To join the union or not?

[Bagels]

Spare me your childish name calling and liberal circular logic. And don't dare assume I am a bigot or that I have no experience with being poor. I am in a biracial marriage and have endured being poor and have lived below the poverty line several times. So, I'm more than qualified than most to discuss this. I am also slightly overweight like most Americans. We are the second fastest nation in the world so there is no practical use in comparing fatness between RTW states and union thug states.

The only factors that count here are desire and behavior. God gave us all the gift of free will and the ability to make smart decisions. Unfortunately, there are those that don't and those that blame "society" or some other BS sociological nonsense for their plites. No one is forcing anyone to forego looking for second or third jobs to get themselves back on their feet. Or moving to an area with a better job market. No one is forcing people to squirt out a bunch of kids they can't afford to feed. No one is forcing a single parent to feed her kids from the drivethrough window instead of choosing a healthier menu. Or opting to eat beans and rice until their finances are in order.

There is no mythical monster named "Society" that holds a gun to peoples heads and forces them to continue to behave in ways that hold them in poverty or obesity. Right now I'm eating a footlong meatball sub on my lunch break. "Society" is nowhere to be found. Its MY fault that I keep eating this unhealthy but tasty garbage and no one else's.

Unsurprisingly, you failed to comprehend my point, which is that people -- including yourself -- often cannot grasp situations that are foreign to them. Opportunity doesn't put food on the table; $$$ does. Most PTers today start at $8.50/hour, working 3-4 hours per day just several times per week -- and are looking at 10-15 years before they'll get an opportunity to go FT. By then, the wage progression will likely be 10+ years, rendering 25-30 years before they ever push top rate (which likely won't be much higher, if at all). Compare that to the current crop of FT UPSers, most of whom waited -- at most -- 6 years to go FT while working 5-6 hours per day at equivalent wages of $12-$15, then took 2 years to reach top pay.

De facto collusion among low-wage jobs -- places like McDonald's and Walmart have long been willing to leave jobs vacant & let lines accumulate rather than matching wages to market demand; their efforts finally paid off during the Great Recession -- has lead to falling wages among non-college graduates. Average wages for a FT employee over 25 with just a HS diploma have dropped from $34,300/year in 1995 to less than $25,000/year in 2012. We've resisted reforming education to give HS students the opportunity to learn apprenticeship skills, in lieu of "college prep" math skills most will never use.

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BTW, I will add that since I graduated HS and moved out onto my own, I struggled with pudginess despite limiting myself to a 2,000 calorie per day diet & exercising regularly. Several years ago I began gradually gaining weight, so I cut my calorie intake to 1,600 per day. I lost much of the pudginess but felt miserable & jiggly instead of lean. I decided to spend more money on food and went with more "healthy" (e.g. more produce, less processed foods) options -- for example, steel cut oatmeal & a cup of fruit for breakfast in lieu of instant oatmeal, an apple in lieu of cheese-and-crackers in my lunch, etc. My calorie intake slightly increased, I became more lean than I had been since HS, and I had more energy.

 

[104Feeder]

Poor people make poor choices, Middle class people make poor choices, Rich people make poor choices. It doesn't really have anything to do wth being educated or uneducated, it's more about being human. It doesn't benefit society as a whole to just increase the ranks of poor people because we want to punish them just as it doesn't benefit society as a whole to "get tough" on crime by widening the net & having mandatory increasing sentences for non-violent offenders.

You're always going to have some poor people, and certainly some abuse of the safety net, but as I said before until we start shooting them in the streets it's better to provide an actual ladder out of poverty & into the middle class: a wide broad stepped one without any rungs that randomly get pulled out. Our strength has always been in our middle class.

There are a lot of ways we "hold a gun to the heads" of poor people and keep them poor. Predatory lending is one way, and that has been rampant in my State from car loans, title loans, payday loans (which they finally made illegal & yet they didn't go away), and of course the abused in home loans that decimated our market. AZ has a very low minimum wage which doesn't help either, and our main metropolitan areas are so spread out that a car is a necessity. Speaking of the poor driving nice cars as was brought up earlier, AZ is a dumping ground for salvage titled cars from other States, (flood damage etc) and cleaning a salvage title here isn't hard either. That Mercedes you see being driven in the ghetto might be two cars welded back together. We don't have annual safety inspections either so the cycle is repeated.

