I cannot even recall the last purely political strike (vs one to dispute conditions of work), but respect to Kesko's (big food retailer) warehousing union section!
They announced potentially organising one to defend press freedom today.
It's our PM Sipilä, who presurrised our statefunded national boardcaster Yle to drop a story - sending 17 annoyed e-mails to a journalist, copying her boss, because he got negative citizens' feedback. And the story was dropped.
NB: FI has been number one in press freedom index of Journalists without Borders five years running. And I want us to remain there.
Annoucing this intention has been wonderful in drawing attention to the questionable actions of Sipilä.
First world problems there.
We barely got unions in the US and our president elect is against press freedom and fair elections unless he wins.
The minimum wage is not supposed to support a family; instead, it is meant for teenage workers, college students who are working their way through school, or as temporary work in between more long-term jobs for adults.
Actually, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt fought to get minimim wage passed, it absolutely was intended to be a living wage. Nothing to get you rich, but enough for you to live somewhat comfortably.
I'd encourage you to pay extra attention to the people working min-wage retail and fast food jobs next time you visit one. Count how many teenagers you see. How many elderly. How many people who are mentally disabled. And how many of these people are managers working more than min-wage and how many are hard-working grunts.
As someone who works in the retail industry, the idea that it's a job suited only for teens and college students is just not true. I've worked with single-moms, with retired amy veterans, with many different people across the autism spectrum. People who'd worked at their min-wage jobs for years and were living content enough lives.
Fun fact: at my work, when we conducted a mass hiring event, our instructions from Corporate were to hire no more than two minors. TWO. I can count the number of minors at our store on one hand. Wanna know why? Because companies don't want to hire high school students who have homework, who aren't available five out of seven days a week, who are often inexperienced and who may not even know how to drive yet.
And yet, without fail, the most visitors we had at our hiring booth were parents looking for a job for their teenaged kids. Because they likely think like you: that retail, fast-food, or any min-wage service is just for young adults and students. Ignoring the managers and long-timers who keep the place running and offer direction, often for little more than the same wage.
The whole "minimum wage isn't a living wage" is a myth and it seriously needs to fade out.
One of the biggest problem with minimum wage is that it cuts back on available jobs. Do companies ever cut from the top? No, they cut from the bottom.
For example, if a company has an available budget of $60,000 for hiring employees that year and wants or even needs to have 4 additional employees, and if the minimum wage is $7.50/hr, it can hire 4 full-time employees at roughly $15,000 year (granted $15,000 a year is not a livable wage for supporting a family, but this comes out as temp jobs and part time positions budgeted into 4 full-time positions). Let's say that the minimum wage is suddenly doubled to $15.00/hr. But the company's needs and budgets do not magically change. A good owner may try to take costs out somewhere else, but when you employ thousands or even millions of people and then it is mandated that every low-end position's wage is doubled, there is really only one option: eliminate positions in order to stay afloat.
It's all a moot point anyway. Jobs that require no formal higher education, and thus pay minimum wage, are slowly being phased out by the industry with cheaper replacements, mostly robots and computers. Even retail stores are replacing cash register people with self-serve kiosks. Raising minimum wage only increases the demand for more high-education jobs as companies are required to scramble in order to implement technologies that are cheaper than people to meet their unchanged, existing needs and wants on the same budget. It may have started out differently, but right now the federal government wants to increase minimum wage not because it helps out the "little guy," but because their income tax on people goes up.
The other option companies have in response to increased minimum wage is raising the price of the products they sell. Most companies do this gradually over the course of their product's acceptance anyway, but a sudden increase in minimum wage would probably mean that some companies would make a sudden increase in price on their consumers. Lucky for the government, this also means an increase in sales tax. Overall, an end-user price increase does nothing more than offset the minimum wage that was just implemented. It is no coincidence that states that have higher minimum wage laws also tend to have higher cost of living. This of course adds to inflation, but that's a whole 'nother topic.
The last option companies have is to cut their outrageous high-level salaries or to eliminate their unnecessary top-heavy positions. Some companies do this, and the world is better for it. But most companies do not do this because those decisions are made by the people who have those outrageous salaries and are in those top-heavy positions. Figuring out how to pay for your own multi-million dollar mortgage and fancy cars on a smaller budget is so much harder than making hundreds of low-end, faceless employees figure out how to pay for their rents and mortgages on no income at all.
