This is topic "The Living Wage" (coming soon to a Theatre Near You) in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-09-2018, 11:15 AM:
Doing my best to keep this non-political, the mythical "living wage" has hit us here in Ontario. On January 1st, last year's minimum wage of $11.40/hr has jumped to $14.00. Our floundering, long-in-the-tooth provincial government actually was against this for most of its now 14-year term, but facing election this June (with horrendous polling numbers FWIW), passed this into law late last year with a promised bump to $15 in one year's time if re-elected. (The politicians are now shaming small businesspeople in public who have been scrambling to adjust.)
Quite a bit of debate as you can imagine, and I'm curious to hear from those located in places where things like this have happened already how you've adjusted. The philosophical and economic debates are one thing (ie: I think I could live on $15 x 40 hours in my small hometown, but not at all in a large city. Not to mention we all started out working for peanuts, and isn't there a valid argument for the value of "entry level" and "student" wages? I think so.).
Anyhow, instant 22% wage increase(30% if the next one kicks in) is obviously causing a lot of concern amongst business owners. It's your largest expense. Some of the franchise coffee shop owners are being shamed for eliminating paid breaks and reducing their health benefits from 100% to 70% (and I should say that most employers of "entry-level" jobs have never provided either, it was the kind of thing some people did as a "perk" for work they otherwise couldn't pay much for). These franchisees can't raise their pricing since the parent company sets those, so it's kind of a tough spot.
Our own situation is a "good news/bad news" thing. On one hand, we have had just a fabulous group of local kids who've grown up with us and are now educated and leaving home. They're leaving now so I don't need to worry about disappointing them. We've been proud to have helped them in our small way. We're also renovating and as such, are able to do some things that will cut out a good chunk of the manual labor required each evening just by being efficient, adding equipment like a dishwasher and more refrigeration and moving our box office to where we can process the "late admisssions" without leaving a kid out there for 3 hours. That's the good news.
The bad news is that now our "college-age manager salary" of $15 (+ bonus when we could) which was much appreciated is now "just minimum". We've so much enjoyed giving kids their "first job" over the years and challenging them with responsibility, I'm disappointed as I think our usual staff of 8-10 kids will shrink to half that, and efficiencies (less hours per shift) we'll bring in will make it difficult to "elevate" those kids to eventually "run the show" with our guidance. It's honestly what I enjoy and what I do best. I just don't know how much we can raise prices right now, this province is getting hit from all sides with inflation.
Apologies for the rambling. In my heart, I want to keep it "the way it is", I want to take my "star" employee, and pay her $19/hr and let the rest aspire first to that, then beyond. Let the customer pay for it. But you either do that, or you "automate" things like McDonald's has, there just really isn't a "middle ground" in a business this tiny. And where's the "soul" in that?
Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 01-09-2018, 02:47 PM:
This was done soley to get the Ontario witch and her gang of liberal trolls re-elected. Regardless 14/hr is a disaster on many levels. Mainly for working people who are just starting a job or have limited skills.
Larger businesses will simply accelerate automation and streamline the work flow at the retail and service levels. Less is more.
McDonalds has cut their staffing significantly with automated stations - ordering kiosks and direct ordering from mobiles. But more than that the work flow has improved so the people who cook the meals also run the food.
CP is no exception with many more ticket kiosks and self serve options for the customers.
Here at the Kingsway Theatre it is a hit but staffing is at most three people when busy and we stick to box-session. That works to increase bar sales at the point of ticket purchase. Of course I have already raised the price - ultimately that is what will mitigate the increase in the short term.
This will backfire heavily on the idiot liberals - of course they did this with no subsidies to employers - training, financial - nothing other that a promise to reduce corporate tax. Like that reduction means anything when businesses are sliding further into the hole.
Welcome to the corporatocracy and the politicians are doing their bidding by squeezing out smaller business and further indebting workers. Soon Wallace and Weyland will own everything.
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-09-2018, 06:57 PM:
As a general rule, people making the legal minimum wage (or close to it) fall into one of two categories: kids in their first job, as described by Dave, and older people, who, for whatever reason (though lack of education and training focused on what the economy needs is almost always the core, underlying reason), are actually trying to support themselves on a minimum wage job, and, in most places in the developed world, can't.
The problem is that there is no effective and fair way to distinguish between the former and the latter and have two minimum wages. Both are doing the same job, so why should one be paid more? But a 16-year old living at home and saving for his first car is in a very different financial situation from that that of a 26-year old single parent, and it's the votes of the latter that the politicians are going after by hiking the minimum wage.
The other aspect to this is that the very big businesses that employ tens or even hundreds of thousands of minimum wage workers (e.g. supermarket chains) are effectively being subsidized by the taxpayer, because many of these workers will need support from the government in one form or another, to bridge the gap between their minimum wage salary and what it actually costs to live.
The fallout from this is significant, and increasing. Political pressure to increase wages by regulation, followed by jobs being automated away in response, is happening here, too. There is an independently owned, mom-and-pop shop cafe around the corner from us. It closed to redecorate for a month last summer, and when it reoponed, there was a touch screen tablet on every table, on which you order your coffee and croissant. The owner appears with them a few minutes later, and the minimum wage student who would have done is no more.
There is no doubt that lower skilled jobs are going to disappear, and the education and training industries (even if most of them are nonprofit, let's face it, that's what schools and universities are) are going to have to step up to the plate and do their part to catch those people who are in danger of entering the workforce proper, without the skills needed to do any jobs other than the ones that are being automated away, before it's too late for them. Some kids are going to have to find ways to gain entry level work experience that they didn't have to find before (my son will be in this position in about 15 years' time, so this is something I'm thinking about). There's a role for government in that, too, but that's veering OT for this forum.
Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 01-09-2018, 07:18 PM:
I'll add to Leo's comment that over the last decade there have been increasing numbers of people forced to take minimum wage jobs because of jobs lost when the economy tanked in 2008. The conventional wisdom that these jobs are filled by teenagers and low skill workers is not necessarily true any more. Plus many jobs in manufacturing and other similar trades require a higher skill level in the past due to more advanced equipment and techniques.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-09-2018, 07:53 PM:
You also have skilled jobs that cease to be needed anymore. Someone might be in their 50s when their industry changes and all of the sudden their career just ends. They are not at retirement age nor does their previous skills have any direct value. This could happen to anyone up until they are retired (presuming that they have a retirement plan and if not, until they can no longer physically work ANY job).
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-09-2018, 09:34 PM:
This is a very complicated issue and one that, in the United States, only promises to grow much worse over the next couple decades unless major changes happen with the mindset of the general public, changes in demographics and changes in (whisper: politics). If we stay on the current path the United States will be like a cruise ship running full speed towards an iceberg.
The cost of living varies widely in different regions of the US. Making every city adhere to a flat, national minimum wage is only a flagrantly stupid idea. Here in Oklahoma people love to scoff at cities like San Francisco raising minimum wage levels to $15 per hour. But our overall income demographics are far lower (and the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour). Someone can make a decent yet modest living on $15 per hour here in Lawton. $15 per hour isn't enough to even live on the outskirts of San Francisco or other high cost cities like New York. That's a little fact political junkies in my region just love to ignore. They think $7.25 is enough for anyone to live anywhere.
And then there's the asinine notion that minimum wage jobs are just for teens in school. If that's really the case then maybe all these businesses paying minimum wage shouldn't be open during school hours. And they should close early in the evening so the kids have time to get their homework done. How about that? The truth is there's lot of adults working minimum wage jobs during school and business hours.
Service industry businesses (like movie theaters) are going to be increasingly behind a rock and a hard place in urban areas with high costs of living. They're going to be caught between affording rising wage levels that are either mandated by the local or state government. Or they're going to be forced to raise wage levels just to get enough positions staffed.
New York City has an alarming problem of homelessness where many of the homeless are people with jobs. They can't afford anywhere to live since land lords, hedge fund companies and other types of speculators have spiked housing prices and gentrified widespread areas. Lower income workers are literally being priced out of the region or they're being forced into homelessness. Sadly, it's far more difficult now for people to migrate to more affordable parts of the nation. Skilled workers with certifications may have to go back to school and get re-certified when moving to a different state.
Eventually the low wage workers struggling horribly to survive in these high cost cities will escape to other regions. Then a bunch of these low wage, service businesses in high cost cities will have far worse staffing problems.
One factor that has me worried for the long term is the United States is now entering a "baby bust." Total fertility rates of American born women are plummeting to new all time lows, well below the "replacement level" of 2.1 children per female (enough kids to replace citizens who die). Parenthood is turning into a very expensive luxury due to high health care costs, high education costs, high costs of family sized housing, day care, family vehicles, etc.
Compound the high cost of parenthood with big cultural changes. Far more women no longer feel obligated to get married and have kids. Many want the freedom to have careers, far more free time and far less complication in their lives. Millennials are delaying marriage and parenthood or just foregoing it altogether in record numbers.
Compound the birth rate problem even further with immigration. Since 1975, for over 40 years, ALL of the United States' net population growth has come solely through immigration. The fertility rate of American born women has wavered near the replacement rate level all that time. Now we're looking at radically reducing the amount of legal immigration and deporting thousands or even millions. Of the immigrants who are coming here their fertility rates are also dropping.
Getting back to the point, the long term worry with an American Baby Bust is many of our nation's businesses and industries need a large, steady supply of young adults. Movie theaters depend greatly on being able to employ teens and young adults. Automation will eliminate lots of jobs. Online merchants killing many brick and mortar "main street" businesses will eliminate far more jobs. Investors like the idea of those kinds of "efficiencies." But they can't escape the fact that online merchants and automated businesses need LOTS of employed, human being customers in order to survive -customers with jobs and discretionary income. Amazon makes no secret how it wants to cannibalize every kind of brick and mortar business, but Jeff Bezos apparently hasn't bothered to think how many customers he will lose once all those brick and mortar businesses fail.
Our military needs a large, steady supply of young adults. We also need a large supply of working age citizens to provide the financial foundation for many government programs, pension systems and even the pension systems for many businesses. If we have too few young adults paying into the system the entire thing goes bust.
I don't think this baby bust problem is on the radar scopes of policy makers at all.
Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 01-09-2018, 11:06 PM:
quote: Bobby Henderson
I don't think this baby bust problem is on the radar scopes of policy makers at all.
They should have made the affordable care act ban insurance companies from covering contraceptives instead of forcing them to. Then, the baby bust might turn the other direction!
BTW, this is meant as a joke and not a political debate about healthcare!
Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 01-09-2018, 11:26 PM:
This is all deliberate - here is an interesting article...focusing on the likes of Oprah and her message. Movie theatres are the canary in the coal mine for the future of the west...
Oprah is a key propagandist for neo liberalism. She may even have had more effect than the Clintons. She propagandized: if you haven't found success, look inside yourself and make some changes, you have no one to blame but yourself, it's not the system. IT'S YOUR FAULT was her core message. Same message as the Harvard Business Review, LinkedIn, Business Insider, The Economist and on and on. Meanwhile the Clintons were destroying the democratic, fairness aspects of the system - the New Deal - and making life increasingly cruel. Shell game.
How did we get from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” to Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual capitalism”?
...
As Kathryn Lofton writes in Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon, “Every product of Winfrey’s empire combines spiritual counsel with practical encouragement, inner awakening with capitalist pragmatism.”
Ann Neumann
Taking Liberties
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-09-2018, 11:36 PM:
There's a lot of good thoughts here. I really hate to see the death of the student job. My daughter actually has classmates in university who've NEVER had one, it's crazy. For us it's really going to force changes. We've always got by on as little "automation" as possible. Customers like it because you just don't see it anymore. Our initial theory is to "automate" enough things (like pre-sliced condiments, larger popcorn display and more "batch-fills", not traying nachos on demand but again using a display case). In short, we'll TRY to go with one less staffer inside, we'll move the box office so nobody is stuck out there after the show starts, and instead of keeping most of the crew there until intermission, they'll go home after the show starts and we've cleaned up. The kids we do keep will probably get most of the hours they've always had and a little more pay, but there might only be half of them as before.
The point about no differentiation for student versus adult wage category gets worse. The new rules say you CANNOT pay less to a part-timer doing the same job as a full-timer. (I once was negotiating a collective agreement and asked the union rep "What if we can't afford this." "Oh, no problem, just lay off your full-time staff and hire part-time." Nice, all for one and one for all? He didn't care, dues were paid hourly.) For sure we will have to define managers versus regular staff if we choose to still have a higher pay rate.
Yes Alexandre, it's getting tough to take up here by times, they've made a mess of everything, taken energy prices through the roof and clearly this is a last ditch attempt to retain power. I'm actually more worried about the new Federal small-biz tax guidelines (effective NOW but they won't actually announce what they are until May.......real easy to plan for that right?). For those not in Canada, it looks like despite business owners paying roughly 50-55% tax now inside a business (rebated if you take it out as dividend to roughly the normal "earned" rate), the gov't is attempting to "double-tax" it if you leave it in a "passive" investment (common to fund expansion or improvements). This would bring it to roughly 73%. So really they want to force this out into your hands to be taxed now. Completely ignoring the fact that a business MUST continually fund it's own growth or at least maintain. Another problem is that since business owners are not entitled to employment insurance or gov't pensions, they often fund medical emergency funds or their retirement via passive investment.
It would seem that this all effectively "breaks" the mechanism in that you now really have no incentive to risk capital inside a business let alone create jobs. It's a curious, curious move. We all have our theories of course, but this is not a political forum. The accountants here are baffled, the gov'ts own economists predict FAR LESS tax revenue and job creation if it goes through. Nobody is aware of any country who has done anything close to this, so we're hoping for the best. (If not, I know how to make popcorn and I work CHEAP!)
Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 01-09-2018, 11:54 PM:
Fast Food CEO says 'it just makes sense' to consider replacing cashiers with machines as minimum wages rise
quote:
RLANDO, Florida — Jack in the Box says it is considering swapping some cashiers with robots as the minimum wage rises in California.
"As we see the rising costs of labor, it just makes sense" to consider adding new automated technology, CEO Leonard Comma said Tuesday at the ICR Conference.
Jack in the Box previously tested technology such as kiosks. According to Comma, the kiosks resulted in a higher average check and helped with efficiency. But at the time Comma said the cost of installing the kiosks wasn't worth it.
But with minimum wages increasing, Jack in the Box is reconsidering the use of kiosks and other technology, Comma said.
Minimum wages are increasing in 18 states in 2018, including California, where the West Coast-centric Jack in the Box is based. California is on track to become the first state with a $15 minimum wage.
Jack in the Box isn't the only fast-food chain that has considered using automation to reduce labor costs and modernize.
Wendy's announced plans to install self-ordering kiosks within a year. McDonald's is adding kiosks to 2,500 stores, though it pledged not to replace cashiers with kiosks.
Smaller chains such as Eatsa and CaliBurger have been working on automating the entire restaurant experience.
"With government driving up the cost of labor, it's driving down the number of jobs," then Carl's Jr. and Hardee's CEO Andy Puzder told Business Insider in 2016. "You're going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants."
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-10-2018, 09:22 AM:
Well based on McDonald's here in Canada, that's a flat-out lie that they aren't going to replace cashiers with kiosks. I don't go often, but the last 3 or 4 stores I've been into feature only ONE live cashier, about 6 touchscreen/pay stations and many tables with info promoting a new app which you can order/pay via your phone. Cashier on duty mostly accepting payment for those uncomfortable paying via kiosk. No "free smiles" here anymore.
Personally I loved elevating great kids above minimum wage when they proved themselves, really felt there was value for us in that. But when I see the amount of staff places like Tim Horton's uses, SO over-staffed, it's a dead cinch that automated machines which will be loaded with filters and coffee to spit out a new pot every 20 minutes to replace a couple of 'em. The touch screens will follow soon after.
And the consumer won't care. They've proven their preference for "cheap" above all else. We grew up with full-time "living wage" service everywhere, but it was the CUSTOMER who eliminated that, not this political posturing. This is just the final nail for the "entry level job".
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-10-2018, 09:55 AM:
quote: Steve Guttag
You also have skilled jobs that cease to be needed anymore. Someone might be in their 50s when their industry changes and all of the sudden their career just ends. They are not at retirement age nor does their previous skills have any direct value. This could happen to anyone up until they are retired (presuming that they have a retirement plan and if not, until they can no longer physically work ANY job).
Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I have a feeling that this will be less of an issue for Generation X and going forward than it has been for their parents and ancestors.
I grew up during the late 1970s and 1980s (born 1972), and grew up in Britain against the backdrop of the huge social and economic changes that Margaret Thatcher presided over. One of the defining moments of 1980s Britain was the 1984-85 miners' strike: a year long, fight-to-the-death industrial dispute in which coal industry workers fought the government's attempt to privatize it (it had been taken into government ownership in 1947), which effectively meant closing it down. The emergence of oil and nuclear power and the disappearance of other uses for coal (the Clean Air Act had outlawed burning it for heating and cooking in most homes, which it had been on a large scale until the 1960s, and the railways had shifted from steam to Diesel and electric at around the same time), had effectively made the fuel obsolete. For about a year and a half, Thatcher and Arthur Scargill (the miners' union leader) pretty much monopolized our TV screens and newspapers: people talked about little else, including 12-year old schoolkids, which I was at the time.
During that dispute, workers whose ancestors, literally going back to the early 1800s, had started work in the mines as teenagers and carried on working in the same mines until they retired, suddenly had to look for something else to do with their lives. To be fair to them, there was little or no economic activity in many mining areas at that time, and little thought had been given to what jobs and retraining might be there for the redundant miners. Scargill was right about that, and IMHO has been unfairly demonized as luddite to some extent, both during the strike itself and by some historians and commentators since. But what that dispute was really about was processing the realization that a second industrial revolution was beginning, one in which the traditional heavy industries that had been the backbone of the British economy for two centuries, were starting to be replaced by other, less permanent and long-term forms of economic activity.
That (and other, though less spectacular changes like it), left a huge impression on me, and I suspect, most of our generation. The lesson was simple: the "job for life" is no more, and we're going to have to spend our entire careers dealing with job skills disappearing, and others replacing them. The transition to digital cinema is the obvious example of that in our industry. Ongoing retraining and "keeping up with the latest" was baked into Gen X's DNA from the 1980s onwards, and therefore I'd speculate that finding ourselves out of work in our 50s and lacking any of the skills needed by the economy at that time will hopefully be a smaller scale problem than it may have been for our parents and our grandparents.
As a postscript to this, I worked in an area of Britain that was formerly the epicenter of its coal industry from 2001-07, as a film and television archivist. While I was there, I gave a film show to a community group in their social club one evening, and afterwards, received a thank you card that included an invitation to "the party of the century," to be held at that venue on the Saturday night following Thatcher's death. I'd emigrated to America by the time that happened, and so never did find out if it took place or not, and if so how well attended it was. Another postscript: while I was there, another of my co-workers told me over a drink after work that she didn't feel comfortable saying this to anyone else (i.e. who had been born and raised in the region), but that she believed that Thatcher closing down the mines was the best thing that ever happened to the north-east. Relatives of hers who had died of mesothelioma or were severely disabled in mining accidents in their 40s were now working in call centers and lighter industry, and she was very relieved about it. But it took 15-20 years and a generation later before anyone could even begin to think in those terms. I wonder how many others secretly believed that, but didn't dare say so out loud for fear of sounding disloyal to their parents and grandparents. I sometimes wonder if that party ended up being a little lower key than was anticipated when I was invited to it.
Sorry - going off at a bit of a tangent.
Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 01-10-2018, 10:35 AM:
quote: Bobby Henderson
Service industry businesses (like movie theaters) are going to be increasingly behind a rock and a hard place in urban areas with high costs of living. They're going to be caught between affording rising wage levels that are either mandated by the local or state government. Or they're going to be forced to raise wage levels just to get enough positions staffed.
That's actually a problem in some markets with low unemployment rates in the Midwest right now. I've seen stories in a couple of markets (sorry, can't remember the sources) where fast food restaurants are having to implement rolling closures of night and even some day shifts due to lack of available staff.
Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 01-10-2018, 12:26 PM:
The only upside on this is that the Ontario Witch and her liberal flying monkeys are finished.
http://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/01/10/minimum-wage-automation/
MONTREAL — Companies might not be able to dodge rising minimum wages by relocating even their most mobile workforces to lower wage provinces, but higher costs could accelerate the pace of automation.
“It would be foolish of some employers to think that they can escape temporarily by moving their operations,” said Canadian Labour Congress president Hassan Yussuff.
While companies may get a short-term benefit, he said the reality is that minimum wages across the country are going to keep increasing.
Unifor president Jerry Dias said pressure is being placed on every province to boost entry wages that mostly affect retail and service sectors, where relocation is not an option.
“This is spreading across the country like a very good epidemic and so they can run but they can’t hide,” he said in an interview.
Some businesses have criticized the pace of wage hikes in Ontario and Alberta.
On Jan .1, Ontario boosted hourly minimum wage by 20 per cent — from an $11.60 to $14. The rate will rise to $15 an hour in 2019. Alberta is expected to raise its minimum wage to $15 later this year.