Registration fees are high for that car, and emissions standards unnecessarily high (our main polution problem is dust) which makes a junker not so attractive. If you do drive a beater, and I as most Feeder Drivers do since our building is in the worst neighborhood of Phoenix, you are going to pulled over repeatedly just by virtue of what you are driving. I'm on a first name basis with most of the police in my city as they kept pulling me over so much because I didn't fit in with my relatively affluent neighbors. Now they just roll up behind me until they realize it's that damn UPS guy again. But for the poor person it's pretty easy to get your performance up since you can usually get them on something and the fee machine starts (they don't sue either).

We have cities fighting here to hand out tax dollars for a car dealership etc. that will be located in one city or the other depending on which corner they are on, then they "forgive" the sales taxes generated by that private business allowing them to "recapture" the money themselves to pay for building the business in the first place. Corporate welfare at it's best. Yet in many neighborhoods your "grocery store" is a Circle K because the big players aren't interested in building one there because no one wants to grease them. Try perusing your fresh fruit & vegetable section at a neighborhood Circle K and see how dissapointed you are.

Our public transportion system is a joke, and I'm not really for public transportation although I see the need. What I don't see is why we spent exhorbitant amounts of taxpayer dollars on a shiny new light with limited service when what we really needed is relatively cheap expanded bus service that goes everywhere.

Our high regressive sales taxes are seconded only by California, and I'm waiting for the CRV to make it's appearance here. It's over 9% in some cities. Of course if you make enough money that you itemize you can get a credit for that on your taxes, but most poor people don't so they are left holding the bag. We're all about sales taxes here, just not having the rich pay them.

Lastly I blame employers here that do everything they can to keep wages down. Good luck working two or three jobs here even if you wanted to, as you won't really get ahead as your second job will mostly pay for you to get to & from your jobs. Supply & demand seems to have no effect when it comes to wages, as they never seem to feel any pressure to raise them. Low paying service jobs are plentiful but good luck finding anything that pays real money. Our news organizations always trumpet job fairs & companies that anounce they are hiring, til you look deeper and find at best it's entry level jobs that pay didly squat. Other than a few high technology companies here that mostly don't hire local, our economy is driven by real estate & construction which are highly volatile. Walmart is our largest employer, and that pretty much says it all.

 

[Overpaid Union Thug]

Poor people make poor choices, Middle class people make poor choices, Rich people make poor choices. It doesn't really have anything to do wth being educated or uneducated, it's more about being human. It doesn't benefit society as a whole to just increase the ranks of poor people because we want to punish them just as it doesn't benefit society as a whole to "get tough" on crime by widening the net & having mandatory increasing sentences for non-violent offenders.

You're always going to have some poor people, and certainly some abuse of the safety net, but as I said before until we start shooting them in the streets it's better to provide an actual ladder out of poverty & into the middle class: a wide broad stepped one without any rungs that randomly get pulled out. Our strength has always been in our middle class.

There are a lot of ways we "hold a gun to the heads" of poor people and keep them poor. Predatory lending is one way, and that has been rampant in my State from car loans, title loans, payday loans (which they finally made illegal & yet they didn't go away), and of course the abused in home loans that decimated our market. AZ has a very low minimum wage which doesn't help either, and our main metropolitan areas are so spread out that a car is a necessity. Speaking of the poor driving nice cars as was brought up earlier, AZ is a dumping ground for salvage titled cars from other States, (flood damage etc) and cleaning a salvage title here isn't hard either. That Mercedes you see being driven in the ghetto might be two cars welded back together. We don't have annual safety inspections either so the cycle is repeated.

Registration fees are high for that car, and emissions standards unnecessarily high (our main polution problem is dust) which makes a junker not so attractive. If you do drive a beater, and I as most Feeder Drivers do since our building is in the worst neighborhood of Phoenix, you are going to pulled over repeatedly just by virtue of what you are driving. I'm on a first name basis with most of the police in my city as they kept pulling me over so much because I didn't fit in with my relatively affluent neighbors. Now they just roll up behind me until they realize it's that damn UPS guy again. But for the poor person it's pretty easy to get your performance up since you can usually get them on something and the fee machine starts (they don't sue either).

We have cities fighting here to hand out tax dollars for a car dealership etc. that will be located in one city or the other depending on which corner they are on, then they "forgive" the sales taxes generated by that private business allowing them to "recapture" the money themselves to pay for building the business in the first place. Corporate welfare at it's best. Yet in many neighborhoods your "grocery store" is a Circle K because the big players aren't interested in building one there because no one wants to grease them. Try perusing your fresh fruit & vegetable section at a neighborhood Circle K and see how dissapointed you are.

