Wow, unemployment is under 4% and most economists will call that virtual full employment. Still, life is very difficult for many Americans. Only about half have money invested in the stock market and according to recent reports, 44% of U.S. workers are employed in low-wage jobs that pay median annual wages of $18,000. Contrary to popular opinion, these workers aren’t teenagers or young adults just starting their careers, write Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, which conducted the analysis.
Most of the 53 million Americans working in low-wage jobs are adults in their prime working years, or between about 25 to 54, they noted. Their median hourly wage is $10.22 per hour — that’s above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour but well below what’s considered the living wage for many regions.
Democrats keep telling us that they will bring Good Jobs, that will, presumably, replace the Bad Jobs.
Can anyone please tell me what will happen if we could wave that magic wand, send everyone to college and get everyone a Good Job, who is going to do all the Bad Jobs they leave undone?
My point is this: There are no Bad Jobs. There are jobs that we have decided, Democrats and Republicans alike, are not worth paying a decent wage and we call them Bad Jobs. Doing so makes the fix sound easy: just promise to replace the bad ones with good ones and hope no one asks who will be left to do the bad ones.
My hope is that Democrats stop this notion that there are bad jobs and admit that there are bad employers, bad labor laws, bad tax codes, lots of bad things for sure but there are no bad jobs and we have to stop placing the blame on the backs of the working class.
Christopher says
I think there will jobs always unattractive regardless of how well they pay. I think I would always consider being an attorney a better job than burger flipping, for example, not that the latter should not be paid a living wage or is not honest work.
johntmay says
My ex-brother in law quit being an attorney because, in his words “I got tired and depressed working with people who were at the lowest point in their life”….my own brother quit being an attorney a few years ago because it made him too cynical about humanity (his words).
Where I work now, one of the happiest workers is the guy who runs the chicken rotisserie.
Christopher says
To each his own I guess.
SomervilleTom says
In the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I pushed a broom as a janitor in a department store in a local mall. I punched a clock, worked minimum wage (with time-and-a-half for overtime and triple time on Sundays and holidays).
That was a bad job. It sucked. It was boring, mindless, tedious, and physically challenging at times. My boss was total jerk, and his boss was a total jerk. There was absolutely NO opportunity for any sort of growth, advancement, or anything like that. It was a work environment where offering an easy and obvious alternative to avoid an easily foreseen disaster nearly got me fired (my boss was ordered by his boss to cover the vents in the suspended ceiling with solid panels because sales people in the area felt they made too much noise. When those panels were sucked up by the air handlers, the boss’s boss ordered us to put weights on the loose panels. The more weights we put on, the more panels lifted up. Eventually ALL the ceiling tiles in the whole corner of the sales floor lifted up at the same time, dumping both the tiles and the various heavy objects that had been on top of them all over the sales floor. Fortunately, the store was closed at the time and nobody was hurt).
That job sucked. Nobody should have to do that job, no matter what the pay. I get that somebody has to do it. I learned a LOT that summer. I learned how to feel genuine empathy for men and women who, for whatever reason, really do have no alternative but to spend their lives in jobs like that. For the rest of my life, I learned how to look those people in the eye and thank them when they empty my waste-baskets and vacuum my cubicle at 3:00a in the morning — when I’m working on a deadline and they’re working a shift. I learned to ask and remember their name. I learned to leave a generous tip when I leave a hotel room. I learned that there are worse things than having to study hard in school and work long unpaid hours as a programmer on the job after I graduated.
That job sucked. That’s a bad job. It was a bad job with a bad boss (he was a genuine jerk, hired because his boss was a genuine jerk). It was a bad employer. My hourly pay was actually pretty good, all things considered. It was a minimum wage job in MD in 1971 — my recollection was that my straight pay was something under $4.00/hour. The time clock was accurate, nobody ever squawked about my overtime and holiday pay. Nobody allowed me to work even a minute without being on the clock. My workplace was relatively safe (aside from the occasional spools of BX cable falling from the ceilings).
Calling that job a “bad job” is not putting blame on the backs of anybody, certainly not the “working class”. The job SUCKED. The job sucked whether it was done by a struggling black teenager from the ghetto, an illegal immigrant, or a privileged white kid working for a summer while attending an expensive private college.
