I can safely say my caddy and GameStop employee experience was never something to lean on.
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Headline is wrong, survey is wrong. We’re all screwed. This is not a millenial thing, it’s a general state of the economy thing. I’m not a millenial, I don’t live with my parents, and I have good-paying job opportunities. But everything else stated applies to me as well as to millenials.
Sure it is. Equal opportunity laws are about what you can’t do (publicly post a job offering and then refuse to hire any people who don’t fit your chosen racial/religious/gender/age profile), not what you can do.
Imagine that you have a family business with 4 employees, and you know plenty of family and friends of family who need jobs, some of whom would be a good fit, but you can’t afford to hire them. Then one of your employees quits, leaving your business down 25%. Can you just hire someone you know could do the job (and wants it)?
It wouldn’t make sense if the government forced you to advertise an opening (what constitutes sufficient advertising?) and lose money/business while waiting for a certain number of applicants (what constitutes a sufficient number? how long do you have to wait? how much money does your business have to lose?)
A lot of small businesses never have openings. They have a lineup of people waiting for a chance, and they can’t afford downtime. So they never have to turn anyone away except with “sorry, not hiring”, which isn’t discriminatory.
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That is non-forgiveable by bankrupcy.
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Stop. That’s literally all you need for it to be legal. You need fifteen employees minimum for these laws to apply. At least the federal ones. That’s why it’s legal. The point of this limit was to make sure that people who run family businesses can hire their family over other people. Also so that the government doesn’t have to police as much.
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Okay, forgive me, but I keep hearing that “hold her feet to the fire” thing, and I have to ask.
Just how in the bloody motherfucking hell do you expect to do that when you’ve already given up your vote, the one and only goddamned piece of leverage you have?
I mean, if we just eliminate all corporate taxes, then we can really hold their feet to the fire to create those millions of high paying jobs, right?
POWER DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT. You don’t get to hand over every bargaining chip you have, agree to do whatever they want, and THEN expect them to listen to you. HOW? HOW do you plan to “hold their feet to the fire”? What is it that you think will be an effective strategy to make the Democrats address your concerns when you’ve already pledged to support them no matter how badly they fuck you because otherwise the crazy fascist will win? Because I have news for you- There’s ALWAYS going to be a crazy fascist running against the Democrats. At what point do you actually say “or else” and fucking mean it? Because unless you’ve got a couple spare million in campaign contributions, that’s literally the ONLY tool you have at your disposal.
I’m sorry to unload on you, but this whole “We need to do whatever it takes to address the immediate threat, and worry about the consequences/cost/implementation later” schtick is historically the kind of thing that ends up being worse than whatever the original threat was, and nobody wants to acknowledge it.
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Have you lived through the 80s? We fucked everything up in a million different ways. Our only choice now is to shut up and dig ourselves out.
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I moved out a week after I graduated college. I had just turned 22. I moved in with my girlfriend, had a really shitty job for a couple of years (eat or fix car, pick one), got married to the girlfriend in the middle of it. It was a common story in the early to mid 90s. There was a booming economy then too.
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You literally can but you have to start voting and keep voting as elections come up.
Yes, much better. How do you think you get rid of Marmot Head or Dino face, sulking?
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I have voted in every election since 1996, including state and local elections. Especially state and local elections. School board, town council, dog catcher, anything. Politicians at the state and local levels actually listen to their constituents, and I talk with my state representatives on a semi-regular basis. Also, the national-level politicians have to start somewhere, and involvement in local politics helps weed out the bad ones before they can rise to national prominence.
Getting money out of politics would help immensely as well. Then, politicians will listen more to their constituents than the lobbyists, and a Hillary Clinton that supported the common people and supported what I believe in would actually be pretty awesome. I like wolf-pac but there are other similarly-minded groups out there as well.
I think this Presidential election is a lost cause, at least as far as voting Republican or Democrat Fascist or DINO goes. I would recommend voting for Hillary in swing states, but not in solid Red or Blue states unless one really wants to. I may vote for third party, or I may not vote for President at all, but I am voting in this election.
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I think that it is also something that people don’t want to hear, but people do have leverage they are conditioned to not use, and that means actually riding the parties and candidates every step of the way and getting them to keep their promises by force. Ultimata can be friendly but firm, that they are in office only under specific conditions, and will be removed - physically if necessary - if they don’t abide the terms. Does that sound unreasonable? It isn’t, any more so than most other jobs, where you get fired if you don’t do what you agreed to.
