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How's that supposed to work?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Legitimately curious what she is expecting. My kindest interpretation is she thinks students or teens should get work experience. Maybe she thinks people should have to work several jobs if it's too... Easy?
Not that students should have to work...
Customer service jobs are some of the worst outside of Malaysian ship breaker or Siberian lumberjack.
In my experience dealing with these sorts of people trying to to justify this argument, it's a combination of:
These are not supposed to be permanent jobs for anyone, i.e. only high school and college students should work them.
These are jobs that should be worked by >!non-white!< people who are comfortable with lower standards of living.
You should work a second job to supplement your income if you aren't earning enough.
For #1, they believe that because they (or people they know) treated lower paying jobs as a foot in the door/stepping stone at a time in their lives where they had a social safety net looking out for them, then everyone else can do that, too.
For #2, they believe that there are people who don't need to live well and are okay with that. Typically this comes down to racial distinctions and the idea that non-whites must love poverty because so many of them live in it.
For #3, they'll dig up some anecdote about some random family member in the past who used to work two jobs where they had to walk uphill both ways there and back and that's what a real work ethic looks like, then go off on a tangent about how people today are just too damn lazy.
For #1 I always ask them when McDonald's shuts down? When does Dairy Queen open? If these jobs are "teenager jobs" then why do they operate during school hours
"Oh, well old people take those spots."
Ok, wearhouse jobs are also seen as "teenager jobs." Is Grandpa lifting boxes while Timmy is at school?
I think the real issue is they don’t really think kids should be going to school.
Also, yeah, I love how they want Grandma out flipping burgers instead of enjoying her retirement. How is that any better?
Leaving aside the fact that old people live on their own and have to afford their own houses same as younger adults. ‘Oh, but they have social security!’ That’s just having us pay to make up the wage difference, you twats.
The idea that younger people just need "work experience" is a vestige of a bygone world, when just having that little bit of experience would make you qualified for the job -- THE job -- that you would continue to do forever, because companies paid for loyalty with loyalty. That isn't how the world works now and every job, entry level, dead end, or otherwise, is the job that you might need to do forever. That's why a living wage is more important now than perhaps it was in previous years.
I've been in a psudo-managment position for over 5 years now in manufacturing and I still feel like I have 0 transferrable experience to bring to another job... How these people think making ice cream or serving burgers is supposed to give you valuable experience is beyond me... Unless they strictly mean "learn how to show up to work."
If easy jobs become living wage then victims of abuse can better escape via building an escape and self sustainability purse.
Being able to escape the household head's abuse is anathema to the "family values" system conservatives try to appeal to whenever gays are allowed more freedom than being sent to Jesus camp or force married by their parents.
And I think you hinted at it, but also women in abusive relationships, even if they're too indoctrinated to realize it. Even without physical violence, being expected to be subservient to your spouse is very common abuse in conservative USA.
She wants underpaid service jobs so the services they provide remain cheap for her personally. And the teens and work experience thing is just a lie they tell everyone, in reality what they see as worthless jobs don't deserve to live well. Finally they see others gaining position and wealth as a direct threat to their level of privilege.
Yeah, I charitably hope she is interpreting "living wage" as living super comfortably in a mini McMansion in the suburbs with a pool in the back yard and a new car in the driveway every 5 years or so. I mean, that's how many of this generation experienced success, so it makes sense if that's her frame of reference. But a literal _living _wage is something you can...you know ..live off of. With super extraneous purchases like food and clothes and a roof over your head. They don't stop and think what they're expecting people to do - work all day or night long so she can have her ice cream and still not be able to afford rent. It's cruel and dehumanizing.
I kinda agree in the aspect that a passing fries and a burger out a drive-thru window shouldn't be the standard of job people expect to live off forever, and that there should be room for starter-jobs.
But, the costs of living have gone up while the number of viable of decent jobs has gone down. Maybe the issue isn't that a burger job isn't meeting the bare minimum but that people expect you to work an office job for barely more than the burger one, while often also asking for some pretty hefty credentials/experience to boot.
Even in the McJobs, there should be some path for workers to have stepping stones to better positions. And yeah, there should also be no tolerance of assholes. Fuck "the customer is always right" and make it "we strive for customer satisfaction, but if you're an awesome we have the right to refuse service"
The thing that bothers me about comments like this is that it has the underlying attitude that everyone should eventually "be someone" and "do something with their life"
There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to go to work, work your 8 hours a day, clock out, leave work at work and enjoy or do whatever you want for the rest of your hours that day.
These McJobs seem to be jobs "people trying to succeed in life" don't want to do, but are services and products they expect to be able to purchase and enjoy.
There is nothing wrong, lazy, or ignorant about people whose priorities are not about work and "getting ahead" - Maybe they want to do their hobbies, or hang out with people they like, or sit in their backyard and no nothing. Not everyone wants to, should, or is frankly qualified to meet some arbitrary measure of success
People doing the McJobs should still be able to eat, live in a safe home, and raise a family and not have to work 2 or more jobs, or be treated like they are worthless. They are stepping up and doing the jobs we all want done in society.
