Any questions, Dummycrats?
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I just looked up http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2004.htm to find that over 2 million Americans work at the minimum wage or less. Needless to say, benefits don’t apply and “job security” consists of knowing that you can always find another minimum-wage job if you get fired.
Euroweenies seem to have another approach: they keep a large percentage of the population unemployed. America seem to prefer keeping a larger percentage underemployed.
Comment by ralphieboy - April 7, 2006 @ 11:31 pm
ralphieboy - 1st jobs most often suck. In my first job I stared at maps for 1.5 months compiling a list of counties and their neighbors by marketing code then another month double checking the list. I had nightmares. But afterwards, (it was a summer job) I had 3 things, a little money in my pocket, a longer resume, and a couple of people my next employer could call that would vouch for me. That was worth it.
These minimum wage jobs have high turnover. This is because many employers *in other companies* use them as extended job interviews. Fill your gas up a couple of times and notice that the guy’s there busting his tail every time and you offer him a job with a $0.50/hr (~10%) raise. 9/10ths of the time, the guy jumps at the deal. People who stay at minimum wage jobs either don’t want to move or they have some sort of defect which makes them unattractive to anyone else. This is not underemployment by any stretch of the imagination.
Comment by TM Lutas - April 8, 2006 @ 4:57 am
TM,
My first job involved coloring maps. I fully agree that a lot of modern jobs require at least two years of training, even if you take somebody with a college degree. From my personal experience, it takes at least two years to train up a decent translator, with no guarantee that they are going to be worth hiring afterwards.
My point is that the Europeans have decided to protect people from being exploited by their employer by simply leaving them with no employer to exploit them. In that respect, they are enormously successful.
Americans have long since figured out that exploitation is the motor that drives employment: if employers could not get more benefit out of their employees’ labor than what they pay them in wages, then employers would have to motivation to hire anyone in the first place.
Comment by ralphieboy - April 8, 2006 @ 11:31 am
ralphieboy - Exploitation is a loaded word, a word that frames things against the US style of operations and towards the French method, IMO. Exploitation has connotations of one side winning and the other side losing. In reality, any proper employment contract has both sides winning without any exploitation.
Comment by TM Lutas - April 10, 2006 @ 9:29 pm
TML,
yes, and there are a lot of employers (the good ones) who work along those lines. But unfortunately, there are a lot of employers who look on employees as just another expense like staples or copier paper and treat them accordingly.
Comment by ralphieboy - April 10, 2006 @ 10:31 pm
Ralphieboy: “My point is that the Europeans have decided to protect people from being exploited by their employer by simply leaving them with no employer to exploit them. In that respect, they are enormously successful.”
You gotta be kidding!!! The big three in the EU are Germany, France and Italy. Their growth has been abysmal compared to freer market countries in the EU. Too, there has been massive unemployment among youth, rioting and everyone expecting the government teat to continue forever despite a shrinking GDP.
Ralphie, at least argue against those statist entities rather than with those that know better than that leftist drivel.
Comment by GM Roper - April 11, 2006 @ 5:33 am
GM,
I am saying that Germany and France are very succesful at keeping a large percentage of their workforce unemployed. That is not my personal idea of “success”, but it seems to be the majority view of voters in lots of EU countries.
When I read comments and articles praising the “victory” in France against the CPE, I have to ask: what are they celebrating? Further high unemployment? What positive steps are they ready to embrace to create employment opportunities of their underemployed youth, especially the social tinderboxes of the suburban ghettoes?
The French were very clear about expressing what they do not want, but what sort of solutions are they willing to accept? I guess their answer is to just print more money and hire people using money loaned to them from abroad or from future generations. It works of the USA…
Comment by ralphieboy - April 11, 2006 @ 5:56 am
Ralphieboy, I was mistaken (imagine that
we agree. but, a strong economy is the only real answer and government teats are not EVER going to work in a long run
Comment by GM Roper - April 11, 2006 @ 12:55 pm
ralphieboy - Why is it that people take jobs with bad employers? It is either because they are insane or that they actually gain by their employment with these bosses. Why would you take a job that makes you worse off than if you had not taken the job?
I’ve taken jobs with “bad” bosses. You know what happens? People go on vacation and just never come back. They steal from such bosses. They engage in work slowdowns and “working to rule” and all sorts of petty harrassments to balance the petty harrassments the bosses impose.
Guess what? Such workplaces tend to do poorly, tend to fail in the marketplace. But even then, I would say that it is highly unusual to see a case of outright exploitation in a capitalistic society.
