is it really a surprise we're all depressed?

[Lady Vizsla]

That sounds horrible. Sorry you have to live that way. To be honest, my family is poor but we've always had enough to be happy. My parents work only one job each and my brother and I have both been blessed to obtain enough scholarship money to attend university abroad.

[My Dog Mr. Kitty]

Suicidesoldier#1

My Dog Mr. Kitty

Suicidesoldier#1

My Dog Mr. Kitty

remourleia

from blue to

If the work being done isn't worth a living wage, then it shouldn't necessarily earn a living wage. Forcing a higher wage can make the position impractical and remove it from the market entirely. Some jobs just aren't practical as anything more than supplemental income for someone who isn't dependent on the job for a living...or for people desperate for work.

As for people having options, the jobs are out there. They aren't cushy jobs. They may require moving. They are often not the jobs people want, but they pay more than enough to survive and often pay for whatever training is required.

Then if my work pays me less than I would make on welfare, why should I bother working?

Do you know how much WalMart makes in revenue a year? The CEO takes a huge sum of money, and the workers who make the business run get minimum wage.
You could up all Walmart employees up to 15$ an hour, and the CEO would still be swimming in cash.

I don't think you quite understand how much of an impact bringing everyone up to $15 an hour would make. There's approximately 2.2 million associates working at Walmart. Even assuming only half of them are currently making $10 an hour (which honestly is very very conservative. It's probably closer to all of them, and it's probably a lower number than that), a five dollar an hour increase to half of them, assuming they're working full time (40 hour work week, 50 weeks working), would be an extra $10,000,000,000 a year in employee salaries. The CEO made about $25.6 million this past year, which is nowhere near enough to "still be swimming in cash". And if you took that out of profits, which go towards necessary expansion, bonuses to employees, dividends to stockholders, paying back debts, etc. Walmart would absolutely go out of business. This past year they made $16 billion in profits. They'd absolutely fail if they lost 63% of their profits. And if they increased the costs of their products, which they'd have to do to even have a hope of surviving, they'd lose out to their competition and go out of business. Now you have literally millions and millions of people without jobs who had them earlier

So you see, it isn't as simple as saying to just increase it five dollars (and really, it'd be more than five dollars pretty much everywhere. I just made sure to make my numbers conservative where I don't have concrete numbers)

I can tell you don't understand simple economic or accounting concepts, considering you think large revenues is a bad thing. I think the word you're looking for is profits. And guess what, millions of people own Walmart stock, including many of their employees. And anytime Walmart returns a profit, it helps everyone who owns stock

The one area you might be wrong in though, is that the company makes 476.294 billion dollars a year, total. A 63% decreases in profits could be compensated for with a roughly 2.1% increase in prices of their goods, which is likely acceptable, given how much lower their prices are behind everyone else.

Although it's likely more like 3-4%, since not everyone makes 10 dollars an hour. That doesn't seem too horrible. Maybe if a price floor was set so that no company could compete under that amount, they wouldn't stand a chance of losing profits, although other companies would have trouble with that 5+ dollar hike.

Increasing the prices on all their items would absolutely harm them against their competition. There's a clear stigma against going to walmart, that walmart seems to only break by having lower prices. If those prices are no longer lower, then more people will go to Target. But if Walmart employees are bumped up to $15 an hour, now every other companies employees will be demanding that. And any increase in the prices of things is less money the entire world has to spend, harming the economy, and lowering the standard of living

I'm completely against the idea of the government setting prices of goods in anything but the most extreme circumstances (where the item itself forces a monopoly, like electricity). I don't want a government stepping in and saying I can't buy milk for anything lower than $5, so they can be safe from competition. That's the whole point of a free market, companies fighting each other to give the consumer the best product for the best price. To eliminate that would eliminate any drive to produce better products and to make systems more efficient

But there has to be a limit, somewhere. Else the market would just be crazy, mercenaries could act like hitman, dogs and cats would be living together! It would be terrible.

We're talking about just a tiny few percents though, which walmart is typically WAY cheaper than places such as Target. The quality is usually less, but it depends to be like .66 or half the price of their competitors. Seems like a few percent is manageable. xp

There has to be a limit to what?

