Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

[Malacite]

So I was pouring over Bill Moyers' site again and these really stuck out to me;


Marshall Ganz on Making Social Movements Matter | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com


^ watch the video.


The Biggest Creator of Low-Wage Jobs? Uncle Sam | News & Notes, What Matters Today | BillMoyers.com


Just want to quote one specific part of this that scares me;

The prevalence of low-wage jobs is part of a larger trend as the nation continues to recover from the recession. The Washington Post notes that most of the 165,000 jobs added in April were low-wage jobs. A 2012 National Employment Law Project report found that three out of five jobs added during the recovery have been low-wage jobs, even though only one in five jobs lost during the recession were low wage.

It's worth noting however, that in light of the recent factory tragedies in Bangladesh and elsewhere in the world, Corporations are starting to seriously re-evaluate outsourcing. It's not much but it's a start - I say it's worth it, to have to pay a little more for goods and services if it means people at home have a job and we have properly quality assurance.


EDIT: Nearly forgot this one;

America's Corporate Inequality Problem | Smart Charts, What Matters Today | BillMoyers.com

[Mezlo]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

Get a degree, work harder, get paid more, and stop crying...

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Also, I'm tired of people (mainly Mal) crying about income inequality. If you worked harder and invested more in a career you'd get paid more and wouldn't have to cry about inequality. Grow up man and focus on what matters most to you. If it's income, then stop bitching about video games and focus on growing yourself into someone that a business would want to pay more for to employ. (this is how business works by the way.) people dont get paid for being people. you get paid for what you can contribute to a business. not all people can contribute the same, thus THERE WILL NEVER BE INCOME EQUALITY. sit down, take the jello pudding pop out of your mouth and listen up son. there are some people that will always work harder and be more focused on growing themselves professionally. these people surpass others in terms of income. GET OVER IT. THEY WORKED HARD TO GET THERE AND THEY DONT WANT TO SHARE THEIR HARD EARNED INCOME WITH SCRUBS LIKE YOU. (Not necessarily calling you a scrub unless you fit into the category of wanting a more equal pay scale while not stacking up to those that have earned what they make.)

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/flame suit on

[cidbahamut]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

You really do live in a bubble don't you?

There is a vast chasm between how things should work and how things actually work in the real world.

[Mezlo]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

Says those that are not living in the bubble they want to live in???

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My bubble is great btw...

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I understand my lifestyle is different than 99.9% of the people on this forum and I accept that. But I dont fault myself for working hard to have gotten to where I am, and I won't except the notion of "I'm worth more than what my employs pay me."

[cidbahamut]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

THERE WILL NEVER BE INCOME EQUALITY

This is probably the only thing we're going to agree on here.

There's a variety of reasons for this, but like with most things it basically boils down to the fact that people are terrible and will take advantage of one another.

[Mezlo]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

This is probably the only thing we're going to agree on here, but Mezlo YOU ARE CORRECT!

I wish I could have thanked this 1,000,000 times...

[cidbahamut]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

You're only correct in that one specific section I quoted. Don't take it as some sort of victory, the rest of your post was pretty detached from reality.

[Malacite]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

Not even gonna respond to Ayn Rand over there, but @ Cid:

Of course there will never be total income equality - communism doesn't work. That doesn't mean we can't take sensible measures to redistribute the wealth so that society as a whole benefits. Case in point, the Scandinavian Countries are all ranked as the happiest in the world, have extremely good education and health care etc. etc. but they do pay a lot of taxes to support that. I'm not saying we (U.S./Canada) should copy them, but there's lessons to be learned from them for certain.

Moreover, history (particularly China's) is littered with empirical evidence of what happens when the inequality goes too far -​ revolution.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

I think active redistribution is probably the wrong way to go about it. Ideally what you'd want is a system that encourages less dramatic gaps. It's something I don't have any idea of how to facilitate, but coercive means are rarely well received.

[Malacite]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

The co-op system of business that Richard Wolfe talked about is a good start, but the laws need to change in part as well; it's too easy to game the system right now by basically buying politicians.

[Taskmage]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

I should know better than to get involved in this, but ...

What exactly is the issue with 165,000 new low wage jobs being created? That's 165,000 people who had zero income that now have at least some income. What scenario would have been preferable? 90,000 jobs that paid twice as well, making 90k people better off but still leaving 75k unemployed? The other day we determined that the fastest job growth we've seen in decades was just not fast enough for you. Now not only are there not enough jobs, but they don't pay enough, either? You can't have it both ways. If companies decide they can probably make a profit by investing $X in workforce expansion, you can either have more jobs or higher paying ones.