Comment by TM Lutas - April 11, 2006 @ 1:40 pm
TML,
I wish that your scenario were the rule: that bad employers eventually tank and leave more room for good ones. But then again, look at Wal-Mart…
Comment by ralphieboy - April 11, 2006 @ 10:24 pm
Well, obvious we have a problem then, if we all agree that government is NOT the answer:
iring gains were fairly widespread. Construction, financial activities, education and health care and government were among the sectors posting payroll gains. That help to blunt job losses in manufacturing and in the transportation industries.
You see, it is exactly the government who seemed to have created jobs in this “payroll spring”. Education and health care is literally nationalized in the US (as in Germany) and government hiring is, well, a result of government direct intervention. This leaves construction and financial parts of the market, but I’d first like to the seperate figures, before I get my hopes up. It looks like the Repulicats have expanded the state further and therefore need more employees…
Comment by Max - April 15, 2006 @ 12:38 am
and don’t forget that housing is also subsidized by government housing loan guarantees…thre “free market” really plays only a minor role in industries like defense, energy, transportation, pharmaceuticals, all of which are higly dependent on governemtn intervention and regulation.
If Bush had managed an unemployment rate like this on the strengh of the economy, I would have to nod my grudging approval. But look at the size of the budget deficit, the national debt and the trade balance and there is little wonder where it is coming from.
And to turn a recent Rush quote of the day around, if Clinton had run up a deficit, debt or trade imbalance under his term of office, Republicans would be gunning to have his feet set in concrete, not his face carved in rock
Comment by ralphieboy - April 16, 2006 @ 1:09 am
ralphieboy - Walmart, as far as I can tell, does not engage in petty harrassment, is generally honest with its employees about what’s expected of them, and are not bad to work for *in comparison with their sector competitors*. Working for the retail industry sucks as a rule. Walmart sucks no less and actually seems to be at least average for that industry segment.
Max - healthcare is *not* nationalized in the US. That would be communist. If you want to get technical about it, the medical system is a mixture between free market capitalism (procedures not covered by government insurance) and economic fascism (government control without government ownership. Several times a year, Medicare (old age health insurance by government) comes out with a price list for the thousands of different CPT codes that describe what it is a doctor does. Most “private” insurers merely reimburse at a percentage (above or below 100%) of the government rate. The employment in the health sector is mixed as well with many private institutions hiring and paying people in healthcare.
Education is also not nationalized in the US. It is a mixed system with private options from the smallesst child up to doctoral programs. MIT, Harvard, Princeton are not government institutions.
Comment by TM Lutas - April 16, 2006 @ 12:38 pm
TML,
I agree, Wal-Mart is a major step up from lining up at the strip every morning, waiting to get hired by some fellow who pulls up in his pick-up looking for day laborers.
But it does shunt off a lot of its health care expenses onto the state by paying them so poorly that they cannot afford health care and have to visit state-funded clinics.
And although health care in America is nominally private, it is so closely regulated by government that it is miles removed from being a “free market”.
Comment by ralphieboy - April 16, 2006 @ 9:50 pm
Ok,nationalized might be too harsh, but it is still sozialist in its roots, for it is regulated by the government (Heavily regulated). The only distinction between the US and the Canadian system is the permission for private options to exist..
And if you look at the education system, you will find a few private institutions (like Catholic or other religious schools) and some home-schoolers, but many more state schools. Of course, it is still less government-regulated than German schools with the famous Schulpflicht, but still most of the services in the education sector are govenment run or initiated.
Comment by Max - April 17, 2006 @ 4:07 am
ralphieboy - An awful lot of Walmart workers either get healthcare through the firm or they get healthcare through a spouse or family member. If you’re a teenage cashier, you don’t want Walmart health care because your parents’ plan still covers you. You’d prefer your compensation in cash. This is not to say that Walmart is perfect, but that the existence of people uncovered by their insurance does not mean that it is a bad thing.
I think we are agreed that healthcare in the US is not a free market but a sort of hybrid. The Democrats push towards full socialization, the Republicans toward full free market medicine. The battles can get pretty arcane. The Republicans created Medicare Part D so that the part D providers could eventually take over the other parts. The Democrats would like to see the part D providers go away and all provision be the same sort of government rule micromanagement that has served us so “well”.
Max - The key is not whether a particular school is secular or religious, government or private run. The key is whether it works or not and what happens when it doesn’t work. My son goes to public school as will my daughters when they get old enough. This is because the school in my district does a good enough job at educating children that it’s not worth the high cost of going into the private system. I could improve their overall education with tutoring and educational trips and materials for the same money (for instance, buying my robot-crazed boy a robot building kit so he can learn the basics). If I were in any number of other districts, I would send them to private school because it would be my best option.
Comment by TM Lutas - May 17, 2006 @ 12:16 pm