We're talking about the government saying "this is as cheap as anything can go". Now you have Walmart (which really isn't as cheap as a lot of people seem to think, Target is really close and Aldi is actually quite a bit cheaper) being forced to raise prices, forcing them to lose business compared to their competition. Now Walmart is having to cut down, fire employees, and/or change their cheap image for something more expensive to match the raise in prices. It'd kill them and make all their employees unemployed

[My Dog Mr. Kitty]

Fifth Trustee

from blue to

remourleia

from blue to

Minimum wage shouldn't necessarily be a living wage. It's a floor for entry level work. If you're trying to survive on minimum wage, the problem isn't the minimum wage or "capitalism."

except when all the jobs are minimum wage.
it's not just walmart that pays minimum wage you know.

Capitalism is where a few greedy ******** take most of the money.

No. Capitalism is just a system of exchanging goods and services. All the money being concentrated in a few hands comes from other issues -- corporations being protected from liability, government favoritism, and the like.

All the jobs? Really? Funny -- my job doesn't seem to be minimum wage.

It's different in small town and rural areas. I live in a small town and the jobs that aren't minimum wage that you can get here are all except for factory work or this one particular call center for mobile phones that we have, which I, thankfully, have a job at. The manager positions and other higher paying positions here have already been comfortably filled.
We're being told that we have to give up, I would say, at least 70% of our lives to live for the last 30%. We don't even ******** know why were here and now I have to succumb to these rules? I don't understand why we're still being held under this game of government and money and imaginary systems.
Call me a tree hugger, but I'd love nothing more than to live off the land in the middle of no where. At least at that point, I'd only have myself to answer to. Capitalism, socialism, do I have to choose? Why do I have to? We've been talking about human rights for a good part of the past century, but no one's realizing how trapped and brainwashed we actually are.

You have every right to say "******** it", buy some dirt cheap land, and try to sustain yourself. But a little hint, even with a minimum wage job, it's a lot harder and a lot less of an enjoyable life living off the land on your own or with a small group of people than it is in modern western society. Life is better today than it ever has been, and that's thanks to capitalism

[My Dog Mr. Kitty]

Senator Armstrong

from blue to

Minimum wage shouldn't necessarily be a living wage. It's a floor for entry level work. If you're trying to survive on minimum wage, the problem isn't the minimum wage or "capitalism."

No, the problem is definitely the minimum wage. It should be livable, especially since so many people without educations (or even some who do given the current job market) can only get minimum wage jobs. Stop acting like our world is the same as it was 50 years ago where you could work over the summer and pay for your school.

There's such a thing as promotions and raises. My uncle started working at JC Penneys as a simple data entry employee in the summer and worked his way up to eventually being one of many vice presidents of the whole company

Sadly for him though, now that he's retired, all his Penneys stock is going down the drain

[ratgirl34]

Have you tried looking for other jobs? If you are 18 and have no criminal record you could go into security. Longer hours, overtime, and depending on the company a bit better than minimum wage and benefits.

Or try going to one of those employment agencies and tell them what you are looking for.

The systems is far from perfect, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to get by. I know a woman who went from not having her highschool education, cleaning hotel rooms, and raising two kids by herself, to having a university degree, and getting a well paying job with benefits.

The resources are out there, you just have to use them.

In the meantime, here is a website on how to make just about anything either free or very cheap. Look up the gardening ideas and start growing your own food. They also have instructions on preserving food.

Activities like gardening are good for relieving the symptoms of depression. And once you get going it can cut back on the cost of groceries. A two-fer.

[X of Castigation]

My Dog Mr. Kitty

Senator Armstrong

from blue to

Minimum wage shouldn't necessarily be a living wage. It's a floor for entry level work. If you're trying to survive on minimum wage, the problem isn't the minimum wage or "capitalism."

No, the problem is definitely the minimum wage. It should be livable, especially since so many people without educations (or even some who do given the current job market) can only get minimum wage jobs. Stop acting like our world is the same as it was 50 years ago where you could work over the summer and pay for your school.