But the union leaders argue that higher wages will ultimately help businesses as low income earners are more apt to spend all they earn and boost the economy.
Jobs that can easily be done from any location, such as call centre work, are theoretically most likely to shift locations. But the reality is that many of these positions pay much higher than entry wages, said Rob Campbell, president of ContactNB, which represents New Brunswick’s large contact centre community.
Air Canada and WestJet Airlines say they have adjusted the wages of their call centre positions and have no plans to move these jobs to other provinces.
Some companies may move jobs say from Ottawa to Gatineau, Que., but the numbers will be very small, said Fabian Lange, associate professor at McGill University’s Department of Economics.
But don’t expect provinces to woo businesses with the promise of lower wages.
He said it would be “politically problematic” for provinces with lower minimum wages to run big campaigns that emphasize how many low wage workers they have.
“It would be political suicide to do that because ultimately they’re all going to be at $15,” added Dias.
Provinces cannot guarantee that their minimum wages won’t unexpectedly rise, said University of Alberta economics associate professor Joseph Marchand.
“No one really saw Alberta’s $15 minimum wage coming. In 2014, it was one of the three lowest minimum wage provinces,” he said.
Marchand said rising minimum wages could speed up a growing trend to automate with the addition of ATMs, restaurant order screens and grocery self-checkout lines.
“It’s happening because technology is moving at a constant rate so that’s making capital cheaper year by year, but then if you have a drastic shift in labour costs that’s only going to speed up the process.”
A report from the Brookfield Institute on the Canadian jobs most at risk of automation found employees in the lowest-paid sectors, such as cashiers and food and beverage servers, are most vulnerable.
Canadian retailers such as Dollarama Inc. and Metro Inc. have said they are speeding up studies of automation as they consider options for offsetting the pending wage increase.
But the shift to automation over the last couple of decades has little to do with wage hikes, said labour representative Yussuff.
“There is recognition that more and more automation is coming to a lot of sectors in society and that’s long before the minimum wage has been increased.”
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-10-2018, 01:55 PM:
quote: Dave Bird
Well based on McDonald's here in Canada, that's a flat-out lie that they aren't going to replace cashiers with kiosks. I don't go often, but the last 3 or 4 stores I've been into feature only ONE live cashier, about 6 touchscreen/pay stations and many tables with info promoting a new app which you can order/pay via your phone. Cashier on duty mostly accepting payment for those uncomfortable paying via kiosk. No "free smiles" here anymore.
I think automation may yield unintended consequences at some businesses where customers are used to getting some level of human customer service. The cold feel of self-serve automation may result in customers just staying at home more often. The brick and mortar sector is suffering bad enough as it is without needing to convince people to stay at home and do all their business via the Internet. I think movie theaters are on a slippery slope with this. You can remote automate d-cinema booths and really not have booths at all in these theaters. You can install ticket kiosks and various self-serve food & drink stations to reduce staff to a skeleton crew level. The end result has a creepy, impersonal ghost-town vibe to it.
quote: Lyle Romer
They should have made the affordable care act ban insurance companies from covering contraceptives instead of forcing them to. Then, the baby bust might turn the other direction! BTW, this is meant as a joke and not a political debate about healthcare!
Certain people are trying to attack contraception in various ways. There were efforts to allow business operators to remove contraceptive coverge from employer provided plans if it conflicted with their religious beliefs. I don't recall what came of that. I can imagine lawmakers trying limit access to birth control pills and other contraceptive methods, perhaps taxing the hell out of condoms, if this baby bust goes into full effect. But then that might result in boom times at vasectomy clinics. If policy makers want to force young people to have more children they would be calling for an extremely expensive unfunded mandate.
quote: Leo Enticknap
Ongoing retraining and "keeping up with the latest" was baked into Gen X's DNA from the 1980s onwards, and therefore I'd speculate that finding ourselves out of work in our 50s and lacking any of the skills needed by the economy at that time will hopefully be a smaller scale problem than it may have been for our parents and our grandparents.
Unfortunately it's costing a hell of a lot more for displaced workers to go back to school and retrain for different careers. They can't do that for free or cheap in the US. Most white collar jobs require degrees specific to their respective field. Price inflation of college tuition is nearly as insane as that of the price gouging going on in health care. Costs of trade schools are ramping up as well. The United States has a hell of a student loan debt bubble (over $1 trillion) that is growing every year. Government financial aid is limited, leaving students (and unemployed workers) having to get private student loans with much higher interest. By the way, financially suffocating student loan debts are another factor affecting America's emerging baby bust.
quote: Sam Graham
That's actually a problem in some markets with low unemployment rates in the Midwest right now. I've seen stories in a couple of markets (sorry, can't remember the sources) where fast food restaurants are having to implement rolling closures of night and even some day shifts due to lack of available staff.
Many young adults who can manage to move are leaving behind small rural towns and modest sized cities in "flyover country" to find better job and social opportunities in large cities. The talent drain is leaving a smaller and less capable work force in these smaller communities. One of my friends is the GM at a local restaurant. Staffing is a constant headache for him. My workplace does random drug screening company-wide out of fairness for our crane truck drivers. When we have a job opening it takes longer to fill it because so many people can't pass a damned drug test.
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-10-2018, 02:01 PM:
I could pass a drug test, but I wouldn't want to work for an employer who requires them of all employees. Outside of safety-related occupations (truck drivers, airline pilots, etc., where I support drug testing), I dislike the idea of employers reaching into their employees' private lives. As long as the employees are not under the influence of anything when they show up to work, the company should not care what they did at home, on their own time.
Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 01-10-2018, 02:15 PM:
quote:
As long as the employees are not under the influence of anything when they show up to work,
I think that's the point. How is the company to know that unless they check?
I've never worked in a place that had random drug testing but I can understand the reasoning behind it. If it applies to everyone from the CEO on down, then I don't see it as a big problem. If it's only Joe the Janitor that has to do it, then that's discriminatory.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-10-2018, 02:33 PM:
Our company made its drug & alcohol policy company-wide early last decade. Prior to that only employees who drove crane trucks had to be tested. The uneven policy was bad for morale. One group of employees had to stay clean. Others could do whatever they wanted. The crane truck drivers knew specific co-workers were smoking pot or doing other drugs in their free time and maybe even having a beer or two before work. A couple things happened that forced the policy to go company-wide. In all the years we've had the policy in place we've had only a handful of test failures and they were all sales/office personnel, not any of the "blue collar" staff.
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-10-2018, 02:44 PM:
Frank--if a "drug test" only demonstrated whether or not an employee was under the influence of drugs at the time that the test was administered, I would agree with you.
My understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that "drug test" kits are sensitive to substances that are present in the body long after the person is under the influence of that substance. In other words, an employee who took drugs on a Saturday might still show up as positive on a drug test given on a Monday, even though he effects of the drugs had long since ended.
Again, I support the idea in cases where safety is an issue. I do not support it in other cases. I do not use illegal drugs, but I also do not believe that my employer has any right to know what I do or do not do at home on my own time.
Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 01-10-2018, 03:00 PM:
Assuming that these things are actually accurate and have no false positives (I don't know if that's the case) then I don't have a problem with them.
Is a "No Drunks or Drug Addicts Allowed to Work at this Company" really a bad policy to have? As a customer, I would consider it a good thing.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-10-2018, 04:18 PM:
The testing company we contract with is pretty good. If someone tests positive for some type of drug the company will run another test to make sure it's not a false positive. They're up on what kinds of foods or other substances can create a false positive. They're also up to speed on how anyone can try to game the system.
One former employee tried smuggling someone else's urine into a random screening, passing it off as his own. He had the sample stored in his car. The former employee didn't know the technician would check the temperature of the sample. Urine cools so many degrees per minute in room temperature after leaving the body. When confronted about it the former employee didn't want to submit another sample. He had failed a drug test just weeks before. Failing this time would probably cost him his job, but smuggling pee definitely did the trick.
quote: Scott Norwood
Again, I support the idea in cases where safety is an issue. I do not support it in other cases. I do not use illegal drugs, but I also do not believe that my employer has any right to know what I do or do not do at home on my own time.
The problem is there are no reliable sobriety tests for drugs like marijuana, misused prescription drugs and hard street drugs. They don't metabolize the same way as alcohol, whose impairment effects are easy to track via breathalyzer or blood tests.
Letting someone who operates dangerous machinery, like a crane truck, consume recreational drugs on his own free time is a risky gamble, both in terms of safety and legal liability. If the truck driver gets in an accident and is at fault he's going to get drug tested. If he tests positive for something like pot there is no reliable way to tell if he smoked his last joint at home on his own time or got baked before getting in the truck.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-10-2018, 05:03 PM:
Leo, I think you'll find that Gen-X will be nailed by their technological obsolescence too. If you find your specialty heading to oblivion, you might find the next thing you are looking for some young person will have the edge on you in terms of growing up with the new technology, speed and the willingness to work MUCH cheaper than the person in their 50s/60s that have a house, kids and other debts to pay. The realities are, as you age, it gets harder to learn new things, your body slows down and you are at a physical disadvantage to younger people. Normally, what an elder person has is experience/stability. When your career evaporates, you lose both. If you are lucky, your industry merely transitions and you can apply past experience to the new technology and adapt. I'd say that the cinema industry has that to a degree. Working on a digital projector is the same and different than a film projector. Film sound and digital sound are near identical. There is enough commonality that MOST techs could make the jump to varying degrees. Clearly, the older they were, the harder the computer stuff was and the IT does tend to baffle them a bit (not all but by and large, it all depends on how computer literate they were when it happened).
And, if we're taking a vote, I'm AGAINST drug testing by employers as an invasion of privacy. The only exception I'd make would be for heavy machinery, police, doctors/medical personnel, public transportation type employees. Like Scott, I'd pass as I don't use the stuff but I think an employer should have a NEED to know and except in the above type cases where there is a safety factor, if you can't observe your employee acting odd or productivity is down, there is no need to know what they did on their off time. I put the need for employee privacy above the need of a company most every time. But that is me.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-10-2018, 06:32 PM:
My company would prefer not to have a random screening policy. The testing service isn't cheap. But we're forced by law to at least screen anyone who drives or operates the booms/ladders on our work trucks.
quote: Steve Guttag
If you find your specialty heading to oblivion, you might find the next thing you are looking for some young person will have the edge on you in terms of growing up with the new technology, speed and the willingness to work MUCH cheaper than the person in their 50s/60s that have a house, kids and other debts to pay. The realities are, as you age, it gets harder to learn new things, your body slows down and you are at a physical disadvantage to younger people. Normally, what an elder person has is experience/stability. When your career evaporates, you lose both.
Worse yet, outsourcing is still very much alive and well in certain job categories. If someone is going to re-train for a different line of work it really helps to pick a trade that cannot be easily/cheaply performed remotely in another country. Better yet, jobs that have to be performed locally, in-person are the safest bet.
The elimination of many main street, brick and mortar jobs in retail, restaurants, etc will take away one of the fall-back options for aging workers who get displaced from their career jobs.
Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 01-10-2018, 08:16 PM:
quote: Sam Graham
That's actually a problem in some markets with low unemployment rates in the Midwest right now. I've seen stories in a couple of markets (sorry, can't remember the sources) where fast food restaurants are having to implement rolling closures of night and even some day shifts due to lack of available staff.
We're starting to see a bit of this issue at the theater I work at. The GM is just barely able at this point to keep enough staff. Hasn't been able to hire for holidays/summer help like he used to. I remember a decade ago there was always a pile of applications available. Any more, there's maybe an app or 3 a month turned in and of those, maybe one every 6 weeks has good availability, and of THOSE, many don't bother finishing the reference check process(of which is admittedly needlessly complex for a part time minimum wage job). We are often not at the staffing level we should be at, and it can get bad over holiday breaks when several employees go out of town... The remaining staff gets worked hard... but not TOO hard to exceed the 32 hour average needed to maintain part time status........... Quite the clusterfuck from several angles.
Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 01-10-2018, 08:46 PM:
Isn't the basic rule of "Free Market" 101 that if you want something you pay for it? Raise the wages/benefits enough and you'll get all the help you need.
Can't "afford" to raise the wages/benefits? Then the market has decided your business doesn't need to exist, at least in the business model you've chosen.
Whether you like it or not is a whole other story.
Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 01-10-2018, 09:26 PM:
Martin, I think you hit the nail on the head!
Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 01-10-2018, 09:59 PM:
Bingo
Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 01-10-2018, 10:22 PM:
"Free Market" 101 is a farce. It does not exist and never has. This self blaming capitalist trope is exactly what Oprah and her MSM presstitutes have been pushing for decades. Somehow it is all the fault of the individual and that all YOU need is to follow their self help - heavy on the self to succeed. Never mind that at the casino that is capitalism - wall street - bankster west all the odds are stacked against you. Where government is nothing more than facilitators for the transnational globalist pimps.
All the while the oligarchy marches on crushing the 99.999999999999999% into the ground - welcome to the feudal future - only worse a future where we peasants cannot even subsist off of a small piece of land.
Here in Ontario - you think it is bad in the US - Canada is a cargo cult colony filled with neo-liberal tools. Where simply raising the minimum wage substitutes as ecomomic policy. Or does it? - the real corporate agenda is to run everyone into the ground - that is the goal.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-10-2018, 10:45 PM:
Alexandre, I'm trying to understand what you're saying, beyond the very obvious "liberals are bad" message (which seems to clearly violate rules the forum has against partisan-biased political rants). Then you have complaints about wealthy oligarchy crushing the common man, which is actually something that conservative types really love. Well, at least the conservatives who actually have power love it. So I don't really understand your position on this matter.
But there is hope. Chances are between extremely slim to none that Oprah will run to be the next President of 'Murica. Conservatives in America certainly don't want that. And the early returns show many Liberals in America aren't turned on by the idea either.
Canada may have its problems, but they don't seem quite as mathematically baffling as the budgetary shit show going on here in the United States, with some states having an even bigger shit show than others, like here in Oklahoma. Oh it's a full on shit show here.
Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 01-11-2018, 09:16 AM:
I think Alexandre missed some implied sarcasm in my post. (hint: scare quotes).
Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 01-11-2018, 09:50 AM:
quote: Bobby Henderson
But there is hope. Chances are between extremely slim to none that Oprah will run to be the next President of 'Murica. Conservatives in America certainly don't want that. And the early returns show many Liberals in America aren't turned on by the idea either.
Well... people have said that in the past about a certain reality TV star too. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Although, I happen to agree with you.
Personally, I hope the "western world" in general could figure out a way to simply see populist politics for what it is. It's certainly not just an American issue and it is very much a "bipartisan" issue.
There are quite a few challenges on the horizon which our governments should not simply ignore, because there are more popular problems that need "solving".
The increasing age and lack of new offspring is a problem that many western societies face. Combined with, even with all western health issues at hand (e.g. obesity), the general life expectancy still increasing in most western countries, this will create some potential problems in the not so distant future, since the working population will only decrease. So, we have less and less people that can care for those who simply aren't able to work anymore.
On the other hand, there's an ever increasing amount of automation, reducing the amount of people doing primarily menial jobs. A good example are the order kiosks at McDonald's, or the automated ticket booths and on-line ticketing at many movie theaters nowadays, but also the move from film to digital.
The biggest challenge here is how to let the general working class benefit from those kind of developments, because right now they aren't. The increased profits due to payroll cuts achieved through automation aren't flowing to the working class, they're primarily flowing to the usually already rich shareholders.
I think in a modern, western society, more people should be aware of those challenges and should be more focused on working towards solutions for those challenges. Unfortunately, right now the "left" and "right" seem to be in a continuous girlfight with each other, while the stinking rich, the proverbial 1%, are grabbing the juicy bones away.
Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 01-11-2018, 10:28 AM:
Interesting discussion! The automation removing jobs reminds me of the book Player Piano ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel) ). The only people employed were managers and engineers.
The wide disparity of wages and cost of living around the US is interesting. We moved from California to the Denver area last year. Though people in Denver are complaining about high housing costs (due to us from California moving here), we were able to buy a house here for less than the cost of the condo we bought in 2004 in California. Migration, I expect, is tending to even out costs throughout the country (but slowly). I expect that cost of living is really driven by the availability of jobs. There's a bit of a positive feedback loop there where companies move to where the trained employees are, and employees move to where the companies are.
Obsolete skills have always been a problem. In the past, technology moved more slowly, and people did not live as long. With the large amount of training and education needed for many jobs, it's difficult to move to something else when one becomes obsolete.
We also, of course, have international trade. Consumer electronics manufacturing has largely moved to Asia. This has improved the standard of living in those countries and caused lost jobs here. I wonder how the worldwide standard of living has changed through international trade. I expect there have been winners and losers, but perhaps the overall quality of life has improved. We probably should not sentence someone to a life of poverty for living across some imaginary line (an international border).
On living wage, I wonder if, in those cities that have implemented it, they have seen a decrease in public assistance requirements. I have not seen any numbers. But, I suppose it's possible that higher costs have resulted in more automation and higher unemployment.
On education, I used to teach electronic technology at a community college. This included DC and AC circuit analysis, transistors, analog circuits like operational amplifiers, digital logic, microprocessors (my first assignment was teaching assembly language programming), math for electronics, etc. Originally, the classes were transferable into an Electronics Technology degree program at Cal Poly. When Cal Poly dropped that program, our enrollment dropped substantially. The program became severely watered down. It redirected to robotics, computer networking, and finally electrical contracting. Some of the students did well in the SF bay area with our training, but I don't know how most of them did. I really hope we were not wasting their time. In any case, training people for the jobs of tomorrow is a gamble since we do not know what the jobs of tomorrow will be, and they will probably not last a lifetime.
I've been lucky. I started electronics with vacuum tubes. audio, and RF. Moved to transistors, small scale digital and analog integrated circuits, microprocessors, firmware, and microcontrollers. For now, it appears I am still able to create useful stuff.
Harold
Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 01-11-2018, 12:06 PM:
Those McDonald's self-serve kiosks, by the way, are a mess.
My review (via my blog)
McD's app ordering isn't much better, though I like and prefer in-app ordering with some other chains (Taco Bell and Which Wich, for example).
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-11-2018, 12:17 PM:
quote: Marcel Birgelen
The increasing age and lack of new offspring is a problem that many western societies face. Combined with, even with all western health issues at hand (e.g. obesity), the general life expectancy still increasing in most western countries, this will create some potential problems in the not so distant future, since the working population will only decrease. So, we have less and less people that can care for those who simply aren't able to work anymore.
The United States has seen its life expectancy drop for at least a couple consecutive years in a row due to the growing number of drug overdose deaths. That's another complicated topic. Still, the median age in the US and other western nations is skewing older. European nations and Russia have been struggling with the issue of low birth rate for some time while it's a new problem in the United States.
A shrinking working age population poses a great threat to government budgets; they'll be less able to afford programs that aid a disproportionately large and growing elderly population. Civil unrest and cultural conflict is another threat. The United States has a very long history of importing labor, both legally & illegally. Let's not forget about slavery either. Culture clashes, racism, xenophobia and even violence are hazards. Europe has been dealing with a flood of immigrants from the Middle East. Fears of European culture being displaced and replaced by Islamic culture have given rise to racism, nationalism and isolationism. I think the backlash is one of the motivating factors behind the UK's "Brexit."
Of course we have some of the same problems here in the United States. Some people want immigration from the Middle East blocked, immigration from Mexico greatly reduced and illegal immigrants deported. But if new generations of American-born adults are having dramatically fewer children then the government and businesses both will have no choice but to import more foreign-born labor. Mass deportations and embargoes on new immigration could yield lots of unintended consequences. It's all but guaranteed many agricultural and livestock processing operations would either shut down or drastically reduce output due to widespread labor shortages. We would see prices of domestic-sourced food spike, forcing far more food imports.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
The biggest challenge here is how to let the general working class benefit from those kind of developments, because right now they aren't.
Soaring education costs are locking many people out of being able to re-train. Add to that the time factor. If someone is reduced to working low wage jobs that person may be be forced to work 2 or more of those jobs. That leaves no time for school and the homework that comes with it.
quote: Harold Hallikainen
On living wage, I wonder if, in those cities that have implemented it, they have seen a decrease in public assistance requirements. I have not seen any numbers. But, I suppose it's possible that higher costs have resulted in more automation and higher unemployment.
For high cost metro areas with cities like San Francisco I have doubts the wage jump has helped. $15 per hour in San Francisco is still going to be starvation wages. Hell, I saw a news article about a software engineer for Google making $200,000 per year struggling to support his wife and 2 kids in the Bay Area. It's ridiculous. Walmart just announced it will bump its starting wage to $11 per hour (giving credit to recently passed tax cuts). $11 per hour can be a livable wage here in Lawton if you're willing to do without in a few categories. $11 per hour isn't enough to survive in most cities.
Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 01-11-2018, 02:28 PM:
Getting back to Dave Bird's original question, it is obvious that he has three choices (or any combination).
- Raise prices.
- Cut staffing (if possible).
- Eat the extra cost.
Unless your venue is next to a lower labor cost jurisdiction, all your competitors are in the same boat, and will face the same three options.
While nobody likes their costs to rise, if a given location is running so close to the edge that this will push them over the edge, perhaps they should think of closing the location.
