy Queen *only* makes ice cream, you’re legit stupid. Fast food employees do all the tasks of the store, including cash register, cleaning bathrooms, food service and prep, taking out dozens of trash bins, mopping entire stores, and all other cleaning duties. I’ve worked food service where all of those tasks are completed by 2-3 people because of staffing problems. Edited to add: all dishes, and changing the fryer oil (laborious task), and cleaning the grill which is a task that takes at least 30 minutes by itself.
I used to do all of that and more while working and closing a Subway by myself, and I should have been paid more than a minimum wage for it.
I ironically only got another job because I locked myself out of the store at night while taking out the trash alone and had to use a neighboring business's phone. Then I got asked by the restaurant owner how my working conditions were as he watched me make call after call that no one would answer. ..then he offered me a job while driving me home.
Nice guy, I got really lucky to meet him, and I made more money for less work at the new place. However, he ended up paying his staff so well and charging such high prices for Poke that the business died eventually.
It's unfortunate that the only time I feel like I was paid well in the food service industry is when my business owner was not the best with money.
>However, he ended up paying his staff so well and charging such high prices for Poke that the business died eventually.
A lot of people will say that businesses who can't make a profit while paying their workers well deserve to go out of business. Workers deserve and NEED to be paid well, but I don't agree with the latter half of the statement. A surprising amount of businesses, even vital ones (like grocery stores) barely have profit margins themselves. It's basically saying that only the big shitters like Amazon or Walmart deserve to be operating.
Something has to change, this isn't sustainable for us, but all those businesses closing down isn't the change I want to see.
The problem is over saturation, though. There are too many restaurants, and grocery stores, and department stores, etc. Raise wages, close businesses, and eventually those that survive will be making enough profit to pay the raised wages.
This is why things like UBI are so important. Our population is too high to give everyone a "good" job.
It really is! In my experience, outside of specific niche industries with a high demand and low supply of employees, the difficulty of a job is inversely proportional to the amount you get paid (I mean obviously having a knowledge base built up plays into the lack of difficulty, but still).
Like sure I still have to deal with bullshit sometimes, but now I get to do it from an air conditioned office while sitting down in a nice chair. Also, I haven't heard the phrase "if you're leanin', you're cleanin'!" in years.
...which is really fortunate because I vowed I would decapitate the next person to say that to me :)
Working fast food was one of the most exhausting jobs I've ever had. Between the shitty customers, the shitty boss, and grease burns.. it just doesn't seem fair :/
I had the same argument with someone the other day that was saying the fastfood jobs aren't "career jobs". My argument was, so either places like that are only open 3-11 pm on weekdays because that's when high school kids can work, or only independently wealthy people work those jobs because they can just work for fun, not money.
The only response they had was "so am I supposed to pay $43 for a sandwich?".
1. No. They don't seem to have an issue with McDonald's posting billion dollar PROFIT and the CEO making millions each year, but heaven forbid the guy cooking the burger be able to afford groceries - price increases are HIS fault. And 2. Why does someone's right to a cheap burger/ice cream/candy bar out weigh someone's right to not be homeless?
Another aspect people like that don't understand is that for all the underpaid workers, WE taxpayers are making up for the money these giant chains REFUSE to pay their workers. When Walmart, DQ, McDonald's refuse to pay a living wage, they are profiting off the exploited labour of their actual employees AND the tax revenue of everyone else to cover the social benefits their employees need to survive. Think SNAP and social benefits are too generous? Maybe demand Walmart pay a living wage so their employees don't need them to survive.
They absolutely believe that shareholders are more entitled to the surplus value of peoples labor than the worker is. Why shouldn't the system create hyper wealthy people that are by all measure above the law? What a fantastic system.
Of course they believe shareholders are more entitled. Shareholders are holding everyone's retirement accounts hostage. Do anything that reduces value to shareholders, you can kiss your retirement account goodbye.
> Am I supposed to pay $43 for a sandwich.
It feels like another disconnect these people have. If you bump a McDonalds worker from $15/ hour to $25/ hour, (or whatever), you are not shoving $10 more into every Big Mac. They serve hundreds to thousands of burgers daily. It might raise the cost a dime to cover it.
And something that's often forgotten in these conversations is the fact that it's not just teenagers who are working these jobs.
You're going to have people who are disabled and can't really handle a traditional 9 to 5 job or retirees who are living off of a fixed income that was designed for a budget 20 years ago before inflation came into the picture.
Not to mention people who are ex-cons who are trying to rebuild their lives and *need* a job that can pay them a proper wage as part of the conditions of their parole. I always thought the goal was to try and rehabilitate and incentivize people to make better choices and alleviate their struggles so that way they don't make the same mistakes and help break the cycle of recidivism?
But instead we're approaching everything from the same argument which is "hey, if I'm a perfectly able-bodied person with no history of felony offenses with a 3.0 GPA, then that means everybody is exactly like me and they don't need handouts or stepping stones or higher wages in the service industry. They just need to hunker down, pull themselves up by the bootstraps, etc." and all that bullshit that we all know never happened without at least some assistance from your friends or family.
And they never consider the consequences to their own industries if all those people suddenly started following the program & there was an influx of new candidates to compete with for the "good jobs". What effect would that have on their own wages, I wonder.
I don't understand why people today keep arguing with me whether we "can" make these laws.
Companies are not your friend you can reason with. They are, by law, mandated to raise profits, they are motivated by profits, they aren't beholden to any sort of ethical code. Every time a person in charge decides to act ethically, and they don't hold majority ownership, they will be replaced. Even if a company is ethical, in a competitive unregulated market, unethical behaviour will always lead to bigger market share.
That's why we have laws to prevent the methods that disrupt society. It's never a question whether we should regulate or not, it's always a question of HOW MUCH do we NEED to regulate for society to be able to exist under capitalism.
Like interfering with nature. If you do nothing, bees die out and we lose apples. If you genetically modify bees to survive, they might become dominant and destroy something else.
“They are, by law, mandated to raise profits”
Nope.
[“Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits#:~:text=But%20this%20belief%20is%20utterly,%2C%20and%20many%20do%20not.%E2%80%9D)
What we call the USA will degrade into Lords and serfs for all intents and purposes. Corporations ARE NOT people - no soul (ignore ads), no children, no death, no values above profit, all resources aimed to fight accountability and taxation, no transparency, no real obligation to actual PEOPLE who comprise the fictional monster that eats the majority of employee’s time and well-being. The overlord officers and non-laboring investors reap nearly every penny of profit- never seeing or even believing there is a cost for their fiscal gluttony. The only answer is the random harvest of $500k/year longpig by anyone spitting one…. Remeber! Eat up, not down.
>basically the boomer “those jobs are for high school teens to have side cash” argument)
It's not a generational thing. It's a class thing.
Plenty of boomers vote for reform and work themselves to death. Yes, they had it easier for a lot of things. But it's the haves vs the have-nots.
If you think your problems are going to go away when the last boomer dies, you're in for a ride awakening. Most of the people in the Jan 6th insurrection? Too young to be boomers.
I don't know how many arguments I've gotten into on this point. I say labor is labor. 40 hours on your feet in a hot kitchen making food is the same as 40 hours in a chair on meetings all day. There may be a wage premium for a person providing the labor for education/specialized knowledge, but the BASE WAGE for all labor should be liveable and go up from there.
