Supervisory experience is relevant.
What privileges do veterans have to you?
Someone smarter than me manages to express what I’ve been thinking all week. All of my takes ended up sounding like Third Way arglebargle.
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Not sure what you are talking about. How so?
I agree there is a huge problem with wealth inequality. They are the only ones doing significantly better while the rest of us stagnate.
What exactly is my claim?
I agree. And I think part of the reason they are able to get away with it is social safety nets. Back when this was worse and there was not welfare to fall back on, they pushed for labor reform and unionized.
I feel like this is a chicken/egg argument. I am not saying gov. assistance CREATED lower wages, I am saying it made it easier for corporations to get away with it over time. It was a gradual process as wages haven’t kept up with inflation.
I do think that. I am not sure why what I have said to lead one to think otherwise.
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Actually it was an attempt to help a marginalized sector who appeared to be facing discrimination. These people had an unusually high unemployment rate, partly due to the super rough economics of the recession.
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Apparently, no ATL dates that I saw…
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The increase in price that would be required to make a meaningful change in the wage base is so tiny that it is indistinguishable from noise. In the markets around me, normal weekly price variability even within a single store is far more than this increase.
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I don’t know, this feels like moving the opposite direction from a minimum basic income.
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The fairly recent New England example is Market Basket - lowest prices among grocery chains, but they pay their workers well and have profit sharing, etc. When the owners tried to replace the CEO with someone else to make it more profitable, the managers, employees, truck drivers, and warehouse workers walked out and went on strike. No union needed. They’d been treated well under the former leader and they wanted him back. Then the customers joined in.
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Yeah, if it forces them “to reimburse the government” instead of paying their employees better, that might just introduce new ways for companies to cut wages, pressure politicians, curry government favor, etc., and for politicians to get kickbacks and special deals. It sounds like something well-intentioned in spirit that might turn out to have less positive side effects.
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These good ideas wouldn’t be needed if it weren’t for the greed of those bad guys. Obviously there are a lot more than just the one or even more than a couple hundred. But yeah, there are a lot of people, mostly white men, who look in the mirror in the morning and genuinely feel like they’re worth three hundred times what one of their lowest-paid workers is worth.
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I think it plays to the capitalist ethic though. Raising wages doesn’t sound fair to the right. Having companies basically use government programs for families as another form or corporate subsidy should play better to the right because they don’t like subsidies and they don’t like their tax dollars going to the social safety net. Getting companies to pay for it instead of taxpayers is a neat political angle.
Historically, that isn’t what happened for the first century or so of the industrial revolution. That’s how we ended up with all the social programs in the first place.
I generally agree that we could come up with much less economically distorting ways of accomplishing our goals, though.
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In real terms? Not a lot. Some employment preferences, better healthcare than the US norm, etc. And much of that is reasonably seen as part of the salary package that comes with employment in the military.
Culturally, veterans (or, more accurately, the concept of veterans) are privileged to an absurd degree in the US. Pervasive media reverence, constant rote genuflection, “thank you for your service”, etc. etc.
In reality, of course, little of that actually reaches the people involved. And it is easily withdrawn if the individual is inconvenient; see Humayun Khan etc.
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Bernie has a good heart, but two points have been unaddressed in over a hundred comments.
First, automation. Amazon and its competitors are poised to automate everything they can. Logistics degree holders are already seeing a drop in employment. The burger flipping machine is on its way. Microsoft is teaming up with WalMart to eliminate cashiers entirely, and Amazon has one cashierless store.
This is the last gasp of full employment for many people. The future is an associates degree or better in automation maintenance doin’ it all at Mickey D’s for that fifteen bucks. Ditto retail, where Lowe’s is already trying out combo stock/customer service robots in some California stores.
Second, we have seen to our sorrow that the election dice are loaded to favot the folks whose only news source is Russian Facebook. The GOP would not miss a minute’s sleep electing stooges who would dismantle the safety net to circumvent Bernie’s bill so no problem for them after a term or two.
Make that three points: it can be argued that above a certain point, corporations profit marginally frim sales but enormously from that endlessly manipulable gambling pool called the stock market. As overseas consumer markets develop, they incline more toward disrespecting the American consumer who will be excluded from consumption by future automation.