The job sucked. It does everyone a disservice to claim otherwise.
johntmay says
When I worked at Xerox after I graduated from high school,, I was hired as a material handler, supplying parts to the assembly line workers. One of my friends was a guy whose job it was to keep the floors clean. He swept, dusted, mopped and our area was always clean and safe. He was paid well. He liked his job. We all liked him and when he was in our area, he had a story to tell, maybe a joke. His job did not suck and I don’t think he thought it did.
I’ve had many jobs in my life. I drove a truck delivering frozen food to grocery stores. I sold cars. I skinned fish. I unloaded produce trailers. I milked cows. None of those jobs sucked with the exception of the car sales. I liked all the jobs except that one, and that one paid the most.
There are no bad jobs. There are bad employers. bad labor policy….and so on.
SomervilleTom says
Each of us is entitled to our own opinion.
I feel that my job as a janitor was a bad job. I’ve shared why. You can ignore what I say if you like, and believe my job was just fine if you like.
I daresay that each voter has an opinion about whether or not there are bad jobs — either for themselves or for loved ones. Each parent has an opinion about whether or not there are jobs they don’t want their child to be forced into.
When any of us (including politicians) affirms the belief of at least some of those voters that some jobs are bad, nobody is “blaming” any worker.
jconway says
I feel like you’re both right. Every job, according to the teachings of my church and many other faiths, should pay a living wage. One that allows a worker to support their family without fear. I think we are facing two issues. Thanks to outsourcing and automation, our economy is no longer producing the middle class jobs it used to.
I was struck talking to some colleagues about how many of their parents were able to support large families. These folks grew up in Re were, Lynn, Saugus, and Eastie and had parents who only finished high school and were able to clock into a company for 30-40 years and send their kids to college and enjoy long happy retirements. Some even has summer homes. That post-war American Dream seems dead to people my age. A friend who’s a tenure track professor at Tufts marries is having a hard time finding an affordable house near his job. The last thing my vegetarian bike riding friend wants to do is buy a car, but our housing market will force him not only to buy one but drive it longer and longer distances so he can get to work.
The first issue is that those jobs have disappeared or have become deunionized and lower paying. The second issue is that we do a lousy job training the students of today for the jobs of today and connecting them to those opportunities.
There are wait lists for the few underfunded regional vocational schools in the area. One of my hopes for the new round of funding and school construction is that we get vocational training back. Electricians, plumbers, construction workers, and carpenters are booming in the local economy. Additionally other certifications like IT and HVAC or solar can be had without requiring a degree. So can real estate agents if we steer kids in that direction. A $700 course is far cheaper than $70,000 a year.
Making community college and state college totally free is a great way to get more students into pink collar jobs like nursing or EMT. All of which have shortages. We should also expand the teacher training programs at our state schools, make them free, and identify good recruits at the high school level. The only thing that has made me happier than my job, is knowing that some of my seniors will be teaching beside me in a few years time.
So I hope you fine fellas can move past the usual fights over semantics and join me in building this better economy.
scott12mass says
One underutilized way of participating in the economy is investing in it. In 2003 you could buy a share of stock in Boston Beer (Sam Adams) for $15 a share. Today that investment is worth more than $350 a share. It’s not just the playground of the evil 1%.
Today you can buy shares in cannabis companies (Canadian) for less than $2 a share.
SomervilleTom says
@ Underutilized way of participating in the economy…:
This is a fine example of unintentional white privilege in practice.
I invite you to consider some of the unspoken assumptions just behind this premise.
1. Every person has a fixed address
2. Every person has a bank account
3. Every person has the necessary ID to buy said stock
4. Every person has the ability to give up enough of their assets long enough for their investment to mature.
@ Not just the playground of the evil 1%
It was also possible to buy today’s winning powerball ticket for a tiny fraction of its returns. Sadly, it is not possible to know which will be a winner when purchasing a powerball ticket.