It's like a never-ending cycle of greed, and the class difference between minimum wagers and CEOs was made even worse by the Bush era. Companies make lots of money and their owners hoard that money greedily. Government, in its supposed nobility, makes a mandate in the form of increased minimum wage that companies share that wealth with the low-end employees. Companies balk and find loopholes around that mandate to share their wealth. Government gets more money for higher taxes on those loopholes, and then starts the whole process over again. Both government and company benefit. Only the people living on minimum wage lose out, because they are still always one step behind the game. Even if they're not unemployed, they may get more money but they have more money going out.
@Nonnahswriter There's just one problem. What about the people who want to work just a little bit, doing something easy? These jobs will be lost if there is a minimum wage set by law, because you won't be willing to pay the minimum wage for some jobs.
@Nonnahswriter There's just one problem. What about the people who want to work just a little bit, doing something easy? These jobs will be lost if there is a minimum wage set by law, because you won't be willing to pay the minimum wage for some jobs.
What do you mean by working "a little bit"? Or "doing something easy"?
Do you mean people who only wish to work a few days a week? I assure you, they won't be in danger. Heck, companies like it if they can get away with giving you four or eight hour weeks. It saves money.
You have to remember that minimum wage isn't just a flat rate; it's based on the hours you work. Even if two people make the same wage--fifteen an hour--if one person is working thirty hours in a week, and the other person works fifteen, guess who's going to be making more money? And guess who is the more expensive employee? Right, the fewer-hours person.
Companies like that. They like being able to pay you for as little as possible while you run their store. Small-hour-workers shouldn't be affected by it; if anything, it's the longer-hour-workers who will see their hours go down to compensate for the higher wage.
But I live in Washington state--one of the highest state min-wages in the country--and I haven't experienced any correlation between my raised wages and my fluctuating hours. They've pretty much stayed the same since I started work at ten an hour and went up to twelve.
Speaking of WA state, we've also got an airport that has voted to increase its minimum wage to fifteen an hour and magically hasn't collapsed, and we just passed legislature to increase our state wage to thirteen an hour. So if anyone's really interested in whether or not increasing the min-wage will cause the collapse of all businesses, feel free to watch my state's economy in the next few years. Assuming D. Turd doesn't screw everything up in the meantime. -_-
The cost of an employee to the employer is a bit more complex than just the living wage. In the UK other 'costs' include pension fund contributions, National Insurance contributions, annual leave, sick leave, maternity/paternity leave etc. Thus companies reduce their wage bill by using 'minimum hours contracts' (where a person is 'employed' but only guaranteed a minimum number of hours work per week - which can be as low as zero, thus making them 'part-time' and not 'full-time') and the 'gig economy' (as exemplified by Uber which claims that their drivers are self-employed and therefore not entitled to any employee benefits whatsoever).
@Nonnahswriter I mean there exist jobs now which are not worth paying 15 an hour for. These jobs will be lost or reduced if such legislation passes. No one is saying "increasing the min-wage will cause the collapse of all businesses" as you say. But it will result in loss of jobs.
@Nonnahswriter I know all too well that people other than the groups I mentioned work minimum wage jobs. I, myself, once worked two such jobs at the same time because circumstances demanded that I do so. If I came across sounding as if I looked down on people who work those sorts of jobs then the miscommunication in my fault.
That being said, the idea that minimum wage is supposed to support a family is the actual myth, or at least wishful thinking. My father graduated high school in 1965. At that time, you could graduate, get an entry-level job somewhere, then work full time and be able to afford the house, the car, a couple of children, etc. because prices for those things were lower. Sadly, what happened in the economy is that the inflationary pressure on prices outpaced the growth in wages--in the last 20 years alone executive-level salaries have tripled while blue collar wages have grown only 20% (after adjusting for inflation) (do I need to cite or does everyone accept my numbers?). In terms of purchasing power, minimum wage workers are significantly more poor than they were when I was a child.
The insidious idea built into the Fight for 15 crowd is that they *want* to limit themselves to minimum wage jobs for the rest of their life. As noted, I have nothing against working retail (in a beauty supply store, of all places, in my case--yes, I *do* know how to apply glaze to hair and I am versed in perms, relaxers, and nail products) but no one should *want* to stay in that sort of job for their entire adult life. Yes, the possibility that one may rise from floor-level employee into a position of lower-level management happens but it doesn't happen as often as people would like for it to.