.
As to the post regarding the lack of job applicants, what this should tell you is that staffing based upon hiring student workers at minimum wage is no longer viable, and probably will become less so over time. Perhaps it is time to re-think that business model, at least in those locations.
.
The one thing I would not do is take the wage hike out on the staff. They are the ones who deal with the public. If they are unhappy, eventually the customers will be too.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-11-2018, 05:08 PM:
Don't discount the notion that if the prime movie goer is now getting $15/hour, the cost of going to cinema seems much more "reasonable", even when the price goes up to offset the cost of the wage increase (while labor may be a major portion of the operation, it is, by no means 100% of the cost so the price increases shouldn't rise by the same amount as the percentage wage increase).
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-11-2018, 09:49 PM:
Mitchell, been working on spreadsheeting our data last couple days, and it's funny, right in the middle of it another drive-in owner up here rang me out of the blue and they were doing the same thing. The answer looks to be a couple things. We'll tweak admission price again this year a bit and we set concessions at a 65-70% margin every year anyway. We will cut hours back, partly because we planned on working ourselves more this year anyway (and owners work REAL cheap!) and partly because we have a lot of long-time kids leaving anyway (and won't be disappointing them). We're also somewhat insulated as half to two-thirds of our hours in the past have been worked by two or three key "managers" who we paid $13.60, $15.65 & $16. With those kids leaving and this years minimum wage $14 (and next year's $15), we're looking at about a 15-18% increase IF we can't save any hours. Likely our own time will do it, but I think we'll look to some new equipment and a box office relocation to allow us to "break even" or better on wage cost. I'd like to maintain the ability to let our next wave of "star staffers" to jump in and manage the place in the future and still have room for a decent profit.
I hope we can weather it, the provincial and federal governments here are on an extreme opposite socialist kick right now. Many new taxes (and taxes on taxes for things like fuel) which could really ramp up inflation. That new minimum will be indexed to inflation and the sad part for those people is this has bumped them to a new bracket, so not only will things start to cost more, their buying power will be even less than before because they're only going to see half (or less) of the raise. That's IF they keep their hours, or indeed their jobs. A higher tax deduction for these lower wages would've worked much better, but in an election time for a desperate government, I guess that wasn't sexy enough.
Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 01-11-2018, 11:06 PM:
All sarcasm gotten - like Peter Potamus - I got that thing!
Western politics is neo-liberal - conservative/liberal is all the same. Maybe with the exception of Ron Paul. The point is that government serves the interests of the transnationals and the colour of the politicos flag does not matter.
I may not be an American but the only creep that gets under my skin more than Oprah and her self help mantra is Clinton. But that is another story.
Regardless it is all for show - policy for the big boys is exactly where it should be - ie shit show for the masses. The last place of resistance is ironical at the movies. Going to the movies is a physical social act that requires effort. Medium is the message and the message occasionally slips through on the big screen that all is not well with the world of the plutocracy.
Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 01-12-2018, 06:52 AM:
quote: Bobby Henderson
A shrinking working age population poses a great threat to government budgets; they'll be less able to afford programs that aid a disproportionately large and growing elderly population. Civil unrest and cultural conflict is another threat. The United States has a very long history of importing labor, both legally & illegally. Let's not forget about slavery either. Culture clashes, racism, xenophobia and even violence are hazards. Europe has been dealing with a flood of immigrants from the Middle East. Fears of European culture being displaced and replaced by Islamic culture have given rise to racism, nationalism and isolationism. I think the backlash is one of the motivating factors behind the UK's "Brexit."
Western European countries like the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium but also to some extend the U.K. have heavily relied on immigrants to fill in positions that nobody else wanted to take. This included immigrants from other European countries like Italy, Spain and Greece, but later also from Morocco, Turkey and many former colonies and now from other European countries like Poland. It's pretty much comparable to the Mexican situation in the United States. Go to any fast food outlet in any major city in Europe and chances you're being helped by someone from "foreign heritage" are pretty much 3 to 1.
Many of those immigrants lacking any modern kind of education, are still stuck in lower wage groups, while others managed to perfectly integrate with the Western European society. Those stuck in those lower wage groups eventually became problematic, also because their offspring usually didn't manage to escape from those groups. Unfortunately, this never was a real point of interest for any political policy, so it only became an issue until it developed into a real problem. I doubt race or religion is really the driving factor here, it's simply the fact that those living in proverbial slums of the society are just much more likely to exhort to other means and ways of relieving their frustration.
The recent influx of refugees is something that's often used for popular media and politics on both sides to make some kind of point. While it's true that there were quite a few incidents which can be subscribed to refugees, it's not like Europe's city suddenly have become the hell hole they're sometimes pictured to be. I'm walking across the streets of Amsterdam, Berlin or even Brussels like I did before, without constant fear of being blown up or mowed down by some semi-truck.
Right now, those refugees are largely accounted for, they're primarily living in their temporary shelters and most of them aren't here to blow things up, they simply want to survive. What's important though is that those people don't become the problematic immigrants of the future. This, however, would require policies that not only potentially span multiple governmental terms, but in Europe, also something that spans multiple countries. In the current governmental framework of the E.U., that's something like landing a 747 on an aircraft carrier...
quote: Bobby Henderson
Soaring education costs are locking many people out of being able to re-train. Add to that the time factor. If someone is reduced to working low wage jobs that person may be be forced to work 2 or more of those jobs. That leaves no time for school and the homework that comes with it.
I'm generally not really a hardcore socialist (although viewpoints might differ ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
), I don't think that all education needs to be entirely free for example. But I do think the government has an important role in keeping education accessible for the general population, while in the meantime ensure proper wages for those working in the educational field, both as a teacher or as supporting staff.
Besides all movements to the contrary, the global market will only further go into that direction, because simply said: People want to buy cheap shit made in China.
It's not like the people born somewhere in Africa are inherently more stupid than in e.g. the U.S. The primary difference is the education each will be able to enjoy. So, in my opinion, the only way to actually contribute to this global economy on the scale of a society is not to try to provide cheaper labor than the other, but to be smarter. For that, you need an educated population and an educated population requires affordable access to good education and the proper trust that a good education will be a good foundation for a stable future, at least financially.
Unfortunately, we in the Western world have the habit to forget this. I think currently, it's even a bigger problem for the U.S. than for Europe. While there is plenty of good education in the U.S., it's becoming increasingly less accessible for those who do not bring the money with them. The same is also happening in Europe to a lesser extent, primarily due to governments losing lack of focus on education, but also due to a bunch of universities trying too hard to join the rank of the U.S. elite universities.
The lack of properly educated people is even hurting our business, because it's simply close to impossible to hire the required knowledge. Last year we had somebody doing his bachelor's degree with us. The knowledge of this guy was just plain laughable and sad. Eventually we had to vote whether or not he did pass the requirements. We voted against it, because what he produced lacked any kind of thoroughness and depth you'd expect for somebody getting his Bachelor of Science, especially compared to what I had to do for mine. Eventually, his school decided to give him his bachelor's degree, essentially because they needed the numbers to make themselves look better. It's a good example of how education is slowly adjusted to the lowest denominator and how certificates slowly lose any indication of value.
Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 01-12-2018, 10:24 AM:
We seem to be drifting into general politics. Nothing good will come of this.
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-12-2018, 10:52 AM:
I'll try to keep this on topic (wage regulation), but it's not a topic that can be understood without getting into politics, because regulation is a political act, done by politicians. And the two issues Marcel raises - immigration and education - are a big part of this mix.
On the immigration issue, globalization has made migration a lot easier and a lot cheaper. The result is that increasing numbers of people are using that option when they find themselves living in a country with a combination of chronic economic dysfunction, and poor government that can't, or won't, do anything about it. President Trump coined a phrase for such places yesterday, and this, I think, is the answer to the question he asked (why is most migration to the United States from underdeveloped and dysfunctional nations?). Migration to the developed world from nations that are still developing, but are doing so successfully and overseen by what are essentially competent and functioning governments (I would give India and Brazil as examples) is far, far lower. The citizens of these countries have realistic hopes and expectations of improving things where they are, and of ending their lives with a better standard of living than they started them. In places like Haiti and Somalia they don't, hence the reason they want to get out.
And I agree totally with Marcel's comments on education. The problems there are not just skyrocketing costs and dumbing down, though both are definitely happening. They are also with what is being taught, especially at the university level. As some here will know, I worked in higher education for 12 years, and during that time saw a huge expansion in humanities and social sciences teaching and research, but little if any in STEM areas. The number of career opportunities paying a decent wage for someone with a degree in philosophy or cultural studies is very limited, and always has been. Until around the late 1990s, this wasn't a problem, because very few people (as a proportion of the overall population) did these programs. In the last two decades, they have expanded massively, and the cost and student debt load attached to them has spiraled out of control, too. Combine that with the fact that the earning power of most of these graduates will likely never go above $30-40k a year (unless they go on to postgraduate education or training in something relevant to the economy, probably at extra cost), and the economy has a ticking time bomb. Meanwhile, Europe and America has to import engineers and doctors from Asia, because we're not producing enough of our own.
The end product of this and other factors is that increasing numbers of inadequately skilled workers are pressuring their elected politicians to regulate the minimum wage upwards, in response to which businesses feel resistance from their customers to foot that bill, and respond by automating as many of these lower paying jobs out of existence as they can.
The answer to this begins and ends with education in the developed world, and addressing poorly functioning and totally dysfunctional government in the developing one.
Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 01-12-2018, 11:00 AM:
I'll take a crack at reeling it back in.
Perhaps a good way to frame this issue is to look at the situation with a fresh perspective.
If the reality is that the minimum wage that can be paid is going to be higher than in the past, then it makes sense to look at ways in which those wages can be maximized.
For example, is it cost-efficient to pay someone to collect money by selling a movie ticket, or is that better done through a kiosk? I tend to dislike automated checkouts at stores, because I feel like I'm doing the work that the store should be doing and not getting any discount for doing so, and then the checkout device often needs to be babysat by a clerk anyway. That's not efficient, and it's frustrating for the customer. So, maybe a little money saved in labor (but not when considering the cost of that automated device), and more customer dissatisfaction.
However, with a movie ticket purchase, the process is pretty simple. There are a limited number of choices and if the kiosk is well-designed, it should be fairly painless for the customer. You'll still need a clerk to babysit a number of machines for special circumstances, but a well-designed checkout system shouldn't need much. Payment can be a challenge, but credit/debit cards and gift cards are so common, I would think that it would be not insurmountable.
The same logic should be applied to concessions, cleaning, etc. Is there such a thing as a Roomba for large commercial spaces?
One of the biggest things we were told in school (1980s) was to be irreplaceable. Learn something that no one else knows. Do more than everyone else. If you can be replaced by a robot or a kiosk, you're in big danger! Unfortunately, so many employees I see act in such a way that I often wish I had an automated option to having to get help from someone who obviously hates his job and doesn't want to be there.
If the lower-level tasks can be taken up by automation of some kind, it opens up those employees (who are having to be paid more) to do something that more greatly benefits the theater than if they were just selling a ticket. Maybe the ticket ripper (if one is necessary) could be more of a host/hostess, where they are the face of the theater. Maybe those employees could be floating hosts/hostesses, making sure that people are having a good time, checking theaters for cleanliness and disruptive patrons.
My point is, maybe instead of bemoaning having to pay employees more to do the same job, maybe they need to be reassigned to different jobs that benefit the theater more.
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-12-2018, 12:44 PM:
The other Scott makes an interesting point above.
If I were a cinema owner, though, I would be concerned about automating too much. Unlike fast food, where the actual food preparation part of the business is labor-intensive and offers great potential for automation, most of the jobs in a cinema are customer-facing positions. (Projectionists have largely been automated out of their jobs at this point.) While it might be possible to install automated ticket machines, concession vending machines, and turnstiles at the auditorium entrance(s), would customers accept that?
A movie theatre is supposed to be a happy, fun place where people feel like they are being taken care of by the staff (and where regular customers sometimes know the employees personally). Would people really accept a fully automated cinema (perhaps with a manager and a skeleton cleaning staff)? To me, such a place would feel more like riding on a public transit system (not usually a fun experience) than going out for a night of entertainment.
I am not sure how to solve this, unfortunately. Maybe one of the big chains will take a gamble on this and find out if customers will accept it. Or maybe customers will be willing to pay higher prices (with their higher incomes) for personal service.
Unrelated comment to Leo's excellent post above: another educational opportunity that is being missed right now is vocational training. For some reason, this has fallen out of favor, but it tends to be far cheaper than a standard liberal-arts college would be. And the demand for tradesmen is high, and the jobs are difficult or impossible to send off-shore. Plumbers, electricians, and mechanics all need to be where the work is.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-12-2018, 01:01 PM:
quote: Scott Jentsch
My point is, maybe instead of bemoaning having to pay employees more to do the same job, maybe they need to be reassigned to different jobs that benefit the theater more.
Another thing people don't appear to realize when they're bemoaning having to pay a higher minimum wage: prices on so many other things have risen. At my company we've seen prices for all kinds of things rise (vehicles, raw materials and components for manufacturing, various office supplies, health insurance, workers comp insurance, etc). Having to bump up wages is just one factor of many.
I laugh at our government's inflation figures since they conveniently leave out things like food and fuel -stuff that everybody has to buy. High fuel prices were the trigger that set off the great recession last decade. Price inflation on housing varies to an extreme from one region to the next, pretty stable here in Oklahoma yet freaking nuts in places like California. Not only does a minimum wage lack the buying power it did in the past, that lack of buying power gets considerably worse in highly populated areas.
Automation has repeatedly been mentioned in the vibe of keeping payroll affordable so the business doesn't go broke. There is a bigger motivation for automating away human employees: more profit. Low wage service industry employees aren't the only people whose jobs are in danger from automation. A lot of white collar, paper pushing jobs will be caught in the gun sights too. Improvements in artificial intelligence and automated statistical analysis will make bigger impacts.
So, yes, people need to be competitive at the skills they learn, but learn skills that a robot or computer system can't do.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
I'm generally not really a hardcore socialist (although viewpoints might differ :Wink:), I don't think that all education needs to be entirely free for example. But I do think the government has an important role in keeping education accessible for the general population, while in the meantime ensure proper wages for those working in the educational field, both as a teacher or as supporting staff.
It's vital for the economic stability and security for any first world nation to have a reasonably well-educated and skilled general public. With all the absurdities present in America's general education and higher education systems I think very people people in the US are concerned about the big picture view.
American colleges and universities are increasingly dependent on foreign-born students (the top reason why they're against limits on H1-B Visas). As tuition prices have skyrocketed and student loan debt burdens have ballooned the situation has priced more Americans out of being able to afford a college degree. American universities are commonly touted as being the world's best, which attracts students across the globe and lots of tuition money. The long term worry for universities is many of these international students are taking their education and skills back home to have careers there and then teach there in the long run. American universities are going to see competition heat up globally for those international students from rich families.
quote: Scott Norwood
If I were a cinema owner, though, I would be concerned about automating too much. Unlike fast food, where the actual food preparation part of the business is labor-intensive and offers great potential for automation, most of the jobs in a cinema are customer-facing positions. (Projectionists have largely been automated out of their jobs at this point.) While it might be possible to install automated ticket machines, concession vending machines, and turnstiles at the auditorium entrance(s), would customers accept that?
I mentioned this possible problem earlier in the thread. Visiting a movie theater is a little like visiting a sit-down restaurant. I think customers do expect at least some human customer service involvement. If a movie theater is just filled with ticket kiosks, self-serve refreshment stations and human-free projection booths it will seem very cold and sterile. A theater at least needs a certain number of staffers there for crowd control and public safety.
Regarding ticket kiosks, I'm wondering just how many of those things would even be necessary in a theater. A lot of theaters are installing recliner seating and going to reserve seating setups. If I visit a theater with reserve seating I'm going to buy my ticket online and get my seat(s) reserved long before arriving at the theater.
quote: Scott Norwood
Unrelated comment to Leo's excellent post above: another educational opportunity that is being missed right now is vocational training. For some reason, this has fallen out of favor, but it tends to be far cheaper than a standard liberal-arts college would be. And the demand for tradesmen is high, and the jobs are difficult or impossible to send off-shore. Plumbers, electricians, and mechanics all need to be where the work is.
My brother didn't go to college at all, but he's doing pretty well as a diesel truck mechanic. He's been doing that kind of work for over 20 years and is now a supervisor at a Freightliner dealership. Although he didn't go to college he has taken a LOT of different courses on vehicles and the stuff they keep changing from one model to the next.
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-12-2018, 02:43 PM:
I'm willing to bet that your brother has never had trouble finding work, either.
I am certainly not against attending a typical four-year college (I did, and I studied something unrelated to my eventual occupation, with no apparent adverse consequences), but I am not convinced that it is the best option for everyone.
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-12-2018, 03:24 PM:
quote: Scott Norwood
Would people really accept a fully automated cinema (perhaps with a manager and a skeleton cleaning staff)? To me, such a place would feel more like riding on a public transit system (not usually a fun experience) than going out for a night of entertainment.
It's been tried: the entrepreneur behind one of the two big low budget airlines in Europe, easyJet, started an "easyCinema" brand in the late 1990s. The idea was that for a rock bottom ticket price, you'd get to see the movie on a big screen, and pretty much nothing more. Booking was to be all online or at automated kiosks, no concessions stands, automated turnstiles to get into the auditoria, sparsely furnished auditoria, etc.
quote: The Guardian, May 28, 2006
Rent rise brings down curtain on easyCinema
Stelios Haji-Ioannou has abandoned an attempt to transform the movie business by opening easyJet-style bright orange "no frills" cinemas with tickets for as little as 20p.
The low-cost business specialist has quietly closed his only EasyCinema, in Milton Keynes, after three years of operation. He is scrapping his "bricks and mortar" strategy in favour of simply offering a nationwide cinema booking website.
Mr Haji-Ioannou has blamed the failure of his outlet on high rents. The site's landowner, UCI, was recently acquired by venture capitalist Terra Firma, which also owns Odeon, and Mr Haji-Ioannou says charges have been pushed up.
"Now that Odeon, who have become both our landlords as well as our competitors, are demanding a totally unrealistic rent we have decided to let them operate the cinema themselves," said Mr Haji-Ioannou in a statement.
The failure is a significant setback for the entrepreneur, who had hoped to create a national cinema chain. Last year he was tipped to buy the landmark Empire cinema in London's Leicester Square.
His plans were initially dogged by opposition from film distributors, which withheld new releases from easyCinema. Some studios were said to be unhappy at the prospect of moviegoers paying such a small amount to see their work.
"As an operating business, it was quite successful," said EasyGroup's director of corporate affairs, James Rothnie. "We've quite a good run of first-run films in the end." But he added: "We're less interested now in the bricks and mortar and more interested in going on line."
EasyCinema's website allows customers to view cinema listings and book movies. It also offers a DVD rental service and is attracting 500,000 hits a month.
Mr Haji-Ioannou has made similar retreats before. His vehicle-hire business, easyCar, originally rented out new Mercedes across Europe, but it is now simply a website allowing customers to book through other rental firms.
The tycoon's attempts to replicate his successful easyJet concept in other industries have met with mixed results. EasyInternet cafés have become a familiar site in cities across Britain and elsewhere. Mr Haji-Ioannou's easyCruise business is rapidly expanding, with four new vessels planned and a new route in the waterways of the Netherlands and Belgium.
But Mr Haji-Ioannou's plan to take on long-distance bus operators such as National Express through a network of minibus routes across Britain appears to have fallen flat. His easyBus discount service was cut back this year to a single route between London and Luton Airport.
He found out exactly what you predicted, which is that audiences don't want a "no frills" experience on an evening out. IMHO, there has to be a happy medium between the easyCinema approach, and not getting much change out of $100 for a couple to have a night at the movies, though.
As an aside, that headline is somewhat ironic: I very much doubt if his cinema had curtains, somehow! Oh well, at least the screen wasn't orange (unless he ran his bulbs well over the warranty hours).
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-12-2018, 04:19 PM:
quote: Scott Norwood
I am certainly not against attending a typical four-year college (I did, and I studied something unrelated to my eventual occupation, with no apparent adverse consequences), but I am not convinced that it is the best option for everyone.
It all gets back to something Leo touched on earlier. It sure seems like a lot of teens enter college choosing fields of study without considering the demand for workers in that field and the pay scales. Maybe that's one thing where it would be good for the government to get involved: provide clear information to kids in middle school and high school what the job and money situation is for many of these fields. If they saw the money math up front before leaving high school a lot of kids would make some different decisions. And the universities would be far less able to keep up with this price gouging on tuition.
Many believe workers with college degrees are automatically going to make more money than those without. My brother is one example to prove that notion is not nearly always true. A decent number of skilled trades, like being a car mechanic, can deliver a better paycheck than being a school teacher or glamour jobs like working in broadcasting. Those trades aren't necessarily "fun" jobs though (although my brother has always loved working on cars & trucks). You're going to get dirty, sweaty and have to work in some unpleasant conditions rather than a clean office environment. That's a small price to pay for not having a giant student loan debt that might take decades to pay off and all for a job category that might not pay squat.
Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 01-12-2018, 07:24 PM:
I have looked into exactly what you're saying a few times. Of the 10 most common bachelor's degrees awarded, about half of them are social sciences, history, and liberal arts/general studies. However when you look at the most demanded degrees those don't usually break the top 20. Not to mention some of those fields require advanced degrees to find high paying jobs. This results in an even greater student loan burden for many of these grads.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-12-2018, 10:09 PM:
There is no doubt a good college education can help round out and broaden a person's horizons entering adulthood. Left to one's own devices, without quality general education and some higher education, many will not fully advance beyond the adolescent "concrete operational stage" of cognitive development and advance into the adult "formal operational stage" of thought. That's pretty important, valuable stuff.
Still, at the same time, you have all these universities charging outrageous sums of money for fields of study where the degree one receives in the end is not worth the paper on which it was printed. There really needs to be a value meter applied to this crap. And I don't know which kind of institution of higher learning I despise more: a state-run university that puts more value on its NCAA football team than anything else or a private university that will charge a kid out of high school the price of a fucking mansion for an education that likely won't come close to yielding a postive return on investment.
Me, having a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from a high caliber art school in New York City, I think I'm pretty smart and worldly. But my younger brother, the diesel semi-truck mechanic, is making more money. In the end, what's more important? Being smarter? Or Living Better?
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-12-2018, 10:46 PM:
Along with all of this comes an inflation in job requirements. There are lots of job listings now that require a "four-year college degree" for jobs that really have no reason to require this.
A previous employer of mine did this--they had a job opening for a receptionist/secretary and a college degree was a basic requirement for it. There is nothing that a secretary does that requires a four-year college degree and no reason to exclude applicants who are otherwise competent but lack that qualification, but, for some reason, they did.
The result of this is, of course, that even more people are compelled to go into debt for a college education even if they are destined for careers that shouldn't require it and don't pay enough to justify it.
That said, I would never discourage anyone who had the ability and desire to attend a four-year college from doing so. There are all sorts of reasons to want to become an educated person, regardless of earning potential. College is about more than gaining job skills. But not everone wants or has the ability to complete a standard four-year college program, and there are not enough options for these people at the moment.
Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 01-12-2018, 10:57 PM:
Even without money to pay for tuition, there has never been a better time to be an autodidact in history to date.
The accumulated knowledge of the world is right in front of you; all you need is a computer and web browser. Sadly, many people squander this looking at photos of Brittany Spears cat.
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-13-2018, 12:17 AM:
quote: Scott Norwood
A previous employer of mine did this--they had a job opening for a receptionist/secretary and a college degree was a basic requirement for it. There is nothing that a secretary does that requires a four-year college degree and no reason to exclude applicants who are otherwise competent but lack that qualification, but, for some reason, they did.
I think the reason employers do this is, they're looking for "stick-to-it-ive-ness," meaning you had the willpower and drive to stay in college and get a four year degree so maybe you'll be a go-getter on the job, too. I wonder if there are statistics that bear this out?
Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 01-13-2018, 05:45 AM:
quote: Mike Blakesley
I think the reason employers do this is, they're looking for "stick-to-it-ive-ness," meaning you had the willpower and drive to stay in college and get a four year degree so maybe you'll be a go-getter on the job, too. I wonder if there are statistics that bear this out?
I'm sure that "big education" can provide statistics that bear this out. I'm also sure that other independent studies would provide statistics that don't bear this out.
The biggest contributor to the student debt crisis is requiring degrees for things that don't need them combined with setting up the environment where people are convinced that getting a college degree is some kind of magic unicorn that guarantees higher income.
Back "in the day" when they put out the stats about how much more people that have college degrees earn, it was skewed because the careers that needed degrees were higher paying. Most people that were going to college did so in order to go into a career that required it.
Now people are told to "get a degree" and many get degrees in sociology or social anthropology (whatever that is) that is largely useless. Unfortunately they run up huge debts to get these worthless degrees.
"Big education" does not receive enough criticism for what they are doing to people with their greed disguised as some kind of utopian goal to "educate" people. The cost of higher education has become ludicrous and has far outpaced inflation. The cost is supported by the gazillion loan programs and grants provided by government. Universities don't have to live by the normal rules of supply and demand because demand is artificially increased by policy and there is no tuition that can't be "afforded" (at least until you actually have to pay off the loan).
We need a lot more people like Bobby's brother that get the training and education necessary for a job and then just work hard at their career.
Completely honestly, my degree in Electrical Engineering could have been designed to be a 2 year program. Instead, it took 4 years because I was required to take courses like philosophy so I could be a "well rounded" student. In reality, it is just an excuse to keep students paying for an extra 2 years.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-13-2018, 12:28 PM:
Lyle, like you, I have a degree in Electrical Engineering. I don't see how one could distill that degree down into 2-years because of all of the math, physics, chemistry and other necessary subjects required BEFORE you even touch an EE course (typically, one's first EE course, maybe 2, are in their Sophomore year. The bulk of the Engineering degrees have their particular engineering in years 3 and 4. Between Math and Physics, I saw 90% of the Engineering candidates wash out (that is NOT an exaggeration or even boasting, it was a simple fact of it and the Physics professors told you up front about the typical success rate). It isn't that the courses were necessarily designed to "weed out" as much as people may not think in a manner that is consistent with how Engineering works. Furthermore, the time it takes to take Physics courses tends to drain one. There is typically a lab associated with each course and the homework level/studying is significantly higher than with other courses. My point there is, do you really want to load yourself down with your Core EE courses while going through that? Furthermore, prerequisites typically will preclude you from advancing too fast (need to have enough math knowledge to do some courses). When I was at Maryland, Engineering students were allowed to take more credit hours than the normal full-time student (Maryland has/had a full-student rate where you paid the same price once you got up to something like 9-credit hours). If forget what the limit was but for Engineering it was over 20, which is a HUGE load, if you did it. I read a few years ago that now Maryland has flipped that a bit. Yes, Engineering still can take the large credit load BUT there is a tuition premium because credits required for graduation are higher than for other degrees. I just checked and it would appear that they have dropped the credit requirement down to 120 (I wonder if the specifics are such that while possible, if it is probable that would be the number...I want to say it was more like 140-160 in my day). I do see that they dropped the full-year of Chemistry (with lab) down to a single 3-credit Chemistry for Engineers and I don't see traditional Statics and Dynamics courses in there. General ed is down to 18-credits or less than one per semester.
My view has been pretty consistent on post HS education. Most people should seek it. That does NOT have to mean college. Trade schools are a good place as are good apprenticeship programs. It is true that one thing that most college graduates can demonstrate is that they can complete something! It is a problem that many people have. College, especially the big-gun schools, really don't care if you pass or fail. It is up to you to learn and they are NOT going to spoon feed you. It is like having training wheels on the world. You get assignments that you may like, you may not like but you have a deadline for either turning them in or knowing the information.
For those, like me, that don't really take to school, I HIGHLY recommend Jr. College (aka Community College). Some don't like them because they feel like 13th and 14th grade but what they do, typically, have is smaller classes and professors that really seem to care a LOT more about the teaching part since there is no research there (at least not at the one I attended). Most of the professors have Masters degrees rather than PHD. For me, the percentage of "good" professors to bad was heavily skewed to the good side at Community College and it was flipped at the University of Maryland. It isn't that the professors at Maryland were bad people or didn't know their stuff. By and large they were VERY talented. They just had somewhere else to be other than teaching and some knew they weren't good at conveying knowledge despite being brilliant at it.
Bobby, the measure of a person is not the income they make but in the quality of the job they do. Many people choose (including me) to do things that make them less money but with more satisfaction. The goal has always been to do something you'd do for free but hopefully people will pay you for it anyway.
Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 01-13-2018, 02:37 PM:
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
— Confucius
Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 01-13-2018, 06:31 PM:
quote:
It is true that one thing that most college graduates can demonstrate is that they can complete something!
I generally agree with this, however I think it's generally wrong to make a 4 year degree an absolute requirement unless it's something where the degree is necessary to prove proficiency in the subject.
I'm someone who left college with roughly 120 semester units, but still 4 semesters from my bachelors due to the alignment of prerequisites. Life circumstances got in the way of completing my degree. However, in the years since I left school I have spent nearly 20 years with a single employer doing the same basic job I was going to school for. When looking for job I am otherwise qualified for, my experience should be given equal weight to a degree.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-14-2018, 11:25 AM:
Many job requirement listings do tend to have "equivalent" experience. With 120 credit hours, which is quite a bit of time and money invested, that you would have wanted to find a way to finish it off. But yes, life can reshuffle one's hand.
When I was in college, there were several people that were in their mid-life that were getting degrees because life changed on them (career ended or topped out at a level less than they desired/needed).
Naturally, the completing college as a sign of being able to complete things is a generalization. There are countless examples (both ways) of where it doesn't hold true. It just betters one's odds.
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-14-2018, 03:22 PM:
quote: Scott Norwood
A previous employer of mine did this--they had a job opening for a receptionist/secretary and a college degree was a basic requirement for it. There is nothing that a secretary does that requires a four-year college degree and no reason to exclude applicants who are otherwise competent but lack that qualification, but, for some reason, they did.
Exactly the same thing happened in my wife's workplace (a university department) a few months ago, and it turned out that there was a good reason for it. A controversy was raging, because they wanted to bend the rules, and hire someone who only had a high school diploma, but who everyone involved agreed would be perfect for the job, and whose resume provided a strong case to support that. The diploma in question had been earned in the 1970s. They were eventually able to hire this person, but only after a fight with the internal bureaucracy.
The college degree minimum requirement for secretary/receptionist jobs had been introduced institution-wide (centrally, by HR) after a spate of incidents in which people without them had been hired, and found to lack the literacy and numeracy skills needed to do the job. Basically, they were dealing with people who had graduated from high school, but could not write a coherent sentence, understand figures on a spreadsheet, or handle even moderately complex information in a phone conversation. After this had happened a few times (one of which ended in an unfair dismissal lawsuit and a fat settlement), they introduced a blanket requirement for a college degree for that grade of position, to insure against that happening again.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-14-2018, 05:33 PM:
Again, having an "equivalent" would have sufficed. If a person has been in the workforce with verifiable references to their work experience, you can pretty quickly find out if they have basic communication/math skills. Requring a 4-year degree for a Receptionist/clerical job is likely overkill. A 2-year certificate would more than suffice for that. If other 2-year colleges were like mine, you are going to have college level English and some math requirement too in there (I can't say how much as my curriculum was VERY MATH heavy, ending with Multi-variable Calculus (aka Calc 3) and Differential Equations. Furthermore, upon entering into Community College, they assessed you in both Math and English to see where you really were.
I think requiring a 4-year degree for such jobs is just plain silly. And, quite frankly, may prevent one from attaining the best candidate. What percentage of people go for a 4-year degree with the hopes of attaining such a job? It isn't a matter of putting one down or assigning a class structure but of finding the best fit for a job. You want someone that is competent, sure but you also want someone that is also desiring of the job and is motivated to do it without you constantly having to push them too.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-14-2018, 08:58 PM:
Currently unemployment in the United States is pretty low. Yet our labor participation rate in the work force is still well below what it was before the Great Recession hit during last decade. More Baby Boomers are retiring. The current federal administration wants lots of restriction on immigration. Then there's that strong looming possibility of a baby bust I keep mentioning.
All of those things are going to make it ever more difficult for employers to fill positions they need filled with human beings. They're going to have to relax some of these ridiculous job requirements, such as a secretary or front office rep having a 4 year degree.
Our nation needs to re-think is how it regards employing ex-cons. Right now anyone convicted of a drug crime or non-violent felony is branded for life with those convictions, making it very difficult to find a worthwhile job and be a produtive, tax-paying member of society. The circumstances make true rehabilitation a long shot and chances of re-offending very high. The re-offend part of the equation may mean more crime victims, maybe even victims of violent crime. I think non-violent convicts, particularly ones with few marks on their record, need some kind of path to get their records cleaned. The current situation is great business for the prison industry, but not so great for taxpayers. Quite a few of the 2.2 million in prison certainly deserve to be there. But there is a lot of people cycling through the criminal justice system who could be positive additions to the American labor pool if our criminal justice system worked smarter rather than wasting money doling out little more than ever-lasting vengeance even more minor crimes.
quote: Steve Guttag
Bobby, the measure of a person is not the income they make but in the quality of the job they do. Many people choose (including me) to do things that make them less money but with more satisfaction. The goal has always been to do something you'd do for free but hopefully people will pay you for it anyway.
I enjoy my job; I'm certainly not doing it for the money. Still my field of work can be frustrating. I've seen a lot of the graphic design industry de-professionalized in many ways over the past 20 years. Having a formal degree doesn't mean much anymore, even those schools like my alma mater are charging ridiculous amounts of money for them. I'm very good at my job. So I totally get why so many cities in the US have drafted very restrictive sign codes. I'm as harsh a sign critic as anyone; there's lots of shit-quality design along the streets. Customers often can't tell the difference between good or bad design. Price is all that matters (and quotes between companies are not apples to apples comparisons either). I guess that's the nature of things when you're dealing with something that is subjective like art and graphic design.
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-15-2018, 08:19 AM:
quote: Steve Guttag
Again, having an "equivalent" would have sufficed. If a person has been in the workforce with verifiable references to their work experience, you can pretty quickly find out if they have basic communication/math skills. Requring a 4-year degree for a Receptionist/clerical job is likely overkill.
It's CYA.
Requiring a given qualification is an objective criterion: either you've got it, or you haven't. Making a judgment as to whether or not someone's demonstrable skills and experiences are equivalent to a given qualification is subjective: two different people can form two different, and perfectly valid, opinions as to whether you've got it or you haven't.
So, as a employer, if you simply require the qualification, with no flexibility or wriggle room, you have a cast iron defense against accusations (and lawsuits) of being institutionally -ist or -phobic. If you introduce the "or equivalent" into the mix, then you're basically painting a great big target in your entrance lobby.
It's the larger employers who tend to do this more, because they are more vulnerable to the lawsuits. Between 2001-13 I worked for two large universities, and during that time, the flexibility and discretion in decision making at lower and middle management levels gradually declined in favor of the check box approach - yes or no, it is or it isn't, etc. etc. The ability to make decisions and interpret policies in the gray areas was gradually taken away from the foot soldiers, and the authority to do so climbed higher up the command structure.
I think it's nothing like as bad in smaller companies and organizations, because more of what gets done is driven by individual professional relationships and the trust that goes with them, and they are a much less attractive target for no win/no fee attorneys, and the sort of person that would be inclined to hire one. There are richer pickings to be had suing an organization that employs 10,000 people and has an annual turnover of half a billion than in suing a nonprofit with 20 full-time staff and a turnover over just over a million, for example.
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-15-2018, 09:22 AM:
No, It's herd mentality, lack of knowledge and nepotism.
I have had a hell of a time applying for jobs, mainly because most people have no clue about what goes on in a movie theater.
I had an employer say to me, flat out, "You don't do anything but watch movies all day." That's when I pulled out my iPad and showed them pictures of the equipment that I worked on. When the person looked at a picture of the gearbox on the back of a Simplex projector or the inside of a Dolby Digital processor he got a dumbfounded look on his face.
So... a while later, I'm on the job on an assembly line...
There was an overhead conveyor system that has an optical sensor shooting across the belt. If the sensor doesn't "see" any product pass by after 30 seconds, it shuts off the conveyor motor.
So, this sensor intermittently stops working, the conveyor starts and stops all the time and it causes the whole assembly line to backlog.
The "maintenance" guy was fussing around with this sensor, off and on, for most of the night but couldn't figure it out.
I had known, most of the night, what the problem was. The last person who installed that sensor didn't properly dress the cable(s) and they were flapping in the breeze, so to speak. There was a frayed spot on the cable and, every time the cable moved just right, the sensor stopped working.
I told the guy that it was a bad cable but he insisted that the sensor and the retro-reflector were just out of line. It wasn't until I walked over and, with just two fingers, moved the cable and stopped the conveyor...then moved it the other way and restarted it.
The guy goes and gets a 15-foot cable and starts to shut down the line so he can replace the wire. I was thinking to myself, "Um...what's this guy doing?"
It took me a few minutes to work up the courage and to formulate a "nice" way to say it but I finally said that he could route the cable and dress it up without stopping the line and he would only need five minutes stopping the line to make the terminations.
If I hadn't spoken up, this guy would have shut down the plant for an hour just to do a five minute job.
No, this is not the first time I've seen things like this happen.
I commonly see people fumbling around for hours, trying to do simple jobs that I can do in minutes!
It's all because this guy is drinking buddies with the shop manager.
In another place, there was a woman whose job was to train new employees for their certification exams. It was well-known that she would only allow her friends to pass the exam. If she didn't like you, you didn't get certified.
I got a 98% on the exam and the only two questions I missed were because she gave the wrong information.
I had to show my exam score to the supervisor or else that woman wouldn't have let me pass my certification!
This kind of crap goes on 24/7 in virtually every shop I've seen!
quote: Leo Enticknap
So, as a employer, if you simply require the qualification, with no flexibility or wriggle room, you have a cast iron defense against accusations (and lawsuits) of being institutionally -ist or -phobic. If you introduce the "or equivalent" into the mix, then you're basically painting a great big target in your entrance lobby.
It's not objectivism! It's plain old stupidity!
Forest Gump could do a better job than most of these people!
Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 01-16-2018, 08:55 AM:
quote: Scott Norwood
If I were a cinema owner, though, I would be concerned about automating too much. Unlike fast food, where the actual food preparation part of the business is labor-intensive and offers great potential for automation, most of the jobs in a cinema are customer-facing positions. (Projectionists have largely been automated out of their jobs at this point.) While it might be possible to install automated ticket machines, concession vending machines, and turnstiles at the auditorium entrance(s), would customers accept that?
A movie theatre is supposed to be a happy, fun place where people feel like they are being taken care of by the staff (and where regular customers sometimes know the employees personally). Would people really accept a fully automated cinema (perhaps with a manager and a skeleton cleaning staff)? To me, such a place would feel more like riding on a public transit system (not usually a fun experience) than going out for a night of entertainment.
Some theaters are already doing quite a bit of hands-off "service" to customers.
- Self-serve ticket kiosks.
- Self-serve drinks (they hand you the cup for you to fill)
- Self-serve popcorn (they hand you the bag/cup for you to fill)
- "Cafeteria-style" concessions, where the candy is on shelves for customers to choose and take to the register
How is this all that different from buying your ticket online/at the kiosk, buying a candy bar from a vending machine, getting a soda from a vending machine, and so on?
I'm not saying that it's what I prefer, but for the basic stuff, it's already happening in some form at many theaters. The big problem comes in when, as the customer, you're expected to pay the same price and you're doing all the work. That's why I don't like the self-serve checkouts at the grocery store. Shave 10% off my bill and I'll be happy to ring up my own purchases, but don't make me replace a cashier simply because you don't want to pay for the labor.
My point perhaps can be drawn best by this example at a local theater.
The Marcus Majestic in Brookfield, WI has a box office where you can purchase the ticket at the counter or at a kiosk. They just redesigned that area, where there are half the number of registers, and probably twice as many kiosk tablets, with the emphasis clearly on the latter.
There is a ticket-ripper station, but even on a busy Saturday, there was no one at that station.
They have a dozen traditional concession lines, where you can order popcorn, soda, and candy. The candy is on shelves that little kids can grab while waiting in line. You get your popcorn served, but you get an empty cup that you have to fill at one of two beverage stations with some variety of a Coke Freestyle-like machine.
Off to one side, they have what Marcus calls a "Reel Sizzle" counter, which is like a diner, where you can order shakes, malts, burgers, and other made-to-order sandwiches. The cook asks what you would like on your burger, another server asks if you want whipped cream with your malt, etc. In a few (5-10) minutes, freshly-made food is ready for you to take into the theater.
Which of these customer-contact points is more valuable? Is it the ticket seller that just sells you the ticket you asked for? Is it the non-existent ticket-ripper? How about the person that rings up the candy you pulled off the shelf while waiting in line, and gives you the filled popcorn container and empty soda cup?
I think it's the people at the Reel Sizzle counter. They have the best opportunity to make a positive impression on the customer by providing that customer with something that couldn't be had from an automated machine.
That's not to say that there weren't other opportunities for great customer service.
The ticket seller could chat up customers with a friendly smile and it would make a great first impression. We had a ticket ripper at a local theater that made the news because he was acutely familiar with every movie, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend movies and say something interesting about the movies people were coming to see. That enthusiasm was a positive thing and it contributed to the personality of that particular theater. Likewise, the concession people have the opportunity to make people feel like they've made a good decision by being happy and cheerful and willing to engage customers and not make them feel as though they are an interruption in the lives of the workers.
It sounds as though it's very difficult to find workers that can exude that kind of friendliness and cheerful demeanor that speaks well of their employer. It's those people that not only *could* be replaced by automation, but *should* be replaced by automation.
