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What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

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Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#211

Post by erikerikson »

ng12 wrote: post #204
lr4444lr wrote: post #144

If you are $120k a year SE and play your cards right, you can sometimes maneuver into a situation where your coworkers aren’t just competent-on-average but actively bright, sometimes brilliant people. At $35k, usually you are trying to identify the one other person in the office who also got unlucky so you can be friends with someone who isn’t getting remarried a month after their fourth divorce. This can't be unders…

This reeks. There are a lot of good, honest, hardworking people out there without Bachelor's degrees.

Agreed. And I've also been a part of such systems where the defection on every person's part created a terrible environment over the very smallest of stakes. Most of my favorite people are those you reference but it doesn't make how bad it can get go away and I read the GP as indicating some rather than all.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#212

Post by [deleted] »

winnit wrote: post #192
bglazer wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you advocating for ethno-nationalism?

I would prefer to think he's suggesting that diversity is a representation of cultural background, rather than suggesting that between racially different individuals that have had similar life experiences (upbringing, education etc.) there should be segregation. Agree that the cynical view of the role of measures ensuring diversity in the workplace needs expanding upon though. Perhaps he means that nowadays diversity…

[deleted]

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#213

Post by pempem »

iamdbtoo wrote: post #160
rnikander wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So rent a room and/or don’t live in the best part of the city. That’s what I did near Boston a few years ago. My rent was well under $1000. Do people think they’re entitled to private apartments in the most expensive cities in the world?

Yeah, that's kind of how this country markets itself. Being able to afford a home and a family on a regular worker's pay is literally part of "The American Dream."

I've thought a lot about this, esp as someone who was born here and whose parents immigrated here for the American Dream.

They've done great. We lived in a rural area. It was possible because one of them came highly skilled and solicited to immigrate.

That being said I shudder when I hear "just move to rural blah blah blah". My life was horrible there. I was considered black, egytian, non-english speaking, to come from a family of savages or royalty or witchcraft depending on the speaker.

This whole "move to a rural place" really doesn't seem open to the non-white growing majority. Its certainly nothing like the Californian life I live now where I still cannot afford a home but can enjoy Mexican, Indian, Ethiopian, Korean, and american culture in a form of acceptance that was fully closed to me growing up.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#214

Post by abxytg »

lettergram wrote: post #203
abxytg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynically untrue. Amazon is not even close to bottom of the barrel. And it's clear you haven't paid market rent in a major city since you bought that starter home back in the 90s - 42k is a joke when your rent is close to $2500 and you get no benefits.

> rent is close to $2500 and you get no benefits. You can get a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment where I live in a decent low crime location for $700-$1000. There’s an Amazon wear house up the street. It’s a city >250k people. People around here make $40k on average and still go to sports games, bars, dancing, etc. It depends where you live.

no doubt

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#215

Post by Auracle »

bruce343434 wrote: post #194
hn_neverguess wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever complains about slavery in the US should look up the 996 working hour system in China (spoiler: 72 hours per week). Why compare ourselves to China and not to a place like Argentina or wherever they take mid-day naps during weekdays? Because you don't want to fall behind in the global economic race. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, there are going to be fewer and fewer protections for the loca…

"You can't complain because other people have it worse!"

You can absolutely try and make things better, but most people have very little perspective. Countless times I’ve seen people say things about how they’d never bring a child into the world because of how bad things are now. They mean global warming, Donald Trump, or whatever happens to be in the current news cycle.

We’re living in the very best time to be human so far. It wasn’t long ago that the world was living under the constant threat of global nuclear annihilation, before that two world wars, before that constant illness, famines, and other wars, etc. Long before that, just struggling to get enough food and shelter to survive.

The same goes for current working conditions/life. Some things are worse than 20 years ago but some are better.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#216

Post by lotsofpulp »

tluyben2 wrote: post #210
Spivak wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can’t afford to live in the city where you work then it’s pretty much the definition of “not a living wage.” Like are we really at the point where we’re totally fine with people commuting an hour one way every workday to a shitty minimum wage job instead of just building affordable modest housing reserved for people working in the city.

How? If you can travel back and forth and that makes it work, what is the problem? You can hate it, sure, but, at least where I live, people commute 3+ hours/day to make a nice living while living cheap. What is wrong with that?

The increase in the world’s entropy is not priced into the commuting costs, so it is artificially cheap living. Assuming an inhabitable planet with clean air and water is a goal, then commuting 3 hours would not be cheap.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#217

Post by erikerikson »

dumpsterlid wrote: post #156
TrackerFF wrote: post #16

Worked a wide variety of low-skill, low-pay temp jobs during college. Lots of the people I worked with there were juggling multiple gigs, and were sort of locked into that system of work. By the time I graduated, it was mostly temp firms that handled the recruitment - and FYI, they absolutely follow the "hire fast, fire fast" mantra. So while you could land work the next day, you could just as easily get fired from t…

"And the worst part? These gigs do next to nothing for your resume. I worked with college graduates stuck in such positions, graduates with decent and hard degrees. One year turns into two, two into three, three into five...and before they know it, they've worked these shitty gigs long enough that their degrees start to lose value. But you gotta pay rent each and every month, so what can you do?" Its not only this, i…

...and truth forbid you call it what it is rather than throwing polish on the turd.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#218

Post by abxytg »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #130
abxytg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynically untrue. Amazon is not even close to bottom of the barrel. And it's clear you haven't paid market rent in a major city since you bought that starter home back in the 90s - 42k is a joke when your rent is close to $2500 and you get no benefits.

In order to keep the discussion meaningful, please don't use extreme numbers as typical examples. This just lowers the quality of conversation.

I am anchored at $2500 because I currently pay $1775 / month (just bumped to $1875) for accommodations I moved in to late 2019. To find a similar situation on the open market I would have to pay $2500.

I am surely in an outlier market so your point stands, I'm just speaking from where I sit, not trying to muddy the waters with hyperbole.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#219

Post by micromacrofoot »

3qz wrote: post #168
mrjangles wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how modern work for a lot of jobs has become de facto indentured servitude...The average worker can't afford anything without taking on debt. For people from other countries wondering about the veracity of these claims, let's take an example: The typical shitty job everyone on here complains about is working at an amazon warehouse. This is a job people with no skills take on. They pay 15 USD an hour. In other curren…

> Americans are just so rich they are out of touch with reality. It’s this one. As a Canadian, I can’t take anything they say seriously about their housing “crisis” or cost of living. Almost everything is more expensive in Canada and most jobs pay a lot less, but things are still not really that bad, so I know that the Americans just like to complain. The only way it’s possible for an American to struggle financially…

I think Canada still comes out ahead… in the US:

* high monthly premiums for healthcare with high deductibles (I pay 14k a year with a 5k deductible for each person in my family)

* high medication prices (people often buy drugs from canada)

* 0 maternity leave (15 weeks max in Canada)

* 0 vacation (2-3 weeks in Canada)

* less accessible child care (Canada is working on building out ~$10/day child care, it can easily cost ~$20k a year in the US)

* less affordable college tuition

* higher crime rates, higher incarceration rates

* lower minimum wage (canada’s is nearly double)

* at-will employment, termination without cause or severance (in canada you can be fired easily, but reasonable severance is required)

* reduced access to abortion (significantly in some states as of late)

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#220

Post by erikerikson »

hhlevnjak3 wrote: post #149
weakfish wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Things are worse somewhere else, therefore we shouldn’t improve anything here”

Or put differently, if we can't improve things in a rich society, how do we expect it to improve elsewhere.

Or, perhaps, help offer better options everywhere so that the tide rises?
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