$15 Minimum Wage by 2021!

Just off the cuff and searching colleges nearby:

If I went to Georgia Tech again(and this time hopefully I am smart enough not to pick Science as a major). I can expect to pay 14,000$ for School, fees and Tuition. With meals and board they estimate 28000$. I think I could do better than that but that is their estimate. I also am I assuming I don't have the hope scholarship. A smaller school in the area is around 6000$ for Tuition and fees/books.

As the PP pointed out College is not my only avenue to self improvement. I could probably go to a tech school for far cheaper. The point is I have options to do better, I can either sit around and not try because I think it is impossible because there is some cosmic force holding me back, or I can get out there and do it.

This shows the average cost of tuition at various types of institutions between 1976-2007...the inflation is staggering. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp

This shows the average starting salaries and unemployment rates by education level in 2017: https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm

Sure there are exceptions to the salaries (e.g. there are certainly electricians, plumbers, other skilled trade workers that make more than the average high school graduate), but those are exceptions. Degree drift is headed in the direction of more people needing at least a Master's Degree to move up in their careers...it just is what it is. Making enough in a year through working for a full-time college student to afford between $34,000 and $42,000 in tuition, room and board even with some federal aid support is just not realistic. Back in 1990, tuition, room and board together annually was about $7,000 on average...someone would be much more likely to be able to earn enough in a year to pay that.
 
As mentioned by other posters there are other options besides college. I do not agree that a Master's Degree is required. Is it nice to have on a resume.

Making enough in a year through working for a full-time college student to afford between $34,000 and $42,000 in tuition, room and board even with some federal aid support is just not realistic.

I assure you it is realistic and it is being done by thousands of college students every year. It almost sounds like from your arguments that reform is needed more for sky rocketing college tuition costs than it is for the minimum wage. I would probably tend to agree on that count.
 
As mentioned by other posters there are other options besides college. I do not agree that a Master's Degree is required. Is it nice to have on a resume.



I assure you it is realistic and it is being done by thousands of college students every year. It almost sounds like from your arguments that reform is needed more for sky rocketing college tuition costs than it is for the minimum wage. I would probably tend to agree on that count.

I do agree that reform is needed for sky rocketing college tuition costs...the trouble is one of the biggest reasons the costs are skyrocketing is because the support from the states for higher education has plummeted. I stand by that $34,000 - $42,000 a year is not something you can work and pay your way through college at least not without also taking on a huge amount of loan debt. I work in higher ed and with college students every day, so this isn't something my mind is going to be changed on.
 
I assure you it is realistic and it is being done by thousands of college students every year. It almost sounds like from your arguments that reform is needed more for sky rocketing college tuition costs than it is for the minimum wage. I would probably tend to agree on that count.
As a college student I don’t know how I could work full time and go to school full time.

As a note for this thread. I’m not sure anyone is getting anywhere with this discussion. If it continues to go nowhere I will close this thread. This thread is about Disney wages not college tuition and stuff like that.
 


his thread is about Disney wages not college tuition and stuff like that.

I apologize I have been part of this. I'll just say what i said from the start and be content with that.

I think it is great that Disney took it upon themselves to do this, just like I mentioned in the Bring your own straw thread. They decided to make a change that they think will be best for all parties and they went with it. I think it will probably pay dividends with the level of customer service in the years to come.
 
As a college student I don’t know how I could work full time and go to school full time.

As a note for this thread. I’m not sure anyone is getting anywhere with this discussion. If it continues to go nowhere I will close this thread. This thread is about Disney wages not college tuition and stuff like that.

I started working in surgery in 1980 as an ORT full time 3-11 and went to school full time during the day. Granted it took me longer than 4 years to complete but I did it. It was difficult, I got very little sleep. It can be done but it requires an enormous amount of determination. I was very selective in determining my Major to maximize my post graduate employment and potential earnings. The morale of the story is I chose an unconventional path, it was hard. It paid more than minimum wage but dealing with life and death, and unbelievable situations is horrible and educational. The bottom line is I graduated with a worthwhile degree and no debt.
 
It's practically impossible to graduate today without debt if you don't have any assistance from parents. There are exceptions of course for exceptional and gifted people like athletes and high scoring students gaining grants and scholarships. But for the majority of people? Yea, it's impossible for the most part.
 


In the 15 years since I got my degree, the cost of tuition has increased such that one semester now could pay for my entire degree. WHen you compare today and the past for college it is like comparing my ability to lift a 5 pound weight with your ability to lift a one ton weight.

To try to bring this back to Disney, something called Disney aspire popped up in my Facebook feed. Haven’t heard anything about it but it seemed like a good step. The promo stuff sounds like it could be very helpful program but obviously how things work in reality aren’t alway the same.
 