Ideally, a movie theater would be filled with employees that want to be there, and truly strive to deliver the best moviegoing experience possible. I don't think turning a movie theater into an automat is the right way to go, but lacking decent help forces the issue of deciding where best to reduce the workforce and concentrate on the most valuable roles.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-16-2018, 10:04 AM:
Who is handing people bags for them to fill the popcorn? I've seen self-serve popcorn "topping" application (and it isn't the real butter people that are doing it). For it to be self-serve popcorn, they would have to have a proper dispenser (something akin to the old automated popcorn machines that would drop the cup and then fill it) to avoid health issues. Then there would be the customer's perception of "freshness" on popcorn. Popcorn is best served about an hour after popping (and left in a warmer) to get the moisture out. People will accuse popcorn right out of popper as being stale, despite demanding that they get the popcorn right out of the popper.
Another thing that is going to keep employees in movie theatres is the ever increasing trend of selling non-cinema food in theatres and "delivering" it to one's seat.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-16-2018, 10:54 AM:
quote: Scott Jentsch
It sounds as though it's very difficult to find workers that can exude that kind of friendliness and cheerful demeanor that speaks well of their employer. It's those people that not only *could* be replaced by automation, but *should* be replaced by automation.
A business gets the kind of employees according to what they're willing to pay. If the theater is going to pay minimum wage or very close to it management probably can't expect such low wage employees to schmooze movie-goers with the level of enthusiasm as that of a sales rep who manages to make good money working on commission. Management should expect a high level of employee turnover too. That's the nature of the McDonald's level pay scale.
Other people may like widespread automation in a movie theater. To me, it would be yet another reason to ask "why bothering going to the theater at all?" If there's hardly any human interaction and all I'm doing is going into a bigger room to watch what is effectively a bigger TV screen (with the movie letter-boxed no less) I'm going to be all that much more tempted to wait a very short time for the movie to show up at various options for home viewing.
IMHO, theaters who cut their staff down to nothing will be cutting their own throats in the long run. I sure don't feel like ordering reserve seat tickets online only to have not enough staff around to enforce seating arrangements.
quote: Steve Guttag
Another thing that is going to keep employees in movie theatres is the ever increasing trend of selling non-cinema food in theatres and "delivering" it to one's seat.
Dine-in theaters are growing in popularity. But customers can be very fickle and unforgiving when it comes to restaurant food. They will draw comparisons on price and food quality with other restaurants serving similar types of food. Customer service is also important, especially if the server is supposed to get a tip. If a theater is going to do the dine-in theme it's really important to have both good management and staff. That's a make or break deal there. It's not easy managing a restaurant or keeping good staff employed in one.
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-16-2018, 02:10 PM:
You'd hate the general level of "friendliness" in service you'll find in Canada, and your "get what you pay for" is true to a point. We've always been sure to have one or two "senior" kids as a manager or assistant role who first of all, are very personable and happy anyway, and second, are paid anywhere from $2-4 higher than minimum with full-time hours and some bonus when we can afford it (or it rains a lot). They are happy to have the kind of hours and a little higher pay that helps them pay for their schooling. The other kids are close to minimum (especially now that it's going to $14, then $15), but they are generally cheerful and good workers. We do bonus them too and do the best we can. They're also never without a "student manager" or ourselves on-site, and customers seem to really like how we treat them.
When I go to the big multiplexes, I sometimes wonder if part of it is just that there are SO many young, young kids and I just don't ever see their "handlers" around. I often think the best thing I can do to show kids how to treat a customer is just to be there smiling, conversing and for the most part, saying "yes" as much as I can. Also being the first to grab a broom and dustpan as soon as the pre-show rush is over.
(I also liked your "crappy sign" comment. First thing I ever did at dad's grocery store was make signs. Was about 6 and thought it was funny to put my dad "on sale" for FREE and tape up the signs out on the shelves. It takes a knack for sure, and nothing worse than crappy looking signage.)
Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 01-16-2018, 10:30 PM:
quote: Steve Guttag
For it to be self-serve popcorn, they would have to have a proper dispenser...
I've never seen one in action, but Cretors makes a self-serve machine. Doesn't drop the cup, but you put your bag/tub under a chute and push a button.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-17-2018, 12:50 PM:
quote: Dave Bird
When I go to the big multiplexes, I sometimes wonder if part of it is just that there are SO many young, young kids and I just don't ever see their "handlers" around. I often think the best thing I can do to show kids how to treat a customer is just to be there smiling, conversing and for the most part, saying "yes" as much as I can. Also being the first to grab a broom and dustpan as soon as the pre-show rush is over.
One of my best friends is the GM at a large Tex-Mex restaurant. He has a very hand's-on management style. He doesn't leave it 100% up to the employees to do all the grunt work. He'll be in the kitchen helping cook food, hauling out garbage and all kinds of other stuff as well as handling customer issues. He's not a push-over; not afraid to fire employees for all sorts of deal-breaking offenses. But he shows he's not above getting his hands dirty. That helps improve his staff's team spirit and morale overall.
quote: Dave Bird
(I also liked your "crappy sign" comment. First thing I ever did at dad's grocery store was make signs. Was about 6 and thought it was funny to put my dad "on sale" for FREE and tape up the signs out on the shelves. It takes a knack for sure, and nothing worse than crappy looking signage.)
Sign design requires both talent and nuts and bolts knowledge of signs and how to make them visually effective (legible, attractive, a positive addition to the surrounding environment). Too many think computers are doing all the work and anyone can throw designs together. The result is lots of cities and towns have commercial business districts littered with cheap, cluttered, unremarkable looking signs. If the city doesn't make businesses maintain their signs you'll see a lot of signs in disrepair (lamps out, faces missing, cabinets rusting to hell, etc). Citizens can't put their finger on why so much of the sign stuff is making their town look like shit. So they just rise up and take part in a general backlash against signs.
A big part of an anti-signs backlash is citizens taking notice of many upper income suburbs around the country with very restrictive sign ordinances in place. The only signs next to the street are small, tombstone sized displays. Then there is a forest worth of bushes and trees flanking the streets, doing a great job of hiding the modest building signs on store fronts. But it all looks very nice, so the town fathers pass a similar ordinance hoping to copy the upscale look.
The consequence of a very restrictive sign ordinance is it hamstrings businesses who want to project an effective storefront identity to passing motorists. Signs are the most important marketing tool for any business with a brick and mortar store front. If the customer can't easily spot a business from the road he may visit a competitor's store. Or he may just buy the product online.
Sign companies and sign designers have a pretty big civic responsibility. They make a big impact on a town's visual character. A unique, great looking, effective sign can become a civic landmark. Towns overrun with crappy looking signs can make visitors think the town is a run down hell hole. The upscale suburbs whose streets do more to showcase landscaping and McMansions rather than its local businesses will lack civic personality. It's just high dollar yet generic looking gentrification. And that too can drive customers to online merchants.
Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 01-17-2018, 09:58 PM:
Federal minimum wage in 7/1970 rose to $1.85 and I don't remember a lot of businesses complaining about it the way they're complaining now. Using the government's official inflation figures (which are incredibly understated), that would be $11.69 in today's dollars, so as far as I'm concerned, no employer should be complaining about $11.69 or less.
Having said that, there probably should have been a lower minimum wage for people under 18. Of course that could have led to employers seeking under 18-year olds instead of adults so they could pay them less. And I seem to have a vague recollection that movie theater workers were exempt from the Federal minimum wage. I just looked it up and all I can find is that movie theater employees are exempt from overtime, but in addition it says that workers under the age of 20 can be paid just $4.25 an hour for the first 90 days and certain students can be paid 85% of the minimum wage. Of course local wage laws would supersede that.
As Bobby pointed out, in big cities, prices for everything are so incredibly expensive that unless one is living for free in someone else's home, no one can live even on $15 an hour.
NYC is among the places that have vastly increased the minimum wage, especially for chain fast food workers. The reason New York State and the City have done so is because New York State ranked first in providing public assistance to fast food workers to the tune of a $700 million annual cost to taxpayers. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be subsidizing McDonald's and Burger King. Nationally, 52% of fast food workers had at least one family member on welfare. If that means some badly run or badly located fast food restaurants go out of business, so be it.
In NYC, the min wage just rose to $12 for companies with fewer than 10 employees, $13 for companies with 10 or more employees and $13.50 for chain fast food workers. That rises to $13.50/$15/$15 in a year and the $13.50 goes to $15 in two years. But NYC is a place where even in the outer boroughs, a studio to a new lessee starts at $1700 a month. We can either raise the minimum wage or have more homeless: it's as simple as that.
In Long Island and Westchester, the min wage (except for fast food) is $11, rising a dollar in each of the coming years until it hits $15 on 12/31/21. In the rest of the State, it's $10.40, rising to $11.10, $11.80 and $12.50 on 12/31/20 with $15 coming at some undefined time later. Outside of NYC, chain fast food is now $11.75 rising to $12.75, $13.75, $14.50 on 12/31/20 and $15 on 7/1/21. This is still poverty money in most places and a worker who lives in a 2-fare zone (most min wage workers do, because the rents are cheaper) will spend $230 a month just on bus or subway fare working 5 days a week. And in NYC workers must pay both local and state income taxes.
My local McDonald's has installed kiosks, but they have a worker monitoring the kiosks because the local McDonald's tends to attract people who are still unable to use any kind of technology efficiently (it boggles the mind that I see so many people having problems using debit or credit cards at grocery store checkouts) and you also can opt to have the food delivered to your table, so there's a worker for that. And you can still opt for the regular register. They've decreased the number of registers, but I don't think they've reduced the number of employees and if they have, it's probably not by very many.
The other thing to consider is that low-paid workers spend everything they make. So any increase in wages for low-income workers goes right back into the economy and I would suggest that low income people tend to spend their money in the same kinds of businesses that hire low-wage workers (aside from medical and rent). So I think those businesses will do just fine.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-18-2018, 10:28 AM:
quote: Martin Brooks
NYC is among the places that have vastly increased the minimum wage, especially for chain fast food workers. The reason New York State and the City have done so is because New York State ranked first in providing public assistance to fast food workers to the tune of a $700 million annual cost to taxpayers. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be subsidizing McDonald's and Burger King. Nationally, 52% of fast food workers had at least one family member on welfare. If that means some badly run or badly located fast food restaurants go out of business, so be it.
New York City is one of few places in the US that has a "right to shelter" law in place for the homeless. If existing homeless shelters are filled to capacity the city will improvise to find temporary shelter for homeless people that need it, even if it comes down to putting them in hotel rooms. The right to shelter law was a frequent target for attack by previous NYC Mayors Giuliani & Bloomberg. But the laws are still in place. With the homeless population in NYC ballooning to record levels and cost to taxpayers ballooning along with it the law may fall under renewed attack. The city is under great pressure to find ways how to reduce the homeless population and its cost to taxpayers.
One idea for reducing the homeless population is relocating many out of town. That idea could work for all the homeless who are employed. It's another matter for those who are mentally ill and/or elderly; no cities anywhere are going to welcome another city's problem that would only drain their resources. For all the working homeless who can be located elsewhere it will come with its own cost: relocation leaves behind fewer low wage, service industry workers to do grunt work jobs many in New York City take for granted. A city made up only of rich people is a city that won't be functional.
Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 01-18-2018, 11:58 AM:
quote: Steve Guttag
Who is handing people bags for them to fill the popcorn?
I'd be interested in knowing if this is actually a thing too. In every self-service snack bar I've been through, the popcorn is pre-bagged. You just grab whatever size filled bag or tub you're buying.
Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-18-2018, 12:19 PM:
Apparently self-serve popcorn machines are a real thing.
https://youtu.be/SfU0aS1o3bs
Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 01-18-2018, 01:11 PM:
quote: Bobby Henderson
One idea for reducing the homeless population is relocating many out of town.
Philadelphia PA tried that. About ten years ago, they tried putting homeless people who were on welfare on buses and shipping them to Atlantic City NJ. New Jersey took a dim view of this, along with the Federal Courts. Eventually, Philadelphia had to take them all back.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-18-2018, 06:12 PM:
As I suspected, any "self-serve" machine will have to keep people's hands out of the popcorn and have the machine do the dispensing. And if there isn't a vessel there to catch it, oh well. And if it isn't perceived as "fresh," what then?
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-18-2018, 06:45 PM:
quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
Philadelphia PA tried that. About ten years ago, they tried putting homeless people who were on welfare on buses and shipping them to Atlantic City NJ. New Jersey took a dim view of this, along with the Federal Courts. Eventually, Philadelphia had to take them all back.
The largest concentration of homeless people I've ever seen in a single city was in Honolulu. They were sleeping in pretty much every doorway in the downtown area where my hotel was. I was later told that there is a sinister back story to this. Apparently there are unlicensed, fly-by-night rehab clinics run by scam artists and quacks up and down the west coast of the mainland. As their patients (or their insurers) run out of money, they used to throw them out onto the streets. Local governments and state regulators started to take a dim view of that, so these unscrupulous clinics started to buy these people one-way plane tickets to Hawaii instead. Once there, they're stuck, with no way to get back to the mainland, so the clinics have washed their hands of them. Given that these people, by definition, are addicts and/or with other mental health issues that effectively prevent them from supporting themselves, it sounds like a difficult and unfair situation for everyone involved (apart from the owners of the quack clinics, who are causing it).
Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 01-18-2018, 07:22 PM:
We are somewhat challenged, in that Washington State has the highest state minimum wage (San Francisco may be higher, as is Seattle). This year, it's $11.50. 14 and 15 year-olds can be paid 85% of the minimum, but even if I thought it was an appropriate place for kids that young (I don't) then child labor laws kick in and we can't keep them clocked in as late as we'd need to (drive-in).
We have a few adults on the staff. Frequently, they're school teachers and bus drivers, who work for us during the Summer, when school's out. Those are the ones I consider for higher wages, because they "get it" and are usually productive from day one. As for the kids who come out here and experience the reality of their first job? Very, very few of them are worth $11 per hour. Not even my own kids were worth that kind of money when they started, and they grew up at the place.
When you have to overcome a youngster's pre-conceived notion of what a job really is (usually instilled into them by parents and/or peers), then start their training by introducing them to the mop and toilet brush that few of them have ever seen, it can be a while before you feel they support $11 or $12 an hour. Over here, it'll be $15 pretty soon.
Oh... and in our economy, the idea you could live on $15 an hour is crazy. Median housing in Seattle is around $700,000, and a reasonably decent apartment can run you $2,000 a month. At 40% of your pre-tax base, that represents at least a $5,000 monthly wage. That puts you at $27/hr, at minimum for a 40 hour week. Then, there's health care. You can't get near 40 hours at most part time jobs because of what that triggers, so you'd have to make your "living wage" with fewer hours and a higher rate.
This all comes back to where it started though. I'm giving a lot of young people their first job. Most of them are blank slates, at best. I'm not teaching them how to run a theatre... I'm training them for the next step in their life. Few can get there without some "basic training", which a place like this is really good for. To put up with that, however, I don't expect to be responsible for someone's "living wage".
But... beyond this point, it probably gets political. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-18-2018, 09:37 PM:
That is an interesting popcorn machine. I wonder how it deals with different size buckets? Presumably, it has some sort of internal mechanism to keep the popcorn warm.
I vaguely remember seeing something in Boxoffice magazine a number of years ago that involved a hot-air popping machine that dropped a bucket down from inside the machine (like old-style soda machines) and then popped the corn into the bucket. I have never seen one of these in person and don't know if the product ever actually existed, though.
Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 01-18-2018, 10:52 PM:
Freshpop at the Comfort Inn Denver, Colorado
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-19-2018, 10:39 AM:
Those are kind of my original thoughts Jack. To try and peg a wage as "living", well there's kind of a million things that go into that unique to each individual. Our "under 18" age has jumped from $10.70 to $13.10 (over 18 from $11.40 to $14) but it's come attached to a new "employment standards" bill that gives everyone 2 paid sick days (5 paid "sexual assault" days) and a provision that part-time staff MUST be paid the same wage as full-time staff if doing the same work.
Mostly this is electioneering, and we're clever enough that we think we'll be fine, but I just don't see the space left for that "first job". And I don't even know what to say about "paid sick days" for high school summer part-time 3-5 hour shifts. It's really poorly thought out in my opinion. It absolutely pushes one to consider more adult/instantly competent staff. It's going to hurt kids overall, part-time jobs are an important first step towards making your way in the world.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-19-2018, 11:25 AM:
Jack,
You seem to contradict yourself. You don't think kids are "worth" $11, let alone $15/hour yet you also say that a "living wage" is $27/hour. So paying kids $11-$15/hour is really paying them merely half of what you admit they would need to live on their own. Perhaps you are letting what you were paid as a youth back when the cost of living was substantially lower cloud what you think $11-$15/hour is worth in 2018?
Naturally, the higher minimum wage affects more than just movie theatre employees and the traditional people that seek out such jobs. Then again, movie theatre employees didn't used to be just a kids job...going far enough back.
I do think the National minimum wage is currently too low. I'm not sure such a speedy jump to $15 is right either. I also think, in addition to a Federal minimum wage that state and local governments should set their own minimums based on their actual cost of living. Since some cities, clearly, it is VASTLY more expensive to live in/near.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-19-2018, 01:10 PM:
quote: Steve Guttag
Naturally, the higher minimum wage affects more than just movie theatre employees and the traditional people that seek out such jobs. Then again, movie theatre employees didn't used to be just a kids job...going far enough back.
That raises the point about subtle and not so subtle things employers can do to cut payroll costs. Theaters replacing adult workers with high school kids willing to work for less is one example. Having salaried managers (or the high school kids) run the projectors instead of a dedicated projectionist is another. Going farther, why not just go all-digital, "boothless" and have theater's projection run remotely along with projection from a bunch of other movie theaters at a central office?
Some work places hire more employees part time with no benefits and cut way back on employees who are full time and have benefits. They can get creative with sub-contract labor or hire people on as independent contractors. At my mothers work place (selling appliances), she has seen the floor flooded with new, inexperienced sales people for the sole purpose of watering down the sales levels of the better, more experienced reps and cutting way down on their commission. That tactic can back-fire; the store runs off a bunch of its experienced workers leaving behind a green staff that lets thing go to shit. Then there's the controversial issues of outsourcing jobs overseas and insourcing legal and illegal foreign-born migrant labor for a number of industries.
With the national unemployment level rate down very low, not to mention the government's stance on immigration, it's going to be difficult for employers to keep holding down wage levels without ending up with lots of vacant job openings they can't fill. There's still a lot of Americans not participating in the labor force, but they seem content sitting on the sidelines for now.
quote: Steve Guttag
I do think the National minimum wage is currently too low. I'm not sure such a speedy jump to $15 is right either. I also think, in addition to a Federal minimum wage that state and local governments should set their own minimums based on their actual cost of living. Since some cities, clearly, it is VASTLY more expensive to live in/near.
I'm a little surprised bigger businesses haven't been doing more to pit different regions against each other in terms of their vast living cost differences. Then again the regions with the lowest living costs aren't doing much to retain the best and brightest of their workforce.
Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 01-19-2018, 03:33 PM:
How would extra employees cut down on the commission cost for the company? If they are paying a percentage of each sale to the salesman, then it doesn't matter to the bottom line if its Tom who gets the commissions or if they are shared between Dick and Harry.
Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 01-19-2018, 06:03 PM:
The nature of the theatre business dictates that theatres need to have a number of part time employees, especially in smaller markets. My theatre's hours are not enough to offer a full time year-round position to anyone but myself. In the summer I have a couple assistants who get close to 40 a week, but in the off season I'm lucking to be able to give one senior assistant as much as 30 hours a week and the others fill in as necessary.
Because business at a movie theatre can fluctuate so drastically from week to week, it is necessary to have enough bodies to be able to staff the busiest of weekends. This means fewer hours available for those employees during slower periods.
In larger markets it may be possible to have a core staff of full time employees which are supplemented by some number of part time employees. However, in smaller markets where this is not an option it's often going to be mostly teenagers and college students just because that's the group able to have the scheduling flexibility and able to deal with an inconsistent number of hours.
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-19-2018, 06:50 PM:
Of course there is a TON of news articles on the subject up here at the moment. One of them cites a rising economy being a far better eliminator of poverty than a legislated minimum wage. They claim California with a higher minimum than most has a much higher rate of poverty.
Regarding the "boothless" projection, that's essentially what we do. Especially now that we have less staff-hours to play with, I'm glad ours in automated. We'll be able to "automate" a couple things downstairs and in that way have one (even two some nights) less staff in but still be able to give the kids we do have a decent amount of hours.
I think my first paycheck was at something like $3.55/hr and I really don't remember having any kind of "feelings" on that. That's what they paid, and I wanted money to spend.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-19-2018, 09:15 PM:
quote: Frank Cox
How would extra employees cut down on the commission cost for the company? If they are paying a percentage of each sale to the salesman, then it doesn't matter to the bottom line if its Tom who gets the commissions or if they are shared between Dick and Harry.
That's only if the retailer's commission rate is an even, flat rate. Some of them will increase a sales rep's commission rate or pay bonuses when surpassing certain sales barriers. On the regressive side of things many retailers require a commisioned sales rep to move a certain amount of product within a pay period to qualify for any commission at all; he has to offset the "draw" of his base pay. With too many reps on the floor it can be difficult getting a decent commission at all.
quote: Dave Bird
Of course there is a TON of news articles on the subject up here at the moment. One of them cites a rising economy being a far better eliminator of poverty than a legislated minimum wage. They claim California with a higher minimum than most has a much higher rate of poverty.