And yes, someone's McJob in middle of nowhere, flyover state might be liveable at minimum wage, and that exact same job be 3 or 4 times that in a big city. It doesn't change the fact that it should pay whatever it costs to be liveable in the place the job is located. If a company can't afford to pay it's employees a liveable wage, it can't afford to do business there. Same as if the business can't afford the electricity or clean water.
Did anyone watch Office Space? Sometimes happiness is found leaving the rat race and TPS reports and doing a McJob that directly benefits others and doesn't follow you home or ask if you have a case of the Mondays.
Capabilities are a gigantic overlooked issue.
I am not capable of "good paying jobs." I'm not intelligent enough. The biggest problem in my entire life has been the fact that my interests are so disjointed from my actual capabilities. I may love going home and watching Anton Petrov discus new findings in particle physics, or astronomy, but there is no universe where I'm actually capable of doing that work.
To a more down to earth example, computer science jobs are some of the very few remaining "good paying jobs" I'm way too stupid to be able to do that work, I've tried to learn.
For all you highly empathetic people out there: yes, it sucks to suck, but that doesn't mean I should just starve and live in someone's basement, paying their mortgage in rent prices for the rest of my life...
And that was kinda my point. The issue isn't just that these jobs won't pay the bills (with a bit to spare) but rather that they won't pay the bills, there are less generally-available jobs that do, and those often have hefty requirements well beyond what they should.
People are being pushed down in the job market and the "McJobs" are insufficient for most people to get by. There user you be more positions that did at one point pay better than flipping burgers and they didn't require you have a Masters', five years experience, and 50 grand of student debt courses.
There were also more retail positions for those that wanted something a bit different than serving up food from a drive-through window. They didn't pay that much more but it was still something, and people became very knowledgeable in those positions. Want to know what tool does job X, what paint to use for job Y, or where to find the latest movie/single/book from some lesser-known artist: there was a staff member that knew that, and they knew the regular customers too! There was a guy whose main job was to put your groceries in a bag and maybe bring it out to the car.
Now we have adults taking up dual serving jobs and a side hustle in order to make ends meet. That's not "end at 4pm and chill" that's "collapse at home and get a minimal amount of sleep before going at it again and again and again".
Corporations cut staff, don't increase pay, and make record profits. I'm not sad that somebody might be working a McJob because they want to want to, I'm sad because they're probably working several part-time because they HAVE to and still struggling to get by, with little to no down-time and no opportunities for change.
And when a bunch of people finally say "fuck it" and employers can't find even enough people to staff their bare-minimum shift schedule, they cry to the government who brings in a million people from other countries to exploit instead of having the corps actually be pressured to make those jobs less shitty.
You make an excellent point that not everyone is capable to do everything in the world with just some gumption and training. We are all different in ways that makes some skills and knowledge unattainable for practical use.
A lot of us have interests and hobbies beyond our abilities. It's also awesome that you are smart enough to know what you don't know (many people who actually suck lack the self awareness)
Your enthusiasm may one day inspire someone else to do great things in that field. Maybe it's a child's future or maybe it's a question you ask that sets off a thought process in an expert. Maybe it inspires you to think about a problem of your own a different way.
Challenging experts to explain what they do so the rest of us can understand and discuss only helps. If you met a particle physicist or astronomer in real life, they'd absolutely love talking with you and corner you at the party and have a great time. Their coworkers would be jealous. :)
Anything we learn isn't wasted.
Not everything we learn has to earn money.
A living wage should not require extreme skillsets or extreme ambition.
A living wage should not require so much time and energy that all there is to life is work.
Living in your parent's basement or with multiple roommates as your only option is not a living wage.
These should be choices people make because they want to, not requirements if they want to afford food and medicine. Or temporary need to do's (like breakups, moving to a new area, theft, etc)
I agree you should be paid a real living wage for whatever it is you do. If the job is worth having it done, it is worth paying a living wage to have it done. Even if it doesn't take a particle physicist to do it. :) Even if it is a low stress job for the person doing it.
I also agree Corporations should not own and rent out single family homes at all. There do need to be rental options for people, but it should be feasible to buy a place too. But that is a different rant.
They factually aren't starter jobs because the people overwhelmingly doing them are people that need to live on those wages.
Low end jobs cannot meaningfully structurally serve as stepping stones within an organization because such professions/companies need massive amounts of low wage labor, very few better paid workers, and most of the actually well paid positions are available via an expensive education not earned by hard work within the org. That is to say Burger Bob's thousands of franchises need tens of thousands of flunkies, hundred of slightly higher paid flunkies, and dozens of high paid people who are mostly recruited out of college or industry.
This is to say statistically approaching zero of Bob's employees can escape poverty by working hard for Bob. The alternative is imagining that a peanut butter sandwich can feed a stadium full of people because in theory any one of them could eat it.
The short answer is her idea of a "healthy society" is not an equitable one.