The fourth pizza delivery guy in a row.....

[Baptismbyfire]

The problem lies with the fundamental nature of corporations : their sole purpose is to maximize profit for their stockholders. Once the rest of the world caught up with the US's manufacturing industry, there was no need for company owners to pay more for work that could be done for much cheaper abroad with comparable results.

Now, some would blame unions for being too greedy and asking too high a salary for the kind of work they were doing, but once again, due to the fundamental nature of corporations, it is ultimately wrong to blame unions for what has been happening over the last few decades.

What many fail to realize is that individuals cannot hope to have the same level of economic mobility that corporations enjoy today. Except for the very few who stood to gain from the increased flexibility in the labor market by negotiating for a better position abroad, most American workers, especially those in the manufacturing sector, had more to lose than gain.

Due to this inherent nature of corporations and corporations enjoying far greater mobility than the individual worker in the age of globalism, if we ever hope to see an increase in the living conditions of American workers, all the workers around the world have to unite, as Karl Marx accurately predicted, and bargain for the same rights and similar pay. It is absurd to believe that corporations would somehow pay American workers more for the same output out of the goodness of their heart or their sense of patriotism.

 

[Red Squirrel]

He probably had a real job, and it got outsourced. Outsourcing seems to be a bigger and bigger problem these days.

 

[Engineer]

This where we're headed, isn't it.

Yes, it is.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/dail...lippers-dan-alpert-breaks-down-145831220.html

 

[Engineer]

It got to the point where it was too expensive to keep these practices up, so manufacturing started getting exported overseas. This lead to the manufacturing sector's decline, leaving a huge population of workers with no marketable skills. The number 1 job market in the US right now is services, and manufacturing doesn't look to be coming back anytime soon.

So...that's why there are 40 year old people delivering pizza these days.

Yea, too expensive for the CEO's and other execs to get million dollar raises. Had to do something so hiring people for a few bucks a day (if even that) solved that really quickly. Then, to make up for the shortfall of wages (and consumption in the US), the CEO's (of banks) gave the masses trillions in credit. Now that too is running dry......next.

 

[Chaotic42]

We need more people producing wealth than consuming it. I don't know why people can't figure that out. I have to produce value equal to about three times my salary in order for the company to remain profitable. When you start cutting people and skimping on quality, the production level is not the place to do it.

 

[Baptismbyfire]

But then what can you expect from a nation that is rife with corruption, but pretends to be holier than thou?

There is nothing money hasn't corrupted. Everything from politicians who have no qualms about taking fat paychecks from corporations, colleges where the highest paid employee is the football coach, once reputable newspapers pandering to the interests of extreme-right wing groups by hiring right-wing attack dogs as their columnists, the so-called think tanks, which manufacture data to disorient the public from taking any kind of position on key issues, ministers who lash out against homosexuals and other minorities in their weekly sermons, but dare not say a word against corporations and political corruption...

 

[futurefields]

orly

Man, you went full retard. Never go full retard.

 

[futurefields]

Math says the world is going down the drain, you can't argue with math.

Don't be shocked by any of the tragedies that come down the line in the next 50 years. We are organisms on a giant rock floating in space. Nothing has been guaranteed for us, nothing has been planned in advance, yet we live like it is. The water will eventually run out, the plants will die off, the animals including us will starve and die out. There will be a last man on earth, and then there will be none. These things will happen, guaranteed.

 

[mugs]

One of them was particularly depressing: A very clean-cut man wearing pressed dress pants and polished shoes. I felt bad and tipped him a fiver on a nine dollar order; you should have seen his eyes - he was so thankful.

Are you sure that wasn't the owner of the restaurant?

 

[raildogg]

They don't need your pity. Maybe they are happy with the job. Maybe you don't have a clue what is going on in their life. But we all like to judge, don't we.

 

[raildogg]

He probably had a real job, and it got outsourced. Outsourcing seems to be a bigger and bigger problem these days.

So what's a fake job then? Something you deem to be not up to your level?

 

[unokitty]

.... This where we're headed, isn't it.

In 2013, of the 953K jobs "created," only 23%, or 222K, were full-time. Total job growth during the first four years of the Obama recovery has been 4,657,000 or just 97,020 jobs per month.

Contrast those number's with Reagan's who generated 11.2 million new jobs or 233,333 jobs per month.

In September 1983 alone, under Reagan, the economy expanded by 1,114,000 jobs. That's more jobs than were added in the entire last year under Obama.

