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This is disgusting. For any institution and any job. If you can’t pay your people a living wage, you deserve to go out of business. Society should not be in the
by alistairSH 3y ago
This is disgusting. For any institution and any job. If you can’t pay your people a living wage, you deserve to go out of business. Society should not be in the business of subsidizing businesses in this manner.
- ransom1538 3y agoIn the nine states that responded about SNAP benefits — Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington — Walmart was found to have employed about 14,500 workers receiving the benefit, followed by McDonald's with 8,780, according to Sanders's team.
- willcipriano 3y agoAll welfare for the working poor is corporate welfare in reality. Walmart doesn't pay a wage that would allow its employees to be housed, showered and fed as they report to work and yet, they get employees that are and all the benefits that come with it. They should be hiring exclusively from the homeless at the rate they wish to pay.
- polygamous_bat 3y agoIn a crony capitalistic world that makes perfect sense. Why not underpay people if the taxpayers will pick up the slack? Why not dump waste in the rivers if the taxpayers will clean it up? It's not like there is a penalty for doing so, beyond the occasional slap in the wrist.
- tzs 3y agoIn those 9 states Walmart has 312000 employees, so that's 4.6% on SNAP. As other comments have noted there are income limits for SNAP. A single person working at Walmart full time would make too much for SNAP. So would a family of two with both people working at Walmart. It looks like same for a family of two adults working at Walmart that has 2 kids (who do not work). A family of two adults with no kids with only one adult working would be right near the boundary. Without more information on the distribution of family size and type among Walmart workers the Sanders numbers aren't very useful. To illustrate how much family composition can matter, I've known Mormon families that would have qualified for SNAP if the working parent had taken an entry level engineering job at Google, and no one would ever seriously say that an entry level Google engineering job does not pay a living wage.
- gruez 3y ago>Society should not be in the business of subsidizing businesses in this manner. This framing doesn't make any sense. People need to eat regardless of whether they work for Harvard or not. If they didn't work for Harvard the government still need to pay for the food stamps. Therefore it's not really clear how we're suddenly "subsidizing" Harvard if the person in question decided to work for them.
- sp332 3y agoIf you turn it around that way, a person who is working for Harvard but not getting enough money from them to pay for the basics is the one subsidizing Harvard. It's giving them the benefit of the work and undercharging them for it, and making up the difference with food stamps.
- chii 3y ago> making up the difference with food stamps. in other words, the gov't is subsidizing the cost of said person, who in turn, is "subsidizing" harvard. So by the transitive rule, the gov't is subsidizing harvard.
- twoodfin 3y agoThe home mortgage interest deduction is the same thing, mathematically. Is Harvard also being subsidized by the Feds via rich professors living in Cambridge?
- ElevenLathe 3y agoYes!
- twoodfin 3y agoOK well, now all government benefits (and roads, and defense, and NIST, …) are “subsidies”, and it’s not clear why taking advantage of one—by Harvard or anyone else—is somehow counter to the reason the government is spending the money in the first place or otherwise worthy of scorn.
- rr808 3y agoIts not a normal jobs, they're students.
- ethanbond 3y agoWhy is it relevant that outside of their capacities as employees of Harvard they are also students of Harvard?
- fabian2k 3y agoGrad students are essentially like employees, just with shitty pay and a higher dependence on the goodwill of their bosses to get their PhD. A large part of scientific research in academia is performed by grad students. To compare this with an area HN is more familiar with, the equivalent to a grad student would be a junior developer fresh out of college in their first 3-5 years. Of course they don't know everything yet and they need some education and mentoring. But that doesn't mean it isn't a real job they do. The job grad students do is roughly the same they'd do later if they stay in research.
- zekrioca 3y agoIn many countries they are considered workers and have all the social benefits of regular workers.
- jprete 3y agoBeing an RA, at least, is very skilled labor. I’d say the job is 80% work and 20% learning academic process and social mores from your advisor.
- Dalewyn 3y ago>If you can’t pay your people a living wage, you deserve to go out of business. I agree, which is why I'm not sympathetic if "AI" ends up driving most of the creative occupations (stereotypical destitute artist, replacable office drone, etc.) to extinction.
- r00fus 3y agoWhen 50% of their admits are legacy (ie rich ppl) this is even worse. Does this institution deserve any USG grant money?