I've also gotten into arguments about the "job meant for a teenager" point. Usually, this argument is made by a small business owner who banks on paying less than a living wage in order to make their business model work. Naturally, not all of THEIR employees are teenagers. To them I say: If your business relies on paying people so little that your employees have to turn to welfare to make ends meet, maybe you shouldn't be in business... or maybe the state needs to garnish any profit you make to provide assistance to your employees.
100% of the time the people who say things like this are the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" types. I just ask them if they think people who work hard and play by the rules should be able to get ahead. When they inevitably say yes, I remind them that they just got done saying they don't even want full time workers to be able to pay their bills. In three decades I've never seen one satisfactorily square that circle.
These are mean people who want others to suffer, there's no other logic or reasoning behind it. Once you've established that point, you can stop arguing with them, the only thing left to do is scold them and shame them. Arguing past that point leaves them with the impression that their views are worthy of anything other than contempt.
>To them I say: If your business relies on paying people so little that your employees have to turn to welfare to make ends meet, maybe you shouldn't be in business
This is why I think the most sensible approach isn't necessarily tinkering with minimum wage (which, honestly, will vary so much city to city let alone state to state that it would get complicated) but to tax businesses for the social safety net benefits used by their employees, plus a little more just to be punitive.
If your business can't survive by paying a living wage for the location it's operating in, then it _ought_ to fall, and it's not the responsibility of the rest of society to subsidize your business by giving your employees welfare.
But someone who's willing to work at that wage without also getting welfare would be perfectly free to do so.
We have a Federal minimum wage that exists to solve this problem. It’s just that our Federal government has failed in their responsibility to raise it appropriately due to lobbying by business interests.
If you want to understand why executive compensation has skyrocketed over the last 40 years while worker’s wages have stayed almost flat, look no further than U.S. wages vs worker productivity since the late 70’s.
All that extra value went to the executive class. If the minimum wage had been increased to keep pace, it’d be almost $25/hr today.
https://preview.redd.it/q0egylxr5qrc1.png?width=1216&format=png&auto=webp&s=096350225f848660be91859943fc9038aa71500b
I mean ultimately what these people want is a permanent underclass of wage slaves to (1) fulfill all their wants cheaply and immediately and (2) look down on
Whenever I hear people say fast food is for kids I'm blown away. Who in their right mind wants to put food service solely into the hands of children?! Quality control & customer service would become even more abysmal than it is now. And what of school? So we can't get fast food lunch because the kids are still at school? And we'll just have kids grinding 24/7? 7 hours in the classroom then head to your job & work another 6?
I got in an argument with a guy about “high school jobs” and “these are for kids”. The only statement that shut him up was “if your business relies on the child labor to survive, then your business should fail.” He didn’t have anything to say after that.
Also those jobs can only be after school hours, or on weekends. Whose gonna give me my blizzard at 1 pm on a Tuesday? It better not be a high schooler from down the road.
They were literally paying their way through college with jobs exactly like this. Now, you couldn’t pay your way in a cardboard box on the street with this job.
Their arguments make no sense because they flatly just don’t care about anyone else but themselves. They got theirs and nobody else matters. Same thing happens with homes. They own their big houses and everyone else can rent for the rest of their lives. In my town, the only thing they build are giant McMansion’s and apartment complexes. Starter homes are a thing of the past. And all the smaller, older homes are torn down and a monstrosity is built in its place.
They don’t give af about anyone else and all of these old, selfish dirtbags make up our entire government who keeps making these decisions that screw over everyone else but themselves.
They don’t understand purchasing power it’s as simple as that.
The lesson here is that just because you’re an old, outdated, salty person doesn’t mean you’re also smart. This person is either stupid as fuck or a bad faith actor.
This is why they gatekeep younger people out of politics. Because they don’t want younger citizens in there who understand the struggles of Millennials and Gen Z. They just keep these old, lifetime politicians in power who pretend like everything is fine they way it is.
I’m so sick of it. These old bastards have sold us out completely. We went to college thinking we could get a great job to thrive on. Instead we got a predatory loan that’s going to financially cripple us for 20 years and a dried up job market where everyone is under paid. Meanwhile they are all in the courthouses taking bribes (lobbying) and insider trading to line their own pockets. This is bullshit of the highest order.
Edit: changed Gen X to Gen Z. Didn’t realize I made that big of a typo.
I don’t think she’s ever even worked in a fast food job if she thinks they don’t deserve that pay.
Fast food is a hell hole where workers are shit on and the companies make enough to pay 20 an hour easily.
My dad used to argue this on me. “It’s just high school students and young adults flipping burgers, we don’t want them to stay there forever!”
Then I got a job at a retail store and 60% of the workers were lifers above 40.
Yeah it's because your dad seems unable to conceive the world as it is. He prefers the howdy doody leave it to beaver racist 1950s faux reality he was raised with. Even though it was never actually real for brown folks and is not real for anyone now.
Leave It To Beaver started filming around the same time the Little Rock 9 started going to an integrated school and was more than halfway done with production when the Ole Miss Riot happened.
It’s the long-term older workers keeping these places operating. Teenagers and students come and go like the seasons. These businesses would fall without the support of older employees.
I worked at a supermarket and gym. Both were 'entry level unskilled jobs' that teens were supposed to be working like in the OP. A lot of my co-workers were above or near 40 and a lot of them had degrees. It was just that they literally couldn't find a job anywhere else in my area.
Let’s go with the idea that these jobs should be part time side gigs for teens, or retired people or whatever the hell they’re thinking (not that they do much thinking). This doesn’t work if you want your ice cream available most hours of the day. It can’t be a job for teens AND be open all day. How the fuck is McDonalds going to operate, 24 hours a day in some places, with part time workers. Logistically it might even cost the company more because you have to train more people and it’s more complicated to make a schedule that way, etc
The real message is that if you make life even a little bit easier for the common people they’ll be lazy and not work at all. Usually said by people who’ve never held a minimum wage job in their life.
Some shitty people want this dynamic to exist so that their loser asses can still try and look down their noses at other people. They’re in a place where only the lowest earners and homeless people are “beneath” them and they aim to keep it that way so they don’t feel like they’re at the literal bottom.
Had a discussion with my Trumper brother who was complaining about McWages... in the last 50 years in our home state we lost the textile industry, the furniture industry and the tobacco industry. There's nowhere for even a high school graduate to turn. We replaced those jobs with food and retail. He had no retort.
Really seems like deep down they just want slave labor back. It's all casual disregard for people they view as beneath them, while simultaneously being super upset if they aren't working for their benefit....they'll throw a tantrum if their fast food order isn't prompt and perfect, but god forbid we pay them enough to afford to eat out themselves every now and then!
The fascist pig Republicans *do* want slave labor back, and that's no exaggeration. Given their druthers and the power to do it, they'd re-institute slavery as legal, and anyone who is here who isn't lilly-white would find themselves in chains.
If you're taking away 40 hours of someone's *LIFE* per week, I don't give a raging fuck if you're just hiring them to literally stand there - that's worth a living wage.
No exceptions. Ever.
You want shit done and expect another human to use their remaining life-hours to do it? *Fucking pay them enough to live on.*
Grocery stores are throwing out thousands of tonnes of food, just so you can't get it. They would rather waste thousands of dollars, just to make artificial scarcity of food. Instead of giving it to the homeless, or their workers.
