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Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

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Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#221

Post by cylinder »

cubano wrote: post #107

I've stopped fearing losing a job because, frankly, it happens so often as a remote webdev I basically never stop looking. In fact, I am currently unemployed after I rather unwisely completed a 20-week job in 11, and I was literally given no notice and a week's pay. So now its back to the Upwork slog and trying to convince someone (again) that yes, since I have been a professional programmer for 25 years I can for su…

Why not get off Upwork, set up a business with an identity beyond your individual self and go for business / corporate work?

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#222

Post by cylinder »

scruple wrote: post #13
intopieces wrote: post #2

My fear never went away. As someone who graduated at the very beginning of the Great Recession, I have a constant feeling that this cannot be forever.

Even prior to that, many of us watched our parents _very unceremoniously_ lose their "job for life" jobs in the 80s and 90s. The illusion of loyalty to an employer and job security went up in smoke with those layoffs, for me personally.

raised by immigrant parents who were self-employed I was always scared away from the corporate world for this reason. They were constantly talking about how people can get laid off very quickly. They tried to steer me into medicine for this reason (recession proof. Didn't take). I'm now in a corporate setting and aim to be self-employed again soon enough.

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#223

Post by oblio »

magduf wrote: post #70
oblio wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the US have only about 330 million people or so?

You seem to be forgetting the billions of people in China. Who do you think buys most of the stuff China exports?

There's not "billions of people in China", there's about 1 billion and 400 million. That's a minor nitpick compared to my other points though.

China exports worldwide, see these examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Brazil

It's not just the US buying from them. Everyone's buying Chinese goods and services.

More than that, the US didn't raise anyone in China out of poverty. Like it didn't raise South Koreans or Iraqis or Aghans or Germans, etc.

The Chinese raised China out of poverty. Nobody's buying Chinese goods out of the goodness of their hearts, they're buying it because they're cost effective. They're buying them quite rationally.

The only thing the US did was allow them to trade, which we go by American values, should be a sort of universal human right. Now that the US is getting the short end of the stick, should we suddenly become hypocrites and say that China's abusing the system the US used and abused for so long? :-)

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#224

Post by magduf »

munificent wrote: post #215
magduf wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point. I'm in the exact same boat: I'm from the South too, which isn't something I'm proud of at all, and I occasionally get comments asking why I don't speak with a Southern accent (my parent intentionally adopted a Midwestern English speaking style, and I also intentionally avoided picking up any such accent, plus I grew up in places with more kids who had migrated there from out-of-state). I really…

> I'm from the South too, which isn't something I'm proud of at all I get that feeling. I live on the West Coast and spend a lot of time online and, man, the number of supposedly progressive, tolerant liberals who are willing to completely shit on an entire group of people based on where they were born or their accent is astonishingly large. There's some real cognitive dissonance around this. They'd never criticize s…

The South has nothing to be proud of. It fought a devastating war to preserve slavery, and this is something it's still proud of to this day. They have violent protests to preserve statues of Confederate (rebel) leaders in public spaces.

Yes, people who use "ain't" sound like ignorant dipshits to me. I grew up in the South and I know the English language well enough to know that's ignorant; no one else in the South has an excuse now that it's 2019.

I don't feel shame for being born in a place I don't have much respect for, since as you point out, it was out of my control, but I certainly don't feel any pride about it, and certainly don't wear it on my sleeve like so many do.

"Less kind to out-groups" is an understatement. This is a place that mob-murdered black people by hanging them from trees not that long ago. Try getting a flat tire in the South and being black or Middle Eastern and see how many white people help you then.

As for food, it's disgusting and unhealthy. It's all fried and is one of the main reasons Southerners have so many more cases of heart disease than the rest of the US. American food in general is horrible, and America has never been good in a culinary sense except for things 20th-+-century immigrants brought here (esp. Italians) (American tastes in food have been improving a lot in the last couple of decades though), but Southern food is horrible even by historical American standards.

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#226

Post by munificent »

magduf wrote: post #224
munificent wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm from the South too, which isn't something I'm proud of at all I get that feeling. I live on the West Coast and spend a lot of time online and, man, the number of supposedly progressive, tolerant liberals who are willing to completely shit on an entire group of people based on where they were born or their accent is astonishingly large. There's some real cognitive dissonance around this. They'd never criticize s…

The South has nothing to be proud of. It fought a devastating war to preserve slavery, and this is something it's still proud of to this day. They have violent protests to preserve statues of Confederate (rebel) leaders in public spaces. Yes, people who use "ain't" sound like ignorant dipshits to me. I grew up in the South and I know the English language well enough to know that's ignorant; no one else in the South h…

> It fought a devastating war to preserve slavery, and this is something it's still proud of to this day.

You're committing a common logical fallacy which is attributing an act to a group and referring to it as a singular entity. You can just as accurately say that "The United States promoted slavery." or "Europe committed the Holocaust."

You know black people are Southerners too and by saying "the South" to uniformly refer to only white slave owners and racists, you implicitly eradicate their lives and contributions to southern culture.

> They have violent protests to preserve statues of Confederate (rebel) leaders in public spaces.

"They" — people who live in the South — also conducted the Montgomery bus boycott and marched to Montgomery.

Jesus, dude, are you OK? No one should be so hateful of such a large body of people.

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#227

Post by ramphastidae »

mikelyons wrote: post #225
ramphastidae wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contract employment? Unions?

Can't contracts always be terminated or union workers laid off?

It depends on the specifics of the contract and the union's collective bargaining agreement, but plenty of these types of agreements exist where employment is not considered at-will.
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