My campaign against increasing the minimum wage is not to keep people poor but to encourage people to improve their situation through education. The phasing out of some jobs because of this sort of pressure has already begun--at least one fast-food chain, Wendy's, is experimenting with self-order kiosks in some their franchises, which is one less person working a cash register (and the kiosk never takes breaks, never asks for days off, never wants a raise, and doesn't necessitate benefits). Other similar establishments are probably doing the same thing. Yes, there are some jobs which cannot be automated--janitorial positions, another job I have worked and worked gladly when the situation demanded that I do so--but in any job where automation may occur it will occur.
@Mathsorcerer I mostly agree. However, in service jobs automation may not occur even when it could. People like having a person to serve them. However, if we use legislation to price workers too high, the value of this interaction is not high enough to justify hiring a person. This is why I am against this type of legislation.
If CEOs were not paid 138 times the average worker (405 times a minimum wage worker) then they'd be able to afford to pay the workers more and the standard of living would go up for a whole lot of people not just the guy at the top.
How CEO compensation has changed from 1935 to 2005:
Don't places like Germany and Holland and other industrialized nations have safeguards in place against this type of thing?
Don't places like Germany and Holland and other industrialized nations have safeguards in place against this type of thing?
Holland is no country, but Germany too has manager salaries in the millions . Not as obscene like in the US, but still more than an avg. person makes in a lifetime.
Do you want someone who earns a fraction of that, handling enormous sums and risks? I guess that would lead to an incline of embezzlement cases and mismanagement
Nonnahswriter I know all too well that people other than the groups I mentioned work minimum wage jobs. I, myself, once worked two such jobs at the same time because circumstances demanded that I do so. If I came across sounding as if I looked down on people who work those sorts of jobs then the miscommunication in my fault.
That being said, the idea that minimum wage is supposed to support a family is the actual myth, or at least wishful thinking. My father graduated high school in 1965. At that time, you could graduate, get an entry-level job somewhere, then work full time and be able to afford the house, the car, a couple of children, etc. because prices for those things were lower. Sadly, what happened in the economy is that the inflationary pressure on prices outpaced the growth in wages--in the last 20 years alone executive-level salaries have tripled while blue collar wages have grown only 20% (after adjusting for inflation) (do I need to cite or does everyone accept my numbers?). In terms of purchasing power, minimum wage workers are significantly more poor than they were when I was a child.
College also didn't cost an arm and a leg, entry-level jobs didn't require 3+ years of experience in the field to apply, cars didn't have nearly as many electronic gadgets built into them to raise their costs, and--yes--the prices for things were lower. Which is why min-wage needs to go up, to keep up with the changes in society.
The insidious idea built into the Fight for 15 crowd is that they *want* to limit themselves to minimum wage jobs for the rest of their life. As noted, I have nothing against working retail (in a beauty supply store, of all places, in my case--yes, I *do* know how to apply glaze to hair and I am versed in perms, relaxers, and nail products) but no one should *want* to stay in that sort of job for their entire adult life. Yes, the possibility that one may rise from floor-level employee into a position of lower-level management happens but it doesn't happen as often as people would like for it to.
My campaign against increasing the minimum wage is not to keep people poor but to encourage people to improve their situation through education. The phasing out of some jobs because of this sort of pressure has already begun--at least one fast-food chain, Wendy's, is experimenting with self-order kiosks in some their franchises, which is one less person working a cash register (and the kiosk never takes breaks, never asks for days off, never wants a raise, and doesn't necessitate benefits). Other similar establishments are probably doing the same thing. Yes, there are some jobs which cannot be automated--janitorial positions, another job I have worked and worked gladly when the situation demanded that I do so--but in any job where automation may occur it will occur.
No one wants to limit themselves to anything. But how is anyone supposed to afford college if they can't even afford to keep a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, or their car running?
It's a vicious cycle. You don't have the proper education to be paid more than a minimum wage, so you should go to college. But you can't get to college without paying an arm and a leg, so you'd like to get paid more to raise the money to get to college. But you don't have the proper education to be paid more than a minimum wage, so you should go to college. But you can't get to college...
And honestly? A college education doesn't mean squat anymore. Companies want experience. They want to hire someone with the set of skills necessary to do the job. Some people can earn those skills through college courses; others through internships and similar programs. Not to mention, a lot of those jobs that require degrees are so highly competitive, and there's not enough of them to go around. There's a reason so many college graduates are working retail and fast-food after they get out; it's not that they're not qualified, it's that they often can't find the job they were trained for. (And this is all assuming the college student got a degree in something worthwhile like math or science; it's even tougher for people like me who are more artistically-inclined.)