The average long-term yield from the stock market is about 10%. Over the 16 years you cite (I’m using 2019 data for average yield and inflation), that means a typical portfolio gained about a factor of five. The average return from $15 invested in the stock market in 2003 is about $75. The cumulative inflation rate for that same period was about 55%. So the inflation-adjusted current value of that $15 investment is about $21.33. The real investment gain of that $15 investment was $53.67 over 16 years — a multiple of about 3.5 over 16 years.
In absolute terms, you’d have to have invested a WHOLE LOT of money in 2003 in order to have a significant portfolio today. In other words, you needed to be in the “evil 1%” — then and now — in order to make serious money.
One reason this little exercise is worth doing is that it betrays another GOP lie about investments, the stock market, and Social Security.
The same numbers that we just went through apply to investments in private retirement portfolios like a 401k and IRA. The returns from those are MUCH less than the returns from the same money spent on payroll taxes through 2003 and returned as Social Security and Medicare benefits today.
It is true that “regular” people can make money through investments. It is not true that they can expect to make a 23-fold gain in 16 years.
scott12mass says
Maybe you can get Bernie to add that to the party platform. Let the government do your investing for you because they will provide a better return. Maybe the party can develop an app that shows a comparison of how much better your money will grow letting the government do it vs doing it yourself. A tougher sell if Bloomberg is your nominee.
SomervilleTom says
@Maybe you can get Bernie to add that to the party platform:
Add WHAT to the party platform? Social Security and Medicare are already working fine.
The government has been funding Social Security for 85 years. It is a transfer tax and insurance plan, not an investment.
The return from each person’s payroll taxes greatly exceeds what the person can earn in the market, especially for low-income people and families — as anybody who depended on the returns from their private investment portfolio learned in September of 2008. That’s WHY the GOP has been trying to kill it for 85 years.
Maybe the GOP can resurrect The Trump Network.
scott12mass says
The government funds nothing. My taxes and others who pay, fund everything.. If everything is working fine why are so many people complaining so much?
Christopher says
You do understand that WE are the government and support that through our taxes, right?
scott12mass says
sure, sure sure
“We the people…….” just disagree about paying for those who never saved enough and are looking for handouts
SomervilleTom says
@paying for those who never saved enough…:
This is well into Fox News La La Land, and isn’t worth rebutting.
Christopher says
Right, because it’s entirely their fault. /s
SomervilleTom says
@The government funds nothing:
That comment irrelevant and unresponsive, and not even accurate.
It is absolutely true that your taxes and mine fund Social Security and Medicare. The point remains that the returns that you and I will get from those taxes in the form of Social Security and Medicare benefits GREATLY exceeds the return you or I would receive by investing those same tax dollars in the stock market.
@ If everything is working fine why are so many people complaining so much?:
The GOP has been complaining about Social Security since it was created 85 years ago. Why? Go ask the those doing the complaining. Most of it comes from the right-wing fact-free echo-chamber. The fact that lots of Fox News listeners complain about pretty much anything that has to do with actual facts has everything to do with Fox News and its audience, and very little to do with reality.
jconway says
Not to mention most Fox News watchers fall into the “get government off my Medicare and Social Security” bucket. The programs are so successful, the people benefitting forget they are from the dreaded federal government. I do think every Democrat running for President should hang these proposed social security cuts around Trumps neck.
nopolitician says
I would like to comment on how ridiculous this suggestion is. It is nonsense to suggest, based on a retrospective stock “winner”, that poor people can do well by purchasing individual stocks.
This is about as helpful as telling someone that they could have played a winning Powerball number and become billionaires.
There is a reason why those companies are selling for $2/share – it is because the market thinks they are worth just $2/share, and will not be worth much more in the near future.
petr says
But the 1% — because they are educated– will tell you that a better than 24x increase in share price is rather rare.
There are far far more stocks that started out at $15/share and are now worthless then those which started out at $15 and are now at $350/share. Simply advising someone to pick a $15 stock is, at best, naive, at worst, criminally stupid.
scott12mass says
I’ve bought Sam Adams but I also owned some Enron shares. Win some, lose some
My point was financial opportunity is not limited to the 1%.
I bought real estate in Fla in the 80’s, worked out well.
