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Less than half of America's working class earns over 30K a year

What if...? said:
I'm a San Diego kid, but my dads family is from east Texas. Too hot. Too many bugs. Asshole snakes in the water. The list goes on.

I'm spoiled.

You just haven't been hit by the speculators yet.

All that pooled money being used to manipulate the housing market.

They'll get there.
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I grew up in San Diego, recently spent three weeks there. There are a lot of positives, weather, weather, and weather. But the two big negatives SUCK BIG TIME. Traffic, and parking. To say nothing of the cost of living. It was much better growing up there, now, not so much.
 
ThoughtEx. said:
Actually, the problem isn't that we have need to have a higher wage. The problem is how the Fed has managed our money creation. Go find your nearest old person, ask them how much they made per hour in their thirties, then asked them how they bought a house at that wage. The answer is, money was worth more back then. Yeah, but inflation is unavoidable you say, nothing we can do about that.

Problem is, inflation is completely avoidable. And the reason it's out of control is banks and lending institutions control how our money is created. The Government has little say in the matter. With the Fed, a privately owned bank, having the power to create new money autonomously, and extending that power to lesser banks; your money becomes watered down every time you make a deposit, or take a loan. Which lessen your buying power, and makes you get another loan to cover the difference in your purchase power.

Say I have 1,000 dollars, and I take it down to the local Wells Fargo and deposit it. Wells Fargo, can take that 1,000 dollars and create 9,000 dollars through the magic of fractional reserve banking. They then loan out the 9,000 dollars, to people who then in turn deposit it in their bank. Say 9 people get a loan of 1,000 dollars. They can do the same thing over again, creating 81,000 of new virtual money from you 1,000 dollars of real money. Now imagines what happens when the upper 1% deposit their money. For starters, they don't deposit in checkings and savings. They normally tie the bulk of their money up in long term investments with these banks. In other words they provide capital to these banks, who in turn use that capital to take in deposits and loan out new money. The interest made off that new money is pure profit, which makes for a better return for the banks capital investors.

This greatly devalues the dollar, makes your thousand dollars worth a tenth of what it used to be worth in the terms of purchasing power. And the wealthy benefit greatly, because they gain purchasing power as their pile of money increases at a faster rate than inflation. This isn't helped by the Fed perpetually heating the economy up by keeping interest rates on non securities low. This is also why talks about income tax are a distraction meant to keep us focused on that instead of this.

The Government doesn't use our tax money to fund themselves, it all goes to the fed. When the budget passes, new money is created. The National Debt isn't really a debt to anyone other than ourselves. When we borrow money from other countries, it's because we need currency to trade with them. We have way more loaned out to trade partners than we have borrowed.

If you really want to make life better for everyone, take the power away from the Fed. Give the power to print money back to Congress. And institute a capital gains tax to pay down the national debt. The reason its so damn high is because our money's being watered down by the upper 1% of the 1% sucking the juices from our carcasses every time we deposit our check or take a loan out for a house. Think Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie families.

This isn't capitalism, btw, it's Oligarchical. Capitalism is actually being hindered by this.

Of course the last person who tried to fix this, was Kennedy. And they shot him.
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All valid points. The other problem being that deflation also screws us. Deflation would hit wages first and make debts harder to pay (see: 2008, also see oil prices and the Russian economy), which causes depressed consumer demand (because prices would be slower to deflate), leading to businesses closing and jobs being wiped out... my best guess is that knocking down the fractional reserve banking system would be like improperly removing a jagged knife* blade from your heart - something that drastic could cause a deflationary spiral: existing debts (public and private) become relatively monstrous, wages collapsing, an endless cycle of one-two economic upper cuts and groin punches. So the question then is how to get rid of that system without causing a catastrophic spiral.

There is of course also the problem of resource shortages. For instance we have consumed all of the world's light sweet crude. We're now using the more expensive type of harder-to-get oil. That in turn is driving up the price of everything. Virtually all of our fish is mercury poisoned, reducing the availability of that. There is a shortage of housing, which is getting worse (and that's driving up those prices). How big a price driver that is compared to the fractional banking system we can discuss all day, but in the future those shortages will outsize everything.

*The jagged knife, of course, being the fractional reserve banking system.
 
beerftw said:
Well for one you still do not have doctors who can patch hold my bear and watch this crowd, so negative 100 on city hospital scores. Also when did medical research counter in to care at a hospital.
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UC Davis in California is a training and research hospital. Tons of patients get treated down at the research hospital there in Sacramento valley. Rural hospitals can't even touch that.