The Government makes the rules (laws). Corporations just play by the rules.

Want less of something? Just tax it. For example, ObamaCare is a tax on full time jobs. Surprised that the number of full time jobs is decreasing? You shouldn't be.

Want more of something. Just subsidize it. For example, trillions of dollars have been spent on the 'War on Poverty,' yet the data shows no positive results. Census Bureau data indicates that the poverty rate was steadily falling in the 1950s and early 1960s, but then stagnated once the War on Poverty began.


Tax full time jobs and the number of full time jobs decreases.

Pay people to be poor and the number of poor people doesn't decrease.


Who'da thunk it?

Uno

 

[Carson Dyle]

Not surprising. I meet an amazing number of people in their mid 30s to 40s who have few marketable job skills. Lose your assistant manager's job at Chili's or your cashier's job at Safeway, what are you really qualified to do for a living?

 

[alkemyst]

I agree that it is extremely important to have that. But guess what, a lot of people don't have that. The single mom raising two kids making $9 an hour will probably NEVER have that.


And even if you do. One medical bill can wipe that all out in an instant. A few months back my wife had to go to the hospital for something that turned out to be fairly minor. It cost us $3000. That's with insurance. Without insurance the bill would have been about $12,000.

There goes that 6 months savings. Now what?

Sadly, many can't even pull together 1 months savings. A lot of our member's seem to have a view of the country through naïve eyes.

I am a high wage earner. I have savings and the like. However; I am currently feeling the struggle now just gaining three dependents that all needed clothing and the like.

My solution is to sell off some of my toys and re-structure my debt.

Now there are a few people that should really be able to save, but choose to dump all disposable money into more and more extras/luxury items.

There are also a majority of people that may even have second and third jobs that simply don't have anything left at the end of the month and are not blowing their money on anything that is non-essential.

 

[blankslate]

.... that came to my house has been a regular, non-retarded guy over 40 who looks like they should be doing a real job for a living. Maybe fifth, I've lost count. One of them was particularly depressing: A very clean-cut man wearing pressed dress pants and polished shoes. I felt bad and tipped him a fiver on a nine dollar order; you should have seen his eyes - he was so thankful. For years (all of the time I've lived here) it's been nothing but college kids. This is just wrong. This where we're headed, isn't it.

Yes, now just think of the people who you'd have seen doing that job a decade ago are being employed... if at all.

I know there's significant factors involved here, but I've lived through downturns and I've never seen anything like this before. It's shocking. I keep on thinking the nicely dressed guy is trying desperately to make enough money to pay his mortgage so he won't lose his house. Maybe he's working two crap jobs and this is his night one. Fricking depressing.

This is also the first major recession in which all of the last remnants of the major banking protections for the "little guy" put in place in the earlier part of the 20th century haven't been there to keep the big banks from screwing them. The new protections are like a throwing a bullet at something vs firing said bullet out of a gun (which the old protections were) at the same object.

Additionally Finance/Insurance/Real Estate has been a smaller percentage of the economy in the past now it's a good deal larger...

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011...-finances-share-of-economy-continues-to-grow/

But that only goes so far. New research by New York University economist Thomas Philippon suggests that the financial sector is enormously outsized.



He finds that, despite all the advances in information technology since the 1980s, the financial sector has become steadily less efficient: All that it has been gained from increased computing power and vast communications networks has been taken away, and then some, “by increases in trading activities whose social value is difficult to assess.”


The upshot, says Mr. Philippon, is that finance’s share of GDP really ought to be about two percentage points lower than it is now. The industry’s travails may be far from over.

e2a (edited 2 add)

Some of those trading activities I would personally include would be the derivatives that Brooksley Born (head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the 90s) thought should be more carefully regulated. Unfortunately then President Clinton listened to the wrong people... Greenspan being one of them.

There's a good Frontline episode dealing with that part of U.S. financial sector history...

here http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/

these derivatives that she wanted to regulate better were amongst the things that made the housing crash even more harmful to the economy

this youtube video covers some of how that happened

the Crisis of Credit




-----

 

[Leros]

The number of good people in this country is exponentially higher than the number of good jobs available.

The number of good people in this country used to be lower than the number of good jobs available, so mediocre people were given good jobs and good salaries. Now that the situation is flipped, there are people used to having good jobs/salaries that can't get a job like that anymore.