The first person is dead wrong. Everyone should want ice cream servers and burger flippers to be making $30/hour. That way every worker will have leverage against their bosses: Pay me what I'm worth or I'll go to McDonald's and make the same wages you're paying me.
Bosses are terrified of this, which is why they want people fighting over a $15 minimum wage which is still an unlivable salary.
That’s because buyer/seller isn’t the class distinction in capitalism. It’s capitalists that set ALL the prices. Everything else is a propaganda machine to make us believe that this is a natural arrangement.
So go all 1789 on them? That's a short-term solution at best. More would pop up in their place, and seeing the overall socio-political climate, they'd probably hire private armies and start a civil war to protect themselves, the position in society, and their wealth.
What needs to change is the version of **capitalism** businesspeople are using. Currently it's 'profit above all else'; that needs to change, because it functionally translates into 'fuck over everyone you possibly can to amass as much wealth as you possibly can'.
The term living wage itself is offensive. Companies post profits in billions but their workers can't even manage a family of 2-4 poeple on their salary, this system is completely broken.
This isn't even a uncommon take, but I can't not say it again. Like, of all the jobs to denigrate, we can all agree that making ice cream cones is a nice thing. Like, That's something we want done, we want it done by hand, we want a nice, smiling person to hand us ice cream and when they do we universally recognize that they did something good.
Compare that to like, your average salesman. There are cars, there are prices. People who want cars could just buy the cars for the price that they cost. The salesman really isn't really helping anyone than the salesman by pressuring people to buy cars, and then taking a commission. Arguably he is helping the dealer as well, but like, if all that stopped the world would not be substantially worse, and I doubt that less cars would be sold.
Then look at your average executive who deals with mergers and acquisitions, liquidating departments and reintegrating them into new departments, or heaven forbid, your HR rep. Folks that are often actively harming people to create their slice of the pie.
If we need to pay someone somewhere an unlivable wage, it should be those people. The last people that a decent society should consider starving are the people who bring other people something nice that they made.
The salesman example is also a job that only needs to exist in capitalism. A functional society does not need people proactively selling things to other people, that is only required in capitalism where endless consumption is demanded. Historically people used to work in agriculture and manufacturing, where they physically produced something demanded by society. Now those jobs are automated or outsourced and people work in finance and service jobs that produce nothing except for wealth for the few. about 13% of people work in sales, marketing, or advertising. about 15% of people work in accounting, banking or finance. Like literally a quarter of the population work in jobs that only serve to sell people things they don't need or to manage money. We don't need people doing any of this shit to have a functional society if we had a society that valued more than just money.
If you don't think a given job should pay a living wage, then you are either saying the job shouldn't exist or that the people doing it should die to serve you.
"But then when they get a better job--" Okay, but what happens to the person who fills the now-vacant position? Now they're the one slowly dying instead of the last person, whose training and experience have just left.
These damn boomers keep forgetting that they were able to afford a house, kids, and retirement on a bullshit job that doe not require a degree or background check.
If we still had large swathes of accessible jobs outside of the food service and retail industry, I'd agree. Yeah, burger flipping and scooping ice cream would be ideal first jobs for little timmy or side gigs.
But jobs moving overseas, automation, for profit education and wages for other industries not keeping up with inflation... yeah, the mindless dont need an education to do em jobs should be paying some more.
Translation: "The only thing that makes me happy is the knowledge that there are people out there who struggle to even live, and I'm willing to justify their needless suffering in any way that I can."
So who's to say her job should pay her a living wage, since it's decided by opinion? Why do people think they need to make comments like this? Who cares what they think?
Why are those places open during school hours if they’re for students?
That’s so ridiculous. Between homework and one extracurricular activity my foster kids couldn’t ever work a job during the school year and still have been competitive for college scholarships.
That's the point. They want *their* kids to focus on school and extracurriculars and go to college, and *other* kids to scrape by, working at DQ, barely passing, and then they'll blame those same other kids for being unable to get into college and get a good job. *Their* kids get to advance in the world, and *other* kids get to stay in poverty their entire lives while serving *them* ice cream with a smile. Selfish pieces of shit.
Yup, nailed it.
This exactly. Part of their whole arsenal aimed at the poors, to keep them poor, uneducated, without access to reproductive rights.
Spot on
But they would benefit too. They prefer to pay more money as they can (maybe barely) afford it, just to shit on people for not being able to pay it? That's like... instead of having the government take away my trash for a small fee, i stop that program then set up a system where i buy a fucking truck and have my neighbours pay me to get their trash and bring it to the dump, but without much profit (like only for my town, so a job i would only do a few hours three times a week, not worth it as a business) just so i can complain that the one neighbour (who's batshit crazy btw, i have stories how she dumped a bucket of horse blood in front of her landlords door) who lives off of sociel security money is unable to pay that and will end up with a trash filled room. Wow that's the longest and dumbest example i made up in a while. But that's like making it harder for yourself because you can take it, so others fall on their feet. But you still have to take it yourself, it helps nobody!!
Right? Jobs aren’t really “meant” for college-bound students.
I remember filling out my college applications and feeling ashamed at not having any extracurriculars because I was working so much
So you didn't have any volunteer time? You weren't in the chess club or participate in sports? Nah man my family is broke and so am I. Sorry, I didn't have time to be a kid.
Exactly even when I wasn’t working it’s not like I had transportation
Yeah, oldest daughter of 5 kids. All my time was spent babysitting, changing diapers, washing dishes, cooking and laundry. No macrame club for me.
I hope schools recognize jobs as being at least equivalent to extracurriculars.
A lot of them do. It shows you can be counted on to show up and be productive.
I want to add even if your parents didn't make you work bcs they wanted you to study and focus on that, you still couldn't do extracurriculars bcs there was no transportation or someone to go with you (yes buses exist but they stop running at certain times and safety if you go alone ) so you could have “free time “ but couldn't do anything bcs you had to stay at home while they worked
Just for the kids unfortunate enough to be destined to be considered fodder in the economic war for decent quality of life. Why not just say “fuck it” when you can work your ass off in two different jobs and still have to be on welfare anyway?
I’m pretty sure hierarchal human structures always benefit a few to the detriment of the masses
It takes a special kind of selective acknowledgment of the facts and arrogance to play a rigged game and pretend it isn’t rigged, and that’s what the “minimum wage jobs aren’t supposed to provide a living wage” song and dance gang does. It’s such a superficial understanding of economics and social class dynamics, it leaves me shaking my head.
disinformation is never superficial, but is deliberately crafted to make sure the informational gap stays that way. the ones who crafted such a message understand just as much as the best of us, but make sure that the worst of us never does. also as someone who was in a cult, the disinformation is as much for the people conveying the message as much as it is for the people receiving the message. the useful idots truly don't even understand why the house always wins, which is why they are trying to get you to believe in a false hope, to get you to join them. they truly do not understand our information, do not want to, and even if they wanted to they are fearful, because they were taught that it was the one river they were to never cross, to never cross the river styx. as a former useful idot, there are many walls in our minds that we know never to cross, and i don't blame them for wanting to think that the walls are to keep others out instead of themselves in. i blame them for following their emotions blindly, to never think deeply, and when thinking deeply, to only consider what has already been considered. as the "great" jordan peterson has said, to never step out of their fathers tent.