Every time I hear about CM wages on the podcast, I am always shocked at how low they are. I worked in the Disney Store 22 years ago, and the entry pay was £6.85/hour, which was about 3 times what my friends were making in pubs and other stores. According to a couple of sites, this corresponds to roughly £11.50 / $14 US in today’s terms.

This was before there was a minimum wage in the U.K., so they could have paid a lot less. I always remember them being an amazing employer, and I loved my time there. So much is expected of CMs in the Store, but that’s nothing compared to what is expected of CMs in the parks.
 
This thread is about Disney wages not college tuition and stuff like that.

Kind of, but there is also programs at disney starting now to help cast members get a degree or better position. We have apprenticeship programs to learn ride maintenance trades and the collage tuition programs. so while im all for those CMs getting more money to hopefully boost our next negotiations there are ways for people stuck in those lower paying jobs to get out with disney paying the way.
 
Sure there are exceptions to the salaries (e.g. there are certainly electricians, plumbers, other skilled trade workers that make more than the average high school graduate), but those are exceptions. Degree drift is headed in the direction of more people needing at least a Master's Degree to move up in their careers...it just is what it is.

Interesting data. I can see this equating to Disney CM's also being subject to degree drift as resources requirements grow for certain positions; I see it as a corporate continuum. I find it incredibly interesting that Disney has a college tuition program, but have to wonder if that is next in the fiscal chopping block? Or perhaps that cost is packaged into the $15/hr. wage?

Back to your point, I can see that more students will detour out of the financial burden of an "advanced" degree, not being part of a flooded resource pool, and go into the trade sector.
 
Maybe I am weird but I think people who make alot of money work very hard to do that. A CEO became a CEO by hard work. So the reward for being successful in the country is that we tax them more etc etc? Why should they be responsible for us? These CEO's offer many of the jobs in the country.

I just am not a fan of it. I think we live in a culture where successful people are " bad " and the ones who aren't are " good "

Millionaires and Billionaires are " bad " people. No I think they are smart people that deserve to get what they get because they earned it. I wish I was one of them

Its just a weird culture now a days...

Everyone just has to do whatever they can to get ahead in life. Easier said than done though

I used to think like this but after seeing a number of ceo’s and similar executives operate I now think the opposite. A lot of people work hard. There are people getting paid squat who work essential jobs and they are working much harder and risking far more than any ceo. Assuming that because somebody is earning a certain amount they automatically deserve it is imho very naive. Deserve has nothing to do with it. The formula for ceo pay is driven by self justification and based on a combination of luck, ability and the gullibility of others and as the results show the entry standards are still focused almost entirely on white males.
 
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The "choices" that people are capable of making are often made for them from birth. This sounds like an argument made from an elite position of power.

No.

They may be influenced by the circumstances they grow up in but they always have choices. Everyone has access to free public schooling. Money for college is so free flowing you'd be hard pressed to find someone not able to get loans and grants to attend. The biggest difference is that it's usually easier for people with money than those without. Some might have to work their way through college while others don't but that's life, nobody said it was easy.

I've lived on both sides of the fence. I grew up with whatever I wanted and then went through times I worked two full time jobs to support a wife and kids while squeezing in college full time and eating Ramen noodles. I paid for school with loans and grants and still had to do odd jobs in whatever free time I had to make ends meet. I missed a lot of stuff when my kids were little because I had to work. It wasn't fun or easy but it was necessary.

Sure there are some people that for whatever reason, physical, mental or situational, that isn't a possibility but those people are in the very small minority. Most just aren't willing to put in the years of hard work that it takes to be successful. On my 21st birthday, which also happened to be Thanksgiving night, I wasn't out partying and having fun with my friends or at home relaxing with my family, I was pulling a 7pm-7am shift, not because I wanted to but because I made the decision to better my situation and that made it necessary.

I could have taken the easy path. Accepted government assistance, my wife and I have 5 kids so it probably would have been substantial, I could have taken money from the Cherokee nation to help pay for my college, money that I wouldn't have to repay, I could have just worked one job making $6.50/hr (which is what I started at) and sat at home on my days off complaining about how broke I was and how unfair life is. However I'm hard headed and not afraid of working long, hard hours if that's what it takes to get the job done and paying my own way along the way.

The biggest problem is that people just don't have the work ethic it takes to become successful, they think they should be rewarded for just doing the bare minimum. Put in the minimum amount of time required, do whatever they want the rest of the time, but still be paid enough to afford them the life of the upper middle class.