My next pick is Canadian cannabis stocks. Buy some or don’t buy. I don’t care. I’ll let you know in a year how I made out..
SomervilleTom says
The most reliable way to make long-term gains in the stock market is to invest in an index fund like those managed by Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, and similar firms.
The second most reliable way is to make genuinely random picks using a random number generator and a list of stocks.
Did your real estate investments from the 80s survive the 2008 crash? How long did it take after 2008 for them to recover their 2007 valuation?
The stock market, with a long-term average yield of 10%, is a fine way to invest for those who can afford to invest anything. The advisers I know and rely on strong recommending equity investments with a matching amount put into long-term bonds, because the bond market tends to move inversely to the stock market.
Most working-class families do not have the cash on hand needed to make any such investments.
scott12mass says
I agree in that strategy and Fidelity makes it easy to invest. I did both. I also didn’t go to Starbucks, made my own coffee and brought it to work with my brown bag lunch in a thermos cup.
If people aren’t using 401k’s to invest they’re throwing money away and financial literacy should be taught in high schools.
Christopher says
Honestly I wish the stock market did not exist. Money should be used as a medium of exchange for goods and services, not to regenerate itself just by sitting there. Businesses should be owned by those who actually build them and stake their blood, sweat, tears, and reputations on them. Public offerings for people with no real skin in the game just invites boards of directors looking out for shareholders to put profit above everything else including humanity in some cases.
scott12mass says
So you don’t believe in the concept of interest? Do you understand what a mortgage is?
Christopher says
Mortgages as we have seen create bubbles that burst. If people want to make arrangements to pay for big ticket items over time that’s fine, but it should not cost more to do that. For that matter we need to as a society get away from the pressure and temptation to put everything on a credit card. Maybe that way the market would bring prices for things like homes and college degrees back down to earth.
SomervilleTom says
@Mortgages as we have seen create bubbles that burst:
I encourage you to take a refresher course in macro-economics. The path you suggest would destroy the ability of any but the already wealthy to have any money to spend at all. Here’s why.
– For any but the very wealthy, the only way to save money for anything that costs more than whatever can be spared from the next paycheck is to put it in the bank or under the mattress.
– Every dollar that is put under the mattress is removed from circulation.
– Mortgage interest is ultimately derived from allowing the bank to use the funds of depositors while promising to replenish them whenever the depositor wants them. The interest (including mortgage interest) that banks charge lenders is the rent lenders pay for the use of the money they have borrowed.
– Interest, paid on a bank account, is the rent the bank pays each depositor for the use of the depositor’s money.
– Banks make their profit on the difference between the interest they collect from loans and pay to depositors on account balances.
Now comes the crucial point: When the bank uses the money in your bank account, you still have the use of that money yourself. You can write checks, use a debit card, buy things online, and so on. So each dollar of your account that bank lends to somebody else ADDS NEW MONEY to the overall money supply (the total amount of money in circulation). It is measured by something called “the multiplier effect”. It means that increasing or decreasing the amount of money that the federal government mints each day is one relatively small piece of the total money supply.
Each bank must retain SOME money so that when you walk up to the counter and ask for cash, the bank has some to give you. The amount the bank retains is called “the reserve rate” or “reserve ratio”.
Until the Great Depression, there were no limits on how much banks needed to reserve. The result was that as the economy collapsed in 1929, banks were unable to collect the funds they had lent out, and were therefore unable to allow return depositor funds to depositors. That’s what a “liquidity crisis” means for a depository institution like a bank.
In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the government created the FDIC (an insurance program that attempts to protect depositors from bank failures) and the “Federal Reserve System”. As part of that, there are strict limits on how much banks must keep on-hand.
Every modern economy depends on the expanded money supply created by these mechanisms to provide funds for governments and businesses to pay employees, retailers to buy and sell inventory, and so on.
The effect of your proposal would be to destroy the economy.
petr says
Win some. Lose some…
Sure. Makes sense… until you realize that waiting 17 years for a 24x payout is something only the 1% are even able to do. It’s all well and good to say ‘plunk down $15 now and wait 17 years for it to become $350.’
