The US to be just another 3rd World Country in 10 years?
POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 22, 2024 00:07
VIEWED: 4295
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Hehe..... sorry for the PN thread title, but I couldn't help myself....
As some of you know, I work overnights part-time at your local failing big-box store. There has been a freeze on wage increases, at least in my District, for 7 or 8 years, so I still make minimum wage after 2 years. :)
I'm not thrilled about my position in life in that regards, but then again, because I can live off of that there has never been much motivation to move along in this stagnant job market.
That is.... until 2 weeks ago......
Our store manager was axed and they brought in a "fixer" who has 30 days to fix what isn't broken (I keep being told that we're the 20 million dollar store and that we're by far the best performer in the district).
Ever since then, the shit is just rolling down-hill. What used to be a stress free job is starting to look much like the hostile work environment I was surrounded by twice in my life when I had jobs making over 50k a year.
I know that no manager in their right mind, especially one that wants to "fix" things, is ever going to give me any lip... but I don't take very kindly to co-workers being abused. ESPECIALLY if they ARE good workers, but the higher-ups know they're push-overs and they can get away with cracking the whip on them to make them do even MORE work for minimum wage.....
Two years just last month.... I've spent quite a bit more time with these people than my family in two years. They, like the people I worked with at the two other jobs, have become my second family.
When I was a kid, half the people I worked with at Toys R Us weren't old enough to vote. Now that I'm 35, I barely work with anyone in their 20's and most of them are in their 30's to their 60's.
These people NEED this job, and the assholes with the 401k's that make up 1% of the store and the people above them KNOW this because if we had something better to do we wouldn't be working for a place that gives ZERO rewards for hard work. (This is then compounded by the fact that because of fear of "discrimination" they won't fire anybody who is lazy and/or stupid).
Once again, I find myself in a position where I'm the only one who doesn't need my job because of my life outside of work. Just like those other jobs, work conditions and stress levels just completely suck. The only difference this time is instead of making 50k with full benefits, I'm making 8 bucks an hour with zero benefits. (I'd make about 150 a week unemployment, which is enough for me to live off of for however long it lasts these days, and I have at least a year of rainy-day funds if NOTHING came up, which I'm sure would never happen).
One of my work Moms was essentially fired the other day because we can no longer leave the store for any reason at night, even during the week when the manager is there. She and her husband are in a tight situation now and need use of the car during the same shifts so when she does work, she needs to leave for about 90 minutes. I know she wasn't making much, but that's about 800 bucks less a month they make now..... :(
It's obvious to me that my Manager is the next target. He's been in the retail game most of his life, and we discuss a lot of things, so he knows the writing is on the wall.
I dunno..... I'm not trying to be chicken little here or anything, but back when Nirvana was still putting out new tunes, I worked with a bunch of 16-17 year old kids who didn't really NEED the job. The store was fully staffed and we got the job done. Now I work at a store with 1/2 the staff payroll, with a bunch of adults who NEED this job, and most of them it's their 2nd job.
That's bad enough, but when I see minimum wage people who know they're never getting a raise no matter how hard they work being treated like shit, I don't know how to deal with it.
I'm REALLY not a violent person. I put bugs in cups and let
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Welcome to the libertarian dream.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK
Is THIS what America is becoming....? A place where people who work a minimum wage job with no benefits and no hope of climbing the ladder now worry so much that they might not have that job tomorrow that they're stressing out hard-core and doing WAY more work than what they're putting into it because they're scared.
Not for anyone with an education, a positive work ethic, and a desire to succeed. My two kids have already each made more money in the last ten years than I've made in forty. The American Dream is very much alive and well.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Welcome to the libertarian dream.
Throw whatever stones at me that you feel you must throw 1kiki :)
I'd just ask you to please read this book before you do:
http://www.amazon.com/Bloody-Williamson-Chapter-American-Lawlessness/d
p/0252062337
I'm not bitching about my own life.
I can think of 3 people at least that I TRULY know that would LOVE to trade places with me. 5 if you include women in the "random" poll at my job. ;)
Chances are that any guy married for just 6 months would trade spots instantly with me if I gave an OBO on eBay for my "life"....
I have like ZERO responsibility. It's like Home Alone sans the broken shopping bags and the two dildos trying to rob the place.......
Whether I consider myself a libertarian or not, I believe that most, if not every one of them I work with consider themselves Democrats. Even all of the white ones. Honestly, it's the first time I've ever felt the reverberations of the BEAT DOWN from this side of the fence.....
I'm going to miss that when it's gone. I hope some of us make an effort to keep in touch when we're not, well, yanno.....
Thank you 1ikki for pointing out something I never considered that is different this time.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Sorry... read it again and you probably don't know the conclusion I came to.....
I didn't change at all on the surface. Same Old Shit, Different Year.....
My current Work Family is completely different and just about as diversified as you can get.
Killing Our Night Shift is like Killing MKJ's DREAM. Period.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Six
We seem to be on parallel conversations. My comment merely reflected this fact: the only thing that's keeping those people from starving to death on the street are the horrible government interventions like the minimum wage, food stamps, medicaid etc. But give libertarians time and even those will be gone. Then we'll have reached libertarian nirvana.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Six, what you are describing is the type of scenarios that led people to taking collective action and unionising, as well as fighting for decent working wages and conditions.
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Quote:A world power other than the USA has fallen into the same trouble, but worse. Social scientists are struggling to answer the question, Why are Russians dying in numbers, and at ages, and of causes never seen in any other country that is not, by any standard definition, at war?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Is THIS what America is becoming....? A place where people who work a minimum wage job with no benefits and no hope of climbing the ladder . . .
A major clue to the psychological nature of the Russian disease is the fact that the two brief breaks in the downward spiral coincided not with periods of greater prosperity but with periods, for lack of a more data-driven description, of greater hope. www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/sep/02/dying-russians/
The Americans are still far behind the Russians, but if the elite really put their minds to it, the USA can achieve parity with Russia.
The American Dream is very much alive and well. A large number of people with connections enjoy extraordinary perquisites compared to the vast majority of the population. The wealth-and-privilege gap is no longer "concealed by the tall fences around the nomenklatura summer houses, the textbook and newspaper depictions of Soviet egalitarianism, and the glacial pace of mobility into one of the favored groups at the top."
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What do you mean "in ten years"?
We're already there.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns. 
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Quote:The Nuclear Superpowers are competing. The USA has not yet achieved Russia's low level, but it is possible for Americans to catch up, if they work as hard as the Russians. www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/sep/02/dying-russians/
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What do you mean "in ten years"?
We're already there.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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