There's such a thing as promotions and raises. My uncle started working at JC Penneys as a simple data entry employee in the summer and worked his way up to eventually being one of many vice presidents of the whole company

Sadly for him though, now that he's retired, all his Penneys stock is going down the drain

Forgetting of course that one still needs to start at minimum wage in those cases. What is one to do in the meantime to avoid starvation, I wonder?

[My Dog Mr. Kitty]

Senator Armstrong

My Dog Mr. Kitty

Senator Armstrong

from blue to

Minimum wage shouldn't necessarily be a living wage. It's a floor for entry level work. If you're trying to survive on minimum wage, the problem isn't the minimum wage or "capitalism."

No, the problem is definitely the minimum wage. It should be livable, especially since so many people without educations (or even some who do given the current job market) can only get minimum wage jobs. Stop acting like our world is the same as it was 50 years ago where you could work over the summer and pay for your school.

There's such a thing as promotions and raises. My uncle started working at JC Penneys as a simple data entry employee in the summer and worked his way up to eventually being one of many vice presidents of the whole company

Sadly for him though, now that he's retired, all his Penneys stock is going down the drain

Forgetting of course that one still needs to start at minimum wage in those cases. What is one to do in the meantime to avoid starvation, I wonder?

Assuming it's impossible for people to house themselves and feed themselves while working full time, which is a huge assumption that I don't exactly believe, there's always federal programs to help people to get on their feet and there's oftentimes friends or family they can stay with for a time to get back on their feet

I think it's more an issue of people not being willing to give up certain comfort items rather than an inability to feed and house yourself on a minimum wage job

[Riviera de la Mancha]

Damn. Sucks to be you I guess.

I am not trying to be flippant. I just have no idea what I am supposed to say in response or even discuss. I can toss out some of the route responses to subjects like this, but I am sure that's either not going to be headed, responded to with some excuse, or just honestly can't help you.

Good luck to you is about the only thing I can think of.

[vegan shrimp kabob]

Keltoi Samurai

remourleia

Hell Rides With GSK

remourleia

Plain Username

remourleia

I remember hearing a statistic 10 years ago that 1/5 people in Canada suffer from mental illness. This was 10 years ago. I'm assuming the rate has gone up since then.

This is a high amount of the population, but, if you think about it, is it really that much of a surprise?

The minimum wage is not inflating with the price of living.
Many people are working 3 jobs and not making enough to pay the rent.
The minimum wage where I live is 11$/hr.
A small, shitty bachelor apartment in my city goes for $750-800.
After taxes, working 40 hours a week at a shitty minimum wage job is only going to get you around $1200 a month.
Your rent is $750; you made $1200. You have $450 left over.
The price of food has skyrocketed as well, to as a single person, not eating out, making my food from scratch, I cannot get away with spending less than $50 a week on food.
Now I have only $350 left over.
My transportation(public transit) costs me $100 a month. I now have $250 left over.
I need a phone in order to work, so now I have $200 left over.

But the thing is, most minimum wage jobs do not offer full-time hours.

So we have people working ridiculous hours, multiple jobs just to afford to survive, and at the end of the day are extremely tired.
So we end up with No time to ourselves, sleep deprivation, and since we're too tired to cook and need to eat more to compensate for lack of sleep and working all the time, we are now eating more garbage pre-made foods like microwave dinners and McDonald's.

So is it really a surprise everyone is depressed?


The problem is Capitalism.

The problem is your view point.

Are you sure?
I have 2 degrees, and the employment counsellor told me I would never be qualified for anythign more than retail customer service.
The sad thing is that jobs that you need education for, such as legal assistant, secretaries, medical assistant, are only paying 12$/hr or less in my area.

To be fair, what did you get your degrees in?

If there's a failure anywhere, I don't place it on capitalism, but rather on the educational paradigms that put down the viability of skilled trades and non-classical academic achievement.

Linguistics/Anthropology for my first, and Law for my second. I am qualified to work as a law clerk or legal assistant with my second program; I don't have the 8-10 year experience to be hired.

Gotta love that decade of experience that you need for an entry-level position anymore.