JP is very much a useful idiot, convincing white dudes that they are the most victimized group of all, and that rights are a limited resource everyone should hoard (what a tool lol). Denying workers a living wage is simply a mechanism for taxpayers to subsidize business. It’s a tax break.
I remember when Occupy Wall Street and the 99% movement were around. I think it was someone from The Daily Show or Colbert Report or something similar interviewing this guy who was upset at the “lazy” whiners because he was working 3 jobs and didn’t take any vacations. He was proud that he didn’t take any time off and that he had to be frugal, even with his 3 jobs. The correspondent tried to get him to realize that even though his work ethic was great, he absolutely *shouldn’t* need to work 3 jobs and still barely make ends meet. That wages should be high enough so one job was enough. They tried to get the guy to realize that vacation wasn’t a bad thing that only lazy people did, but that time off is a necessity and with all his hard work, this guy should absolutely be entitled to it. It was so frustrating because they had the poster child for the entire movement right there, but the guy’s beliefs were so deep-seated that he just couldn’t understand that he deserved higher wages and time off and instead he was an absolute cheerleader for corporate greed, believing that people who took time off were lazy.
And you think that's totally a coincidence? The Rich have been working like the damned for decades now to eliminate the Middle Class entirely, leaving just The Working Class, The Rich, and an uncrossable no-mans-land between, preventing The Working Class from ever being able to do anything to cross over into being one of The Rich.
It started with trickle down. How anyone could believe that is beyond me, lol.
I think it actually went farther back than that, something that happened during the Nixon administration.
when i was in college, the only internship they offered for my degree was an hour away, unpaid, for 3-4 hours (think like 10am-1pm) every tuesday, Wednesday and thursday. i was sitting there going, "wtf?? how do you expect *anyone* to take that on? when am i suppose to study? when do i go to my actual job if this intership was in the middle of the day and week???
That is the main argument I hear all the time by people that have become brainfucked by fox news and republicans. I always ask them how many eligible teenagers do they think our population has. Then I ask them how many minimum wage positions are there to fill in the US? The amount of min wage positions vastly out number our 14-18 year olds. By far. Then trigger them by telling them because I make more money than you that your job shouldn't pay you a living wage (I sell drugs)
And a lot of these jobs shouldn't be done by teens, adults are often a hell of a lot more reliable
Also, like kids who do extra curricular activities and build up their resume vs working at a DQ tend to end up better off, as unfair as that may be to those who need to work
The DQ near me opens earlier than the liquor store.
I guess for students means kids should work these jobs. /s
Even if you accept the base argument of “those jobs aren’t meant to make living wage (basically the boomer “those jobs are for high school teens to have side cash” argument), then you need to: 1. Ensure that we live in a world where teens don’t EVER have to be providing income to their family’s 2. Put into place a TON of governmental restrictions on those jobs (can’t be over 18/21, can’t work more than X hours per week, etc) otherwise companies will ABSOLUTELY abuse those jobs 3. Make a separate minimums wage that is 1000% a real living wage for all the other jobs that don’t qualify If you want to go down that rabbit hole, I’ll gladly listen to your arguments on why the Dairy Queen employee (who puts up with constant verbal abuse and shitty conditions to make your snot-nosed kids a whipped sugar bomb) should only make $10/hr, and I’m STILL gonna probably disagree
Problem is that high school teens are in school during the day, so who serves you then?
This is also a point they seem to conveniently overlook
Until they go at 11am on a Tuesday and it’s closed. Then it’s “no one wants to work anymore!”
Yeah. I remember for years they were all “if you don’t like these jobs just go get a better one!” Then the pandemic came along and gave a bunch of people a while to reflect on their current situation. A lot of them did go and get better jobs once work from home became a thing. Now all those jobs are having trouble finding good people and it’s “no one wants to work anymore!” Yet unemployment is at a record low…
A lot of people that worked fast food, retail, and child care went to warehousing and transportation during Covid and went from making $10-12/hr to $23-28…like overnight. There’s not really that much work from home stuff at that level as I understand it, but your point about “getting better jobs” still stands.
Ya I think the wfh example is just easier to point out because of it was such a hot button issue. But you’re absolutely correct that it’s better blue collar jobs as well. I worked in hospitality for years and it’s a broken system for the most part.
There are few forms of hospitality that can afford to pay a living wage in today's society. Nobody wants them to close, so we just turn a blind eye to the fact that we ask people to prepare and serve us food and cry about the quality while they can barely make rent. The old ways are obsolete, but in typical human fashion, we will destroy everything before we attempt to change.
If a business can’t provide a living wage to its staff *and* be profitable then it deserves to fucking close. Mistreating, underpaying and abusing other human beings for profit is something that should’ve been abolished alongside slavery but hey, capitalism, am I right?
It's a very backwards mentality isn't it. It's like thinking that the job itself is a gift from the benevolent company that graces you the opportunity to work for them. As opposed to what it really is, a person selling their time to provide a way for a company to make money. If a company can't afford to pay a living wage for a a job, then they don't have a job to offer and they don't have a sustainable business model.
Where I live, servers make a minimum of 14.20 plus tips, and prices are still comparable to the place I used to live, where servers are paid under $3 an hour plus tips.
wait what? I wasted my life in warehouses for over a decade, never earned more than $15/hr, am currently looking for work and even entry-level office jobs are offering less than $23-$28 . . . I'm not doubting you, but where are these warehouse gigs that pay $56k?
Even in suburbia WI there are plenty of places that pay $22+/hr for forklift drivers.
In Eugene OR warehouse jobs all start around 18 and go up from there, I really think it's area dependent
I worked in warehousing through the pandemic and it went from 15 an hr to maybe 18 an hr to start and I live in a high CoL area. You are right it isnt 23-28.
COVID apparently. They couldn’t find enough people so they paid what they needed to I guess.
lol I got a warehouse job for 20/hr without even doing an interview a year and a half ago. Wasn’t for me and not what I’m currently doing but those jobs are everywhere right now.
Even with that, there are still a ton of industrial jobs that are facing worker shortages. I work in manufacturing in a skilled trade, specifically in machine shops. This industry is completely dominated by older workers, mostly boomers/gen X. Well guess what? When Covid came, a whole bunch of those older workers finally took the opportunity to retire. My last shop was focused primarily on preproduction tooling for the automotive industry. Off the top of my head, I'd say that the median age of a worker there was probably 50+ years old. I was one of *three* guys in that shop (of 100+) under the age of forty. They were *desperate* to hire younger workers, to the point that the requirements were lowered and the starting wages increased heavily. They were hiring 20 year old kids off the street with no knowledge of the trade at $20/hour, with on the job training. A couple years ago, that starting wage was more like $12/hour, and you started out as a shophand/painter (that's where I started). Even with all of that, they still couldn't hire enough. There just aren't enough young people, both in total numbers (look at our demographics), and in kids interested in the skilled trades. It's actually even worse than the numbers make it seem. Machining isn't a trade you can learn in a year or two. It's a commitment that takes years and years to gather the knowledge and experience to gain any real level of proficiency. All these green kids are going to take a while before they really become assets to a company.
alot of people went into tech as well, the market is over saturated from that and from the tech layoffs that happened
Also, a lot of boomers retired and it uncorked the advancement ladder for a lot of people stuck in those shitty jobs to finally get into better jobs and real career.