Oh yeah not enough womens clinics, women here can go to a hospital for than, literally, so that comes down to abortions, sorry you have to drive 20 minutes for an abortion rather than walk down the street, man the women here must be crying so loud.
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20 minutes? More like an hour. And did you not read that I was not just talking about abortions or did your mind just ignore that part? If you have a car then 20 minutes is doable, but if you don't, you're screwed in way too many ways in rural areas. Just you try walking to the general store. Rural America is infamous for food deserts. Oh but everyone's a farmer, you say? Not even close.

I can get fiber here if I go with verizon, my issue is that my house/single wide whichever you call it was built in the 50's so they need to redo a lot to get fiber out there, as the current phone line system is antique. For cable we have spectrum formerly time warner, and man gotta love those blazing fast speeds that never come, we also have other dsl providers and satellite internet with no one gets unless they live like way out in the middle of nowehere.
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That's because expanding infrastructure out to rural areas is very expensive.

And jobs in rural areas, what recession? I see plenty of jobs in rural areas, unless you mean jobs for programmers and tax accountants, then yeah there may be a shortage of those jobs, but skilled labor jobs are in no shortage, rather they seem to be in a shortage of laborers.
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This trumps your anecdotes.

This contradicts you, too.

Fact of the matter is, Rural America is dying.
Businesses are disappearing, too. There used to be four gas stations, three grocery stores, three car dealers, and a lumber mill. Now, there’s just one restaurant in town open at night. The nearest hospital is more than an hour away, the nearest city, Bend, is two-and-a-half.
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And then the American outback is also notoriously regressive, racist, sexist, and homophobic to boot. Rural America is no country for gays or lesbians, or Muslims, women who don't know their place... yeah, no one wants to live around that culture.

Virtually any opposition to gay marriage thrives in rural areas. Opposition to the Civil Rights Act thrives there. People just like you who howl when the word 'abortion' pops up thrive there, too. Virtually everyone who has a religious objection to paying for contraception in an employer's health care plan comes from rural areas. Whiners who hate baking cakes for gay people, yup, mainly are rural people. The Muslim fear peddlers, anti-immigrants and illegal immigrant panic-peddlers make their bases in rural areas. White supremacists live nowhere else BUT the rural areas. Literally that is where Kekistan began. Trump won the rural areas - you can clearly see by election maps that Trump has no love in the cities.

Jobs are the big reason people are moving away from rural areas, but another big reason is that those areas are incredibly rigidly regressive in a world that is increasingly cosmopolitan and progressive. The culture of rural America is as toxic as the air in Shenzen.

You can argue all day that I'm wrong but the statistics are what they are - people are leaving rural areas. Ultimately it's not up to me to ask why.
 
beerftw said:
You mean the american dream is to live as expensively as possible while making as much as possible to be just as poor as a minimum wage worker in the south but you can brag about how much you make while still being poor?
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Anything to avoid scrutiny of the illusion.
 
beerftw said:
How is the standard of living better? How is paying 2k for a one bedroom in la in a city that smells like raw sewage moving up? It more or less sounds like you are in favor of society being as expensive as possible, and trying to pump up wages to justify it.

I have no idea why people keep moving to cities, they consistantly lose when cost of living is factored in. Here in texas an apartment in austin can cost over 1k a month, and traffic a nightmare, yet austin is a 45 minute drive from where I live if I cut through florence. There is no benefit moving to a city when the city is close enough without the cost, unless you are some hipster who thinks he needs culture and needs to live within walking distance of everything, because My experience in la was you could walk across town faster than you could drive across it.
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I work for a big corporation in downtown Chicago. I was talking to a well stacked cute new girl the other day. She moved here from some small nondescript stagnant town in Michigan with no opportunities besides fast food. Same as all her friends and some family. There's your answer.
 
countryboy said:
I grew up in San Diego, recently spent three weeks there. There are a lot of positives, weather, weather, and weather. But the two big negatives SUCK BIG TIME. Traffic, and parking. To say nothing of the cost of living. It was much better growing up there, now, not so much.
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I'm a stagehand. Work mostly downtown.

Did I tell you I hate PETCO park? Lol.