A rising economy that rises across the board, across all demographic groups, the so-called "tide lifing all boats," will eliminate poverty. The economy in the United States is improving in an extremely uneven manner. The stock market is doing great (for now). Those in the top income brackets are doing great. Everyone else is not seeing the same kind of boom time. Improvement is happening very unevenly from one region to the next. Oklahoma didn't get hammered too bad by the housing industry collapse last decade, but it sure hasn't been adding new residents in recent years like Texas at all. The state's current budget fiasco and what it has done to many school districts is convincing some residents to leave. I know teachers and cops who have left the state for better pay elsewhere.
The implication California has a higher rate of poverty due to its higher minimum wage is just bonkers. The folks pushing that argument probably think more people would be employed if the minimum wage was lower. I guess they never heard of the "working poor." California's unemployment rate has fallen from 12.2% in 2010 to 4.9% in October of 2017 (the US rate was 4.1% and Texas was 3.9%). The primary reason why California has a higher rate of poverty is because it costs too much money for most people to live there. But California is a cool state and people are still moving there in droves and then, I guess, figuring out a plan to survive once they get there. Even at $15 per hour a worker would be living in poverty in many areas of California.
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-19-2018, 10:47 PM:
I can't cite the source precisely, but a local politician interviewed on a talk radio show a few days ago claimed that the recent population increase in CA is solely due to immigration directly into the state from outside the US. If you exclude international immigrants, California's population declined. In particular, economic migration of both people and businesses from CA to other states has accelerated significantly in the last 2-3 years: we've had a net outflow of interstate migrants. We've also officially been named (sorry - can't remember by who) the second most business unfriendly state in the nation (apparently, New York is worse).
quote: Bobby Henderson
California's unemployment rate has fallen from 12.2% in 2010 to 4.9% in October of 2017 (the US rate was 4.1% and Texas was 3.9%).
I'm guessing that this just measures unemployment, not underemployment. One problem here is that a set of taxes and fees payable by an employer kicks in if you hire someone for 20 hours a week, some more at 30 and some more still at 40. This gives employers an incentive to hire on a part-time/casual basis, with the result that there are many people out there who don't show up on the official unemployment figures, but who aren't making as much as they need to for a reasonable standard of living.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-20-2018, 01:45 AM:
Oh yeah exactly. Basic employment/unemployment figures really don't tell the whole story on the economy. The numbers indeed say nothing about under-employment -the worker has a "job" but it's actually a shit-pay job, and he probably needs 2 more shit-pay jobs plus a few roommates to share living costs in order to survive. Still he's not "unemployed."
This is why I roll my eyes with disgust whenever I hear anyone running for elected office talking about "jobs." They always talk about jobs in a generic, vague, all jobs are the same quality when giving their sales pitch for votes. It's a bunch of lame crap. And it makes me think of Marines' joke about the Navy's old catch phrase: Navy: it's not just a job, it's an adventure. The Marines would say, "Navy: it's not just a job, it's a blow job."
American-born people may be leaving California, but I'm not sure where they're going. If they're moving from one really popular place to another really popular place the move may end up being a sideways one. For instance Texas has been gaining a lot of population. But rapidly growing areas in the Lone Star State, such as Austin and all the cities around it, are seeing living costs rising very rapidly. NW Arkansas (Walmart HQ country) is doing the same thing.
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-20-2018, 10:11 PM:
A lot of people from California move to Montana, specifically western Montana (which is where the mountains are). The cost of living is high on that side of the state, but not near as high as in California. You could sell your modest California home, move to Montana and use the money to pay cash for a way better house than you had, and then invest the rest.
In fact, almost any homeowner from California can afford to move to Montana, but most people from here could never afford to move to California. At least, not to the cities.
The big problem with Californians is, they tend to be "tree huggers" or "animal lovers" who move in (sometimes for only half the year) and then try to change the "way of life" that has existed in this state for generations.
The cost of living in southeastern Montana is probably about half what it is in the western part of the state, and 1/4 of what it is in California cities. We don't have mountains around here....but we have other types of scenery that's just as pretty. Wages aren't exactly sky-high here though...it's all relative.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-21-2018, 08:21 PM:
The thing that concerns me here in "flyover country" is extreme living costs in coastal cities and other rapid growing urban areas is causing all sorts of stealth-inflation for smaller towns and rural areas where the cost of living is low, but wages are low and the tax base is really low.
I still have some family in Temple, OK but most have died off. My dad's parents are gone, two of his siblings are gone. A bunch of other relatives have passed. The town's population is shrinking, shedding young adults much faster than newborns can replace them. The town can no longer afford a police department. Its infrastructure is aging and the cost of maintaining it is rapidly increasing -thanks in part to the orgy of price gouging taking place in the big cities. The douchebags there are making things more expensive for everyone. These small towns don't have the population or customer base to make modern comforts like really fast broadband Internet service feasible. Many of the elderly people trying to keep Temple, OK alive are having a hard time staying. There's very little health care service in that town. Anyone needing a lot of care and supervision, like hospice care, can be forced to move to some type of assisted living facility in a bigger city. There's a lot of homes in these dying rural towns that can't even be sold.
There are plenty of things I dislike about big cities, with the outrageous cost of living being right there at the top of the list. Unfortunately the long term trend points to more people being forced to relocate in or near urban areas whether they like city living or not.
Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 01-21-2018, 10:12 PM:
First thing I did was raise the price. Most people did not notice and others are aware of the drastic increase in costs. I see this as the death knell of the Liberals in Ontario and their nasty ass witch leader.
Economic policy cannot be based on just dumping wage increases on small business. Regardless the reality has hit home for even medium sized companies.
My attitude now is no more time to learn - the employees have to run right out of the gate. I have a licensed bar and need people who are competent - I simply cannot afford the useless ushers and months of training.
What this means is that the young adult - student job is finished. Race to the bottom now with fast food/bars/restaurants and movie theatres.
There is an even bigger issue - complete lack of basic education and work ethic in a large part of the youth. Not just because of age or digital distractions but also because government policy is geared to education as a business not a means to create productive people.
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-23-2018, 08:13 PM:
Well, there's no question Alexandre, these aren't your daddy's liberals (provincially or federally). They are veering more and more towards "social justice" as the answer to all questions. (Trudeau addressed the World ECONOMIC Forum today with an incoherent speech on gender issues, meantime his comrades seem hell-bent on destroying NAFTA, the only reason anyone still makes anything in Ontario anyway.) Where, oh where are the "left of center" liberals who understood that we have to have some economy left to pay for all this stuff?
I digress. We are changing our entire layout and will be adding some equipment to eliminate a lot of work. I'm going to "shift" some of the pre-opening prep to happen during the first movie when there's often an hour where we aren't doing much, we can prep condiments and cotton candy etc for the NEXT night during that time with a little better planning. I've shaved enough hours to come it at a similar wage cost as last year, but we'll likely tinker with the pricing while we have the opportunity. I'm also hoping to move our box office closer to our snack bar which would allow us to sell tickets to the odd latecomer without leaving a kid out there by the road for 2-3 hours after the show starts.
We'll be doing a lot more of it ourselves as a family as well.
(Still no change to the "Owner's Minimum Wage" I assume.) Some of that is because a lot of our "old-timer kids" have been with us 10 years and are moving on anyway. We'll go from having 10 or 11 on staff to only 3 or 4 "non-family". It's too bad, it really is, I'm not sure how or where high school kids will find jobs anymore. This will certainly be another "hidden cost" to those middle-class families, all pricing for goods is going up and now they'll essentially be subsidizing their kids even more (or the kids won't be doing many activities that they used to pay for themselves).
Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 01-23-2018, 10:35 PM:
quote: Steve Guttag
Jack,
You seem to contradict yourself. You don't think kids are "worth" $11, let alone $15/hour yet you also say that a "living wage" is $27/hour. So paying kids $11-$15/hour is really paying them merely half of what you admit they would need to live on their own. Perhaps you are letting what you were paid as a youth back when the cost of living was substantially lower cloud what you think $11-$15/hour is worth in 2018?
Steve, if you read my post as being contradictory, it was not intended.
My point was that we have a ways to go, if ever, before minimum wage work can be considered "livable"... and I'm not convinced it should be.
BTW... when I left home and went out for my first job in the early '70s, minimum wage was a little under $3/hr, and gas was something like 35 or 40 cents a gallon. I "rebelled against the system" and bought a Honda bike when it hit .50, because there was no way I was spending $10 to fill up my old Chevy V8 gas hog. There was nobody out there, agitating for an artificially-inflated wage. Rather, the market dictated that, if you didn't offer enough to attract the person you wanted, you'd likely lose him/her to someone who did. More than once, that influenced my decisions when I was an employee, and I think I appreciated those positions more that way. For the minimum wage I started out at, I was exposed to radio announcing and engineering (before I had yet earned my licenses), and got a job as a "production assistant" at one of the local TV stations. That was basically a "gofer" job to take some of the load off the Production Department (of one). I'd never touched any kind of broadcast or television equipment before getting those jobs, and I'm probably lucky I got those minimum wage positions, because I walked in, not having a clue. On the other hand, that's where I first learned what went on in those places and turned the experience into one of two life-long occupations.
I'd like to think that most reasonable people without a political image to promote wouldn't expect an entry level employee at a theatre or fast-food restaurant to pay his rent or buy a house, run a car, pay insurance and medical expenses, feed a family and put the kids through school with only the skills required to cook fries or pour a Coke. Individually, the value of those positions don't call for that kind of return. By ratio, with the experience and skills you have, what would your job be worth today? Likely, an impossible wage to meet.
My other point is that I consider minimum wage to be a "training wage". We are a part-time, seasonal business and always will be. There are not enough hours in the day (or year) for someone to establish themselves and make any kind of "living" before the season ends, and along with it, their employment.
That makes us a good place for kids, who are usually still living with their parents, to get their employment history started. For the most part, I don't consider their level of experience and productivity to be commensurate with a wage that they could establish an independent, personal economy with. Rather, my place is a reasonably good step in that direction, which in itself has value.
For the lack of opportunity for them to make a career here, the trade-off is what they take with them when they leave. Once they get a season or two under their belts, which is about average before many of them head off to college, the military or other jobs, they're exposed to a range of social skills, food service, money management, light building maintenance, crowd control and teamwork. Most often, they leave here with more confidence and self-respect than when they started, and are better prepared to step into jobs that aren't necessarily related to the theatre business, which is our goal.
But... having been around this business as long as you have, I'm sure you get all of this already.
Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 01-24-2018, 07:45 PM:
quote: Scott Jentsch
Likewise, the concession people have the opportunity to make people feel like they've made a good decision by being happy and cheerful and willing to engage customers and not make them feel as though they are an interruption in the lives of the workers.
It sounds as though it's very difficult to find workers that can exude that kind of friendliness and cheerful demeanor that speaks well of their employer. It's those people that not only *could* be replaced by automation, but *should* be replaced by automation.
Ideally, a movie theater would be filled with employees that want to be there, and truly strive to deliver the best moviegoing experience possible.
quote: Bobby Henderson
A business gets the kind of employees according to what they're willing to pay. If the theater is going to pay minimum wage or very close to it management probably can't expect such low wage employees to schmooze movie-goers with the level of enthusiasm as that of a sales rep who manages to make good money working on commission. Management should expect a high level of employee turnover too. That's the nature of the McDonald's level pay scale.
...
IMHO, theaters who cut their staff down to nothing will be cutting their own throats in the long run. I sure don't feel like ordering reserve seat tickets online only to have not enough staff around to enforce seating arrangements.
Bobby is right on the money here. When I first started in the biz, as part of the concession crew, pay was minimum wage, but the company was just a midsized chain that, for the most part, let theaters run themselves. I remember being that "bubbly" attendant, because the job was fun and I was allowed to do just that.
Since then, though, many things have changed. A buy-out by the largest theater chain in the country implemented the most change. Rampant micromanagement really impacted morale. No longer was there any freedom. No more employee pre-screenings of movies, no more paid food runs, employees now had weekly hour caps, couldn't trade/pick up/give away shifts freely anymore, cashiers were forced to follow a script, POS systems that were needlessly complex to 'force' suggestive/add on sales querys, quotas to meet with rewards cards AND charity donation requests for all cashiers, staff cuts and much stricter payroll "goals"(that are increasingly impossible, the theater has to beat same day last year indefinitely- someone called in last year? Sucks, you aren't going to hit target today and you'll hear about it), a company that won't invest any money into the 10 year old building that's already going to shit... the list goes on. So yeah, of course that turned the cashiers into lifeless robots. They HAD to say x number of things and by the time they do, the customer is visibly annoyed and just wants to get away from the counter. And call me overly sensitive all you want, but being forced to say all that crap and customers shooting you down while getting visibly annoyed for hours on end.... good god is it ever draining. It sucks. There's no more time for pleasantries or getting to know the customer or suggesting movies after you've signed them up for a rewards card and solicited them for a dollar tax write off. It all just seems that the company doesn't give a flying fuck about the employee, so why should the employee give a fuck about the employer? The employee struggles to "speak well of their employer" because there's not much well to speak of. Turnover is worse than ever, and as I mentioned earlier, it's harder to find employees than ever.
So yes, as Bobby said, theaters(at least big chains) are shooting themselves in the foot. It's all about money today rather than a decent future for the company. Race to the bottom. How cheap can you get?
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-25-2018, 01:39 PM:
quote: Jack Ondracek
My point was that we have a ways to go, if ever, before minimum wage work can be considered "livable"... and I'm not convinced it should be.
If minimum wage jobs should not be livable wage jobs perhaps businesses relying on minimum wage workers should not be open at all during school hours, not be open late at night and certainly not open all night long.
So many people believe that jobs at McDonald's or wherever are just for teenage kids. If I visit a fast food restaurant for lunch during the work week I'm going to see nothing but grown-ass adults at the registers and working in the kitchen. Those people working there during regular business hours are trying to earn a livable wage, and if they're making only $7.25 an hour (minimum wage in OK) they'll have to get one or more additional shit-pay jobs to make up the difference. And then the taxpayers get to provide food stamps and other assistance to make up for how these folk's ends are not meeting.
Lots of movie theaters have matinee shows during the work week while school is still in session. The 12-plex in our mall has its first Monday-Friday shows at 11:00am and the first Monday-Friday shows at the Patriot 13 theater begin at 1:00pm. They need adult employees for those shifts. Our old former Carmike 8-plex is the only one whose early shows begin late enough in the afternoon for student staffers to work.
When I was a kid I remember how just about every retail and service store shut only a couple or so hours after sunset. Very few were open all night. I remember one long distance road trip where my dad was driving through much of the night. We were running low on fuel, but having a hell of a time trying to find a gas station that was still open. Today that's not a problem. There's lots of fast food restaurants, convenience stores and other places (like Walmart) open all night long. The adults working those graveyard shifts are at higher risk of attack by armed robbers, rapists and other criminals. And they're subject to all sorts of odd human behavior that can happen late at night (often drug/alcohol fueled). Some of these workers deserve hazard pay; instead they're getting $7.25 an hour or not much above it.
Over the long term this business model of hiring "kids" on the cheap is going to fall apart if the United States continues its steep, price-gouging trends in housing, health care, education, transportation and more. There won't be enough "kids" to hire. Too many people of child-bearing age are being priced out of parenthood. Few of us seem to be concerned with that or even be concerned about anyone other than ourselves. I see it all the time in my work -customers wanting free design work, not wanting to pay the labor it takes to install a sign. They're always looking for an angle to save themselves money, even if they know it would make us lose money. They don't care.
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-25-2018, 02:33 PM:
quote: Bobby Henderson
Few of us seem to be concerned with that or even be concerned about anyone other than ourselves. I see it all the time in my work -customers wanting free design work, not wanting to pay the labor it takes to install a sign. They're always looking for an angle to save themselves money, even if they know it would make us lose money. They don't care.
I think you've identified precisely what has to account for at least 50% of the problem. My family lived in a small town. We owned a business that the other people supported and we hired full-time "living wage" (for the area, NOT what far-off politicians said it was) staff, with benefits. We could buy just about whatever we needed in a town of 1,400 from other families who employed other full-time staff. But that wasn't just in small-towns, most of the businesses in the city were the same way. Likely this is how goods and services changed hands for hundreds of years, maybe more. I don't believe any of these families all of a sudden fired their full-timers. We sure didn't, and we weren't open most nights and were the last ones to open Sundays.
The consumer chose cheap a long time ago now, the full-timers retired and were replaced by the only staff anyone could afford and still compete on price (many stores just simply went out of business) and now here we are. But unless people are going to suddenly stop shopping at Wal-Mart (or worse, Amazon), unskilled retail labor is never going to support a family again, ever, whether the minimum wage is $15, 20 or 50 "nominal" dollars.
Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 01-25-2018, 04:23 PM:
But that is the point. The transnationals are leading the way to total serfdom and most people are either willing accomplices or completely unaware. It is shocking - especially in rural areas where all that is left are box stores, fast food and an occasional granny antique flop house.
Speaking of granny - looks like the Riverdale witch strikes again!
Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 01-25-2018, 04:33 PM:
I'm the last place open at night in the downtown area here, so I occasionally get some of the oddities walking in my door. I guess it comes from living in a small town, though, since even though I'm alone here at night (other than the audience who's in watching the movie) I've never felt like I was in in any kind of danger.
Mostly I do things like calling the taxi for people who walk this far from the bar and then decide they are too drunk or cold to walk the rest of the way home so they sit on the bench in the lobby for a while.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-25-2018, 09:00 PM:
quote: Dave Bird
The consumer chose cheap a long time ago now, the full-timers retired and were replaced by the only staff anyone could afford and still compete on price (many stores just simply went out of business) and now here we are. But unless people are going to suddenly stop shopping at Wal-Mart (or worse, Amazon), unskilled retail labor is never going to support a family again, ever, whether the minimum wage is $15, 20 or 50 "nominal" dollars.
I think a great deal of the country is stuck in a negative feedback loop on this. It's race to the bottom economics. Lots of "little people" have no choice but to shop at Walmart or places selling food and other necessities for even less. Here in Lawton we have two Walmart Supercenters and one Walmart Neighborhood Market store, but I swear it seems like there are ten times as many dollar stores. Those things are all over the damned place. Some of the lower income and minority residents here trade a lot of jokes and dark humor about having to shop at the dollar stores.
Big business and globalization is forcing much of this. It's not enough for a publicly traded company to be profitable; the company has to be even more profitable from one quarter to the next. And the easiest way to increase profit is by carving it out of payroll. The Dow Jones may be hitting new record highs, but it is something detached from the economy on "main street" and doesn't say a damned thing about the middle class squeeze or the misery index ratcheting up on the earners at the bottom and near the bottom of the income scale. Wage stagnation is a real problem. There may be claims that wages are now finally rising, but it's a statistic seen through rose colored glasses. The number is going to look good when it averages in the enormous income gains of the top 10% of the income bracket. The wage gains of little people aren't keeping up with the pace of inflation -counting things like food and fuel, which aren't factored in to the government's inflation figures.
Some of what's happening on Wall Street and the rest of our economy feels morbidly similar to the 2005-2006 time frame before America's housing industry and much of the global economy went to hell.
Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 01-26-2018, 07:23 AM:
Agree with Bobby again. There's a reason everyone started going cheap... they had to. Their pay wasn't keeping up. They couldn't spend like they wanted to. Mom&pops started losing business and closing. Those employees had to take lower paying jobs. Which meant they had to be MORE cheap. On and on and on.... The 'big three' of every industry wins and wins... Quite literally hoarding all the money in the market, just like the winner in Monopoly, only one comes out on top and everyone else goes bankrupt. Things are only going to get worse unless something big changes, in my opinion.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-26-2018, 11:44 AM:
The baby bust I keep mentioning will be that "big change" if our nation keeps doing what it's doing long enough. The United States is already a few years into this emerging baby bust cycle, and if the trend continues on its current trajectory it will take less than a decade for it to start yielding serious consequences. What happens to a school district if its enrollment is cut in half?
Any industries built around children will be the first to feel the impact. Single people and couples without kids don't need big McMansion homes and big vehicles. They don't have to buy toys, school supplies, pay for day care, pediatric health care, etc. Minimalist living is a growing trend among younger adults. Many young adults are choosing to rent rather than buy homes.
If fertility decline becomes a long term thing, spanning decades like it has in Japan, it will wreak havoc on the government's ability to fund Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social safety net programs. The government needs lots of young, working age adults paying taxes to keep those programs solvent. I am pretty worried about that. By the time I am eligible to start drawing Social Security the program may no longer exist. All the money I've been paying into it would be gone.
Our military needs a steady supply of young adult recruits. And those recruits most often come from middle income and lower income families -people who are finding it ever more difficult to afford having children or just outright choosing not to have kids in favor of a less complicated, more affordable life. Our nation's security also depends greatly on it being a leader in technology and innovation. But our nation recently dropped out of the top 10 list of world's most innovative countries. This news can't be too surprising since the US already has to import many thousands of doctors, scientists and engineers.
