Also how come when people complain about McDonalds workers getting paid more will result in a higher priced menu and automation never complain about the same thing when it comes to the McDonalds CEO making $18 million a year? Something seems a bit off there
Not a lot of self-awareness there. Maybe we should just give him what he wants and halve the size of government so he can get a real job.
I didn't think exempt employees are precluded from joining unions. Or is this a federal rather than state job difference?
No, it means relying entirely on yourself. No one does that, no one ever has and no one ever will. It's not on the table as one of the options. The real questions are about how best to manage the interdependence that people require, whether in any given case it should be down to a free market, regulated private concerns, subsidised companies, charities, federal government, legislation, so on and so forth. No matter how you cut it 99+% of your needs are met by other people.
Mutual exchange is not parasitic dependence. Earning your living in a government job is not the same as living idly on the dole. Ignoring those distinctions to score internet snark points is nothing to be proud of.
That is a ridiculous, disingenuous distortion of the idea. You might as well say being dependent on plants growing out of the ground or animals growing flesh on their bodies nullifies the concept of self-reliance, all in a stupidly transparent, wholly FALSE attempt at equivalence with receiving money for nothing from the government. This "point" you're all flogging to death is a pile of rancid horse shit.
Whenever I meet someone who works in the public sector the first question I ask them is "why don't you have a real job?"
Which is cute. But odds are that, unless that job is "politician" or "political aide" (because they know which side of the bread needs the butter), it actually isn't as well recompensed as a private sector job, despite being more essential. The fact Lanzman continues with his social Darwinism shit despite this is, of course, sauce for not just the goose but Mad Max AND Maverick as well.
It damn sure is and in my line of work, I've been dealing with a lot more of these cunts lately because of the computer chip shortage and no one having inventory. I've also had to deal with people getting tax returns, but at least the absolute worst customers I've had were all on the phone and I could hang up on them. I can't imagine doing this for $7.25 AND having to deal with the fuckers face to face.
Oh really, how much choice do the other Americans on Wordforge have on whether or not their tax dollars go to you?
Damn I just thought about this: if you can fake an Indian accent you can weed out a lot of troublesome phone customers with a quickness! Also repeat the same phrase every minute on the minute throughout the phone conversation, something like "I will certainly be providing great customer service to you".
I don’t know what public sector salaries are in the UK but we compensate our public sector workers here quite well with incredible pensions and some would say they are overpaid. The rub of it however is these people have to literally rape a puppy in public to get fired. I’d love to have job security like that but i also recognize the merits of performance based employment and am a steadfast supporter of that As for the essential part I’m curious as to why you’d say public sector jobs are more essential - i think both sectors are filled with essential jobs and both have a lot of fluff
I've only ever heard the term refer to salaried employees who are exempt from overtime, like management and (in my line of work) certain on-air jobs. I make the same money whether I work a 40-hour week or a 60-hour week (though I do get comp time for the extra hours, which is actually better than getting overtime).
That's how we use it, although the majority of our employees are exempt, whether they are management or not. Sometimes there is comp time for field work.
It really is. If I had never joined the Navy, I never would have left the podunk town I grew up in. It's only the super wealthy OC types "fleeing" California for places like Idaho and Texas and New Mexico, then bitch about how none of these places have things like public parks or infrastructure or in the case of Texas, a reliable power grid
You're moving the goalposts. Neither of those things are self reliance, nor was anyone making case that living off benefits is admirable.
Ironically this has elements I do agree with. We are dependent on our environments for survival and in evolutionary terms a key factor in those environments tends to be other people. That's not a technicality or strawman, if you look at our cognitive and behavioural make up it's remarkable how inefficient we are until you put that make up into situations whereby the individual becomes part of a group. Money is just one iteration of the way that interdependence has been expressed, we've codified the value of people's activities with numerical scores and latterly attached those scores to labour markets but the underlying need to be part of a society remains. Make no mistake about what I'm saying here, if it weren't for being capable of interdependence we'd have won the collective Darwin award millennia ago. Therefore the distinction you are making is artificial, as a species we rely on each other every bit as much as we do on oxygen producing plants. We're simply not capable of living without either, much less prospering. Now, you are concerned about socialism leading to people leaching off the state and I agree to an extent. It is worth consideration, but it isn't the question being addressed in this thread. Leaving aside the argument that those people still pay VAT and still purchase goods from profit making firms let me ask you a question. What does that have to do with McDonald's wages? How does making paid employment untenable reduce the odds on becoming dependent on benefits? Surely it achieves the opposite? If employment leaves people unable to make a living wage where does that lead? Seems to me that it would increase the incidence of benefit claims or (much, much worse) homelessness and petty crime.
If, by "beyond their means", you mean the maxing out credit cards taking trips to foreign countries and buying enough clothes and toys that it would supply all the children in Cuba and mortgaging a house that will take 30 years to pay off, then, you are thinking of a different class of people. However, if you talking about a hard working couple living in a modest, if not flea infested rathole apartment, driving a vehicle that could break down any day, and barely feeding themselves (two can live as cheaply as one, right?) then you and I have vastly different definitions of "living beyond one's means", especially if you consider any person or business to be "self-reliant" just because they aren't accepting food stamps or any other government handout.
Two incomes in one apartment is more than enough, UNTIL they start making babies with no real plan to support them.