I forget the actual statistic, but I read something along the lines of: there are 4 unemployed engineers per engineering opening, but for every 4 engineering opening there is only one qualified candidate.

 

[BUTCH1]

That's one of the things which bothers me about modern corporate society. People who produce little to nothing (or even negative work) are able to get by over and over again. If you call them out on it, you get in trouble.

Is it really worth it to do 10x the work for the same pay?

This dude had an ego issue, if a batch called for 48lbs of a chemical and it came in a 50lb box I trained people to just take out 2lbs and send it along, this idiot had people shoveling out 48lbs so we could put the chemical back in the same box. Some items were in grams but the chemical came in a 55gl drum so I had a rack set up with 5gl buckets so it was fast to dispense it, noooo, can't do that, get the forklift, drop the drum from the racks, and screw a bung (spigot) in it and dribble 80grams of the material out, dumb and dumber. Someone who still works there was at a meeting about the fubare'd inventory situation and no one could fix it, guess what asshole, I spent 6yrs learning SAP so I could "fix" any issue that arouse, now they have not a single person to fill my shoes but that's OK, they're saving the $60/wk by me being gone..

 

[AlienCraft]

We need more people producing wealth than consuming it. I don't know why people can't figure that out. I have to produce value equal to about three times my salary in order for the company to remain profitable. When you start cutting people and skimping on quality, the production level is not the place to do it.

The productivity level has increased far beyond the reward for such increases. Those all now go to the CEO, who has done little or anything to improve that productivity, save for reducing the workforce.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

What is worse is now figure out what percentage of these seemingly unemployed individuals spent money on higher education.

 

[futurefields]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/ceo-to-worker-pay-ratio_n_3184623.html

"The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased 1,000 percent since 1950, according to data from Bloomberg. Today Fortune 500 CEOs make 204 times regular workers on average, Bloomberg found. The ratio is up from 120-to-1 in 2000, 42-to-1 in 1980 and 20-to-1 in 1950."



If you aren't born wealthy, start busting your ass and make no mistakes while you are still a child and make 100% of the best decisions always, or not incredibly lucky (like lottery winning lucky) in this country, you are fucked.

Nowadays average kids have to be fucking Rudy to get anywhere, it sucks. You have to overachieve like crazy just to not starve in the streets.

 

[brianmanahan]

it is funny that everyone seems to think things were way better for most of the last X years, and everything is going to pot now, and it is just a matter of time before we are all unemployed/dead/etc.

i bet many of the doomsayers on here werent even alive in the cold war era, when all everyone talked about was how the US and russia were going to nuke each other to oblivion. it was only a matter of time, we were all going to be living in a postnuke wasteland.

many people seem to think that prior to 2000 the world was so much better for the last 1000 years, and all of a sudden it is terrible. and i am saying that is incorrect. there are always bad things happening, just like there are always good things happening, and the world goes on in spite of them. this too shall pass.

tl;dr: there will always be problems. rise up and meet them. live your life in spite of them. work hard, spend wisely. your outlook and attitude has more of an effect on your life than you realize.

 

[Cuda1447]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/ceo-to-worker-pay-ratio_n_3184623.html

"The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased 1,000 percent since 1950, according to data from Bloomberg. Today Fortune 500 CEOs make 204 times regular workers on average, Bloomberg found. The ratio is up from 120-to-1 in 2000, 42-to-1 in 1980 and 20-to-1 in 1950."



If you aren't born wealthy, start busting your ass and make no mistakes while you are still a child and make 100% of the best decisions always, or not incredibly lucky (like lottery winning lucky) in this country, you are fucked.

Nowadays average kids have to be fucking Rudy to get anywhere, it sucks. You have to overachieve like crazy just to not starve in the streets.

Just quoting for emphasis. This is a very serious issue.

 

[Engineer]

Just quoting for emphasis. This is a very serious issue.

Nah, just lower their taxes (even more) and it will trickle down to the masses.....promise.

 

[trmiv]

I've had a guy with a similar look deliver to my house. Turns out he was the owner of the pizza place making deliveries because they were really busy.

 

[Patranus]

The problem, in my opinion, is RIDICULOUS profits by the large corporations and way overpaid top executives and CEO's.

Hold up. So a corporation is generating 'ridiculous' profits yet somehow the executives who generate said profits are overpaid?

Sounds like they are being underpaid if profits are the measuring stick for compensation.