****s traffic and parking downtown whenever there's a game.
 
Zalatix said:
Wage Statistics for 2014
Most jobs pay under $20/hour
Most U.S. jobs pay under $20 an hour - CNNMoney
Most new jobs pay under $15 per hour as of 2015
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.htm
So when someone says get a better paying job... the fact is there are not enough high paying jobs to go around.
If everyone in America had a PhD in physics half of them would be earning under $15 because there's an absolute shortage of good paying jobs.
No matter what anyone does, half of the country must earn under $15 - poverty level wages - because the jobs don't exist. And under Trump's health care plan Americans will lose half of that to insurance premiums. Which will leave most Americans squatting in the streets.
This is capitalism. Government interference didn't do this. Employers do not want to pay any wages at all, and they would have people work for free if they could get away with it. See our prison-industrial complex for an example.
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Anyway, a dream compared to the wages in SOCIALIST Venezuela.
 
Zalatix said:
Wage Statistics for 2014

Most jobs pay under $20/hour
Most U.S. jobs pay under $20 an hour - CNNMoney

Most new jobs pay under $15 per hour as of 2015
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.htm

So when someone says get a better paying job... the fact is there are not enough high paying jobs to go around.

If everyone in America had a PhD in physics half of them would be earning under $15 because there's an absolute shortage of good paying jobs.

No matter what anyone does, half of the country must earn under $15 - poverty level wages - because the jobs don't exist. And under Trump's health care plan Americans will lose half of that to insurance premiums. Which will leave most Americans squatting in the streets.

This is capitalism. Government interference didn't do this. Employers do not want to pay any wages at all, and they would have people work for free if they could get away with it. See our prison-industrial complex for an example.
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Hey most of the low wage earners are liberals so they are just getting what they deserve.
 
Zalatix said:
UC Davis in California is a training and research hospital. Tons of patients get treated down at the research hospital there in Sacramento valley. Rural hospitals can't even touch that.


20 minutes? More like an hour. And did you not read that I was not just talking about abortions or did your mind just ignore that part? If you have a car then 20 minutes is doable, but if you don't, you're screwed in way too many ways in rural areas. Just you try walking to the general store. Rural America is infamous for food deserts. Oh but everyone's a farmer, you say? Not even close.


That's because expanding infrastructure out to rural areas is very expensive.


This trumps your anecdotes.

This contradicts you, too.

Fact of the matter is, Rural America is dying.


And then the American outback is also notoriously regressive, racist, sexist, and homophobic to boot. Rural America is no country for gays or lesbians, or Muslims, women who don't know their place... yeah, no one wants to live around that culture.

Virtually any opposition to gay marriage thrives in rural areas. Opposition to the Civil Rights Act thrives there. People just like you who howl when the word 'abortion' pops up thrive there, too. Virtually everyone who has a religious objection to paying for contraception in an employer's health care plan comes from rural areas. Whiners who hate baking cakes for gay people, yup, mainly are rural people. The Muslim fear peddlers, anti-immigrants and illegal immigrant panic-peddlers make their bases in rural areas. White supremacists live nowhere else BUT the rural areas. Literally that is where Kekistan began. Trump won the rural areas - you can clearly see by election maps that Trump has no love in the cities.

Jobs are the big reason people are moving away from rural areas, but another big reason is that those areas are incredibly rigidly regressive in a world that is increasingly cosmopolitan and progressive. The culture of rural America is as toxic as the air in Shenzen.

You can argue all day that I'm wrong but the statistics are what they are - people are leaving rural areas. Ultimately it's not up to me to ask why.
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:shock: WTF dude.
 
Well then maybe the stupid ****s in congress should stop ****ing around in their desperate efforts to fabricate bull**** arguments and start working together to find real solutions to stimulating jobs and economic growth.

Nah...**** it. I heard Trump tweeted something. They should spend the next six weeks ****ting themselves over it.
 
HenryChinaski said:
I work for a big corporation in downtown Chicago. I was talking to a well stacked cute new girl the other day. She moved here from some small nondescript stagnant town in Michigan with no opportunities besides fast food. Same as all her friends and some family. There's your answer.
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https://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/48838/68-of-employers-cant-find-qualified-workers

Weird. Employers claim they cant find qualified workers while 'workers' claim they cant find jobs. You'd think there was an opportunity for a solution there somewhere....
 
