Why did your classmates take those jobs?
At a glance, I'd bet the people who took jobs in resort towns were young/naive/unaware that it'd be quite expensive to live in these places.
College students who work around their class schedules, and retirees too. Let's get real, people need these jobs, and these jobs can never ever pay a living wage. Although if they stick with this career path at McDonalds, and learn management skills, they can earn a living wage.
McD's type jobs (that would also include lots of retail, etc.) can be successful in two different manners:
- They can provide you with a quick-and-easy paycheck when you're young and still in school, or they can supplement your retirement.
- Or you can look at them as a career. If you're serious about this as a lifelong career, working your way up to a manager position is a realistic goal (even for someone with just a high school diploma).
But as a prime-of-your-life, supporting a family job, you'd better not plan to stay on the cash register! It's just not good planning.
How are you going to pay for that education to become skilled when you are making so little that you can’t make basic ends meet? Take out student loans and then be saddled with insane interest rates and huge monthly payments for the rest of your life? If we expect people to educate themselves, we need to either pay them better so they can afford that education or provide the education them.
That's a fair question, and it has several inter-related answers:
- We need to get out children/students on a career path at a younger age. We as a society have accepted a philosophy that any child/student can be anything, but -- realistically -- that's not true. Few people have the makings to become doctors or engineers, yet right now in my low-level high school classes, quite a few of my students are convinced that they're headed for these careers -- in spite of their sketchy attendance and 1.8 GPAs. If we started shuffling those kids towards trades around the time they started high school, they'd be able to graduate with entry-level skills for those well-paying trade jobs.
- We need to stop telling kids that they should "Do what they love, and they'll never work a day in their lives." Few-few-few people will support themselves with music, for example. Again, we need to funnel kids towards jobs that will actually work for them.
- We offer great vocational classes in the high schools, and our low-middle income kids and middle-income kids flock to them. The lowest-of-the-low (in terms of income and grades) kids eschew these classes, saying manual labor is beneath them. What happens to these kids later? They're only qualified for walk-in-today-work-tomorrow jobs like cashier jobs, and their chance to take those vocational classes for free in high school is gone.
- Years ago kids who were unrealistic in high school ended up in factory jobs, but that's no longer a realistic option in America. We don't have a lot of manufacturing jobs anymore, and they pay very little. This option, essentially, is closed to today's youth.
- If you're out of high school and realize you have no skills, college/debt isn't your only option. Community colleges offer excellent programs for a reasonable price. A single, able-bodied person supporting only himself can pay for a community college program while working 1/2 time, and he can have that certificate/degree in 1-2 years.
- Similarly, the military can be an excellent place to gain training as a young person. Oh, they earn every penny they get, but some of the benefits are life-long. Honestly, looking back on my life, I should have gone into the military right out of high school. I didn't even consider it then, but if I could go back in time, that's the route I'd take.
- Last thought: Teenagers have always been anxious to get out of their parents' house/live on their own. But it's just not smart to rush that move; finish your education wh
- Real last thought: I say this to my students all the time -- If you "get your 20s right", the rest of your financial life is MUCH MORE likely to work out well; whereas, if you goof off, don't get that education soon, take on too much debt or the responsibility of a child too soon, you're likely to "play catch-up" for a long, long time.
The argument that the poor could indeed have a fine enough life if they just stopped buying cell phones, cable TV, entertainment, and whatever else is listed as over-the-top expenditures is coming from such a place of privilege. And it is completely stereotyping and generalizing the lower economic class in our country.
Eh, stereotypes don't come from nowhere -- though I disagree with the "fine enough life". I'd agree with "a better life".
Frequently I see my poorest students (or their families) making financial choices that don't seem to be in their best long-term interest. For example, 100% of my students have smart phones.
Another example: I'm thinking of two sisters I taught last year who missed a week of school because their family lost their apartment -- but the day they came back to school, both had new hairdos, new clothes and their nails were freshly manicured. I think people in these positions are kicked so often that they figure, "I can afford to splurge on this one thing right now, and I will enjoy this thing for the moment." Or they want it to appear that money isn't a problem, even though they're living at the homeless shelter.
I came from rural poverty, and I know what it's like to feel that you never-never-never have anything decent in your life. To be forced to buy all your clothes at Goodwill, to pretend you aren't hungry, that you aren't interested in going to prom, that you don't really want to go on that field trip. It gets really old -- but I got out of that situation because I put all my resources into education, not momentary pleasures.
There is no such thing as unskilled labor. EVERY job requires skills.
Eh, if you mean soft skills/expected of everyone skills like showing up on time, dressing appropriately, etc., yeah, everyone needs to do those things -- but they're more like common sense than skills.
Unskilled labor is something that essentially anyone (excluding the few who are mentally or physically unable) can do with a day or two of training. Running a cash register, keeping a retail store neat and tidy, janitorial work, short order cook. If you can become a functional employee within a week, it's unskilled labor.
