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My parents collect cans for a living

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Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#331

Post by valarauko »

MisterTea wrote: post #266
999900000999 wrote: post #260

During the great recession I had a co worker, a legendary game designer in some circles, tell me he was collecting cans to pay for gas. When he was unemployed he was desperate for any type of work. I was more interested in how gentrification makes her family's life harder. Back when I was 19 you could get a place in LA for 600$. Now same place is 1300$, no matter how many shifts or cans you pick up your not covering…

hearing $1300 and $600 in terms of rental money and living in NYC I cant help but ask what neighborhoods is that rent available? Back in the late 90's friends who were moving out at 17-18 Yo were having a hard time finding local places for $500 in the boonies of Queens. I own some property and have a large 2nd floor 3BR that can fetch $2500 and its in a shitty neighborhood where someone was shot around the corner the…

Parent comment says LA, so perhaps its possible there?

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#332

Post by c0balt »

jimbokun wrote: post #212
rbanffy wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jessia is the American dream. She's the one who made it, unlike thousands of others, who worked equally hard, and didn't. No family should have both parents working 12 hours a day just to survive, period.

> She's the one who made it, unlike thousands of others, who worked equally hard, and didn't. Data? Immigrants continue to do very well in the U.S., often succeeding to a greater extent than people born here.

What's your argument/ statement based on? At least link a study after accusing someone else of misrepresenting a topic.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#334

Post by bigbillheck »

kstenerud wrote: post #245
bigbillheck wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is violence your response to rudeness?

It has been, and it has served me well. You'd be surprised at how quickly abusive people shut up after a smack.

If you have kids I hope you don't raise them that way (or think that violence is an acceptable approach there).

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#335

Post by Ensorceled »

moron4hire wrote: post #305
Ensorceled wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, brown bottles also make it difficult to see if, for instance, those pickles have "passed". Both at the store level and for the consumer.

Huh? Pickles don't go bad. That's kinda the whole point of pickling.

I didn't say bad, "passed" ... mushy and yellowish.

They can go also bad if they weren't canned properly, which is rare but happens.

Which is why people like clear glass.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#336

Post by [deleted] »

dbavaria wrote: post #51
rmk wrote: post #26

I am curious: if you collect cans for a living, do you qualify for government assistance? Is it possible that Jessica Yauri receives aid earmarked for children so they can get proper nutrition, via her parents? She does not mention if she qualifies for lunch assistance. Also, I am assuming that she goes to a public school where she doesn't have to pay to attend. It is also not clear if she receives further aid in sup…

I don't think you are curious, rather you're making a not so subtly veiled point against immigration which is wholly inappropriate in the context of this thread.

[deleted]

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#337

Post by bobthepanda »

dmurray wrote: post #70
garmaine wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t matter. The redemption cost is paid by the consumer when they buy the can—it is literally added to the bill, like a sales tax. Any recyclable value is extra.

The recycling centre's costs per ton of aluminium collected likely go up, though, from dealing with more physical cans.

None of the deposit goes to the recycling centers in the US either.

In the US recycling is a mostly private affair, which is why we saw things like bales of low-quality plastic getting shipped to China.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#338

Post by snapetom »

rootsudo wrote: post #57
elil17 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The writing in this article is incredible and I have nothing but admiration for the author and her family. But, to me, this situation is what’s wrong with America. Why are people who are clearly so hard working struggling to get by?

It's not a "problem" per se, it's unskilled, untrained labor and someone with no resources trying to make it. Not all hard work gets a reward. Not everyone has a happy ending. While statistically, you have a better chance of making a "high" salary in the USA, it really also depends on what you do and who you know. Picking up cans also sounds like they could be undocumented, with no "legal" work papers. Many times, it…

Your comment is a sobering economic reality of what it's like for immigrants, documented and undocumented, and even putting aside the huge cultural adjustments.

We're biased in tech because we see H1-B visa holders living a comfortable life, even with lower wages. However, this is an outlier in current, and certainly prior, immigrant stories. Immigrating to a new country is downright hard. Many times it's unskilled, but also, at least in the Western countries, it's an issue of unrecognized skills that makes things difficult. My father had an EE degree and certifications from his home country, but the US, where we immigrated, didn't recognize them. He had to work in lower skilled jobs in electronics for years because of this.

I remember going can scavenging with him to supplement household income. It was a decent way to put food on the table back in the early 80's.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#339

Post by hunterb123 »

valarauko wrote: post #327
hunterb123 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing I said indicated the immigrants were rich or poor, the majority are poor though. My point was if there's a nicer system than the US, immigrants will be flocking there too. Luckily we have numbers on the rates of which people immigrate to which countries, and the average wages of citizens of those countries. > Indian-Americans are the richest ethnic minority in America because migrating from India pretty much…

> Plenty of lower class Indian immigrants pool their money for taxi medallions, convenient stores, hotels, trucks, etc. to get a business going. Are there many "lower class Indian immigrants" who arrived in the past 30 years? The immigration system since the 90s has raised the barrier for Indians so high that the idea of 'lower class Indian immigrants' seems difficult to parse. I disagree with the assertion that Indi…

Yes. There are many lower class immigrants period and there's many jobs in which they work.

Uber driving, trucking, convenient stores, and many more.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#340

Post by csunbird »

lampe3 wrote: post #109
mschuster91 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An investment in capability that benefitted basically no one. There is a benefit: You rarely find plastic bottles and beer cans in the environment any more.

Really? I live in Hamburg, Germany. The amount of broken glass bottles is amazing... I lived in Hamburg for almost 30 years, but the city was never dirtier than it is right now.

Same in Berlin, I had to replace my bike's tires more than once.

Replying to sibling comment: The incentive is to not break the bottle, but return it instead.

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