Fast forward to today.... I make more than enough from just one job with the company I've worked with for 21 years (the same one that used to pay me $6.50/hr) to live comfortably. Yet here it is, 4:00 Thanksgiving afternoon, and I'm at work when I could be at home because they pay me a ridiculous amount of money to be here today and tomorrow so I take it. I still work on other stuff on my days off and make more money doing those things than I do working here. I have a friend that owns an accounting firm that makes tons of money and he's often still at work at 10pm at night. I'm friends with a multi-billionaire who owns a major sporting franchise. He's 70 something and he gets up and starts his work day at 4am every day and it often doesn't end until midnight.

The fact is, most people who make a lot of money work for it and put in more hours than people realize. They see them in their nice houses or driving fancy cars and think that they just have it made but don't understand the amount of work that goes into paying for those things so they think that everybody should be able to afford them. What I've found is the main commonality of wealthy people is their work ethic. Not all of them an geniuses or even super smart but they work very hard at what they do and they don't just become successful, they make themselves successful. That work ethic is also what is missing in the majority of the population and why about half the country doesn't make enough money to even pay taxes. I was once part of that majority but I worked myself out of it.

Life is full of choices. The problem is that most people only like to make the easy ones.
 
I used to think like this but after seeing a number of ceo’s and similar executives operate I now think the opposite. A lot of people work hard. There are people getting paid squat who work essential jobs and they are working much harder and risking far more than any ceo. Assuming that because somebody is earning a certain amount they automatically deserve it is imho very naive. Deserve has nothing to do with it. The formula for ceo pay is driven by self justification and based on a combination of luck, ability and the gullibility of others and as the results show the entry standards are still focused almost entirely on white males.

Some of them might not be out there burning the midnight oil now that they've reached the pinnacle but I can pretty much guarantee you they did for a long time to get there. The mediocre don't rise to the top. Those at the top had to outwork and outperform a lot of other people who wanted to get to that same position but failed. Nobody out there wants to promote a failure to one of the top positions of a company for fear of it falling back on them.

That said, in large corporations a lot of positions are redundant, especially in the admin/executive roles, so once people get there there isn't as much work for them to do since it's spread across more people but getting into those positions isn't easy.

Nobody "deserves" anything. A CEO doesn't deserve $10M any more than a guy at McDonalds deserves $15. The difference is that the CEO worked to get to the position that pays $10M. Whether he deserves it or not is irrelevant, that's just what it pays.
 
No.

They may be influenced by the circumstances they grow up in but they always have choices. Everyone has access to free public schooling. Money for college is so free flowing you'd be hard pressed to find someone not able to get loans and grants to attend. The biggest difference is that it's usually easier for people with money than those without. Some might have to work their way through college while others don't but that's life, nobody said it was easy.

I've lived on both sides of the fence. I grew up with whatever I wanted and then went through times I worked two full time jobs to support a wife and kids while squeezing in college full time and eating Ramen noodles. I paid for school with loans and grants and still had to do odd jobs in whatever free time I had to make ends meet. I missed a lot of stuff when my kids were little because I had to work. It wasn't fun or easy but it was necessary.

Sure there are some people that for whatever reason, physical, mental or situational, that isn't a possibility but those people are in the very small minority. Most just aren't willing to put in the years of hard work that it takes to be successful. On my 21st birthday, which also happened to be Thanksgiving night, I wasn't out partying and having fun with my friends or at home relaxing with my family, I was pulling a 7pm-7am shift, not because I wanted to but because I made the decision to better my situation and that made it necessary.

I could have taken the easy path. Accepted government assistance, my wife and I have 5 kids so it probably would have been substantial, I could have taken money from the Cherokee nation to help pay for my college, money that I wouldn't have to repay, I could have just worked one job making $6.50/hr (which is what I started at) and sat at home on my days off complaining about how broke I was and how unfair life is. However I'm hard headed and not afraid of working long, hard hours if that's what it takes to get the job done and paying my own way along the way.

The biggest problem is that people just don't have the work ethic it takes to become successful, they think they should be rewarded for just doing the bare minimum. Put in the minimum amount of time required, do whatever they want the rest of the time, but still be paid enough to afford them the life of the upper middle class.

Fast forward to today.... I make more than enough from just one job with the company I've worked with for 21 years (the same one that used to pay me $6.50/hr) to live comfortably. Yet here it is, 4:00 Thanksgiving afternoon, and I'm at work when I could be at home because they pay me a ridiculous amount of money to be here today and tomorrow so I take it. I still work on other stuff on my days off and make more money doing those things than I do working here. I have a friend that owns an accounting firm that makes tons of money and he's often still at work at 10pm at night. I'm friends with a multi-billionaire who owns a major sporting franchise. He's 70 something and he gets up and starts his work day at 4am every day and it often doesn't end until midnight.