The line about how it's "worth it" for people to pay more for their products is grossly dissociated from reality as well. Yeah, those people in Bangladesh probably deserve to have their employers spend twice as much money creating safe, humane work environments for them. I'm not saying they don't. But the poor here in America are relying on those insanely cheap products to get by. Tell them it's "worth it" to pay more when they already, in your view, do not have enough. I guarantee they will spit in your face.

And yet they're getting paid 100x as much to get your fast food order wrong than those factory workers are for doing real labor in hazardous conditions to actually produce a product. The whole income inequality issue goes through a whole distortion of perspective when you bring third world countries into it. Because as much as you complain about CEOs making 100x as much as the common worker whose backs they're standing on, our nation's poorest are making 100x as much as the foreign workers whose backs they're standing on. So ok, you say that the highest earners in the US don't deserve to get as much as they do. Maybe not. But by any measure of social justice on a global scale, the poorest people in the US are getting more than they deserve, too!

The standard of living we demand in Western countries is unfair and unsustainable. The world's average salary is $1,480 per month(1) or about $18k per year. That's how much everyone would make if you took everything from the rich and gave it to the poor, creating perfect income equality. The data is very patchy in developing countries, btw, so the actual number is probably even lower. If the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which you support, passes, the least amount of money that anyone in the US will be allowed to make is $21k per year. What does that say, if we justly apply these standards to every human being? It says that we believe the minimum amount that a productive worker deserves is higher than the global economy can support. How's that for American?

[cidbahamut]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

Aren't there cost differences across border though? That guy in the third world country might be making $1 per day, but that doesn't necessarily mean his grocery bills are the same as ours. Just sayin' it's a bit more complex than you're laying it out as TM.

Also: there will always be a peasant class. That's the brutal ugly truth of it.

[Taskmage]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

Aren't there cost differences across border though? That guy in the third world country might be making $1 per day, but that doesn't necessarily mean his grocery bills are the same as ours. Just sayin' it's a bit more complex than you're laying it out as TM.

The figure is adjusted for that, as well as the UN is able to. From the article:

But these dollars are not normal US dollars. The economists use specially adjusted exchange rates - the average salary is calculated in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) dollars. One PPP dollar is equal to $1 spent in the US.

Essentially, the PPP dollar takes into account the fact that it is cheaper to live in some countries than others. The idea is that we don't care how many actual dollars somebody is paid in, say, China, but we care about what sort of stuff those dollars can buy.

"If someone in China takes their salary of 1,500 yuan per month and they go to the bank, they will actually get $200," ILO economist Patrick Belser explains.

"But this is not what we use to compute this global average, because what is important here is what people are able to buy with these 1,500 yuan, and this is where we compare to the purchasing power of the US dollars and find that it is actually equivalent to around $400."

Another way of putting it is that the conversion to PPP dollars expresses how much it would cost you in the US to get the equivalent goods and services you can buy with your salary locally.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

Huh...

[Malacite]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

That's all complete nonsense.

Partly because of how much real estate screwed everything up; It's the biggest reason why the value of money has gotten so out of control. Back when my Dad was growing up, your Mortage would typically run an American family about 15~20% their income - it's up to like 45~40 now. That's why I cringe whenever I see people on the news networks praising rising house values -it costs too much damn money just to have a place to live now, never mind food or other necessities.

For a local (relatively to me anyway) example, the average rent in Toronto is at least $1000/month. I've read countless articles on the CBC and other sources of how even with government support, a lot of people are struggling just to pay rent. It's like that guy said at the end of the video in one of the links; "There's a difference between living and surviving." And right now too many people are simply just surviving.


Almost a year ago Jon Stewart did a bit on that super complex in China where they have something like 40,000 people living there IIRC? (don't quote me on the exact figure I just remember it was a lot - I think ti was called the fox compound or something?) making parts for iPhones and other Apple merchandise. They're paid slave wages, live in horrible conditions, are only allowed to leave once a year to see their families at Christmas time etc etc... all to save roughly 13% on the products in America.

That is bullshit. You can't tell me it wouldn't be better to have to pay a little more for things to ensure that people back home have jobs and can in turn pay their taxes and support their local economies. Again, the main reason for the outsourcing isn't so much for the cheaper goods, but the tax loopholes - a full 1/3rd of America's corporations pay nothing each year in taxes to federal govt. so they can keep paying the CEOs and share holders exorbitant sums of money. Or how about all the federal tax dollars that go towards subsidizing corn ethanol (not even regular corn to eat, but for making ethanol) dairy & meat farms.

Anyway, that's enough crusading for now.

EDIT: The point about the jobs thing was about how previously well-paying jobs have been largely replaced with ones that barely allow someone to scrape by, and that's a problem. Of course, Congress if far more concerned with lining their own pockets and trying to make Obama look like a tool than actually fixing things.