Where I am, you need five years retail experience within the last five years to work at Walmart, and zero gaps in employment history from the time you're 16, and a two year degree ( it's not strictly speaking mandatory, but with the devaluing of diplomas in the last few decades, an Associates Degree is roughly equivalent to having a GED anymore, in that it's now the bare-minimum required to be seen as not a redneck. )

It also doesn't help, though, that in my area, we offer tax breaks to companies for hiring out-of-state workers, while assessing tax penalties for hiring people who live in certain municipalities in the form of a "user's fee"

The tax breaks to companies hiring foreigners pisses me off.
What goes on is, at least in Canada, the minimum wage for foreigners is less than that of citizens and permanent residents, so they bring in foreigners so they can pay them less for the same work, and then they lie to the foreigners saying the job will get them citizenship. There was a McDonald's doing this(I think somewhere in British Colombia) where the workers were forced to live in specific building, and it was basically a slave camp.

[vegan shrimp kabob]

Riviera de la Mancha

Damn. Sucks to be you I guess.

I am not trying to be flippant. I just have no idea what I am supposed to say in response or even discuss. I can toss out some of the route responses to subjects like this, but I am sure that's either not going to be headed, responded to with some excuse, or just honestly can't help you.

Good luck to you is about the only thing I can think of.

Sucks to be me?
This is not a problem unique to myself.
This is a problem affecting at least 20% of the population.
So sucks to be me? I am one in a billion. There is nothing special about my situation.

[vegan shrimp kabob]

Plain Username

remourleia

Plain Username

remourleia

I remember hearing a statistic 10 years ago that 1/5 people in Canada suffer from mental illness. This was 10 years ago. I'm assuming the rate has gone up since then.

This is a high amount of the population, but, if you think about it, is it really that much of a surprise?

The minimum wage is not inflating with the price of living.
Many people are working 3 jobs and not making enough to pay the rent.
The minimum wage where I live is 11$/hr.
A small, shitty bachelor apartment in my city goes for $750-800.
After taxes, working 40 hours a week at a shitty minimum wage job is only going to get you around $1200 a month.
Your rent is $750; you made $1200. You have $450 left over.
The price of food has skyrocketed as well, to as a single person, not eating out, making my food from scratch, I cannot get away with spending less than $50 a week on food.
Now I have only $350 left over.
My transportation(public transit) costs me $100 a month. I now have $250 left over.
I need a phone in order to work, so now I have $200 left over.

But the thing is, most minimum wage jobs do not offer full-time hours.

So we have people working ridiculous hours, multiple jobs just to afford to survive, and at the end of the day are extremely tired.
So we end up with No time to ourselves, sleep deprivation, and since we're too tired to cook and need to eat more to compensate for lack of sleep and working all the time, we are now eating more garbage pre-made foods like microwave dinners and McDonald's.

So is it really a surprise everyone is depressed?


The problem is Capitalism.

The problem is your view point.

Are you sure?
I have 2 degrees, and the employment counsellor told me I would never be qualified for anythign more than retail customer service.
The sad thing is that jobs that you need education for, such as legal assistant, secretaries, medical assistant, are only paying 12$/hr or less in my area.

Be content with what is. That doesn't mean stop trying, but if you are stuck as a cashier forever learn to be the best cashier and let that be enough.

I used to be a cashier. I didn't hate the actual work much, other than my managers were the spawn of Satan, and blamed me when drunk customers came and did s**t(it was in a bad neighbourhood). They also physically harassed me and other people I worked with. But that aside, the main bad part was that I was making, on a good month, $1250 a month. I lived in a shithole at that time that I paid $750 for. I also had to spend $100 a month on my bus transportation to get me to college and other places. Plus the price of groceries in my neighbourhood at that time was ridiculous, like $25/lb for steak, and, while I am allergic to apples and don't eat them, someone in front of me at the checkout once bought one apple that came to over $3. Hamburger Helper was like $5, and the ground meat to go with it usually was around $13.
Then I needed a phone, because you need a phone to work, and a basic home phone where I live is $40 a month.

[vegan shrimp kabob]

My Dog Mr. Kitty

remourleia

from blue to

Yoshpet

from blue to

Minimum wage shouldn't necessarily be a living wage. It's a floor for entry level work. If you're trying to survive on minimum wage, the problem isn't the minimum wage or "capitalism."