Why is teaching a child less "valuable" than throwing a football?
Why is programming some new stupid app eons more valuable than helping the elderly dress and use the bathroom with dignity?
I am a teacher, and while it does require a certain personality type, it is something that MANY people can do -- with the college classes and training. I'd put programming in the same category: you'd have to be math-oriented to go into that field, but MANY people can learn to do it, and FEW will be supremely successful enough to develop the next big app.
Assisting the elderly is something that pretty much anyone could do -- with a day or two of training.
On the other hand, few-few-few of us could be competitive football players -- even if we had all the training in the world.
The more rare your abilities/training, the more the world pays for it. Yes, that leads to huge discrepancies.
In this case, the "American Dream" was to be able to make it into the union factory, work until your body couldn't do it anymore, save some of your earnings, retire with your pension, and feel proud that you and your spouse (also working there) had been able to support your family. No one was aspiring toward expensive fancy vacations, dream houses, flashy material goods. They just wanted to be able to work hard at their 40 hour a week job and do well for the people they loved
I do agree that "The American Dream" has grown to the point that not everyone will achieve it. A low-skilled job will never pay for trips to Hawaii or a second house at the beach; if those are your goals, you really do need more skills.
It's harsh but true. Why would people work hard to attend college (university here in England), go into debt and give up their free time for assignments and part time work to make ends meet, only to be paid the same as someone who doesn't? There has to be some recognition for qualifications and specialised skills (e.g. doctor, nurse, lawyer).
This makes perfect sense to me. When we're talking about give-more-to-everyone, it has to come from somewhere. And if everyone's going to be given more-more-more, it'll have to come from the top earners. Why, then, would people work themselves to the bone, perhaps going into debt to pay for education, and work at harder jobs -- if they aren't going to be rewarded for it?
I agree that when you're talking about the few-few-few CEOs who are receiving the 66 million dollar paychecks, it's hard to fathom, but -- in general -- people who have unique skills and who bring unusual talents to the company should expect to be paid for those talents.
The gist of the article was that even blue collar work in the future is going to require a college education. Maybe the trade schools will evolve to provide a college education so their graduates will be able to compete for manufacturing jobs.
Clarification: The article isn't saying that factories are going to hire college grads to work on conveyor belts in old-fashioned factories. It's saying that those conveyor-belt-type-jobs are disappearing; automation is replacing those workers. Factories will only need people who can build/maintain those machines, and that will require college degrees.
Don't we already see this happening? For example, you can order your food online now -- or on an ipad at Panera. Retail stores are dwindling as more people order online. No-skill jobs are decreasing rapidly.
I think minimum wages would benefit from being tied to the same type of index, because housing is the single largest expense for every working person. In my opinion, students and minor children LIVING WITH THEIR PARENTS (i.e. high school student part time jobs) should be paid a separate, different minimum wage that is more along the lines of what our current minimum wages are at.
Disagree. Say you have two people working side-by-side in a low-to-no-skills job. You want to pay one more because he's an adult/has a child and one less because he's still in high school/lives with his parents? Not many people would be pleased with that arrangement.
You do know that "burger flippers" get training and have skills too, right? It might surprise you, but fast food work is HARD. Not everyone is cut out for it.
You're confusing
skilled work with
hard physical work.
To give a non-burger example, digging ditches with a shovel is hard work, but the vast majority of us are capable of doing it. On the other hand, operating heavy machinery to dig a huge ditch is skilled labor, which requires training.
There's no "indignity" with sharing a house. People do it all the time! It can be an appropriate lifestyle choice. As I mentioned, my DH chose to do this to save money.
Yes. Frugal life choices can make a huge difference in your financial security, especially if you make those choices while you're still young/are building up your finances.
I think what people think is necessary to live has changed to over the past generation. When I think of the cellphone and cable bills, eating out, designer clothes & bags, massages, manicures, daily Starbucks stops, electronics etc that some seem to think are necessities and go in debt to have them, then I understand why people can't get ahead.
I definitely think we as a society have accepted a whole lot of unnecessary things as "necessary".
"Low income" doesn't have a look - poor people are not required to look a certain way in order to "qualify" as poor.
I both agree and disagree with your post.
You've given lots of examples of how a poor person might be able to afford this-or-that luxury, and each is true. So, yes, it's essentially impossible for us to know who's genuinely poor based upon any 30-minute snapshot of his or her life.
On the other hand, all those assumptions -- smart used-clothes shopper, gifted a pizza coupon by friends, etc. -- aren't likely to be
ongoing possibilities. When we're talking about people we know well, we have a better picture of that person's life. I'm thinking about a girl with whom I used to work. She was a single mom, always short on money, constantly trying to borrow money -- yet she drove a new car, brought restaurant left-over boxes for lunch 3-4 days a week and spent more on new clothes in a typical month than I did in a year. When she moved away, she paid movers to pack her things. We earned roughly the same amount, but I feel quite sure I know why she was always broke!