Our public transportion system is a joke, and I'm not really for public transportation although I see the need. What I don't see is why we spent exhorbitant amounts of taxpayer dollars on a shiny new light with limited service when what we really needed is relatively cheap expanded bus service that goes everywhere.

Our high regressive sales taxes are seconded only by California, and I'm waiting for the CRV to make it's appearance here. It's over 9% in some cities. Of course if you make enough money that you itemize you can get a credit for that on your taxes, but most poor people don't so they are left holding the bag. We're all about sales taxes here, just not having the rich pay them.

Lastly I blame employers here that do everything they can to keep wages down. Good luck working two or three jobs here even if you wanted to, as you won't really get ahead as your second job will mostly pay for you to get to & from your jobs. Supply & demand seems to have no effect when it comes to wages, as they never seem to feel any pressure to raise them. Low paying service jobs are plentiful but good luck finding anything that pays real money. Our news organizations always trumpet job fairs & companies that anounce they are hiring, til you look deeper and find at best it's entry level jobs that pay didly squat. Other than a few high technology companies here that mostly don't hire local, our economy is driven by real estate & construction which are highly volatile. Walmart is our largest employer, and that pretty much says it all.

I can agree with most of that. The points I would like to add though is that people need to take responsibility for their own actions and inactions. And also need to have the desire to pick themselves back up after a fall. You mentioned a safety net. I equate government social programs to one of those that firefighters might use to catch someone jumping from a burning building. Well, sooner or later they have to get out and back into the world. I've done it. I was on partial unemployment many years ago when I was laid off from my fulltime day job. I was part time at UPS but it wasn't enough so I always tried to keep a day job until driving picked up. I absolutely hated being on unemployment so it didn't take long to get myself off it.

As far as eating habits and predatory lending is concerned..... that's completey 100% in the hands of the consumer. If you don't want to get fat... eat right and/or exercise. Is you don't want to take on too much debt... don't sign the paperwork. ESPECIALLY if you can't afford it. Its that simple.

 

[104Feeder]

I can agree with most of that. The points I would like to add though is that people need to take responsibility for their own actions and inactions. And also need to have the desire to pick themselves back up after a fall. You mentioned a safety net. I equate government social programs to one of those that firefighters might use to catch someone jumping from a burning building. Well, sooner or later they have to get out and back into the world. I've done it. I was on partial unemployment many years ago when I was laid off from my fulltime day job. I was part time at UPS but it wasn't enough so I always tried to keep a day job until driving picked up. I absolutely hated being on unemployment so it didn't take long to get myself off it.

As far as eating habits and predatory lending is concerned..... that's completey 100% in the hands of the consumer. If you don't want to get fat... eat right and/or exercise. Is you don't want to take on too much debt... don't sign the paperwork. ESPECIALLY if you can't afford it. Its that simple.

Yet it's not really that simple, as people don't really understand that they are signing a loan for 456% annual interest when they go for one of those "payday" loans that are supposed to last 2 weeks. Have you ever bought a home? Did you actually read every single one of those forms that they passed your way? Even I had fatigue about 20 pages in and would have signed away my first born & both testicles at that point without realizing it. Lenders know better than you do whether you can afford it, whether statistically you are ripe for a bankruptcy or just one setback away from financial ruin yet they are fine with lending you more than you can afford because they, unlike you, can be bailed out by the Government without all these negative consequences. You can argue all day long that what we spend on the poor in any form is too much but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the Corporate welfare that goes on unchecked.

As far as people needing to take responsibility, could you explain exactly what you mean by that? I know it's a catchphrase, but explain what it means to you. I have this vision of people who have had to take unemployment, food stamps or any form of public assistance appearing before cameras to tearfully describe the mistakes they have made and then be publicly flogged or humiliated. Isn't that going to be fun when the list gets down to me.

Waiting for the building to be burning is a little too late for a safety net in many cases, and it seems that the way that net is designed now you're jumping from a burning building into a net held by firefighters on a boat who then dump you over the side and you can't swim.

I think a very small number of people truly abuse what little welfare system there is in place today, and just like any system you are going to have a small number who game it. Most people want to work, want to have a normal life and be seen as productive members of society. In some ways, we all precipitate the problem with the popular opinion that people in low wage jobs are somehow less than human. The person cleaning your hotel room, the toilets at your workplace, making your hamburger, driving that bus, cleaning the streets, the cashier at a discount store, pretty much anybody at the airport...why do we put them down because they are working a job we wouldn't do, look a way we find unattractive or unhealthy, or don't speak the way we speak? (cue Alabama's 40 hour week please)