The problem is not that it’s impossible or even difficult, but rather that most people simply refuse to do it. And then they wonder why they have no control over their government, and who is going to provide it to them. It means that voting is not a “set and forget” process done every four years, that like with other employees you need to actually take time out of your busy schedule to supervise their work, and deal with the unpleasantries of confronting them if/when they don’t do what they were elected to do. A few hundred million USians command more than enough power to do this, but they don’t through an apparently perennial combination of gullibility, fear, and laziness.
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I hate these kinds of articles, because it’s just a survey. It’s the laziest form of journalism- hey, let’s ask a bunch of people what the feel about themselves, then report it as if they were reality instead of opinions! There are only a few questions on there that are factual, like whether they are living with parents. That you can reasonably rely on. But economic conditions? There might be actual facts to back that up or not, but you know, don’t bother doing any journalistic work or anything.
And as if it’s not content-free enough, one of the questions is about winning the fucking lottery. Well that’s useful to know.
And there is little I wouldn’t have said myself, back in the late 80s-early 90s. Being young and heading out into the real world is scary. I was convinced I would never own a house, social security would already be gone by now, and we wouldn’t be able to walk outside because of the hole in the ozone layer. Oh, and the world would be a nuclear-warhead pockmarked hellscape by now. My opinions about those things clearly never mattered.
Everything old is new again:
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This is exactly what all the millennials need to do but aren’t. You are the exception and should understand that fact. I agree with most of what you say except the part about not voting in a solid blue state (because she’ll win anyway), that assumption is how brexit got through and killed the Columbia farc deal (don’t know much about the latter but everyone thought it would pass so didn’t vote for it).
Voting is a right and a privilege. Voting for candidates who aren’t an asshat or a corp shill is not, but the only way to get rid of them is to vote.
I’m GenX, not Millennial, but I know many Millennials who are more politically active than I am.
She has to earn my vote and she hasn’t. If (God forbid) she loses this election, she has only herself to blame. “What are you going to do, sit at home and sulk?” is not only a bad argument, but it’s demeaning. Yet this is the only argument for voting for her that I’ve heard from her campaign or her supporters. There’s been no outreach to Millennials and liberals beyond the bare minimum amount of bare minimum pandering. All I’ve been hearing from her side is “she’s not Trump”, only with a baseless insult or two thrown in.
I don’t like Trump, but I’m not shit-scared of him enough to vote for a thinly-veiled Republican who does not share my values whatsoever. It would take an alarming number of non-Trump people to not vote Hillary to cost her the election, and God forbid this should happen, it should be alarming. I want it to be alarming. This election is hers to lose. However, I know it won’t be a cause for alarm if she loses. Her supporters will blame Johnson and Stein like they blame Nader for 2000, and they’ll also blame those whiny sulky Millennials for actually having principles.
Um, yes it is. I have the right to vote, but I’m not legally compelled to vote. I can also vote for whomever I want. I’d write in Charles Darwin if my only other option was Paul Broun.
Call for an Article V Convention for an amendment to overturn Citizens United and get money out of politics.
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Listen to the crappy gandpa, he gets it that this election is between a douche and a turd sandwich (thank you south park), what he’s working on is the mid-terms (where dems are the laziset voters of all). The more the millennials vote now the more attention they will get in the next election (mid-terms) and then candidates they are excited about will appear, this is the point bernie is trying to make. Also this current election is about not going backwards and setting up the supreme court for the next 20 years as not shills for the trump family.
EDIT:grammar
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Wolfpac is awesome. I assumed by you reply you were a millennial, I should have asked.
Statistically though they do not vote in very high numbers, and while the Sanders movement saw some improvement in political activism they also generally don’t get active in the political parties’ structure. Like it or not this is a form of generational self-marginalization. The reason politicians pay more attention to seniors than to young people is that seniors vote, they organize, and their organizations also get them out to vote. One of the most effective thing that those millenials who are involved and active can do is get as many of the non-active ones as possible in their community to the polls. Do this live and locally, not online. Help make it easy in your community - rides, maybe organize parties near the polling places. If you get a friend who otherwise wouldn’t have voted to the polls, your voice is now twice as strong. Until then, it might not be their fault that their generation gets ignored, it might not feel fair, but that’s the reality, and griping isn’t going to change it.
The other reality is that the outcome of these elections disproportionally impacts the youngest voting blocks. Wars, job policy, education policy, these are all much bigger issues for people 18-25 than they are to me. Trump scares the crap out of me, but the fact is that my life, Jill Stein’s life, Hillary Clinton’s life will not be much worse under Trump.
This isn’t anything new, it has always been the case. The Vietnam draft was the most important reason we fought to lower the voting age to 18.