When was the last time $15 stood between you and a winter night without heat? Probably never, you feckless thug…
SomervilleTom says
I hear you about moving past the usual fights.
The Episcopal church also teaches, at least implicitly, that every job should pay a living wage. Like every Christian denomination that practices a Roman Catholic Mass, it also promises at each celebration of the Mass — celebrant and congregation together — that “Christ will come again” and that “We await his coming in glory”. I can’t speak for other traditions, but I don’t think I’ve ever known of a fellow parishioner or cleric who takes those words literally or who suggests that we form public policy accordingly.
In my view, the reality is that our society must find a way to share the wealth that our economy generates so that none of us is forced to live a life of poverty. I think a UBI is far more likely to happen than raising the minimum wage enough that every kid working summers as a janitor can earn wages sufficient to afford a three-bedroom home, car, and yard.
America of the 1950s was not the halcyon paradise that is portrayed in television, and part of the reality of America of the 1950s is that it was a unique accident of time, space, and technology. Houses could be cheap because every population center was surrounded by huge swaths of empty and cheap land. That was true because the automobile had just become available to the masses and we collectively had no awareness of just how devastating its insatiable thirst for gasoline and paved surfaces would become. Every population center was surrounded by rings of radiating development spreading like measles throughout America. Our nation was flush with material prosperity because we had just ramped up production of essentially everything during a brief (by modern standards) and intense war. ALL of our international competitors had been destroyed in that same war.
The premise that America will ever be able to restore the culture of the 1950s is utter foolishness. It would be huge mistake even if we could — the 1950s were NOT a halcyon paradise for people of color, for working-class women, for anyone except rigidly heterosexual Protestants, or for anyone else who did not fit the explicit and explicitly legislated prejudices of the era. The 1950s were a disaster for those who for whatever reason could not escape the urban wastelands created by the flight of wealth and people to the “new” and “modern” suburbs.
We only perpetuate the fights, stereotypes, and abuses of the past by repeating the propaganda of prior years as the “unifying truth” of the present.
There have ALWAYS been bad jobs. There will always BE bad jobs so long as people depend on wages to survive. We, as an economy that creates more new wealth per person than any economy in human history, have a moral obligation to distribute some of that wealth so that NO member of our society is obligated to spend their life performing one of those bad jobs.
I suggest that it is ONLY when that happens that the new society that emerges from that shared prosperity will find a way to either transform those bad jobs so that they are no longer bad or do away with them altogether.
When NO member of society is forced to work through economic starvation, then bad jobs will cease to exist. The minimum wage rate is neither the problem nor the solution. The economic paradigm that creates the need for a minimum wage rate is the problem. Forced distribution of society’s wealth is the solution.
jconway says
We’re basically on the same page. I don’t like idolizing they 50’s since it’s was an era where women and non-whites were largely shut out of the labor pool. I do think an argument could be made, as the Nordic countries seem to have advanced, that there is an egalitarian way to have a single breadwinner take care of a family. Mainly by alternating the leave policies of the two parents. Paid leave is another issue that we aren’t talking about at the Democratic primary level that’s a needed and widely popular reform. Far more popular than Medicare for All.
I think selling the Green New Deal as a guaranteed jobs program is another, particularly if it pays living wages. Seattle adopted a truly living wage and hasn’t experienced slowing growth in the slightest. The 1% can afford to share. I think that’s a compelling argument. I agree we don’t want people working retail jobs forever, but there is a better way to shift them to better jobs without paying them starvation wages or taking away their rights in the workplace. I think an income floor is a reasonable thing to push for. At the end of the day being a teacher is a lot more fun than being a lawyer, even if the latter pays more than the former.
I’m looking into getting my realtors license to build a surplus in the summer as my wife goes back to school, but under a more just economy I would not have to do that. I see no other way I can afford a house though.
jconway says
The clergy I know do, including the Episcopalian. It is possible to have faith based policies lead to liberal outcomes. I would argue the civil rights movement, the sanctuary movement for immigrants rights, and the push for living wages are embedded in various Christian and teachings and those of other faiths. One does not need to believe literally in the resurrection to support them, but I do believe when Bishop Curry talks about the “Jesus movement” he is talking about following a guy who rose from the dead and conquered death. Otherwise what’s the point? Why follow a liar as Lewis would argue?
