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>> We have jobs, we have just decided that the people working those jobs are not deserving of prosperity. I read an article years ago talking about a man that
by phkahler 10mo ago
>> We have jobs, we have just decided that the people working those jobs are not deserving of prosperity.
I read an article years ago talking about a man that worked as a janitor for a US public school. He was just getting by on whatever that job paid. Someone (school board, business person, IDK) said if he wanted to make more money he should get more education himself, or learn some new skills so he'd be worth more and could get a "better" job. And hey, I'm all for some amount of meritocracy and all that but... If he did improve himself and get a better job the school would presumably find someone else to be the janitor for similar pay. The bottom line is that they expect an able-bodied adult to work a job that most people look down on for barely a living wage. At some point it's not about him needing to upskill it's about expectations about who gets paid how much, and America expects a lot of people to "make a living" at just above poverty wages.
I'm not sure how you change that, to some extent employers can't pay more because it's become structural and they don't actually have the money to pay those jobs more. So I have to agree with parent poster:
>> There are so many underlying changes to the established relationship between Labor and Capital in the US that would be a necessary part of keeping jobs here that it would effectively make us a completely different country.
- _DeadFred_ 10mo agoIt used to be 'America, land of the free' and we hero worshiped homeless dudes who happened to chase after cattle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy Now it's 'America, land of the greed' and fox news talking heads say homeless dudes should just be executed. Fox News host Brian Kilmeade saying that homeless people should receive "involuntary lethal injections" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phYOrM3SNV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phYOrM3SNV8
- giardini 10mo ago_DeadFred_ says: "Fox News host Brian Kilmeade saying that homeless people should receive "involuntary lethal injections" Yeah, that kind of thought crossed my mind when a homeless guy, unhappy that I wouldn't let him sponge my car's windshield, grabbed my lhs rear view mirror with both hands and broke it (the mirror no longer responds to its dashboard control). But the moment quickly passed, leaving me only with a new item for my to-fix list. FWIW we still worship cowboys. They differ greatly from today's urban homeless.
- _DeadFred_ 9mo agoThey really don't all that much, they just had different options.
- giardini 9mo agoAnd you know this how? Personal experience, research, multiple interviews, analysis of census data, etc.? And BTW, Perhaps you could enlighten us as to why cowboys are, as you state, _DeadFred_ >"homeless dudes who happened to chase after cattle."? Maybe a research URL or perhaps an brief explanation of how you lived with "cowboys" for X years and also lived with the "urban homeless" for Y years or such?
- marcosdumay 10mo agoIf you upskill enough people, companies will need to start paying more for those services. And once they need it, they will find the money. There is a reason unemployment numbers are always within the same small band. There's always money to employ around the same ratio of the population. And when people get richer, that ratio gets slightly smaller, not larger.
- runako 10mo agoThis really doesn't work because there is not enough demand for people to upskill. Even during boom periods like 1999, there were still janitors. Janitors did not suddenly earn more money because white-collar hiring was exploding.
- marcosdumay 10mo agoYou can look around the world, janitors consistently earn more in countries with a stronger middle class. What you are calling "boom periods" are not composed of lots of people upskilling and moving into a higher earning partition of the middle class (or leaving poverty). I have no idea why you expected then to behave like something they are not.