VanceMack said:
https://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/48838/68-of-employers-cant-find-qualified-workers

Weird. Employers claim they cant find qualified workers while 'workers' claim they cant find jobs. You'd think there was an opportunity for a solution there somewhere....
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Many people don't want to work in a small town with very little opportunity for growth and low wages. So they go to larger cities seeking employment with corporations that offer growth, steady benefits, competitive salaries, and other perks It's not the 1950s anymore where you can make your way in the small town that you grew up in and retire with a pension from Joe Bob's General store. I wish it was that way, I work for one of the most desirable for employment corporations in the world I ****ing hate it as I hate the corporate environment. But the wages, benefits, PTO and other perks that I get doing what I do, do not exist in Billy Bob Alabama.
 
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jdog said:
Hey most of the low wage earners are liberals so they are just getting what they deserve.
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Thats straight up trolling bull**** and I'm pretty sure you know that.
 
HenryChinaski said:
Many people don't want to work in a small town with very little opportunity for growth and low wages. So they go to larger cities seeking employment with corporations that offer growth, steady benefits, competitive salaries, and other perks It's not the 1950s anymore where you can make your way in the small town that you grew up in and retire with a pension from Joe Bob's General store. I wish it was that way, I work for one of the most desirable for employment corporations in the world I ****ing hate it as I hate the corporate environment. But the wages, benefits, PTO and other perks that I get doing what I do, do not exist in Billy Bob Alabama.
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Its cute that you think all those jobs are in Billy Bobs general store in some podunk nowhere town. Finding skilled workers is a problem across the country...and not just in fast food industries. But lets be honest...if someone has done absolutely nothing to prepare themselves for a future, then they ought to not only take that job at Billy Bobs general store, but they should also take on a part time at Taco Bell and bust their ass for a few years to provide for themselves an opportunity later in life. Or they can stay on moms couch and piss and moan about how unfair life is while the illegal immigrants come in her and actually succeed where they cant/wont.
 
VanceMack said:
Its cute that you think all those jobs are in Billy Bobs general store in some podunk nowhere town. Finding skilled workers is a problem across the country...and not just in fast food industries. But lets be honest...if someone has done absolutely nothing to prepare themselves for a future, then they ought to not only take that job at Billy Bobs general store, but they should also take on a part time at Taco Bell and bust their ass for a few years to provide for themselves an opportunity later in life. Or they can stay on moms couch and piss and moan about how unfair life is while the illegal immigrants come in her and actually succeed where they cant/wont.
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If finding skilled workers is so hard then why are skilled jobs wages not rising and why are so many STEM degree holders not even able to find employment in STEM jobs?

Nobody's pissing and moaning - the jobs aren't out there. Less than half of the jobs that exist pay much. Less. Than. Half.

You absolutely can't get what doesn't exist.

And the stupidest idea ever is to suggest people should take a SECOND job - that takes a job from someone else! WTF.
 
Zalatix said:
If finding skilled workers is so hard then why are skilled jobs wages not rising and why are so many STEM degree holders not even able to find employment in STEM jobs?

Nobody's pissing and moaning - the jobs aren't out there. Less than half of the jobs that exist pay much. Less. Than. Half.

You absolutely can't get what doesn't exist.

And the stupidest idea ever is to suggest people should take a SECOND job - that takes a job from someone else! WTF.
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Someone like an illegal immigrant or a refugee? I mean...THOSE are the guys vcoming here and working and not bitching about how hard or unfair life is. Yes...I can understand why you would think a part time job is 'stupid'. Far more appropriate to live in mommies basement and let someone else take care of you.
 
VanceMack said:
Someone like an illegal immigrant or a refugee? I mean...THOSE are the guys vcoming here and working and not bitching about how hard or unfair life is. Yes...I can understand why you would think a part time job is 'stupid'. Far more appropriate to live in mommies basement and let someone else take care of you.
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What an idiotic narrative. Many immigrants die on their way here. A lot more work in farms and never make it at all. Your cherry picked nonsense only factors in the very few who ever make it. And you are in no position to lecture anyone about mommies basement when you failed to master basic reading skills - I said that your suggestion of taking a second job is idiotic because it reduces the number of jobs for others, nowhere did I say that a part time job is stupid.