When I look at Bonhoeffer and Maximilian Kolbe I see two Christians willing to lay down their lives for Jews precisely because they believed in a heaven and a hell. They had zero doubts where they were doing and where those Nazis who murdered them were going. That was how they could accept their fates.
Ditto MLK. I cannot watch the Mountaintop speech his last night alive as a believer without thinking he is having some kind of beatific vision of his martyrdom. I think faith can empower people to do evil (9/11) or good (laying down one’s life to save another), but it would not empower if there was not some kind of truth embedded in these beliefs.
SomervilleTom says
While I probably would have nodded in agreement with you twenty years ago, I feel differently now.
For the record, I was speaking of the literal resurrection and return. Having spent a little bit of time in the Episcopal church’s formal “discernment” process, I’d like to repeat the observation of Bishop Spong that every graduate of a credentialed seminary since WWII knows that at least half of what he or she speaks from the pulpit is false. The reality is that congregations keep their clergy within a fairly tight doctrinal box whatever the formal institution might say.
Regarding heaven and hell, my perhaps overly cynical take after nearly seven decades on this planet is that for every Bonhoeffer, Kolbe and MLK there are a thousand Pat Robertsons.
I categorically reject your last sentence. Whatever “truth” is, I reject the assertion that it has anything to do with intensity of those who believe it. I do not believe that a passion that God defeats our enemies and empowers ourselves is a path to “Truth”. I view heaven and hell as human creations designed to advance human power systems. “Heaven” is the place where people who obey end up. “Hell” is the place where everybody else goes. The kind of “truth” you’re talking about has caused more oceans of blood to flow in the history of humanity than pretty much any other single cause.
I think that the men you cite, together with enlightened men and women before and after them, somehow connect to and channel “truth” directly. In a typical Gordian Knot of circularity, this is of course the very definition of confirmation bias. I know that the resulting worldview lacks the certainty that we all seek. I have come to conclude that it is nevertheless the very best we can do.
After all, Christianity is at its heart a faith in individual revelation — that there are no reliable external or material means of confirmation beside the intimate exchange between every person and that person’s interior god.
I find more meaning in the ancient Zen Buddhist tradition that the path to knowing God lies in discarding and rejecting every and all human conceptions of God. Enlightenment, in that tradition, is found in the absence of everything else.
jconway says
Fair enough. I know my own in laws have felt freer in the past few years since they retired from parish ministry to chaplaincy to express their own doubts about the ancient creeds. My father in law is a great admirer of Bishop Spong. I admire the bishops social justice work, but strongly reject his “post-theist” theology.
Frankly, it’s issues like that they have kept me on my side of the Tiber. Too often the TEC is liturgical Unitarianism. Not at the Advent, but that was definitely the vibe I got at Emmanuel (which still has a very moving midday Good Friday service I highly recommend). Pope Francis is focusing away from the culture war and on a culture that values the marginalized, but he also is right to insist the church is not just another NGO. It’s a revelation of an eternal truth. Or should be anyway.
I think there’s still room in the middle for committed Christians to promote liberal solutions to social and economic problems without rejecting science or the divinity of Jesus. I reject thinkers who make it either/or. From Robertson to Dawkins to Spong.
SomervilleTom says
I appreciate your sharing.
As I get older, I find myself more and more becoming the dreaded Secular Humanist. For me, theist theology obscures rather than reveals the truly miraculous wonder of material creation. That’s not a topic for a thread on BMG, though. 🙂
jconway says
Ironically you’re more of a regular churchgoer than I am. I’m glad you still find solace in the Episcopal rituals, even if you do not subscribe to the entire creed. I’m pretty charitable on definitions. I’m not as focused on who’s in and who’s out and more on how can we all spare an hour a week to think about something deeper and more meaningful than the present. I considered this exchange yesterday morning and a similar theological discussion with my wife as my hour.