You're assuming these people have options other than working for minimum wage, and in this economy you would be wrong. Many of these people are lucky just to be employed, even if they're underemployed.

All full-time work should be a "living wage", and all willing adults should be able to find full-time work of some form. Anything less is to allow some people to profit from the needlessly low quality of life of another. Can't wait to see who's going to rush in and defend that particular paradigm.

If the work being done isn't worth a living wage, then it shouldn't necessarily earn a living wage. Forcing a higher wage can make the position impractical and remove it from the market entirely. Some jobs just aren't practical as anything more than supplemental income for someone who isn't dependent on the job for a living...or for people desperate for work.

As for people having options, the jobs are out there. They aren't cushy jobs. They may require moving. They are often not the jobs people want, but they pay more than enough to survive and often pay for whatever training is required.

Then if my work pays me less than I would make on welfare, why should I bother working?

Do you know how much WalMart makes in revenue a year? The CEO takes a huge sum of money, and the workers who make the business run get minimum wage.
You could up all Walmart employees up to 15$ an hour, and the CEO would still be swimming in cash.

I don't think you quite understand how much of an impact bringing everyone up to $15 an hour would make. There's approximately 2.2 million associates working at Walmart. Even assuming only half of them are currently making $10 an hour (which honestly is very very conservative. It's probably closer to all of them, and it's probably a lower number than that), a five dollar an hour increase to half of them, assuming they're working full time (40 hour work week, 50 weeks working), would be an extra $10,000,000,000 a year in employee salaries. The CEO made about $25.6 million this past year, which is nowhere near enough to "still be swimming in cash". And if you took that out of profits, which go towards necessary expansion, bonuses to employees, dividends to stockholders, paying back debts, etc. Walmart would absolutely go out of business. This past year they made $16 billion in profits. They'd absolutely fail if they lost 63% of their profits. And if they increased the costs of their products, which they'd have to do to even have a hope of surviving, they'd lose out to their competition and go out of business. Now you have literally millions and millions of people without jobs who had them earlier

So you see, it isn't as simple as saying to just increase it five dollars (and really, it'd be more than five dollars pretty much everywhere. I just made sure to make my numbers conservative where I don't have concrete numbers)

I can tell you don't understand simple economic or accounting concepts, considering you think large revenues is a bad thing. I think the word you're looking for is profits. And guess what, millions of people own Walmart stock, including many of their employees. And anytime Walmart returns a profit, it helps everyone who owns stock

Walmart would not go out of business.
They can raise the price of everything by 15 cents if they need to.

[Riviera de la Mancha]

remourleia

Riviera de la Mancha

Damn. Sucks to be you I guess.

I am not trying to be flippant. I just have no idea what I am supposed to say in response or even discuss. I can toss out some of the route responses to subjects like this, but I am sure that's either not going to be headed, responded to with some excuse, or just honestly can't help you.

Good luck to you is about the only thing I can think of.

Sucks to be me?
This is not a problem unique to myself.
This is a problem affecting at least 20% of the population.
So sucks to be me? I am one in a billion. There is nothing special about my situation.

I never said there was anything special to you. I just said that it sucks to be you because I have no idea what else to say in response for the reasons I stated.

All I can really do is say that it sucks to be you and live in your general area, wherever that is.

[vegan shrimp kabob]

Riviera de la Mancha

remourleia

Riviera de la Mancha

Damn. Sucks to be you I guess.

I am not trying to be flippant. I just have no idea what I am supposed to say in response or even discuss. I can toss out some of the route responses to subjects like this, but I am sure that's either not going to be headed, responded to with some excuse, or just honestly can't help you.

Good luck to you is about the only thing I can think of.

Sucks to be me?
This is not a problem unique to myself.
This is a problem affecting at least 20% of the population.
So sucks to be me? I am one in a billion. There is nothing special about my situation.

I never said there was anything special to you. I just said that it sucks to be you because I have no idea what else to say in response for the reasons I stated.

All I can really do is say that it sucks to be you and live in your general area, wherever that is.