Apologies for the pessimism, but this is the same human race who brought us Auschwitz and slavery. Expect the worst.
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I don’t have data. I’m sure I can find economic studies that come to various conclusions. Wages are much higher in the US than in Mexico and countries further south. Those countries have millions of unemployed, underemployed, or people who are working and would just like a higher wage. It seems common sense that employers will get to pay less as they have more supply of workers, especially if those people are used to being paid much less for work. For example, minimum wage in Mexico is about $5/day (CNN article from 2017). What rational person in Mexico would stay there and earn $5/day when he could come on over to the US and get a minimum wage that’s more than ten times that? I know if I were in that situation I would certainly move for the higher wage. And wouldn’t that $5/day worker be happy to receive $50/day, which is less than American workers will accept?
But you’re right, I don’t know a study to back that up. It just seems like common sense. But I could be completely wrong about it. It’s very possible that even with a huge number of workers willing to work for less money, employers won’t lower wages, because reasons. Just for the same reason that if, say, a huge new oil reserve were discovered somewhere, which could pump oil for $10/barrel, people would still want to pay higher prices for oil because reasons. Or if one Apple store sells the iPhone X for $500 and all the other stores sell the same phone for $1,000, people will continue paying $1,000 for it, because reasons. What do I know about the mysteries of economics.
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Yeah, it’s always mystified me how people shop at boutique supermarkets like Von’s or Whole Foods and feel like they’re getting their money’s worth.
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It’s a really different situation. Commercial buyers of commodities (and low skilled labor is nearly a commodity) go for price. Consumers shopping for groceries take into account a lot of other factors, such as convenience, shopping experience, selection, premium products, etc. As you rightly point out, that’s why some (but not many) consumers are willing to shop at Whole Paycheck. In fact one thing you’ll notice at WF is they don’t even sell commodity groceries where they are competing straight up against Safeway. You can’t buy ordinary Heinz ketchup at WF, but I’m sure you can buy a dozen different kinds of artisan organic non GMO ketchup at WF. They know not to sell the same commodity products as are common, because they can’t sell those at a higher price and they take up shelf space and their buyers aren’t looking for that.
And in the same way, a world-wide open labor market isn’t going to depress wages for heart surgeons or basketball stars, but would destroy wages for low-skilled work. Mexico’s $5/day min wage sounds terrible to us Americans but even that is significantly higher than basic wages in many other countries.
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There are employment preferences in the public sector. However, since I don’t know to work in the public sector, I have been faced with the opposite. At the least people don’t understand my work experience in the military; at the worst, they discount it because of their own biases.
Veterans have no power over the “Thank you for your service” and I have yet to meet one veteran who enjoys hearing that. It’s usually said by someone to make them feel better about themselves. (And it’s a frustrating and common occurrence for a veteran to hear “Thank you for your service” at the end of a job interview, only to hear nothing back from that employer. It sure made that hiring manager feel good about themselves though.)
There is an issue with the publicizing of veteran support but it’s fairly empty. There’s the same trend with gay pride. 10-20 years ago, sponsors were limited and if a company sponsored a parade then it was actually a risk. Now, we’re seeing a rainbow-wash of corporate talking points every June to appeal to the gay and gay-friendly demographics.
In real terms, to this veteran, the only privilege I have is underemployment and the constant judgment of other people who don’t understand the difficulties of trying to finance oneself through college in 2008 while living in a rural part of the US.
And honestly, with my progressive-leanings, I have my veteran status revoked by the people who would superficially support veterans. And the progressive people that I want to support, they don’t want me around. There’s always one person (sometimes three) who will channel their frustrations at me into passive aggressive questions about their disdain for the military-industrial complex. The worst part is the onlookers who silently condone it.
All I want is someone to understand my skills and experience, so that I can do some good in this new town that I call home. (I thought grad school and an MSW would help, but it didn’t.) It definitely makes sense how more Iraq and Afghan veterans have died from suicide than in the war.
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Are you familiar with the Hell Of A Way To Die folks?
Leftie veterans.
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No, but I always love a good podcast. Thanks for sharing.
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