(I'd like to offer the aside that social mobility is two dimensional. Along with vertical social mobility (class) there is also horizontal social mobility (subculture). A vibrant music scene, or really creative culture in general, demands robust mobility in the subcultural dimension. And some places are better for that than others.)

Skronk wrote:

Rog wrote:I'll reiterate~

Rockefeller

Right, someone who wants to a Rockefeller, or like them or is impressed by
them, is an asshole. That's what I'm saying.

Rog wrote:

Skronk wrote:

Rog wrote:I'll reiterate~

Rockefeller

Right, someone who wants to a Rockefeller, or like them or is impressed by
them, is an asshole. That's what I'm saying.

We're in complete agreement.

$12 an hour is pretty good pay in my book.

Eating Noddemix wrote:$12 an hour is pretty good pay in my book.

Is your book titled "Living In Poverty"?

El Protoolio wrote:

Eating Noddemix wrote:$12 an hour is pretty good pay in my book.

Is your book titled "Living In Poverty"?

I'm sure in a small town one can live large on a wage like that. In a large city like Columbus where the cost of living is close to the national average, $12 an hour will cover rent for a modest apartment, a car payment, food and living necessities, and you can get by okay....as long as you have no other financial obligations. I can't imagine making that little in New York or San Francisco.

lemur68 wrote:...you can get by okay....as long as you have no other financial obligations...

Or if you don't get sick or you don't have to care for a sick relative or don't have to save for a down payment on a house or save for when you lose your job or have to support two kids and a spouse.

Fuck dude where I live $12 will barely buy you 3 gallons of gas. And if it takes that many gallons just to go to and from work your first hour is paying for you just to be there.

Don't even get me started on how much of that $12 is robbed from you by Uncle Sam. Then there are the taxes on all the goods you buy. And the "soft" taxes being levied on food items because of the rising gas prices. And rising rents, and rising utility costs. You want health care? There's a huge chunk of your $12 an hour and that's even if you decide you can afford it, which most people don't, so the tax payers end up paying for care for things that could have been prevented if those people could afford insurance, which then also causes the premiums for the ones that do to go up because the hospitals are now charging more to make up for their losses and well here we are again chasing inflation with our stagnant wages.

Meanwhile every god damned year your city, county, state and federal representatives grant themselves "cost of living" pay increases and then whine about how raising the minimum wage to $7 an hour by 2010 will cost too fucking much.

Sorry but there is a huge disparity between wages and the cost of living right now and most people just accept it or assume they can get by on credit in an emergency which is just shooting themselves in the foot.

It makes my head spin. No one who barely squeaks by on paycheck to paycheck should just accept their wages as they are. We should be constantly pushing for a raise, at minimum a yearly 5% cost of living increase.

I don't have a source for this so it could be total bullshit but I read that the value of the dollar has shrunk by 25 to 75 % since 2001.

Seems about right though doesn't it? My fixed expenses haven't multiplied since then and my variable expenses are now all but nil but the amount I'm paying out every month sure has gone up.

This is all with me making more then $12 an hour. So no I don't believe that is enough in today's world.

The problem (IMO) is that real wages for workers have not kept up with the pace of productivity or cost of living. Over the last 30 yrs or so, if folks worked harder and produced more output for the company, they haven't see it in their checks...yet we all know Execs have seen huge increases in their compensation.

sunset_gun wrote:The problem (IMO) is that real wages for workers have not kept up with the pace of productivity or cost of living. Over the last 30 yrs or so, if folks worked harder and produced more output for the company, they haven't see it in their checks...yet we all know Execs have seen huge increases in their compensation.

I agree completely.

I think these sorts of statistics can be pretty misleading. How do they quantify employment, exactly? If we compare two couples, say, and one couple has a single source of income at $80,000/annually, and the other has two sources of income at $15,000 (think Walmart supplanted with trips to the food bank), well, how are we supposed to compare the two?

Employment figures look fantastic relative to many other countries, but they definitely don't usually index in more, uh, 'qualitative factors'. Quality of employment needs to be examined alongside these statistics in order for them to impart anything like a valid picture.

Not to mention...well, my personal experience with employment has largely been in small/very small businesses. These are the business fields that are supposed to provide the opportunity for people to take financial control over their lives, or so I'm led to believe. A typical small business cannot afford to hire lots of full-time staff, so they often rely on a core group of employees supplanted with independently contracted free agents. How is that sort of situation treated? You end up with a pool of workers that are self-employed/unemployed, that work an awful lot when they are needed, but are not entitled to any form of reasonable economic security, insurance, etc.