As for the kiosks, technology also comes with its own sort of bugs and costs. Kiosks will require maintenance. They can be hacked. They can be broken. It'll be interesting to see what happens with Wendy's experiment, but I don't think they're the end-all be-all solution some people make them out to be. Grocery stores have already been implementing self-serving check-outs, and I still see plenty of human cashiers working alongside them.
One of the big problems for millenials is that many of us entered the workforce just as the 2009 economic crisis hit and unemployment went up.
Having a 1-year gap in your job history (or 1 year of a low-paying, low-prestige job) is bad for anyone's resume, but it's especially nasty for someone who's only been in the workforce for 1 year.
I cannot even recall the last purely political strike (vs one to dispute conditions of work), but respect to Kesko's (big food retailer) warehousing union section!
They announced potentially organising one to defend press freedom today.
It's our PM Sipilä, who presurrised our statefunded national boardcaster Yle to drop a story - sending 17 annoyed e-mails to a journalist, copying her boss, because he got negative citizens' feedback. And the story was dropped.
NB: FI has been number one in press freedom index of Journalists without Borders five years running. And I want us to remain there.
Annoucing this intention has been wonderful in drawing attention to the questionable actions of Sipilä.
First world problems there.
We barely got unions in the US and our president elect is against press freedom and fair elections unless he wins.
Well, your statement would be true in "internetspeak" if... the US was a so called "third world country" - or a developing nation - but I do not think USA is. And you are dismissing, somehow, a just concern about a country that I love. Any erosion of press freedom is not a "first world prob" to me - but a grave attack on democratic checks n balances, and the civil society.
Limiting right for the labour to organise together and the press to function freely is plain wrong wrong. It does not matter which is the worse or better nation. I reject the race to the top; and the bottom, perso.
It is the Institution, which is the most influential single role in our country. That power and scrutiny both is tied to the Insitituion of PM, not citizen Sipilä who is the prime minister.
The brave journalist in question published those e-mails. Most incriminatingly our PM said: "I see no need for an opposition, with your line of journalism." And: "My faith in you (=public broadcaster Yle) is zero; which makes us even."
Any media should feel free to scrutinize, and if needed critisize, the Institution of the Prime Minister/President/Parliament, and media certainly need not have his or her or its "faith." I'm in revolt with these statements.
I deeply respect Finnish press in general - some of it is to the right, to the left, to the popular - but one can always tell. And I deeply respect our Parliament, and the insitutions of PM and President - which means they needs must be scrutinised. Without fault or favour. So I am with that Union, all the way.
One of the big problems for millenials is that many of us entered the workforce just as the 2009 economic crisis hit and unemployment went up.
Having a 1-year gap in your job history (or 1 year of a low-paying, low-prestige job) is bad for anyone's resume, but it's especially nasty for someone who's only been in the workforce for 1 year.
One of the big problems for millenials is that many of us entered the workforce just as the 2009 economic crisis hit and unemployment went up.
Having a 1-year gap in your job history (or 1 year of a low-paying, low-prestige job) is bad for anyone's resume, but it's especially nasty for someone who's only been in the workforce for 1 year.
When I say "college" I don't mean a name-brand four-year university that even I cannot afford (and I make well above the national average). No, I mean community college, where you can earn computer certifications to open the door to jobs which not only pay more than the minimum wage but can land you at a desk instead of working in a warehouse or a big box retail store. I crunched the numbers for people before and the cost of earning the two entry-level certificates is about $1,500, much of which can be obtain via Federal grants and/or scholarships for low-income students. Grants, not loans--you don't have to pay those back.
I didn't say it was easy to claw one's way up the ladder, only that it is possible.
Even our own two are going to have to live at home while attending the community college for the first two years, after which they have to option of transferring to a larger four-year campus.
I have two Bachelor's of Arts degrees, one for Mathematics and another for Chemistry--incidentally, *never* take four accelerated French courses during only one summer unless you want to spend 6 hours each day in class then have 4 hours of homework each night. I have never used either degree in any job I have ever had. Well, no--I was an actuarial analyst for about a year but that was mostly Excel spreadsheets.
Do you want someone who earns a fraction of that, handling enormous sums and risks?
Yes.