By most counts she agrees on 90-95% of issues with Sanders, and that was before she tacked left during the campaign. Are you saying that you disagree 90-95% with Sanders?
When you’ve been through as many these elections as I have, it is refreshing to be able to vote for someone who is articulate, informed, represents us well on the international stage, and agrees with me on at least 80% of the things I think are important. As much as I often disagreed with the current president, I voted for him with great enthusiasm (and would do so again if I could). Clinton will be a fine president if she is elected, and I’m sure I will get angry with her over many things but no more than I was angry with Obama, Clinton I, Carter, Johnson, or Kennedy (I’m too young to remember Truman), and surely quite a lot less than I was with all those GOP monsters since Nixon who have tried to ruin the country. (I exclude Ike since he wasn’t a monster.)
This is what really puzzles me about some of the anti-Clinton rhetoric from the left; it seems really disproportionate to the actual disagreements with her, and the result is the truly weird phenomenon of people who don’t believe she will at least try to do what she and her platform say she wants to do voting for a guy who thinks that the free market or the end of the solar system are appropriate approaches to Global Warming, or a shallow political hobbyist with no leadership skills or political experience, and questionable consistency and judgment.
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There are more than two sides to every issue, so not liking Hillary Clinton’s politics does not necessarily mean I reject Bernie Sanders’ politics. Even if it did, it wouldn’t mean I reject them completely.
I think that 90-95% figure is closer to 80%. And she didn’t “tack left”, she’s outright lying about what she believes in and what she will do once she takes office. The beltway pundits call this type of thing a mid-election pivot, but I call it lies. Regardless, her agreement with Bernie is only milquetoast semi-agreement couched in qualifiers. Check out her answer on fracking versus his. I like his answer (an emphatic “no”) a lot better than hers, because even though they technically agree on paper, her no is a lot more flexible than his.
I do disagree with Bernie Sanders, but only on about ~10%. On the other 90% I agree with him at least a little. But on paper, anyone can be made to agree with anyone else 90% of the time.
This will be my sixth, and it is the first where I legitimately wanted to sit out the Presidential vote. I’ve voted for both major parties (Bush’s first term was a complete eye opener for me) as well as third parties for President, but this is the first one where I’ve thought to myself, fuck it, it’s not worth it.
I voted for him in 2008, not enthusiastically, but because I liked what he had to say and I thought he had promise. I didn’t think he was going to save us all or anything like that, I just thought he would be less shitty than most politicians and much less shitty than McCain. I didn’t like that he carried on many Bush-era policies or ramped them up (NSA spying), didn’t go after the banksters, didn’t close Gitmo, etc, so I voted third party in 2012. In Ohio. I still don’t know if he or Romney would have been better for the country.
I get it. You’re saying my views aren’t that different from Hillary Clinton’s, and on paper, you’re right. However, in practice, I’m far to the left of her, I don’t trust her, and I think she can be bought. Just because her opinions du jour agree with opinions I’ve held for decades doesn’t mean she’s on my side, nor does it mean she’s someone I can trust. On the other hand, there aren’t a whole lot of options right now, but hopefully there will be soon.
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well, it’s exactly like @popobawa4u says: as a voter, you DO have leverage and a responsibility, but you have to be diligent AFTER the election, too. even if the most unlikely thing happens and jill stein or some other 3rd party candidate is elected, it’s not just automagically all puppies and rainbows… she could decide to say “fuck all y’all” just as much as any other major party candidate.
i’d much rather vote for clinton, who’s been tried and tested and devoted her entire damn life to public service, than trump or ANYONE else running right now. bernie was my first choice, and it was a bitter pill to have him lose the race, but i respect his experience in government enough that when he says, “hey, clinton’s going to be a good president” that he knows what he’s talking about. it’s not like he didn’t accomplish anything, and he’s got the right idea to grow and groom more progressive candidates from down the ballot to ensure his concepts and ideas take deeper root and flourish in 4 years and beyond.
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One important thing for Sanders supporters to remember is that Clinton’s ambition and arrogance makes the prospect of being a one-term President highly unpalatable to her. While I hope she wins, I also hope that she’ll see more undervotes and lower turnout by Dems in solid blue states like mine* than Obama saw so that she and her people understand from 9 November onward how unpopular her business-as-usual Third Way policies are. That combined with the kind of follow-up activity you describe might make her actually deliver on some of the platform planks that Sanders voters forced on her.
[* states her campaign would have to actively work at to lose, states where she has a margin that can easily survive undervotes]
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