Bagels
Family Leave Fridays!!!
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.