Your average teacher or nurse has both more intelligence and more integrity.
And handle far greater risks. The way things work now, even if a CEO makes horrible decisions and tanks the company, he still gets a huge salary and bonuses.
I come from a poor rural family, even if getting unto Hesinki School of Ecnomics was no worse than having to do as well as prepped children of wealth. I respect Finland for that entrance examination being universal, but it was also about answering technique - I studied earnsetly, and got in first time around, but only just.
But more importnatnly, I remember how hard it was for me to afford a correct interview outfit for the interview that got me the first summer job. My shoes were just a bit too large, and I almost cried of frustration during that half a kilometer walk, because it was so uncomfy, but I had to get there on time.
If you asked me, I'd had preferred to get a prepping course and shoes to fit.
What I want to say: if you have the influence of interviewing someone for a job, and think they look a bit shabby - maybe they are just poor, but qualified and motivated. Once hired, they can afford that outfit.
Maybe ask, but in a way that would allow this person to want to work for you still.
We barely got unions in the US and our president elect is against press freedom and fair elections unless he wins.
Well, your statement would be true in "internetspeak" if... the US was a so called "third world country" - or a developing nation - but I do not think USA is. And you are dismissing, somehow, a just concern about a country that I love. Any erosion of press freedom is not a "first world prob" to me - but a grave attack on democratic checks n balances, and the civil society.
That's the point I was going for that the US is supposedly a first world country but the ship has all but sailed on basic democratic institutions including freedom of the press and free elections.
That's the point I was going for that the US is supposedly a first world country but the ship has all but sailed on basic democratic institutions including freedom of the press and free elections.
As someone telling me that "keeping pants on" is a friendly stance on humans being sexual, it is very hard for me to take a severe infringement of press freedom as "a first world problem."
If you want to change that, telling me so is probably not the first step. Wanting it to change is.
Us Finns meanwhile are not uncertain about press freedom. It must be.
Comments
We barely got unions in the US and our president elect is against press freedom and fair elections unless he wins.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/takingnote/2014/03/07/f-d-r-makes-the-case-for-the-minimum-wage/?referer=
I'd encourage you to pay extra attention to the people working min-wage retail and fast food jobs next time you visit one. Count how many teenagers you see. How many elderly. How many people who are mentally disabled. And how many of these people are managers working more than min-wage and how many are hard-working grunts.
As someone who works in the retail industry, the idea that it's a job suited only for teens and college students is just not true. I've worked with single-moms, with retired amy veterans, with many different people across the autism spectrum. People who'd worked at their min-wage jobs for years and were living content enough lives.
Fun fact: at my work, when we conducted a mass hiring event, our instructions from Corporate were to hire no more than two minors. TWO. I can count the number of minors at our store on one hand. Wanna know why? Because companies don't want to hire high school students who have homework, who aren't available five out of seven days a week, who are often inexperienced and who may not even know how to drive yet.
And yet, without fail, the most visitors we had at our hiring booth were parents looking for a job for their teenaged kids. Because they likely think like you: that retail, fast-food, or any min-wage service is just for young adults and students. Ignoring the managers and long-timers who keep the place running and offer direction, often for little more than the same wage.
The whole "minimum wage isn't a living wage" is a myth and it seriously needs to fade out.
For example, if a company has an available budget of $60,000 for hiring employees that year and wants or even needs to have 4 additional employees, and if the minimum wage is $7.50/hr, it can hire 4 full-time employees at roughly $15,000 year (granted $15,000 a year is not a livable wage for supporting a family, but this comes out as temp jobs and part time positions budgeted into 4 full-time positions).
Let's say that the minimum wage is suddenly doubled to $15.00/hr. But the company's needs and budgets do not magically change. A good owner may try to take costs out somewhere else, but when you employ thousands or even millions of people and then it is mandated that every low-end position's wage is doubled, there is really only one option: eliminate positions in order to stay afloat.
It's all a moot point anyway. Jobs that require no formal higher education, and thus pay minimum wage, are slowly being phased out by the industry with cheaper replacements, mostly robots and computers. Even retail stores are replacing cash register people with self-serve kiosks. Raising minimum wage only increases the demand for more high-education jobs as companies are required to scramble in order to implement technologies that are cheaper than people to meet their unchanged, existing needs and wants on the same budget. It may have started out differently, but right now the federal government wants to increase minimum wage not because it helps out the "little guy," but because their income tax on people goes up.