I think it's odd how the press and some policy makers talk about issues like "income inequality." They appear to be looking at issues like this in an isolated way and only in the present tense. They're not looking at the bigger picture, macro-economic view and its push-pull effects over time. Some demographers are already aware of this issue, but I think an American Baby Bust is going to catch everyone else by surprise.
Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 01-26-2018, 12:33 PM:
As usual here, interesting discussion. On cheap imports, I am reminded of the film Outsourced ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425326/ ). Though the film will not win a lot of awards (though IMDB shows 5 awards), there's an interesting scene where a customer calls the call center and complains that the product they want to buy was not made in the USA. The person taking the call says that they DO have a similar product, made in the USA, and gives them the price. The customer goes for the imported product. Things are extremely price driven right now. Today, the president called for free FAIR trade. This seems difficult to accomplish. One idea I proposed (to little favorable response) is to apply an import tariff on all imports that would yield half the trade deficit for the previous year. The idea is to not to try to judge whether a country is acting "unfairly" or not, but to, instead, say we want to reduce our borrowing of money through the trade deficit.
On "baby bust," I have seen a lot of stuff over the years on "the earth's carrying capacity," but little on "the optimum human population." It SEEMS there would be an optimum population that ensures species survival and results in the highest overall standard of living. I remember some law from calculus about a maximum existing within an interval, but don't remember what it's called. Anyway, it SEEMS we should be working towards whatever that optimum population is. However, as others have pointed out, the transition needs to be gradual due to likely imbalance between the number of producers and consumers. It is interesting that Congress can't seem to get to Social Security and that the longer they wait, the more drastic the solution will have to be.
As previously mentioned, displacement of workers by automation is the subject of the book "Player Piano" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel) ). An interesting film based on the writings of Kurt Vonnegut is "Between Time and Timbuktu" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_Time_and_Timbuktu ). Among the interesting themes in this movie are a character wins a trip to (as I recall) a "space-time warp" by winning a Tang jingle contest. Relevant to this thread is a theme where everyone is given a handicap to make them all equal. Intelligent people have headphones with sounds to distract them. Ballet dancers dance with sandbags to bring them down to the common talent level.
We live in interesting times (as have all those before us).
Harold
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-26-2018, 01:15 PM:
quote: Buck Wilson
There's a reason everyone started going cheap... they had to. Their pay wasn't keeping up. They couldn't spend like they wanted to.
There's another angle -- the notion that everybody deserves to have everything. The last sentence in the above quote says it all. It's just a societal change.
I remember when color TV was a newfangled thing. According to wikipedia, it was 20 years after color TV was widely available in the U.S. before color sets outsold B&W ones. But when flat screens came out, it was far less than a decade when it seemed like almost every screen in the land was replaced with a flat one, even though the old tube might have been working fine.
Financial situations don't seem to matter when it comes to what's considered a "necessity" today. Most people have a large-screen TV with satellite dish (and a Netflix subscription), smartphones for the whole family, and so on. People going into massive debt at Christmastime is a common story. Concerts with tickets priced at over $100 each are instant sellouts, with "front row" seats going for way over the regular price.
My mom and dad NEVER had a brand-new car in their whole lives. These days some people buy brand-new cars for their kids for high school graduation.
If a typical person commits to foregoing some of the expensive luxuries and makes "I can't afford that" part of their actual vocabulary, maybe they wouldn't have to go cheap in their shopping.
It seems to me the biggest difference between "now" and "then" is that today, people assume they deserve these luxuries in their lives, whereas "then," people would work hard to earn them - or they would just do without. Cripes, our local high school can't even field a set of cheerleaders for our sports teams this year....not enough students want to put in the effort.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-26-2018, 01:42 PM:
quote: Harold Hallikainen
On "baby bust," I have seen a lot of stuff over the years on "the earth's carrying capacity," but little on "the optimum human population." It SEEMS there would be an optimum population that ensures species survival and results in the highest overall standard of living. I remember some law from calculus about a maximum existing within an interval, but don't remember what it's called. Anyway, it SEEMS we should be working towards whatever that optimum population is.
Some environmentalists like the idea of a baby bust. Fewer people would mean less impact to the environment, right? The problem is this decline in fertility is happening too fast, creating a serious imbalance between generational age groups. Under long term, optimal economic conditions any developed or developing nation would reach the demographic transition, achieving a stable population growth rate, just enough people being born to replace those who die and even numbers of people spread across all age groups.
A disproportionately large retired population and smaller working age population is financially unsustainable. In the US our already large elderly population is swelling each year as Baby Boomers reach retirement age. The imbalance, expense and increasing scarcity of resources can lead to political unrest & upheaval, maybe even war. That wouldn't be good for the enviroment. A shrinking population might mean fewer scientists, biologists, zoologists, geologists, etc. That wouldn't be good for the environment either.
Japan has been suffering long term consequences from its baby bust. Its shrinking work force and rapidly aging population has created tremendous budget problems for its government. Japan has the world's highest national debt to GDP ratio; its debt is 2.2 times larger than its GDP. The United States is in 8th place with a debt to GDP ratio of 106%. Japan's death rate is significantly higher than its birth rate. Many thousands of elderly people in Japan are dying "lonely deaths," not being discovered until someone notices the smell coming from their apartments. Because these people have few, if any visitors their bodies are sometimes not discovered for weeks or even years.
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
quote: Harold Hallikainen
Things are extremely price driven right now. Today, the president called for free FAIR trade. This seems difficult to accomplish. One idea I proposed (to little favorable response) is to apply an import tariff on all imports that would yield half the trade deficit for the previous year. The idea is to not to try to judge whether a country is acting "unfairly" or not, but to, instead, say we want to reduce our borrowing of money through the trade deficit.
I don't think protectionist rhetoric is going to get very far. Investors don't like it. Lots of American companies do most or all of their manufacturing work overseas and import their products back to American soil. I don't see that changing. If anything companies like Apple might start opening factories in places like Africa to avoid labor cost increases occurring in China and other Asian nations.
quote: Mike Blakesley
I remember when color TV was a newfangled thing. According to wikipedia, it was 20 years after color TV was widely available in the U.S. before color sets outsold B&W ones. But when flat screens came out, it was far less than a decade when it seemed like almost every screen in the land was replaced with a flat one, even though the old tube might have been working fine.
When you factor inflation TV sets these days are significantly cheaper than the old CRT color TV sets and big screen projection TVs from 30 years ago. Hell, the 65" TV in living room cost a lot less than the 52" HDTV I had (that was stolen in a burglary).
Regarding people buying new cars all the time, that's not a luxury enjoyed by everyone. I'm driving a 16 year old pickup that I bought new in 2002. I'm dreading having to buy a different vehicle; when I do I'll probably get something used. New car prices today are absolutely insane.
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-26-2018, 03:04 PM:
quote: Bobby Henderson
New car prices today are absolutely insane.
I'm curious, what did you pay for your pickup when you bought it new?
I just used the government's "inflation calculator" to figure out what $3501 in 1971 would buy today -- it came out to over $21,000. You can get a pretty nice basic car for that and it would have a HELL of a lot more features than they had in '71. More luxurious cars are going to be more of course, but cars today are far more dependable, have lots more features, are multitudes safer, and will last a lot longer than a '71 would.
The only reason I picked '71 is, my parents bought a "demonstrator" LTD that year that still had the window sticker and I still remember the amount. It was the first time I ever saw a car priced over 3 grand. I think they got about 700 bucks off for it being a demonstrator car -- it was the closest thing to a new car they ever had.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-26-2018, 04:51 PM:
I paid $23,000 for my pickup brand new in 2002 (Chevy Silverado LS-1500, Vortec 5300 V8 engine, regular cab, stepside, short bed). The same kind of pickup truck now costs over $20,000 more. Hell, a freaking Chevy Colorado small pickup with a V6 engine is running over $40,000. One of my friends recently bought a used 2013 Chevy Silverado Z71 with 60,000 miles on it, for $30,000. Another guy I know who lives in Stillwater just bought a similar truck brand new and paid nearly $70,000 for that truck. Thankfully he's making good money doing IT work for the university.
Today $20,000 would get you into a base model Honda Civic or a Kia Soul with some extras. My girlfriend drives a Nissan Altima with a V6 engine in it. She paid nearly $30,000 for that seemingly ordinary sedan -and that was with some discounts applied.
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-26-2018, 05:28 PM:
One of the reasons for higher car prices now is that very few new cars were sold in the recession years (roughly 2007-2012), which has reduced the number of used cars on the market from what it would ordinarily be. "Cash for clunkers" has contributed to this as well. Thus, there is a lower supply and higher demand for both new and used cars.
Also, as Mike points out, modern cars are generally much better than 1970s and 1980s models. In addition to having more reliable mechanical parts (the life expectancy of a modern car is 200k miles; my first car was a hand-me-down model from 1985 that didn't even have a sixth odometer digit), they are also significantly safer. Naturally, a safer car with a longer lifespan will be more expensive than the earlier generation, even taking inflation into account.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-26-2018, 09:31 PM:
The auto industry enjoyed several years of increasing sales, with 2016 being a record year. But 2017 ended up being the first full year sales decline since the Great Recession. Sales were really down the first half of 2017. The industry had hoped hurricane damages (particularly in the Houston area in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey) would move a huge number of new vehicles. That didn't happen. Sales picked up some in the fall, but not enough.
New vehicles have been pretty good for more than 20 years. My pickup truck is pretty old now, but I've had no problems with it at all. It has just under 120,000 miles on it. My only costs of owning that truck has been fuel, tires and routine maintenance. The 1992 Camaro I owned previously was a decent car too. The only reason I got rid of it is some idiot drove into the back of my car as I was turning onto my street. The car's frame got bent pretty good, enough to total it.
Auto manufacturers are putting all sorts of new bells and whistles into vehicles. But some of the features, such as navigation, can be done by smart phones just as well and without another monthly service charge eating away at one's budget. I can't help but wonder if some of these high prices are ways for people to feed in the inner-douchebag part of their egos. Lots of Americans tie parts of their identity into their vehicles. It's like the Mercedes-Benz catch-phrase: the best or nothing.
Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 01-26-2018, 09:38 PM:
quote:
There's another angle -- the notion that everybody deserves to have everything. The last sentence in the above quote says it all. It's just a societal change.
...
My mom and dad NEVER had a brand-new car in their whole lives. These days some people buy brand-new cars for their kids for high school graduation.
If a typical person commits to foregoing some of the expensive luxuries and makes "I can't afford that" part of their actual vocabulary, maybe they wouldn't have to go cheap in their shopping.
It seems to me the biggest difference between "now" and "then" is that today, people assume they deserve these luxuries in their lives, whereas "then," people would work hard to earn them - or they would just do without.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the millions of people living in real actual poverty right under our noses. My next door neighbor, a very nice lady in her 70s with essentially no family left, has lived in her home since the early 80s. I don't think her home now is worth much more than it was then. She's on social security and can't work, but did work her whole life. She had to take out a reverse mortgage years ago to pay bills and can't pay it back. She does not have cable, internet, or satellite. Her landline has been shut off and now has no phone. Her furnace doesn't work. Her AC doesn't work. Her hot water heater doesn't work. She had to permanently shut off several circuits in her house due to wiring issues. She has exactly 2 working lights in her home and they're LED bulbs I gave her. I mow her lawn for her. She's been eating on "back of the cabinet" canned goods from the 80s. Her car is 20 years old, has skull sized rust holes all over, barely runs, loud exhaust, leaking gasoline tank, with 6 month expired tags. She no longer has trash service. She's either using the dumpster next door or god forbid nothing at all. Most recently her water has been shut off for not being able to pay her recently tripled sewer bill due to a big repair/diversion project the city is doing. Quite literally her only 'frivolous expense' is that she has 3 cats. I'm not sure what else she can or will have to do without... She's about to lose her house.
I am fortunate to be doing much better than her but I certainly wouldn't call myself well off. My house is 700sqft, one bedroom, and worth less than $30,000. I do have 3 cars, but they are all over 20 years old and all have over 200,000 miles. One has 345,000. I have to have some sort of backup to ensure I can keep my "main" job which is newspaper delivery. I have two jobs just to pay the bills and work 365 days a year, approximately 55-60 hours a week. I also don't have cable, satellite, or internet. ALL LED lit home. All my clothes are from the thrift store. 95% of my home furnishings were free or from thrift stores/garage sales. I buy used phones and am still using an iPhone 5, for which I only pay $30/mo for service. Comparable to landline bills of yore. I had to replace the roof over my porch myself, and certainly won't have the ten grand to replace the main roof for quite some time. Let alone the 68 year old furnace in the basement. I couldn't DREAM of buying a brand new car. The newest car I've ever owned was 4 years old, and I only paid $6500 for it because it too had over 200,000 miles on it. But again, I count myself lucky because I am at least able to pay my bills and slowly make small and moderate improvements to my home and afford repairs to my vehicles(most of which I also do myself).
Point is, sure quality of life has improved in many ways, but many people do indeed live without, and I'd wager that *generally* people don't have a whole lot of spending money past the basics. Seems those bigger tagged items like TVs(which have really come down in price) and phones are often tax return purchases, etc. Further, the average age of cars in the us just keeps going up and up. So as plenty of people are buying new, clearly even more are keeping their cars longer.
Lord someone make me stop talking.
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-26-2018, 09:45 PM:
The first car I had after moving to the US was a '99 Civic, with 142k miles on the clock when I got it, and 205k when I involuntarily said goodbye to it. That was when I made the mistake of leaving it in the parking structure of San Bernarghetto ... oops, sorry, -dino Metrolink station. I was working an early shift at the Egyptian that day, and would be outta there while trains were still running, so I thought I'd give myself a break from the crawling traffic on the 10, plus having to share the freeway with a bunch of people who think they're the big rig driver in Duel.
When I got back that evening, the Civic had been stolen. The security guard at the station didn't seem at all concerned, commenting that "two or three a day" are taken from that facility. The San Bernardino Police Department gave me my report for the insurance claim, and made it clear that there is no way they could seriously investigate the incident. If it's anything less serious than a homicide, they don't have the manpower to do anything more than issue the reports.
If that hadn't happened, I had no plans to get rid of the Civic and would probably still be driving it. It broke down once while I had it, thanks to a coolant hose bursting, but after they'd all been replaced, it never needed anything more than routine maintenance. It was a bit of a guzzler (around 30 MPG), and having to change the oil every 3,000 miles (which in my case meant every month) was a bit of a pain, but the extra spent on gas was a helluva lot less than the depreciation on a new or nearly new car.
It would have been less viable to continue running a car that old if I wasn't able to do that routine maintenance myself, but even so, that experience shows that, as Bobby points out, every new generation of vehicles has a longer viable service life, which in turn gives the auto industry a problem when it comes to selling new vehicles in a sub-optimal economic climate. And of course pure electric cars will need a lot less maintenance than internal combustion engined ones.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-26-2018, 10:07 PM:
quote: Buck Wilson
Point is, sure quality of life has improved in many ways, but many people do indeed live without, and I'd wager that *generally* people don't have a whole lot of spending money past the basics. Seems those bigger tagged items like TVs(which have really come down in price) and phones are often tax return purchases, etc. Further, the average age of cars in the us just keeps going up and up. So as plenty of people are buying new, clearly even more are keeping their cars longer.
There's a lot of people who can't even afford the basics. The "failure to launch" trend is pretty bad. It's pretty ridiculous when someone graduates from college and because they're buried in student loan debt they have to move back in with the parents. Some kids don't even go to college and are still stuck at home for some reason. There's people hitting age 30 and still at home. They can live through the shame and embarrassment of that situation or do like you did and scrape by. The choice is either of those things or move into a place with one or more roommates.
In recent years I've seen a lot of "punching down," people who are well off or very well off spewing anger and disgust at middle and lower income people. They act like experts on what people with modest incomes can do without. It's pretty easy to say someone of modest means is being stupid with his money if he has a $50,000 new sedan parked in front of a shitty little apartment. But these douches expect the little people not to even have a fucking TV set or phone.
I thought about this when Mike mentioned subscriptions to Netflix. That's cheap; it's nothing like having a full blown cable bill. Here in Lawton cord-cutting is very common. Hell, I'm probably going to end up doing that. SlingTV would cost about half my Dish Network bill. I might do like my girlfriend and just get a new outdoor antenna use Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Amazon has their own "channels" thing where you can build up a package with only the channels you want. I'm not sure if that would be any less expensive than SlingTV though. A bunch of people here in Lawton don't even have Netflix. They're using those modded FireTV sticks and Kodi boxes, getting their TV shows and movies (illegally) free of charge.
Posted by James Wyrembelski (Member # 9037) on 01-27-2018, 04:48 PM:
It does not surprise me at all that the auto industry is seeing decline. They've been channel stuffing the lots for quite some time. Now that there's no more room for inventory at the car lots, manufactured cars leaving the plant can no longer count as a "sale". It's finally catching up.
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-28-2018, 02:00 AM:
Well, you have that and the predatory nature of many used car businesses. If a customer cannot finance the sale through their own bank and they do the financing at the mercy of the used car business then they open themselves up to all sorts of predatory behavior. Make one single payment late and your car gets repossesed. The lot hits you with all sorts of re-stocking fees. And they move that same car along to the next sucker, or I mean "customer" ASAP.
My town (Lawton, Oklahoma) is not representative of all of America, but this town does speak volumes on how people in lower income and lower-middle income brackets are exploited. We have no shortage of predatory businesses who thrive on stomping their boot heels down on the necks of people struggling just to survive. I believe pay day loans operations are a puss-filled boil on the ass cheek of humanity and that these legalized loan-shark operations should be absolutely outlawed. Rent to own stores that sell furniture and appliances at hyper-inflated prices are stores that fully deserve to be fire-bombed. They are another parasitic social cancer of our society. All these freaking dollar stores are another giant-sized problem. They sell people all sorts of cheap crap and the food they sell is nothing more than highly processed poison imported from who knows where. Oklahoma has lots of pawn shops, but those things seem to be everywhere. We have all sorts of casinos in Oklahoma, which obviously causes even more problems. Then we have our for-profit, private prison industry, whose investors are looking to make even more money. So things like speeding tickets, court fines and other judgments may be kicked back to some preferred legalized loan-sharking finance operation if the defendant can't pay for the judgment 100% up front.
So, um, yeah I guess we can just keep up with this "punching down" behavior, pissing and shitting on those we believe are beneath us (but still worthy of exploiting for taxpayer revenue). But meanwhile a great deal of "little people" are leaving their zippers up in this environment. Breeding children into this absurd orgy of douchebag greed is only a cruel thing to do. It's going to be easier and far cheaper to just not bring any kids into the situation. Let the douchebags wrestle with the concept of population crash, national security crisis and the prospect of a country like China invading and winning.
Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 01-28-2018, 10:54 AM:
Bobby - you just summed up the rot that is western neo-liberal captialism. This is why Trump won - because there is nothing left for America but a race to the bottom fire sale. And the casino pimp pussy grabbing fat man is going to run the ICBM right into the ground.
Trump has done two things. First he completely exposed the farce that is the MSM driven fake social justice scam run by the democratic/plutocracy pimps and their gender bender identity politics vassals. The second is not quite complete but he is working on it - working on being completely incompetent in the implementation of the oligarchy plan to destroy America and subsequently control the planet.
Oklahoma or Canada it is no different here in Toronto - payday loans, walmarts, tim hortons, vast tracks of the city converted into condos for money laundering slobs from where the fuck ever, generic box store hells and of course the rent-a-crap scam. Outside of Toronto it is even worse.
Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 01-28-2018, 11:52 AM:
quote: Bobby Henderson
So many people believe that jobs at McDonald's or wherever are just for teenage kids. If I visit a fast food restaurant for lunch during the work week I'm going to see nothing but grown-ass adults at the registers and working in the kitchen. Those people working there during regular business hours are trying to earn a livable wage, and if they're making only $7.25 an hour (minimum wage in OK) they'll have to get one or more additional shit-pay jobs to make up the difference. And then the taxpayers get to provide food stamps and other assistance to make up for how these folk's ends are not meeting.
OK, but if you overpay for the time, people who crutch on these entry-level jobs aren't likely to be motivated toward anything better. An entry-level job doesn't have to be reserved for a teen-ager. Experience level and the value of one's work isn't necessarily tied to age.
There are a lot of older folks, who are back in the workforce after thinking they'd be able to live off of their retirement. There are also those who are the victims of their own poor planning. Those entry-level jobs are about all that's available to them, because they either don't have the skills for something better, aren't motivated to attain them or employers don't see that age group being of value to their businesses. I'm uncomfortable with the number of them that have pushed kids out of a starting job, but I see why and admit to not having an easy answer for it. Over time, our system hasn't made it easy, given what's deducted from your social security for anything you make in addition.
I get your points, even if I don't happen to agree with them all... which is fine. I also don't like participation trophies and schools that turn off their scoreboard clocks so the kids won't feel traumatized by a loss. We have plenty of that around here, too.