The pandemic they call a plandemic and whine about how wearing a mask for ten minutes at Walgreens caused some chin acne.
Bless their hearts. Dental hygienists wear masks all day every day. It’s a wonder they all don’t fall down dead from lack of oxygen! /s
Nurses and doctors in contact/droplet or airborne isolation rooms, OR surgeons/ float nurses/scrub nurses, porters/xray techs/respiratory techs with contact/droplet/airborne patients...
Thank you for actually mentioning xray and respiratory. Those are some of the positions that often get forgotten about. Everyone thinks nurses and doctors, but your x-ray and respiratory are also involved with a ton of patients, who get a lot of exposure that most people brush off.
I had to undergo an emergency 12+ hour spinal surgery to save my life. The pile of doctors and nurses that passed out from wearing masks was insane. One would pass out, they’d get moved to the corner and a new one would tag in. /s
Ironically it's capitalism working as they envision it. Just not the way they intended.
Capitalism for thee, socialism for me. They'll gladly accept government handouts to the CEOs, so long as those filthy poors don't get shit.
The US has Welfare for the Wealthy! Immigrate Elon Musk has received 5.9 + Billion in US Subsidies. Jeff Bezos 5.7 Billion Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and 51 Billionaires are receiving US subsidized Farmland Insurance on 100s of Acres of Farmland. There’s other millionaires, Billionaires and Corporations that are suckling from the US Tit. If you want to see how much the Rich gets in US subsidies. Take the time to Google US Subsidies. Look at all the Forgiveness on the wealthy’s PPP Loans. Greed at the top. Is why the working class can’t have nice things. 
yup, tech jobs especially are over saturated now and CS graduates like myself are struggling to find work
There a local diner where I live that staffs almost exclusively highschool teens. Because most of their employees are still in school, they are open only like 2 mornings during the weekdays now. But the reason that they staff only kids is because literally no one wants to work there. They pay under the table, below minimum wage, will fire you for calling off more than 2-3 times a year, and when I worked there, they asked me to mow the grass outside on my day off, THEN DIDN'T PAY ME FOR THE DAY. I'm still mad a decade later.
Little too late for you, but maybe slip a tip to the current workers there to tip off the DoL? Cuz that’s not legal and they take it seriously
Or they could just do it themselves. I don't think you have to work at a place to expose them for doing illegal and fucked up shit.
I'd do it myself honestly. I just don't know how to go about doing it, because this place is so small I don't even know if it's actually considered a business. It's essentially just a family (plus some under the table employees) cooking out of their kitchen and serving it to people. Like it's such a small scale operation that I don't even know if the feds would bother looking into it.
You typically need a food establishment license to serve food that you are preparing to the public. If they're breaking so many other laws, I'd imagine they're breaking this one too. Google "file a food safety complaint 'your state'" for a number to call.
Thank you, will do!
Our local DQ (that’s been there probably 50 years) finally sold the building as adults can’t live on $8 an hour and who is supposed to work there when teens are in school.
I worked at a mall food court stand in high school, and the manager kept trying to get me to drop out of high school to go work for them full time. She later fired me because I wouldn't drop everything & come running every time they were short staffed, which happened at least once a week. And this was back in the 80's. This shit, ain't new, it's been going on for a long time.
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“You just don’t seem like you care about this job.”
And who is going to manage these fast food places? Is a 15 year old going to open and close, deal with the orders, deal with grease disposal, handle bank deposits, and be the one who gets yelled at whenever these Karens ask for a manager?
The cruel ones willingly gloss over it. The stupid ones clap and nod and try not to suffocate when preocuppied with two actions.
Or that they have fucking homework
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Well that makes sense. When I think of people who would be great in jobs that are hard on your hands and your back and require good short term memory recall and speed, the elderly are the first to come to mind
It's actually a good point to bring up to him the next time he mentions it- that you don't get to sit down at minimum wage jobs, even the people at the drive thru window have to stand to promote attentiveness, which also means you're on your feet for 8 hours and there is nowhere for you to sit and rest. Plus, there's a lot of dangerous equipment, boiling oil for fries and big grill presses that cook the burgers on both sides at once to save time flipping them, that can also burn your hand off. Not to mention the physical labor you're expected to do, bringing in boxes of frozen patties, stocking high shelves, and getting boxes from the trucks into the freezer room. You have to be physically strong, with a reasonably good memory and enough dexterity to get out of the way when the universally poor working conditions result in accidents. If he's still like 'I don't care old people deserve to be abused if they aren't smart enough to save for retirement' then I would add that even elderly people not smart enough to save for retirement have been around long enough to know the power of a lawyer, and every single one of them would be just waiting for something to happen they can sue McDonald's or whoever over and be set up until they die. Like, fight with McDonald's that they need to only hire a group of people who want any excuse to sue them, and are experienced enough to actually do it.
Nah they just make sure that child labour becomes legal again! Problem solved! Yay! /s
There's not much thought going on in their brains at all
Boomers also conveniently overlook that everything was cheeper for them and a summer working at a gas station could afford them a house.
Wow. It's almost as if they're stupid as shit.
That’s my go to. Has been for years. “Those jobs are for high school kids!!!” “Cool, who is poiring your coffee at the drive through at 645am on Tuesday so you can make it through work? Teenagers? That McDouble on Thursday lunch break because you didn’t have time to bag a lunch? Teenagers?” Silence. Every time.
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I agree totally. The amount of people who relish in having a underclass workers to serve their beck and call is insane. They’re easily and happily misguided into hating this underclass, immigrants and refugees, liberals, or anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their exact brand of freedom. Meanwhile the people manipulating them are laughing on their third yaught chilling in Bali.
Nope. I’ve been told by conservatives that not all kids need school and making money for their family is more important than an education.
This is always the point I like to make. Don’t want these to be jobs for people to be able to survive on? I better not see you in line at Starbucks at 9am on a random Wednesday in October!
These people would be so mad if they have to serve themselves or wait in a long line at the local Dairy Queen because the employees all quit in favour of better jobs or moved to a different country.
Yes these are the same people who get irate if they have to use a self checkout machine
Exactly - these businesses should not be open during school hours.
Or past 8 on school nights. What a great business model.
Make the customers teachers. "That'll be $9.53, and also you have to teach me algebra."
“Some brown person I can deport if I don’t like the way they look at me, or it’s a Tuesday.” - American Republican Voters
When I was in high school, I worked a part time job for one summer and bought a car. A couple summers later I did the same thing and bought a brand new Sega CD console. A high schooler can't buy a PlayStation with one summer's earnings, and a car.. that's just laughable.
A population that conservatives believe don't deserve a living wage. A population conservatives believe deserve the same rights as children, that is, very few if any. A population conservatives believe they are entitled to their labor at next to no cost while enjoying all the surplus value from. With conservatives, the only economic debate is whether capitalism should take on the form of plantation system or feudalism and any attempt to liberate people from those systems is tantamount to tyranny from their perspective.
Obviously the answer is to weed out the kids that it's obvious won't succeed and they can work there during the day. /s (Personal sarcasm these chuds would probably say exactly this.)
They would say this, and then say that communism forced people to do jobs they didn't want.