The fact is, most people who make a lot of money work for it and put in more hours than people realize. They see them in their nice houses or driving fancy cars and think that they just have it made but don't understand the amount of work that goes into paying for those things so they think that everybody should be able to afford them. What I've found is the main commonality of wealthy people is their work ethic. Not all of them an geniuses or even super smart but they work very hard at what they do and they don't just become successful, they make themselves successful. That work ethic is also what is missing in the majority of the population and why about half the country doesn't make enough money to even pay taxes. I was once part of that majority but I worked myself out of it.

Life is full of choices. The problem is that most people only like to make the easy ones.

What I’ve found is that it’s common for wealthy people to justify their wealth by extolling their work ethic. While ignoring the millions of people who work their asses off and get paid squat. That includes all the people who protect you, many of the people who heal you, educate you or your kids, and etc. Working hard to make a lot of money is not a hard choice. It’s an easy one. You don’t know what a hard choice actually is.
 
What I’ve found is that it’s common for wealthy people to justify their wealth by extolling their work ethic. While ignoring the millions of people who work their asses off and get paid squat. That includes all the people who protect you, many of the people who heal you, educate you or your kids, and etc. Working hard to make a lot of money is not a hard choice. It’s an easy one. You don’t know what a hard choice actually is.

Ah, but therein lies my point, it's still a choice.

At one point I worked my *** off and got paid squat, I understand how that works. There are trade offs with every job and working hard to one person doesn't mean the same thing to another. I work hard at my jobs but it's not the same kind of working hard as someone digging ditches. You want to talk about the military, they don't get paid much but they have free housing and free food and free lots of other stuff so they could basically save all of the money they make if they wanted to which is more than what the average American has available to save if they wanted. Firemen/paramedics have about 20 days off a month and lots of them use those days off to start other businesses that make more money than they do at their normal job. My sister is a teacher, she started off not getting paid much but she kept teaching and going to school and working hard at her job and now she has her doctorate and makes a lot of money as the director of education at a hospital. The opportunities are there, it's a choice whether someone wants to take advantage of them or not.

Everyone's life hinges on their choices and everyone has an opportunity to succeed. Just because you work hard doesn't mean you're going to be what's considered successful, you have to work hard and make the choices you need to make to better yourself or to attain your goal.

"Working hard to make a lot of money is not a hard choice. It’s an easy one."

If that's true then why doesn't everybody make a lot of money if that's what they want? Working two jobs while going to school full time and only getting a handful of hours of sleep for a few years certainly wasn't an easy choice for me because it was grueling. I certainly wasn't happy much during those times, I was tired. I didn't want my kids in daycare so my wife stayed home and I was the sole income to what turned out to be my wife and I and five kids. That's why twenty something years later, I still work hard. At one point a couple of years ago I worked in some manner every single day for 8 months straight which included a few hours of work on Christmas day. A 100 hour workweek is nothing for me.

It's not bragging or extolling my work ethic, it's explaining what it takes to dig yourself out of the gutter and get on your feet. The world owes you nothing, if you want something then you have to get it yourself. If you sit around thinking that everything is just going to be given to you then you're sorely mistaken because it's not going to happen unless you win the lottery.

I've been at the bottom wondering how I'm going to get money to pay rent. Not eating so that there's money for baby food and diapers. Working on my own car in the parking lot because there's no money for a mechanic. The first car my wife ever had that I bought her after we had been married two or three years cost $500. We lived below the poverty line until I worked us out of it.

The real problem are the people at the top feeling sorry for the poor people and giving them money and taking away their incentive to work hard and better themselves. They are the ones that are keeping them in poverty because humans along with every other animal are inherently lazy. Why work when there's a free place to live and free food to eat and free money to spend on things. It might not be much but it's free and enough to get them by. Instead of inspiring them to work hard and dig themselves out they're instead eternally destined to be poor and dependent upon the government and the taxpayers. It's a perpetual cycle that affects a large part of the population and until that cycle is broken most of those people are never going to rise out of poverty.

The point is, they still have a choice, they just choose the easy road instead of the hard one.
 
BTW...for people who think that some people live in a hopeless situation with no way to get out. Ben Carson was raised in poverty, living on food stamps by a single, illiterate mother but would read books from the library to boost his education and decided to be a doctor after watching them on TV. He went on to become a neurosurgeon and is currently the US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

He made a choice and worked for it. He exploited his opportunities and became extremely successful.
 
BTW...for people who think that some people live in a hopeless situation with no way to get out. Ben Carson was raised in poverty, living on food stamps by a single, illiterate mother but would read books from the library to boost his education and decided to be a doctor after watching them on TV. He went on to become a neurosurgeon and is currently the US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

He made a choice and worked for it. He exploited his opportunities and became extremely successful.

The exception does not make the rule. For every Ben Carson there are hundreds and thousands of people who work their butts off, do everything right, and never make it out of poverty. Read some academic research on the subject instead of referencing anecdotes.
 
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