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-28-2018, 01:07 PM:
Well one thing we can learn from this thread: Nuclear war with total annihilation of everything and everybody would probably be a blessing at this point.
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-28-2018, 01:20 PM:
It all depends on how old you are I suppose. Saying people "have no choice" but to be "cheap" has hundreds if not thousands of individual qualifiers to make it true. I do contend at the outset, when my family hired "living wagers" to sell food, and most of the people in that town supported us every week, and most of those people were reasonably affluent, the whole system worked. But when the Wal Marts came to the next town offering "better prices" (often via lower quality and smaller sizes and definitely cheap unskilled part-time labor), those big tricked out Silverado crew cabs, Buicks and Cadillacs started to be seen driving out of town and supporting the cheapest price. They couldn't see that these retail employees of mine were customers of theirs too I guess, and the small towns started to suffer. But there are so many mostly voluntary choices that go in to "making a living". Saddling yourself with a mortgage not knowing the mine or the plant will close long before you pay it off is pretty common. Thinking you "deserve" stuff you see other people have (when most of it's probably bought with debt) sure bites a lot of people. It's a problem when you see middle-class disappearing (it'll be by taxes here in Canada, as well as the continued subsidization of big companies whose only real ability to undercut the little guys price is by using those subsidies to lower their cost of entry, and volume). But it's a fact that less people live in extreme poverty today than they did yesterday, a trend that's gone on for 150 years or more. The social justice warriors love to tell us why it's all going to hell, but that's a growth industry of its own of course. I just can't imagine, in a world of 7.5 billion people that I'm owed or "deserve" anything. There's an endless supply of people to replace me, no doubt most more competently too. So life's about hustle, I guess. Not sure if I'm winning, but haven't given up anyway. Living within one's means was always the first step, finding work (even if it was below the "living" wage) was the next. I hope the ambitious and the young aren't losing this stepping stone so the politicians can test ideologies.
Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 01-28-2018, 04:19 PM:
Hey Dave - did you play Blade Runner 2049?...You just summed up the plot.
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-28-2018, 05:17 PM:
quote: Bobby Henderson
It's pretty ridiculous when someone graduates from college and because they're buried in student loan debt they have to move back in with the parents.
That happens a lot when they choose a degree that has no jobs available, or very few jobs. Or, a lot of kids are pressured to go to college when college may not be the right thing for them. Then they complain they "can't find any jobs in their field."
It's not like opportunities don't exist. In my own hometown, just to give one example, there is a great need for a plumber. We have one plumber in town but he's approaching retirement age. He is busier than two rabbits in heat. Some kid -- or two -- could graduate high school, go to a trade school to learn plumbing, come back here and make a handsome living.
There are opportunities here for college people too, they just need to get around the idea that "you can't enjoy life in a small town." We could provide nice livings right now for an optometrist, at least one carpenter, a body shop operator, and several motel entrepreneurs -- a lot of the business people in this town (including me) are approaching retirement age. We have one doctor in town who's in his mid-60s and will be looking for a new guy to take over. Ditto with two dentists. The list goes on.
But no, every parent (and all their peers) tell kids, "You've gotta get the hell outta this town." So here we are -- close to 2,000 people needing services and eventually, we'll have nobody to provide those services. I'd wager there are thousands of small towns all over that are in the exact same boat.
Occasionally some smart young person will buck the trend and come back. There's a girl who left town to experience the big-city life, lived in Denver a few years, then came back and started a women's clothing store with a beauty salon and is kicking ass.
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-28-2018, 09:07 PM:
What makes that all the more inexplicable is that the quality of life in smaller, more rural communities is (assuming you're making enough to live reasonably) an order of magnitude better. I would give up the 20-30 hours a week behind the wheel of the car, air quality so bad that HVAC filters which are supposed to last 90 days are clogged up after a month, housing and taxation costs rising out of control, an increasing crime rate, etc. etc. in a heartbeat, if our family circumstances allowed it.
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-29-2018, 10:40 AM:
You're right Mike. My son is going into electrical shortly. Every summer I get the odd person with a "Masters" in some obscure or "already too many" field apply for part-time night popcorn making and it makes me wonder if anyone knows how to look up what might be in demand before they "follow their passion".
On "rural economics", there are two glitches in the small towns I hang around in. In this country anyway, our residential taxes approach or exceed "city" taxes and the commercial taxes are very high as well given the limited income and revenue potential. I'm starting to hear councils and mayors say "come talk to us, let's see what we can do" because I think they realize they're pricing us out of the market. At a certain point the numbers just can't be made to work. Another thing we're seeing is housing prices rising due to city retirees wishing to downsize. It's a windfall for some, to be sure, but the prices certainly are higher than what someone participating in the "local economy" can often afford. Half of those city ex-pats tend to get bored and leave, but there's an endless supply.
But most of all, I like the line that I think Lou Holtz used. "Don't talk about your problems. 80% of the people don't care and the other 20% are glad you have 'em."
Small-towners and retailers and theatre owners sure have 'em, but it's also up to us to solve 'em.
I like the story of the girl who went to Denver. My advice as a long-time small-towner to kids is yes, you do need to get out and see some things and spend some time in the city. You might find yourself there or you might not, but in doing so you'll be able to come back with complete satisfaction if that's your choice. Sounds like she was able to get a few ideas in her time away and figure out a way to make it work "back home".
Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 01-29-2018, 10:57 AM:
As we say about Montgomery - "It's a nice place to leave."
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-30-2018, 01:06 PM:
quote: Jack Ondracek
OK, but if you overpay for the time, people who crutch on these entry-level jobs aren't likely to be motivated toward anything better. An entry-level job doesn't have to be reserved for a teen-ager. Experience level and the value of one's work isn't necessarily tied to age.
Low wage jobs (such as those in fast food restaurants) have a high employee turnover rate. No one is looking to make a career out of being a McDonald's fry cook. People in low income groups aren't "cruching" on these jobs as much as they are often stuck working those kinds of jobs due to their own individual circumstances. Saying they won't likely be motivated to do anything better assumes all have both plenty of money and spare time for higher education or vocational training as well as access to better job opportunities.
Nevertheless all of these businesses using minimum wage staff, open weekdays while school is in session or late at night, still need adult bodies to staff those positions. That's regardless if it's the same bodies showing up to work months or years later. Those employees have to survive somehow while working there. More often than not that's going to mean working multiple jobs or doing other odd work to earn money. I know single mothers who have to work day jobs and then wait tables or tend bar at night. They're not getting enough (or any) child support from the baby-daddies and the fact they're working screws them out of assistance for things like child health care from the government.
quote: Dave Bird
Saddling yourself with a mortgage not knowing the mine or the plant will close long before you pay it off is pretty common. Thinking you "deserve" stuff you see other people have (when most of it's probably bought with debt) sure bites a lot of people.
Many Americans are guilty of playing the Keeping up the Joneses game. I've seen a lot of that with upper-middle and upper class income people -or rather people trying to project the appearance of being a member of the upper income brackets. They finance big houses, expensive vehicles, vacation trips and all sorts of other stuff they can't really afford. And then they have the audacity to upgrade into even more lavish digs.
That was a big part of what fueled that housing industry fiasco last decade. I still remember that Countrywide Mortgage TV commercial where this couple was arguing in their kitchen over buying a home. The husband had all kinds of doubts but the wife chewed on him like he was some kind of idiot, eventually making him cave with the "we can do this" line. I wish I could find a copy of that video.
quote: Mike Blakesley
It's not like opportunities don't exist. In my own hometown, just to give one example, there is a great need for a plumber. We have one plumber in town but he's approaching retirement age. He is busier than two rabbits in heat. Some kid -- or two -- could graduate high school, go to a trade school to learn plumbing, come back here and make a handsome living.
Lots of people don't want to settle for something like that. They still have the fantasy in their heads they're going to hit it rich in some white collar career someday. So going to college and racking up a shit-ton of student loan debt is the first step.
Blue collar trades (like being a plumber, mechanic, electrician, carpenter, etc) are not "clean" jobs. Plumbing work is one of the most unpleasant out of all trades. I sure wouldn't want to be under a house in the dead of winter fixing a busted pipe while laying in a bunch of freezing water, mud and Lord knows what else.
quote: Leo Enticknap
What makes that all the more inexplicable is that the quality of life in smaller, more rural communities is (assuming you're making enough to live reasonably) an order of magnitude better. I would give up the 20-30 hours a week behind the wheel of the car, air quality so bad that HVAC filters which are supposed to last 90 days are clogged up after a month, housing and taxation costs rising out of control, an increasing crime rate, etc. etc. in a heartbeat, if our family circumstances allowed it.
The cost of living is lower, but that varies from one town to the next. I think apartment rental prices here in Lawton are crazy for the size of this city (it's just as high as Oklahoma City), but movement of military troops through here is one thing that helps keep rental prices high.
Small towns and even small cities (like here in Lawton) have a difficult time retaining their young people. Kids grow up, get out of high school, go to college (or trade school) and often leave town for good. Some rural towns may offer some good job opportunities, but what do they offer socially? Finding a significant other or spouse might be even more of a reason for a young person to leave a small town. When the small, rural town is left mostly with an aging and elderly population its tax base shrinks. Things we take for granted, like police and fire dept service, become difficult to afford luxuries. Infrastructure prices are just about as high in small towns as they are in big cities. The shrinking tax base can't keep up with the expense. A rural town in bad enough shape could be forced to close the local school. Once that happens the town is all but dead.
quote: Dave Bird
But most of all, I like the line that I think Lou Holtz used. "Don't talk about your problems. 80% of the people don't care and the other 20% are glad you have 'em."
And that saying probably needs to be put on our nation's flag. It would be a more accurate representation of our culture of selfishness and self-indulgence than those stars and stripes.
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-30-2018, 02:39 PM:
quote: Bobby Henderson
Blue collar trades (like being a plumber, mechanic, electrician, carpenter, etc) are not "clean" jobs. Plumbing work is one of the most unpleasant out of all trades. I sure wouldn't want to be under a house in the dead of winter fixing a busted pipe while laying in a bunch of freezing water, mud and Lord knows what else.
What I was getting at is, unpleasantness or not, there are plenty of people who go into jobs like plumbing, but they want that big city fantasy life you speak of, so they go to work for some contractor and have a steady job, but they wind up working their butts off for an "hourly" wage and most of their money goes to the boss.
Here, a guy could start the EXACT SAME kind of business, make better money, and be able to set his own hours, take a week off if he wants to and when he wants to, and enjoy great quality of life. Virtually all of the contractors in town are so busy they don't even have their phone number on the side of their trucks, but they all manage to schedule in time off for hunting season or whatever. The guy who does most of the work for us at the theater has about a two-year waiting list of people wanting him to work on their houses and such.
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-30-2018, 05:28 PM:
quote:
quote: Dave Bird
But most of all, I like the line that I think Lou Holtz used. "Don't talk about your problems. 80% of the people don't care and the other 20% are glad you have 'em."
And that saying probably needs to be put on our nation's flag. It would be a more accurate representation of our culture of selfishness and self-indulgence than those stars and stripes.
Well, I don't mean that in a cynical way, I mean it in the belief that I think people need to quit thinking that OTHER people are going to solve their financial issues via legislation or social movements. There are just simply way too many factors adding up to why $15 does or doesn't cut it for a second job. If I read you correctly, the "selfishness" of thinking you can just live however you want, have as many kids as you want with zero plan as to how to pay for that is kind of putting things backwards......oh well, it's a great vote-seller.
Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 01-30-2018, 07:25 PM:
The witch is going down - Doug Ford is the new sheriff in town!
Posted by James Wyrembelski (Member # 9037) on 01-30-2018, 11:08 PM:
quote: Mike Blakesley
The guy who does most of the work for us at the theater has about a two-year waiting list of people wanting him to work on their houses and such.
I can confirm this myself. Part of the reason it has taken SO long to get our theater reopened is due to this. We get people to take the job and it takes them not days but WEEKS to show up sometimes. They are so busy that scheduling alone is a major hurdle. It's not as if we can just jump to another person or company either because they pretty much are too busy themselves!
We are finally to a point where we can get the last and final approval to finish the job out. Plumbing inspector did not like that we planned to vent the restroom fans out the side of the building. He wanted it out of the roof. So, we have to get the plumbers out here to install a special vent system to get it out 2 floors up AND call the roofing company to properly cut holes otherwise it voids the warranty on the rubber roof. This ain't happening overnight, these folks are needed EVERYWHERE. At this point, contractors etc. at least in this area can pretty much name their price.
Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 01-31-2018, 08:14 AM:
There used to be "contractors" and "Service Companies". ow there is a trend toward one does it all. This results in delayed installations and long waits for service. This leads to a slowly grinding to a halt situation where everyone is unhappy with the delay times.
In our area, the power company has gone into the appliance and furnace repair business. They have a team of technicians that do just service and there are enough techs to make the wait time in hours not days.
Wherever there is a clearly obvious need, competent people will enter that market to fulfill that need.
The scheduling of time is the most difficult part of any service oriented business. Often there are contracts for routine maintenance as well as emergency service. When the emergencies become too frequent, the provider must add staff to properly serve this need or there will soon be a competitor.
Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-31-2018, 11:41 AM:
So there's an interesting angle for sure. Skilled well-paying trades and professions with twice the work available goes wanting.....meantime the people with the arts degrees and student debt demand (and in some places will get) the "living" wage of $15. Do they teach basic economics and statistics these days?
(A corpse could beat Kathleen, you think the Ford "gong show" does anything but jeopardize that? I understand Doug is not what Rob was, but still.....)
Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 01-31-2018, 12:50 PM:
quote: Mike Blakesley
Well one thing we can learn from this thread: Nuclear war with total annihilation of everything and everybody would probably be a blessing at this point.
May I propose another idea before we implement this solution?
What about Basic Income? I mean, if it doesn't work out the way it should work, we can still revert to Mike's plan.
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-31-2018, 01:30 PM:
quote:
We get people to take the job and it takes them not days but WEEKS to show up sometimes. They are so busy that scheduling alone is a major hurdle. It's not as if we can just jump to another person or company either because they pretty much are too busy themselves!
One problem we run into is, our regular guy will be working on a job and he will run into what he calls "While you're here" syndrome. He'll be just about done and the customer will say "hey, while you're here, could you do this other thing?" and that ties him up for another week.
But, he's really good about showing up when he says he will and his prices are fair. That's a big advantage of a small town -- if a fly-by-nighter comes in here and starts ripping people off or not finishing jobs etc. he'll get found out very fast, word will spread like wildfire and he's forced to either clean up his act or get outta town.
Posted by William Kucharski (Member # 7246) on 01-31-2018, 07:14 PM:
quote: Bobby Henderson
My town (Lawton, Oklahoma) is not representative of all of America, but this town does speak volumes on how people in lower income and lower-middle income brackets are exploited. We have no shortage of predatory businesses who thrive on stomping their boot heels down on the necks of people struggling just to survive. I believe pay day loans operations are a puss-filled boil on the ass cheek of humanity and that these legalized loan-shark operations should be absolutely outlawed. Rent to own stores that sell furniture and appliances at hyper-inflated prices are stores that fully deserve to be fire-bombed.
I understand the animosity towards these places, but the question then becomes what would people who patronize these places do otherwise? If you're getting a payday loan you're out of other ways to access cash when you need it. If you're going to a rent-to-own furniture store not even used or IKEA furniture fits your budget.
Yes, they take advantage of the poor, but without them what would people who need cash based on an upcoming paycheck do? Underground loan sharks or other black economy options are the only real alternatives.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
What about Basic Income? I mean, if it doesn't work out the way it should work, we can still revert to Mike's plan.
Basic income, aka the "never have to leave the house again" plan.
quote: Mike Blakesley
One problem we run into is, our regular guy will be working on a job and he will run into what he calls "While you're here" syndrome. He'll be just about done and the customer will say "hey, while you're here, could you do this other thing?" and that ties him up for another week.
Ask any physician and they will tell you people operate this same way; they'll come in for a physical and go through the entire process, and then as the doctor is shaking their hand saying "I'll see you next year" patients will say "Thanks, Doc! By the way, I have this weird looking mole here…"
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 02-01-2018, 12:58 PM:
quote: Dave Bird
Well, I don't mean that in a cynical way, I mean it in the belief that I think people need to quit thinking that OTHER people are going to solve their financial issues via legislation or social movements. There are just simply way too many factors adding up to why $15 does or doesn't cut it for a second job. If I read you correctly, the "selfishness" of thinking you can just live however you want, have as many kids as you want with zero plan as to how to pay for that is kind of putting things backwards......oh well, it's a great vote-seller.
That's not the selfishness I'm talking about. Maybe the situation is different where you live, but I don't know of anyone surviving on minimum wage jobs who lives in a McMansion, drives nice vehicles and has all the things he/she wants. People in that wage group struggle just paying for basics.
As for the stereotype of "welfare mothers" shitting out lots of kids for more welfare cash, the money math doesn't add up there either. Even with government assistance each child born represents a net loss of income to that mother, not to mention her time and freedom. Repeating what I've said earlier: teens and young adults are getting better at avoiding pregnancy. The birth rate of American-born women in 2017 fell to a new all time low of 1.77 kids per female. A rate of 2.1 is needed to replace Americans who die. Regardless of this trend, people of certain political leanings are still tightly holding onto that welfare mother image as a common talking point.
The selfishness I'm talking about is the modern American "ethic" of making money by screwing over other people, carving it out of the backs and asses of those other people. These acts run big and small. A "small" example would be a group of people at a restaurant not tipping the server. That dick-move is shamefully common here in Lawton. We have to battle the syndrome of people trying to get something for nothing at my workplace. Then there's mass-scale screwing, such as Enron Executives forcing their employees to buy Enron stock while they were secretly selling theirs while knowing the company was financially imploding. The widespread gentrification of neighborhoods in New York City has been an investment bonanza for hedge funds, foreign investors, etc. Landlords have used all sorts of unethical tricks and criminally fraudulent acts to force low income tenants out of rent-controlled properties to cash in on the investment wave.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
What about Basic Income? I mean, if it doesn't work out the way it should work, we can still revert to Mike's plan.
Right now Universal Basic Income seems like a concept that could only work in a perfect world. It could eliminate welfare and its imprisoning aspects as well as greatly reduce the government bureaucracy tied to it. But UBI has its own drawbacks. It is not a magic bullet to fight price inflation of specific things, such as what a 2 bedroom apartment costs to rent here in Lawton versus a 2 bedroom apartment in Brooklyn.
The Kurzgesagt channel on YouTube has a beautifully animated video about Universal Basic Income here.
IMHO, it is better to have improved regulatory control over specific industries to prevent price gouging. But we're all about deregulation in America. So anything goes with how anything can be priced, even necessities like food and health care. One thing I really can't stand is some of the same people who get their panties in a twist over a higher minimum wage will do all they can to defend industries like health care when they want to price gouge the shit out of patients. I remember people trying to defend the oil industry over $4.00+ gasoline, "it's all about supply and demand." Never mind the fact speculators on Wall Street played a part in those high prices. Having to pay 2 or 3 times the normal cost to fill up one's gas tank isn't a problem for a rich person. It's hell for people in the low to middle income brackets. And it was a catalyst for touching off the Great Recession last decade.
quote: William Kucharski
I understand the animosity towards these places, but the question then becomes what would people who patronize these places do otherwise? If you're getting a payday loan you're out of other ways to access cash when you need it. If you're going to a rent-to-own furniture store not even used or IKEA furniture fits your budget.
Pay day loans are even more hazardously toxic to one's personal finances than a high interest credit card. Users of pay day loans get plunged into an ever deeper financial hole. The people who run these pay day loans companies know exactly how concepts like positive cash flow and daily accrued interest work. They know what they're doing to their borrowers and I believe that makes them just as evil as someone selling heroin. Their customers either don't know the dangerous risks of pay day loans or they're are using such loans to feed some kind of destructive impulse such as drugs or gambling. Pay day loans operations may not hire guys named "Fat Tony" to go around breaking people's legs. But they have used fuzzy language in bad check laws to toss people in prison for failing to pay back their extreme interest loans.
Rent to own stores are another scam. The weekly or monthly payments on the low-grade products they offer are higher than what you would pay financing a furniture or TV purchase at a legit store. It baffles me that anyone in Lawton would visit a rent to own store when there are so many people selling good quality used electronics, furniture and appliances on Craigslist, Facebook, Goodwill, etc.
quote: William Kucharski
Yes, they take advantage of the poor, but without them what would people who need cash based on an upcoming paycheck do? Underground loan sharks or other black economy options are the only real alternatives.
Parasitic businesses not only take advantage of the poor, but contribute very well to keeping poor people stuck being poor. Loan sharks and other underground economy operations still exist. And legal parasitic businesses routinely cross the lines of legality, such as all the pawn shops here in Lawton selling stolen merchandise. If you spot your stolen TV at the pawn shop you don't get it back for free. Here in Lawton you have to pay the pawn shop guy to get back the stolen merchandise. So you file on your home owner's insurance to get the TV replaced. Someone else buys that TV set and the pawn shop store still makes money off the stolen goods. You're really screwed if you're trying to get back a unique collector's item or something with sentimental value.
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