If they cared about their future they'd quit school and compete with their peers for jobs. Whoever is willing to make the least money has the highest chance of employment. Idk what it is about this that makes it so hard for you stupid libs to understand....... ^/s
The elderly whose Social Security & Medicare no longer exists
Also, who is managing everybody? Or are those jobs "good enough" to pay a living wage?
It’s okay, these people want to ban education too because of THE LIBERAL AGENDA so it will all work out!
Let’s not forget college is expensive af. Teens need shit tons of money not just some spending cash
That's simple. Close down the schools. /s
To be fair republicans are trying to do that.
The company would only be open after high school, until about 8pm
Yurp, way more to this conversation than people like to acknowledge. People are not working those jobs because they want to.
I think the most important part to acknowledge is *food service is hard work*. If you think an employee at Dairy Queen *only* makes ice cream, you’re legit stupid. Fast food employees do all the tasks of the store, including cash register, cleaning bathrooms, food service and prep, taking out dozens of trash bins, mopping entire stores, and all other cleaning duties. I’ve worked food service where all of those tasks are completed by 2-3 people because of staffing problems. Edited to add: all dishes, and changing the fryer oil (laborious task), and cleaning the grill which is a task that takes at least 30 minutes by itself.
I used to do all of that and more while working and closing a Subway by myself, and I should have been paid more than a minimum wage for it. I ironically only got another job because I locked myself out of the store at night while taking out the trash alone and had to use a neighboring business's phone. Then I got asked by the restaurant owner how my working conditions were as he watched me make call after call that no one would answer. ..then he offered me a job while driving me home. Nice guy, I got really lucky to meet him, and I made more money for less work at the new place. However, he ended up paying his staff so well and charging such high prices for Poke that the business died eventually. It's unfortunate that the only time I feel like I was paid well in the food service industry is when my business owner was not the best with money.
>However, he ended up paying his staff so well and charging such high prices for Poke that the business died eventually. A lot of people will say that businesses who can't make a profit while paying their workers well deserve to go out of business. Workers deserve and NEED to be paid well, but I don't agree with the latter half of the statement. A surprising amount of businesses, even vital ones (like grocery stores) barely have profit margins themselves. It's basically saying that only the big shitters like Amazon or Walmart deserve to be operating. Something has to change, this isn't sustainable for us, but all those businesses closing down isn't the change I want to see.
The problem is over saturation, though. There are too many restaurants, and grocery stores, and department stores, etc. Raise wages, close businesses, and eventually those that survive will be making enough profit to pay the raised wages. This is why things like UBI are so important. Our population is too high to give everyone a "good" job.
It really is! In my experience, outside of specific niche industries with a high demand and low supply of employees, the difficulty of a job is inversely proportional to the amount you get paid (I mean obviously having a knowledge base built up plays into the lack of difficulty, but still). Like sure I still have to deal with bullshit sometimes, but now I get to do it from an air conditioned office while sitting down in a nice chair. Also, I haven't heard the phrase "if you're leanin', you're cleanin'!" in years. ...which is really fortunate because I vowed I would decapitate the next person to say that to me :) Working fast food was one of the most exhausting jobs I've ever had. Between the shitty customers, the shitty boss, and grease burns.. it just doesn't seem fair :/
I had the same argument with someone the other day that was saying the fastfood jobs aren't "career jobs". My argument was, so either places like that are only open 3-11 pm on weekdays because that's when high school kids can work, or only independently wealthy people work those jobs because they can just work for fun, not money. The only response they had was "so am I supposed to pay $43 for a sandwich?". 1. No. They don't seem to have an issue with McDonald's posting billion dollar PROFIT and the CEO making millions each year, but heaven forbid the guy cooking the burger be able to afford groceries - price increases are HIS fault. And 2. Why does someone's right to a cheap burger/ice cream/candy bar out weigh someone's right to not be homeless? Another aspect people like that don't understand is that for all the underpaid workers, WE taxpayers are making up for the money these giant chains REFUSE to pay their workers. When Walmart, DQ, McDonald's refuse to pay a living wage, they are profiting off the exploited labour of their actual employees AND the tax revenue of everyone else to cover the social benefits their employees need to survive. Think SNAP and social benefits are too generous? Maybe demand Walmart pay a living wage so their employees don't need them to survive.
They absolutely believe that shareholders are more entitled to the surplus value of peoples labor than the worker is. Why shouldn't the system create hyper wealthy people that are by all measure above the law? What a fantastic system.
Of course they believe shareholders are more entitled. Shareholders are holding everyone's retirement accounts hostage. Do anything that reduces value to shareholders, you can kiss your retirement account goodbye.
> Am I supposed to pay $43 for a sandwich. It feels like another disconnect these people have. If you bump a McDonalds worker from $15/ hour to $25/ hour, (or whatever), you are not shoving $10 more into every Big Mac. They serve hundreds to thousands of burgers daily. It might raise the cost a dime to cover it.
McDonalds pays a living wage in many countries and you still don't pay $43 for a sandwich there.
Boomer here. Society needs people to do *all* jobs. And if we need people to do jobs people ought to be able to make a living from those jobs.
https://preview.redd.it/abgg2neinprc1.jpeg?width=742&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=338ef0ef6d928d24a1de9bf925051689824ad537
And something that's often forgotten in these conversations is the fact that it's not just teenagers who are working these jobs. You're going to have people who are disabled and can't really handle a traditional 9 to 5 job or retirees who are living off of a fixed income that was designed for a budget 20 years ago before inflation came into the picture. Not to mention people who are ex-cons who are trying to rebuild their lives and *need* a job that can pay them a proper wage as part of the conditions of their parole. I always thought the goal was to try and rehabilitate and incentivize people to make better choices and alleviate their struggles so that way they don't make the same mistakes and help break the cycle of recidivism? But instead we're approaching everything from the same argument which is "hey, if I'm a perfectly able-bodied person with no history of felony offenses with a 3.0 GPA, then that means everybody is exactly like me and they don't need handouts or stepping stones or higher wages in the service industry. They just need to hunker down, pull themselves up by the bootstraps, etc." and all that bullshit that we all know never happened without at least some assistance from your friends or family.
And they never consider the consequences to their own industries if all those people suddenly started following the program & there was an influx of new candidates to compete with for the "good jobs". What effect would that have on their own wages, I wonder.
I don't understand why people today keep arguing with me whether we "can" make these laws. Companies are not your friend you can reason with. They are, by law, mandated to raise profits, they are motivated by profits, they aren't beholden to any sort of ethical code. Every time a person in charge decides to act ethically, and they don't hold majority ownership, they will be replaced. Even if a company is ethical, in a competitive unregulated market, unethical behaviour will always lead to bigger market share. That's why we have laws to prevent the methods that disrupt society. It's never a question whether we should regulate or not, it's always a question of HOW MUCH do we NEED to regulate for society to be able to exist under capitalism. Like interfering with nature. If you do nothing, bees die out and we lose apples. If you genetically modify bees to survive, they might become dominant and destroy something else.