The other option companies have in response to increased minimum wage is raising the price of the products they sell. Most companies do this gradually over the course of their product's acceptance anyway, but a sudden increase in minimum wage would probably mean that some companies would make a sudden increase in price on their consumers. Lucky for the government, this also means an increase in sales tax. Overall, an end-user price increase does nothing more than offset the minimum wage that was just implemented. It is no coincidence that states that have higher minimum wage laws also tend to have higher cost of living. This of course adds to inflation, but that's a whole 'nother topic.
The last option companies have is to cut their outrageous high-level salaries or to eliminate their unnecessary top-heavy positions. Some companies do this, and the world is better for it. But most companies do not do this because those decisions are made by the people who have those outrageous salaries and are in those top-heavy positions. Figuring out how to pay for your own multi-million dollar mortgage and fancy cars on a smaller budget is so much harder than making hundreds of low-end, faceless employees figure out how to pay for their rents and mortgages on no income at all.
It's like a never-ending cycle of greed, and the class difference between minimum wagers and CEOs was made even worse by the Bush era. Companies make lots of money and their owners hoard that money greedily. Government, in its supposed nobility, makes a mandate in the form of increased minimum wage that companies share that wealth with the low-end employees. Companies balk and find loopholes around that mandate to share their wealth. Government gets more money for higher taxes on those loopholes, and then starts the whole process over again. Both government and company benefit. Only the people living on minimum wage lose out, because they are still always one step behind the game. Even if they're not unemployed, they may get more money but they have more money going out.
Do you mean people who only wish to work a few days a week? I assure you, they won't be in danger. Heck, companies like it if they can get away with giving you four or eight hour weeks. It saves money.
You have to remember that minimum wage isn't just a flat rate; it's based on the hours you work. Even if two people make the same wage--fifteen an hour--if one person is working thirty hours in a week, and the other person works fifteen, guess who's going to be making more money? And guess who is the more expensive employee? Right, the fewer-hours person.
Companies like that. They like being able to pay you for as little as possible while you run their store. Small-hour-workers shouldn't be affected by it; if anything, it's the longer-hour-workers who will see their hours go down to compensate for the higher wage.
But I live in Washington state--one of the highest state min-wages in the country--and I haven't experienced any correlation between my raised wages and my fluctuating hours. They've pretty much stayed the same since I started work at ten an hour and went up to twelve.
Speaking of WA state, we've also got an airport that has voted to increase its minimum wage to fifteen an hour and magically hasn't collapsed, and we just passed legislature to increase our state wage to thirteen an hour. So if anyone's really interested in whether or not increasing the min-wage will cause the collapse of all businesses, feel free to watch my state's economy in the next few years. Assuming D. Turd doesn't screw everything up in the meantime. -_-
That being said, the idea that minimum wage is supposed to support a family is the actual myth, or at least wishful thinking. My father graduated high school in 1965. At that time, you could graduate, get an entry-level job somewhere, then work full time and be able to afford the house, the car, a couple of children, etc. because prices for those things were lower. Sadly, what happened in the economy is that the inflationary pressure on prices outpaced the growth in wages--in the last 20 years alone executive-level salaries have tripled while blue collar wages have grown only 20% (after adjusting for inflation) (do I need to cite or does everyone accept my numbers?). In terms of purchasing power, minimum wage workers are significantly more poor than they were when I was a child.
The insidious idea built into the Fight for 15 crowd is that they *want* to limit themselves to minimum wage jobs for the rest of their life. As noted, I have nothing against working retail (in a beauty supply store, of all places, in my case--yes, I *do* know how to apply glaze to hair and I am versed in perms, relaxers, and nail products) but no one should *want* to stay in that sort of job for their entire adult life. Yes, the possibility that one may rise from floor-level employee into a position of lower-level management happens but it doesn't happen as often as people would like for it to.
My campaign against increasing the minimum wage is not to keep people poor but to encourage people to improve their situation through education. The phasing out of some jobs because of this sort of pressure has already begun--at least one fast-food chain, Wendy's, is experimenting with self-order kiosks in some their franchises, which is one less person working a cash register (and the kiosk never takes breaks, never asks for days off, never wants a raise, and doesn't necessitate benefits). Other similar establishments are probably doing the same thing. Yes, there are some jobs which cannot be automated--janitorial positions, another job I have worked and worked gladly when the situation demanded that I do so--but in any job where automation may occur it will occur.