You’re awfully similar to my father in age and worldview, he jokingly refers to himself as a “just in case” Catholic. He’s exhibited ambivalence toward organized religion his entire adult life, but insisted on being admitted to Beth Israel as a Catholic “just in case” anything bad happened during his recent emergency gallbladder operation. Unlike me, he is probably as skeptical towards the creeds as you are. Unlike me, he wants a real priest administering last rites and won’t settle for any old preacher saying some words. Gotta be a man in a Roman collar saying the right ones!
He also raised me to be a big Carl Sagan fan, and at some point among all the billions and billions of stars you get to thinking that humanity is not at the center of the universe and is pretty cosmically insignificant. Cosmology and Darwin put a big dent in the Genesis story, but I also think that our lives as lived on Earth have meaning and significance. Even after we are gone, and it’s this microcosm that leads me to think the macrocosm of the universe is not a random assortment of stars and cells but a bigger story. Probably bigger than anything any of us have thought it up to be. Certainly bigger than the “a$$hole in the White House” as Big Jim calls the present occupant.
SomervilleTom says
I find it truly miraculous that I can show how certifiably random processes, iterated over many repetitions, generate rich, complex, and beautiful outcomes. Even if we aren’t yet able to show the entire process from absolutely zero order to the birth of my five children, I can at least see a collection of scenarios that shows how it can be accomplished without the intervention of any supernatural beings, regardless of gender or quantity.
It literally gives me chills to watch the patterns of mollusk shells emerge from simple processes applied to trivially simple inputs.
I’m constantly reminded of the observation that when we learn that dolphins have consciousness and become skilled enough to communicate them, we will learn that not only do dolphins believe in God, but that their God looks a LOT like a dolphin.
I am deeply spiritual, and I find that for me theism and its metaphors actively obscures and interferes with my relationship to and appreciation of the spiritual realm that surrounds and intertwines with the material.
seascraper says
John
Politics is not going to solve this. Either we find a way to be satisfied with our lives or no job will give you what you want.
I can tell you that the answer is to stop craving what other people have, stop craving to be part of the group, and stop craving for the group to want what you want.
johntmay says
Politics is the ONLY way to solve this., The economy is rigged by the wealthy class. I do not “crave what others have”, I crave justice.
johntmay says
…by the way, when working class citizens who are vital to the economy of a community cannot afford to live reasonably close to that community because they can’t afford a place to live, that’s not a “housing crisis”, it is a wage crisis,
It was in the local news (Franklin) where police located a 65 year old homeless man whom was living in a tent in the state wood because he could not find a place where he could afford to live ….and he has a full time job.
nopolitician says
Something that has dangerously crept into “conventional wisdom” is that many jobs are “bad”, and thus should not pay much money.
Think about your biases for a minute. Do you think that people working these jobs “deserve” to earn enough to have a decent house, a spouse, and a couple of children?
Bus driver
Meat cutter
Grocery Stocker
Janitor
Mall Security guard
Hair Stylist/Barber
Landscaper
Waiter
Or do you look at those jobs as “low skill”, and thus people working them should not be paid very well?
My guess is that people look at those jobs and say “oh no, we couldn’t pay them more money because that would mean that all those activities would cost *me* more”, and so many people are currently on the bubble themselves.
SomervilleTom says
I don’t know about any of the other jobs, but — as I recounted upthread — I do have first-hand experience as a janitor. The job that I had SUCKED. It was BAD. It had bad (minimum wage) pay, required no skills, had zero advancement opportunities, had a terrible and abusive boss who in turn had a terrible and abusive boss, and was a job for a terrible, incompetent, and now long-dead employer (Montgomery Ward & Co).
It needs to be said that that minimum wage pay in MD in 1972 was better than the minimum wage pay for the same job in MA in 2020. The overtime was better, the holiday pay was better, and the resulting take-home pay was worth more.
I really wish you and John would stop bandying around the word “deserve”, because that has nothing to do with it. A job is DIFFERENT FROM the person who fills it. A job will be good, indifferent, or bad regardless of whether the person filling it is Satan’s Spawn Incarnate or Mary the Mother of God.
Bad jobs most certainly exist and NOBODY “deserves” them.