malek4980 said:
You said the following: "Did you think that through? Those are the only two fucking options. "
Whereas I said "the demographics show that the people who earn minimum wage are those that want to, or those that have no other choice." I never stated those were the only options, just the two predominant ones of the demographic.
malek4980 said:
I already admitted that it's mostly arbitrary. But once one profession receives tips, expectations are created as to what the base pay for that profession will be and what the pay will be with tips, affecting who gets into the profession and what their expectations are.
If it's arbitrary then don't whine about why you are more deserving than other people and are
entitled to something labeled a 'gratuity'.
malek4980 said:
Yeah, I never said that. Back four pages ago, you wrote that the minimum wage was sufficient, arguing it was proportional to educational levels, age, experience, etc. So I was arguing against your general stance on minimum wage. (by the way, I'm still waiting for you to explain how the fact that women make up a disproportionate percentage of minimum wage earners has to do with the sufficiency of current minimum wage levels.)
Sufficient for the particular skill sets required and for the particular lifestyles of the individuals who resort to it most. They were senior citizens, women in a non-transitional part-time work, and students. The majority boasting little to no education. These are people who want part-time work requiring little skill, or people with no marketable skills whatsoever. The pay matches the lifestyle choice (retirement) or skill set (little to none).
The notion that a single job should pay enough to support an individual is absurd. You are paid for the particular work and skillset involved. You don't cook the food, you don't manage the business. You're just the person that crossed a sufficient minimum skill threshold required to take orders and deliver meals. The minimum wage is to prevent people from offering so little, that there is no way anyone can make a living regardless of any combination of employment. It's not to ensure that everyone is guaranteed to have a life beyond work.
malek4980 said:
Maybe it indicates laziness; it can also indicate other things: lack of parental encouragement, cultural barriers, and--yes!--even a lack of natural ability. It might also indicate immediate, pressing concerns--such as kids, health problems, current bills, debts--that might make college or university unattractive. It's easy just to dismiss everyone as lazy.
Bu...bu... it's not my fault! It's my genes, it's my parents, it's the environment around me, it's my health, it's my kids. Not you're lack of motivation, ambition, or collection of poor choices.
Rationalizations are a dime a dozen. It's salve of the lazy and inept, who don't seem to want to accept that living in one of the eminant countries in the world for economic opportunity, they've somehow failed spectacularly.
Health issues are a coherent argument, but even then, Canada is a country which has words like 'Employment Equity' and 'Workplace Diversity'. Words that mean, even if I fuck up and get sidelined with spinal muscular atrophy like Stephen Hawking, the places I chose to work at will still find me a position so long as I can think and type with one hand. I have to accept I'll never earn more and will have to take pay cuts, but 25-30K a year is not so bad for barely any motor skills. Plus, we get universal health care.
malek4980 said:
Come on! This sounds like "power-of-positive-thinking" pap. There are many things outside of our control: where, when, and to whom we are born; our genes; the economic conditions of our country; our health, etc.
As for the example of the GM workers, they probably weren't planning too badly at the time they were hired. I think you're expecting omniscience from them. And it's hard to obtain "marketable skills," which change during time, when you're a high-school grad in your forties with a full-time job and a family.
Speculation bent on rationalizing why particular individuals can't escape their own mistakes. It's not hard to gain marketable skills, nor do you require omniscience. It requires having a Plan B, C, D in the event you're crippled or laid off and that you put some time to obtaining it. Even some of the absolute idiots from my high school days have degrees. They may have went through what they called the '10 year program' and D's for Degrees meme, but they certainly got something and are no longer spending most of their time at McDonalds.
Part-time and long-distance education is popular and widely available in Canada. One of my co-workers, as I mentioned in another thread, is someone who came to Canada and spent her first year entirely indoors. She couldn't drive despite needing to drive, no previous job experience anywhere at the age of 30, and despite claiming a Masters Degree from what I think must have been a degree mill, she fails spectacularly at everything. But thanks to coming to a country where they train you for the position once hired, and hard work from herself and her co-workers. She is now capable of doing the job in a minimal capacity. What got her the position? A piece of stupid paper that's an insult to my stupid piece of paper.
While she's a nice enough person, an infant monkey would be more intelligent. Yet she's getting about 53K per annum, which she tells me she doesn't even check because she's more than happy having a job. People like her just demonstrate that the minimum threshold for Canada is extremely fucking low, almost designed for an idiocratic world.
You end up in life in relation to the effort you put into it. I can expect such adverse situations in the Sudan, in Eastern Europe and wherever the general economic level is shit, but not in a country where they have a shortfall of workers, skilled or no, and still can't make up the gap through immigration.
malek4980 said:
Really, we're both making value choices here. You're describing a system you want, made of people either at the top or the bottom--winners and losers. But it seems like a self-defeating system when ultimately most people end up near the bottom. And I really don't see why those at the absolute bottom, the poorest and most vulnerable in society, need to be crushed.
(PS I will be entering a fairly closed, credentialist profession: law--which should be fairly immune from this crushing global competition you're referring to.)
It's the system that is. Not everyone is going to make it, so you had best compete or suffer. Most people do not end up at the bottom in Canada:
http://www.muchmormagazine.com/2008/07/average-canadian-family-income-now-70400/.
Minimum wage is an extreme minority and until lately it's trended downward. However, the crushing I described is a side-effect of limited resources. There are only certain number of positions tied to various levels generated by the overall economic well-being of the country. If you do not compete for those on an international level, than the people internationally, with an incentive to do so, will grab those jobs because they're more experienced and better trained.
Even the notion that professions like Medicine, Law, and Accounting are immune to it is false. Just in the same way I'm using my designations to obtain international ones outside Canada, there are similar standards to allow people from other countries 'mutual recognition' or enough leeway to minimize the effort required to obtain accredation here.
I find the notion that people need gratuities for default work, absurd. You get paid relative to the skill level of that job and in Canada, toward a required minimum. Claiming that the 'poor' people are victims of outside forces is insulting to the people who start with even less, and worked to more without any magical legs ups or divine interventions.
If ominous threats about 'life lessons' are all that can be afforded, then maybe that's what the problem is. Too much fatalistic bullshit from people who like to complain than act.