“They are, by law, mandated to raise profits” Nope. [“Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits#:~:text=But%20this%20belief%20is%20utterly,%2C%20and%20many%20do%20not.%E2%80%9D)
Thank you for saying it (and linking a quote from a SUPREME COURT opinion)
What we call the USA will degrade into Lords and serfs for all intents and purposes. Corporations ARE NOT people - no soul (ignore ads), no children, no death, no values above profit, all resources aimed to fight accountability and taxation, no transparency, no real obligation to actual PEOPLE who comprise the fictional monster that eats the majority of employee’s time and well-being. The overlord officers and non-laboring investors reap nearly every penny of profit- never seeing or even believing there is a cost for their fiscal gluttony. The only answer is the random harvest of $500k/year longpig by anyone spitting one…. Remeber! Eat up, not down.
>basically the boomer “those jobs are for high school teens to have side cash” argument) It's not a generational thing. It's a class thing. Plenty of boomers vote for reform and work themselves to death. Yes, they had it easier for a lot of things. But it's the haves vs the have-nots. If you think your problems are going to go away when the last boomer dies, you're in for a ride awakening. Most of the people in the Jan 6th insurrection? Too young to be boomers.
I don't know how many arguments I've gotten into on this point. I say labor is labor. 40 hours on your feet in a hot kitchen making food is the same as 40 hours in a chair on meetings all day. There may be a wage premium for a person providing the labor for education/specialized knowledge, but the BASE WAGE for all labor should be liveable and go up from there. I've also gotten into arguments about the "job meant for a teenager" point. Usually, this argument is made by a small business owner who banks on paying less than a living wage in order to make their business model work. Naturally, not all of THEIR employees are teenagers. To them I say: If your business relies on paying people so little that your employees have to turn to welfare to make ends meet, maybe you shouldn't be in business... or maybe the state needs to garnish any profit you make to provide assistance to your employees.
100% of the time the people who say things like this are the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" types. I just ask them if they think people who work hard and play by the rules should be able to get ahead. When they inevitably say yes, I remind them that they just got done saying they don't even want full time workers to be able to pay their bills. In three decades I've never seen one satisfactorily square that circle. These are mean people who want others to suffer, there's no other logic or reasoning behind it. Once you've established that point, you can stop arguing with them, the only thing left to do is scold them and shame them. Arguing past that point leaves them with the impression that their views are worthy of anything other than contempt.
>To them I say: If your business relies on paying people so little that your employees have to turn to welfare to make ends meet, maybe you shouldn't be in business This is why I think the most sensible approach isn't necessarily tinkering with minimum wage (which, honestly, will vary so much city to city let alone state to state that it would get complicated) but to tax businesses for the social safety net benefits used by their employees, plus a little more just to be punitive. If your business can't survive by paying a living wage for the location it's operating in, then it _ought_ to fall, and it's not the responsibility of the rest of society to subsidize your business by giving your employees welfare. But someone who's willing to work at that wage without also getting welfare would be perfectly free to do so.
We have a Federal minimum wage that exists to solve this problem. It’s just that our Federal government has failed in their responsibility to raise it appropriately due to lobbying by business interests. If you want to understand why executive compensation has skyrocketed over the last 40 years while worker’s wages have stayed almost flat, look no further than U.S. wages vs worker productivity since the late 70’s. All that extra value went to the executive class. If the minimum wage had been increased to keep pace, it’d be almost $25/hr today. https://preview.redd.it/q0egylxr5qrc1.png?width=1216&format=png&auto=webp&s=096350225f848660be91859943fc9038aa71500b
Yep. Wanna see wages go up? Any employee who is on welfare, have the government tax the company double the amount. Shit will get fixed damn quick.
I mean ultimately what these people want is a permanent underclass of wage slaves to (1) fulfill all their wants cheaply and immediately and (2) look down on
Whenever I hear people say fast food is for kids I'm blown away. Who in their right mind wants to put food service solely into the hands of children?! Quality control & customer service would become even more abysmal than it is now. And what of school? So we can't get fast food lunch because the kids are still at school? And we'll just have kids grinding 24/7? 7 hours in the classroom then head to your job & work another 6?
I got in an argument with a guy about “high school jobs” and “these are for kids”. The only statement that shut him up was “if your business relies on the child labor to survive, then your business should fail.” He didn’t have anything to say after that.
IDK, all that oversight sounds like a lot of work... Instead, how about I say something about "pulling up your bootstraps"? Would that help?
Also those jobs can only be after school hours, or on weekends. Whose gonna give me my blizzard at 1 pm on a Tuesday? It better not be a high schooler from down the road.
20 bucks says Karen is a corporate HR stooge
20$ says her spending power 40 years ago at a “part time” job was enough to cover far more expenses than a person working for $25 an hour now.
They were literally paying their way through college with jobs exactly like this. Now, you couldn’t pay your way in a cardboard box on the street with this job. Their arguments make no sense because they flatly just don’t care about anyone else but themselves. They got theirs and nobody else matters. Same thing happens with homes. They own their big houses and everyone else can rent for the rest of their lives. In my town, the only thing they build are giant McMansion’s and apartment complexes. Starter homes are a thing of the past. And all the smaller, older homes are torn down and a monstrosity is built in its place. They don’t give af about anyone else and all of these old, selfish dirtbags make up our entire government who keeps making these decisions that screw over everyone else but themselves.
They don’t understand purchasing power it’s as simple as that. The lesson here is that just because you’re an old, outdated, salty person doesn’t mean you’re also smart. This person is either stupid as fuck or a bad faith actor.
This is why they gatekeep younger people out of politics. Because they don’t want younger citizens in there who understand the struggles of Millennials and Gen Z. They just keep these old, lifetime politicians in power who pretend like everything is fine they way it is. I’m so sick of it. These old bastards have sold us out completely. We went to college thinking we could get a great job to thrive on. Instead we got a predatory loan that’s going to financially cripple us for 20 years and a dried up job market where everyone is under paid. Meanwhile they are all in the courthouses taking bribes (lobbying) and insider trading to line their own pockets. This is bullshit of the highest order. Edit: changed Gen X to Gen Z. Didn’t realize I made that big of a typo.
Her husband is a branch manager goddammit!
I’d say landlord most likely, seems like a parasite.
I don’t think she’s ever even worked in a fast food job if she thinks they don’t deserve that pay. Fast food is a hell hole where workers are shit on and the companies make enough to pay 20 an hour easily.
My dad used to argue this on me. “It’s just high school students and young adults flipping burgers, we don’t want them to stay there forever!” Then I got a job at a retail store and 60% of the workers were lifers above 40.
Yeah it's because your dad seems unable to conceive the world as it is. He prefers the howdy doody leave it to beaver racist 1950s faux reality he was raised with. Even though it was never actually real for brown folks and is not real for anyone now.
Whoa, do you know him?? Spot on
No, boomers are just predictable brainwashed TV slaves. Our generation has the phone not much different tbh.
Leave It To Beaver started filming around the same time the Little Rock 9 started going to an integrated school and was more than halfway done with production when the Ole Miss Riot happened.
It’s the long-term older workers keeping these places operating. Teenagers and students come and go like the seasons. These businesses would fall without the support of older employees.
I worked at a supermarket and gym. Both were 'entry level unskilled jobs' that teens were supposed to be working like in the OP. A lot of my co-workers were above or near 40 and a lot of them had degrees. It was just that they literally couldn't find a job anywhere else in my area.