- __rito__ 3y agoIsn't that for undergraduate admissions? Correct me if I am wrong.
- WillPostForFood 3y ago30% of those admitted to Harvard each year are recruited athletes, legacies, relatives of donors and children of faculty and staff. Legacies are a subset of that 30%. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/us/politics/harvard-admissions-civil-rights-inquiry.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/us/politics/harvard-admis...
- nceqs3 3y ago50% of the Harvard class are not legacy. It's nowhere close to that number. Of course Harvard (one of the best universities in the world) deserves USG grants.
- sandworm101 3y agoWealthy legacy families don't allow their kids to be grad students. They set them up with jobs and internships. Rich people generally do not teach. I'd bet that the percentage of legacy grad students is far lower than of legacy undergrads.
- jibe 3y agoLegacy is closer to 15% of the class. You might be confusing the number with Legacy+Athlete+Faculty+Donor?
- sandworm101 3y agoThese are grad students. They are the academic equivalent of college athletes. They provide great benefits to the school. They generate substantial income. But they are not long-term employees, nor does the school want to turn them into such. The school wants to educate grad students, to turn them into something other than grad students. There is something to be said for not paying them too much, for not encouraging the profession of being a perpetual grad student.
- bushbaba 3y agoPaying them enough to live off of though isn’t asking for much.
- llbeansandrice 3y agoPaying enough to live is more than many jobs these days.
- alistairSH 3y agoThat some other employer doesn't pay well justifies all employers to do the same? All employers should be paying living wages. I said as much in my first post.
- llbeansandrice 3y agoRight, I’m agreeing with you.
- ant6n 3y ago>> They provide great benefits to the school. They generate substantial income. But they won’t pay them enough to be able to feed themselves?
- sandworm101 3y agoThe student athletes aren't paid anything. The reality is that in academia there are a great many positions meant to be temporary, positions that in the past might not have been paid anything at all. Many undergrads generate massive amounts for their schools. Not every star athlete is on scholarship. Not every lap assistant is a paid grad student. Most are actually required to pay the school for the education they receive despite them also generating revenue.
- evancox100 3y agoWhy is it disgusting? Do you think Harvard should tell them NOT to apply for food stamps? At the current minimum annual salary of $40k, a single student wouldn't be eligible for SNAP amyways, the income threshold for a household size of 1 is $29,160. You'd need a household size of at least 3 to be eligible, with total household income under $49k. So you, a spouse and 1 child, or you and two children, etc.
- lapcat 3y ago> Why is it disgusting? Do you think Harvard should tell them NOT to apply for food stamps? This feels deliberately obtuse. The second half of the submitted article headline is "Even Though It's the Richest School In The World With A $53 Billion Endowment". Obviously people think Harvard should pay its graduate students more so that they wouldn't need food stamps.
- ghodith 3y agoIt's obvious to you that graduate student positions should pay enough to support a sole income provider for a family of three? Because according to the parent, that's what we're discussing here.
- lapcat 3y agoYes. Graduate students are inherently older, since they first need to obtain an undergraduate degree, and then graduate school itself can take many years to complete coursework and especially to write a dissertation. You can't expect grad students to put off the rest of their lives indefinitely, not get married, not have a family.
- evancox100 3y agoFamily formation is delayed across the whole population, but I do think it's worth asking what can be done to support earlier family formation. (Given that many people are saying they are not having the number of kids they would like to have.)
- s1artibartfast 3y agoIt's honestly a hard problem to solve. From the government perspective, is better to have someone making low income with food stamps then entirely unemployed and relying on more social benefits. Businesses raise wages when no one will accept the job at that wage. Social benefits like food stamps allow individuals to take jobs at lower wage, and therefore drive down the price.
- ilyt 3y agoI mean conclusion seems simple here, raise minimal wages. Preferably by area too, if minimum wage doesn't allow to subside in reasonable commuting distance it means it is too low. > Social benefits like food stamps allow individuals to take jobs at lower wage, and therefore drive down the price. So subsidizing corporate workforce exploitation with taxes. Terrible idea.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoLate response, but not every workers situation is identical. Someone might be single and someone might have 10 children with disabilities. This is why programs like food stamps and disability support take into account the situation of the individual