You mean, ALL of North America?

[vegan shrimp kabob]

Suicidesoldier#1

My Dog Mr. Kitty

Suicidesoldier#1

My Dog Mr. Kitty

remourleia

from blue to

If the work being done isn't worth a living wage, then it shouldn't necessarily earn a living wage. Forcing a higher wage can make the position impractical and remove it from the market entirely. Some jobs just aren't practical as anything more than supplemental income for someone who isn't dependent on the job for a living...or for people desperate for work.

As for people having options, the jobs are out there. They aren't cushy jobs. They may require moving. They are often not the jobs people want, but they pay more than enough to survive and often pay for whatever training is required.

Then if my work pays me less than I would make on welfare, why should I bother working?

Do you know how much WalMart makes in revenue a year? The CEO takes a huge sum of money, and the workers who make the business run get minimum wage.
You could up all Walmart employees up to 15$ an hour, and the CEO would still be swimming in cash.

I don't think you quite understand how much of an impact bringing everyone up to $15 an hour would make. There's approximately 2.2 million associates working at Walmart. Even assuming only half of them are currently making $10 an hour (which honestly is very very conservative. It's probably closer to all of them, and it's probably a lower number than that), a five dollar an hour increase to half of them, assuming they're working full time (40 hour work week, 50 weeks working), would be an extra $10,000,000,000 a year in employee salaries. The CEO made about $25.6 million this past year, which is nowhere near enough to "still be swimming in cash". And if you took that out of profits, which go towards necessary expansion, bonuses to employees, dividends to stockholders, paying back debts, etc. Walmart would absolutely go out of business. This past year they made $16 billion in profits. They'd absolutely fail if they lost 63% of their profits. And if they increased the costs of their products, which they'd have to do to even have a hope of surviving, they'd lose out to their competition and go out of business. Now you have literally millions and millions of people without jobs who had them earlier

So you see, it isn't as simple as saying to just increase it five dollars (and really, it'd be more than five dollars pretty much everywhere. I just made sure to make my numbers conservative where I don't have concrete numbers)

I can tell you don't understand simple economic or accounting concepts, considering you think large revenues is a bad thing. I think the word you're looking for is profits. And guess what, millions of people own Walmart stock, including many of their employees. And anytime Walmart returns a profit, it helps everyone who owns stock

The one area you might be wrong in though, is that the company makes 476.294 billion dollars a year, total. A 63% decreases in profits could be compensated for with a roughly 2.1% increase in prices of their goods, which is likely acceptable, given how much lower their prices are behind everyone else.

Although it's likely more like 3-4%, since not everyone makes 10 dollars an hour. That doesn't seem too horrible. Maybe if a price floor was set so that no company could compete under that amount, they wouldn't stand a chance of losing profits, although other companies would have trouble with that 5+ dollar hike.

Increasing the prices on all their items would absolutely harm them against their competition. There's a clear stigma against going to walmart, that walmart seems to only break by having lower prices. If those prices are no longer lower, then more people will go to Target. But if Walmart employees are bumped up to $15 an hour, now every other companies employees will be demanding that. And any increase in the prices of things is less money the entire world has to spend, harming the economy, and lowering the standard of living

I'm completely against the idea of the government setting prices of goods in anything but the most extreme circumstances (where the item itself forces a monopoly, like electricity). I don't want a government stepping in and saying I can't buy milk for anything lower than $5, so they can be safe from competition. That's the whole point of a free market, companies fighting each other to give the consumer the best product for the best price. To eliminate that would eliminate any drive to produce better products and to make systems more efficient

But there has to be a limit, somewhere. Else the market would just be crazy, mercenaries could act like hitman, dogs and cats would be living together! It would be terrible.

We're talking about just a tiny few percents though, which walmart is typically WAY cheaper than places such as Target. The quality is usually less, but it depends to be like .66 or half the price of their competitors. Seems like a few percent is manageable. xp

I live walking distance from both Target and Walmart.
They're actually generally around the same price.
I would rather shop at the Target though, because the Walmart is absolutely disgusting. You walk in and it's crowds of people; it's dirty in there; everything is broken.