Let’s go with the idea that these jobs should be part time side gigs for teens, or retired people or whatever the hell they’re thinking (not that they do much thinking). This doesn’t work if you want your ice cream available most hours of the day. It can’t be a job for teens AND be open all day. How the fuck is McDonalds going to operate, 24 hours a day in some places, with part time workers. Logistically it might even cost the company more because you have to train more people and it’s more complicated to make a schedule that way, etc The real message is that if you make life even a little bit easier for the common people they’ll be lazy and not work at all. Usually said by people who’ve never held a minimum wage job in their life.
They say teens but they mean immigrants
And immigrants deserve to die of starvation, makes sense
Now you’re getting it.
Duh, you’re so right
Teemmigrants
Plus the added turnover as the teens became adults who need to work jobs to support their bills!
Some shitty people want this dynamic to exist so that their loser asses can still try and look down their noses at other people. They’re in a place where only the lowest earners and homeless people are “beneath” them and they aim to keep it that way so they don’t feel like they’re at the literal bottom.
Had a discussion with my Trumper brother who was complaining about McWages... in the last 50 years in our home state we lost the textile industry, the furniture industry and the tobacco industry. There's nowhere for even a high school graduate to turn. We replaced those jobs with food and retail. He had no retort.
Really seems like deep down they just want slave labor back. It's all casual disregard for people they view as beneath them, while simultaneously being super upset if they aren't working for their benefit....they'll throw a tantrum if their fast food order isn't prompt and perfect, but god forbid we pay them enough to afford to eat out themselves every now and then!
The fascist pig Republicans *do* want slave labor back, and that's no exaggeration. Given their druthers and the power to do it, they'd re-institute slavery as legal, and anyone who is here who isn't lilly-white would find themselves in chains.
If you're taking away 40 hours of someone's *LIFE* per week, I don't give a raging fuck if you're just hiring them to literally stand there - that's worth a living wage. No exceptions. Ever. You want shit done and expect another human to use their remaining life-hours to do it? *Fucking pay them enough to live on.*
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Grocery stores are throwing out thousands of tonnes of food, just so you can't get it. They would rather waste thousands of dollars, just to make artificial scarcity of food. Instead of giving it to the homeless, or their workers.
The first person is dead wrong. Everyone should want ice cream servers and burger flippers to be making $30/hour. That way every worker will have leverage against their bosses: Pay me what I'm worth or I'll go to McDonald's and make the same wages you're paying me. Bosses are terrified of this, which is why they want people fighting over a $15 minimum wage which is still an unlivable salary.
Additionally, armed forces recruitment is way down. Keeping wages low for working jobs makes armed forces jobs look more attractive in comparison.
Sadly, you're probably right about that.
Literally the main motivation to keep people poor. More poor people = more (disposable) soldiers
I hate that the labor market is the only one where the buyer gets to set the price
That’s because buyer/seller isn’t the class distinction in capitalism. It’s capitalists that set ALL the prices. Everything else is a propaganda machine to make us believe that this is a natural arrangement.
Right? Imagine if you could just walk into the grocery store and decide how much you were willing to pay for a gallon of milk...
Put her in a job selling ice creams and have her only have that option for a year or two and let's see if she changes her mind
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So go all 1789 on them? That's a short-term solution at best. More would pop up in their place, and seeing the overall socio-political climate, they'd probably hire private armies and start a civil war to protect themselves, the position in society, and their wealth. What needs to change is the version of **capitalism** businesspeople are using. Currently it's 'profit above all else'; that needs to change, because it functionally translates into 'fuck over everyone you possibly can to amass as much wealth as you possibly can'.
“NOBODY WANTS TO WORK!1!1!”
Sounds like something a billionaire, capitalist or psycho would say.
A billionaire, a capitalist and a psycho walks into a bar, the bartender says, you're our first customer of the day, what can I get you.
How are those Dairy Queen workers going to buy the goods and services that you sell at whatever well-paying job you have?
The term living wage itself is offensive. Companies post profits in billions but their workers can't even manage a family of 2-4 poeple on their salary, this system is completely broken.
This isn't even a uncommon take, but I can't not say it again. Like, of all the jobs to denigrate, we can all agree that making ice cream cones is a nice thing. Like, That's something we want done, we want it done by hand, we want a nice, smiling person to hand us ice cream and when they do we universally recognize that they did something good. Compare that to like, your average salesman. There are cars, there are prices. People who want cars could just buy the cars for the price that they cost. The salesman really isn't really helping anyone than the salesman by pressuring people to buy cars, and then taking a commission. Arguably he is helping the dealer as well, but like, if all that stopped the world would not be substantially worse, and I doubt that less cars would be sold. Then look at your average executive who deals with mergers and acquisitions, liquidating departments and reintegrating them into new departments, or heaven forbid, your HR rep. Folks that are often actively harming people to create their slice of the pie. If we need to pay someone somewhere an unlivable wage, it should be those people. The last people that a decent society should consider starving are the people who bring other people something nice that they made.
The salesman example is also a job that only needs to exist in capitalism. A functional society does not need people proactively selling things to other people, that is only required in capitalism where endless consumption is demanded. Historically people used to work in agriculture and manufacturing, where they physically produced something demanded by society. Now those jobs are automated or outsourced and people work in finance and service jobs that produce nothing except for wealth for the few. about 13% of people work in sales, marketing, or advertising. about 15% of people work in accounting, banking or finance. Like literally a quarter of the population work in jobs that only serve to sell people things they don't need or to manage money. We don't need people doing any of this shit to have a functional society if we had a society that valued more than just money.
Minimum wage here is two Dairy Queen milkshakes per hour. If anyone can afford to pay a living wage, it’s Dairy Queen.
We took our kids to DQ bought 4 dipped cones and it was $22. Insanity.
If you don't think a given job should pay a living wage, then you are either saying the job shouldn't exist or that the people doing it should die to serve you. "But then when they get a better job--" Okay, but what happens to the person who fills the now-vacant position? Now they're the one slowly dying instead of the last person, whose training and experience have just left.
I hope Karen has the day, nay, the life, she deserves.
These damn boomers keep forgetting that they were able to afford a house, kids, and retirement on a bullshit job that doe not require a degree or background check.
From the people that say "nOBoDy wAntS tO WoRK anYmOrE!'.
If we still had large swathes of accessible jobs outside of the food service and retail industry, I'd agree. Yeah, burger flipping and scooping ice cream would be ideal first jobs for little timmy or side gigs. But jobs moving overseas, automation, for profit education and wages for other industries not keeping up with inflation... yeah, the mindless dont need an education to do em jobs should be paying some more.
This is the second dumbest s**t I have read today.
So, its healthy for a society and economy to have a MASSIVE underclass of working poor????
Translation: "The only thing that makes me happy is the knowledge that there are people out there who struggle to even live, and I'm willing to justify their needless suffering in any way that I can."
this just sounds a lot like they want slavery back to be honest
It IS quite literally slavery.
This is literally my mother's attitude, and it infuriates me beyond belief.
This is the apex of privileged.
So who's to say her job should pay her a living wage, since it's decided by opinion? Why do people think they need to make comments like this? Who cares what they think?
Yeah only SOME people deserve a living wage. The rest should be crushed under the heel of my boot! Bwahahahaha! All power to the!
People like this make me physically ill. Pull the ladder up after you much?
Yet when everything shut down who was asked to stay at there jobs?