How CEO compensation has changed from 1935 to 2005:
Don't places like Germany and Holland and other industrialized nations have safeguards in place against this type of thing?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/gambia-election-president-yahya-jammeh-shuts-down-internet-phones-polls-open-a7449371.html
Do you want someone who earns a fraction of that, handling enormous sums and risks? I guess that would lead to an incline of embezzlement cases and mismanagement
Your average teacher or nurse has both more intelligence and more integrity.
It's a vicious cycle. You don't have the proper education to be paid more than a minimum wage, so you should go to college. But you can't get to college without paying an arm and a leg, so you'd like to get paid more to raise the money to get to college. But you don't have the proper education to be paid more than a minimum wage, so you should go to college. But you can't get to college...
And honestly? A college education doesn't mean squat anymore. Companies want experience. They want to hire someone with the set of skills necessary to do the job. Some people can earn those skills through college courses; others through internships and similar programs. Not to mention, a lot of those jobs that require degrees are so highly competitive, and there's not enough of them to go around. There's a reason so many college graduates are working retail and fast-food after they get out; it's not that they're not qualified, it's that they often can't find the job they were trained for. (And this is all assuming the college student got a degree in something worthwhile like math or science; it's even tougher for people like me who are more artistically-inclined.)
As for the kiosks, technology also comes with its own sort of bugs and costs. Kiosks will require maintenance. They can be hacked. They can be broken. It'll be interesting to see what happens with Wendy's experiment, but I don't think they're the end-all be-all solution some people make them out to be. Grocery stores have already been implementing self-serving check-outs, and I still see plenty of human cashiers working alongside them.
Having a 1-year gap in your job history (or 1 year of a low-paying, low-prestige job) is bad for anyone's resume, but it's especially nasty for someone who's only been in the workforce for 1 year.
Well, your statement would be true in "internetspeak" if... the US was a so called "third world country" - or a developing nation - but I do not think USA is. And you are dismissing, somehow, a just concern about a country that I love. Any erosion of press freedom is not a "first world prob" to me - but a grave attack on democratic checks n balances, and the civil society.
Limiting right for the labour to organise together and the press to function freely is plain wrong wrong. It does not matter which is the worse or better nation. I reject the race to the top; and the bottom, perso.
It is the Institution, which is the most influential single role in our country. That power and scrutiny both is tied to the Insitituion of PM, not citizen Sipilä who is the prime minister.
The brave journalist in question published those e-mails. Most incriminatingly our PM said: "I see no need for an opposition, with your line of journalism." And: "My faith in you (=public broadcaster Yle) is zero; which makes us even."
Any media should feel free to scrutinize, and if needed critisize, the Institution of the Prime Minister/President/Parliament, and media certainly need not have his or her or its "faith." I'm in revolt with these statements.
I deeply respect Finnish press in general - some of it is to the right, to the left, to the popular - but one can always tell. And I deeply respect our Parliament, and the insitutions of PM and President - which means they needs must be scrutinised. Without fault or favour. So I am with that Union, all the way.
I agree we should not hijack the Castro thread, even if I wonder which quarter will be nuanced when we leave. Maybe Castro never was, so there.
Do read of my point there of being consoled by a milanese. It mattered a lot to me then, even so today.
Limping but not broken, and someday we will heal.
I didn't say it was easy to claw one's way up the ladder, only that it is possible.
Even our own two are going to have to live at home while attending the community college for the first two years, after which they have to option of transferring to a larger four-year campus.
I have two Bachelor's of Arts degrees, one for Mathematics and another for Chemistry--incidentally, *never* take four accelerated French courses during only one summer unless you want to spend 6 hours each day in class then have 4 hours of homework each night. I have never used either degree in any job I have ever had. Well, no--I was an actuarial analyst for about a year but that was mostly Excel spreadsheets.
But more importnatnly, I remember how hard it was for me to afford a correct interview outfit for the interview that got me the first summer job. My shoes were just a bit too large, and I almost cried of frustration during that half a kilometer walk, because it was so uncomfy, but I had to get there on time.
If you asked me, I'd had preferred to get a prepping course and shoes to fit.
If you believe the media, I was almost lazy.
Maybe ask, but in a way that would allow this person to want to work for you still.
If you want to change that, telling me so is probably not the first step. Wanting it to change is.
Us Finns meanwhile are not uncertain about press freedom. It must be.