Maybe you shouldn't let Betsy Devos handle your education.
 
cuban smokes said:
below is a copy & paste from one of my earlier post today; still holds true



real wages peaked in 1979; since then medical related cost & health insurance cost have increased exponentially to the point that many have little to no disposable income, no savings, and no retirement funds

wages are generally not growing; most workers experience wage stagnation over a period of time

even if every available job in this nation was filled by a willing worker there would still be 10 of millions that would be left unemployed

technology is changing the work place & more jobs will be lost to the ever increasing growth of technology that displaces employment opportunity for many

many that are college educated are finding it difficult to realize employment in careers they thought they would be working in & many graduates end up working in fields they have no interest working in, and for wages that do not support their debt levels, or their lives

people should stop deluding themselves into believing there is some miraculous panacea for educated workers, skilled workers, part time workers, seasonal workers, the working poor, the poor, many of which typically have little, or no disposable income, and many cannot afford more education than they may already have

people don't seem to be willing to admit to themselves that as a society we are witnessing the downward glide of the opposite side of the growth bell curve, which is demonstrating that capitalism as we have known it is changing, and not for the better

America is becoming a third world Hell hole & people are deluding themselves into believing just the opposite

Trump will make it all better
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There are too many people in the US. Just a thought.
 
VanceMack said:
Its cute that you think all those jobs are in Billy Bobs general store in some podunk nowhere town. Finding skilled workers is a problem across the country...and not just in fast food industries. But lets be honest...if someone has done absolutely nothing to prepare themselves for a future, then they ought to not only take that job at Billy Bobs general store, but they should also take on a part time at Taco Bell and bust their ass for a few years to provide for themselves an opportunity later in life. Or they can stay on moms couch and piss and moan about how unfair life is while the illegal immigrants come in her and actually succeed where they cant/wont.
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All of the blue-collar manufacturing and any competitive jobs that were spread across middle America in small towns up until the 80s are now in overseas. So unfortunately now if one decides to get off mom's couch and not take a job at Taco Bell and better themselves they have to go into a large city seeking employment in one of those big fancy high-rise buildings. Usually that comes with some sort of college degree. But the payoff is a salary 401(k), pension PTO, things that make life more bearable. I wish it wasn't that way but it is.
 
Zalatix said:
What an idiotic narrative. Many immigrants die on their way here. A lot more work in farms and never make it at all. Your cherry picked nonsense only factors in the very few who ever make it. And you are in no position to lecture anyone about mommies basement when you failed to master basic reading skills - I said that your suggestion of taking a second job is idiotic because it reduces the number of jobs for others, nowhere did I say that a part time job is stupid.

Maybe you shouldn't let Betsy Devos handle your education.
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No ****. Many immigrants, illegal and legal risk their lives to come here, often with absolutely nothing, and do what weak impotent ****s in this country say cant be done. Work, succeed...prosper. 36% of all new businesses are immigrant owned. The sad reality is your comments show that you know what I am saying is true...it just stings for you to hear that you are responsible for your own failure.

Run along now.
 
HenryChinaski said:
All of the blue-collar manufacturing and any competitive jobs that were spread across middle America in small towns up until the 80s are now in overseas. So unfortunately now if one decides to get off mom's couch and not take a job at Taco Bell and better themselves they have to go into a large city seeking employment in one of those big fancy high-rise buildings. Usually that comes with some sort of college degree. But the payoff is a salary 401(k), pension PTO, things that make life more bearable. I wish it wasn't that way but it is.
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Believe it or not, past generations were filled with people that worked full time jobs AND part time jobs AND went to school to get those degrees and create that better future life for themselves. Nothing has changed.
 
VanceMack said:
Believe it or not, past generations were filled with people that worked full time jobs AND part time jobs AND went to school to get those degrees and create that better future life for themselves. Nothing has changed.
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You seem to be dancing around the fact that people leave small town America and head to larger cities for higher wages and more varied opportunity. I make more money and get more PTO than an average Alabama or Texas state trooper and I just work in a mailroom.
 
HenryChinaski said:
You seem to be dancing around the fact that people leave small town America and head to larger cities for higher wages and more varied opportunity. I make more money and get more PTO than an average Alabama or Texas state trooper and I just work in a mailroom.
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'People' have always left small town America for better opportunities. Just as many people leave big cities because they are tired of the hassle, high costs, etc. Regardless...stay or go there are opportunities along the way and they all require hard work. That has always been the case. Nothing has changed...those that will bust their ass to succeed tend to succeed and those that will whine and blame others and make excuses for their failures will remain failures.
 
VanceMack said:
'People' have always left small town America for better opportunities. Just as many people leave big cities because they are tired of the hassle, high costs, etc. Regardless...stay or go there are opportunities along the way and they all require hard work. That has always been the case. Nothing has changed...those that will bust their ass to succeed tend to succeed and those that will whine and blame others and make excuses for their failures will remain failures.
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Agree to a point, however it's near impossible to succeed in a small town with zero economy and fast food jobs.
 
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