Okay! Here I am with nothing in particular to report. I got a new job....delivering Chinese. I may have another job....a low paying dental sculpture technician job. I'll know about the tech job next week. It'll be a lot less pay than the exciting, danger-filled world of derivery, but will provide boring benefits and safety. booo!
Actually, my main problem with this dental lab is its tendency to hire skilled labor for lousy wages. I could go on about this for days. Unfortunately, as I have related before, this is not at all uncommon. It has become way too easy to exploit a larger number of workers. Why am I being offered the same or worse wages that I was offered in college and right after? 16 years later. A friend tells me it is due to the influx of illegals (yep. I said illegals-my wording.)I believe one could also add to them the preponderance of just plain disadvantaged, undereducated documented Amuurican workers. I believe that although that is a factor,(not really an accident that these people exist-business needs someone to exploit) the real problem, in my opinion, is the rampant acceptance of unscrupulous business practice. No one seems to mind the way business conducts its affairs. Wanna cut cost? Offer no benefits, low wages to your skilled workforce and give yourself a raise. Illegal? No. Not yet. Wrong and destructive? Yep. Maintaining our idealized free and fair America involves not military action, but a vigilant, active citizenry.
Why do we tolerate a minimum wage that relegates workers to living below the poverty level? Why do we continue to buy products from companies that exploit their employees and cost this nation billions in government assistance for their underpaid workers? Because we don't give a damn how bad things are for someone else. We just want our DVDs cheap, our food a little less expensive, our clothes at half price. We don't see the correlation between acceptance of poverty for others and our own devaluation. I'd say call your congressman, but chances are he doesn't care either, because he was elected with money from a big business. Next time, try electing a candidate who doesn't cater to business. Yeah. Look for one instead of just accepting whomever is offered as the frontrunner of your party.
Lordy. I could go on and I will, but I have to hurry off to my delivery job. Making enough money to live on is as easy as accepting the possibility of being assaulted or killed while delivering food. God bless the USA.
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Home to the comic Windy City, which is now just a bunch of unnavigable superhero comics pages. Actual Website wouldn't even be fun. But we can talk about it. Say, does anyone read this?
14 comments:
Semi-congrats on the job! (I'll take sweet&sour chicken with pork fried rice, please.)
Why are wages so low? Because the Democrats have turned their back on Union workers. Because the Republicans have turned their back on the working class. It's all about _their_ money.
Wanna force wages lower? Import cheap labor from abroad, and keep 'em undocumented so they won't report your abuses nor demand health care. Replace high-tech workers with H1B wageslaves from abroad. Move the factories overseas to countries where slave labor is legal. Tell the displaced factory workers to re-train for computer jobs! Ha ha!
With everyone working several part-time jobs, who has time to notice that Corrine Brown and Dick Cheney are -censored-?
Let's run the government like a Business! Yeah! Forget about 'services' and all that, focus on the bottom line!
Cut the fat! Be lean and mean! Fire 20 civil service employees and save $20,000 per year each! Replace them with 10 appointed $100,000 per year managers instead! Whoo!
And let's focus on education! No Child Gets Ahead! We need to make sure _all_ 19-year-olds can read at a 2nd grade level! (If they could understand a newspaper article, then they might not vote correctly!)
Gripe gripe gripe.
Be careful out there.
Rob
Oohh, Raaahhhhbb!! (My best Laura Petrie voice)
I knew I could count on you.
Your Sweesowah poak be there in 45minutestohowah! (my best job voice)
Only three-quarters of the world, bhamini? :) Thanks for the pop-in! I like your blog(s).
Tonight, I delivered to several industrial businesses that were fairly teeming with asian and hispanic peoples. They were working 2nd and 3rd shifts. Their children were waiting (bored to tears/sleeping) for them in the lunchrooms, some of them babies being cared for by slightly older siblings. WTF? Bet this doesn't just happen on a Friday night. These kids have to get up and go to school after spending their night in the back of a warehouse, waiting for mom to get off work at 6am to take them there.
Oh, I know. Duh. Well, sorry, but I never got to see this side of Jacksonville until lately. I reckon its been kept better hidden here than the rest of the state.
So, how do you convince illegals to become documented? Is amnesty the answer? I really just don't know anymore.
My gut feeling is to help make their own countries worth living in. Sounds pretty condescending, huh? Well, apparently Mexico, for one, is not safe to live in or fit to make a decent living in. Why else are people literally dying to get here? Anyone out there know how much stake we have in Mexico? If we actually invested in the country, tried some fancy "diplomacy" to help straighten up their obviously corrupt government and law enforcement agencies, help jumpstart their nondrug-based economy, would this help to persuade them to stop risking their lives to come here? My Chinese coworkers are quite emphatic that they wish to go back to China. Things are "too difficult" here. They are here only to make enough money to be set up well once they return home. Well, that's a whole big communist can of worms to open up for another day, but my basic belief is that we have people here in this country, new immigrants that mirror our own heritage, that have to be acknowledged and made part of the system. For their sakes and ours.
Now, how do we do that?
these are difficult problems. i for one can say with certainty that i don't have the answers. but it is a sad state of affairs. in my line of work i see the worst of the worst in the worst of situations. it is just heart breaking. a lot of times it is really hard to feel anything but bad, even for the drug dealers and gang bangers. many of them live in filthy, terrible squallor, and have never known anything but criminality and poverty and they have the choice of pitchin' rock or working at McDonalds. they choose rock a lot of the time. it pays much, much better but the downside is jail or getting shot. oh, man. this is a downer blog post. c'mon Ginny, let's hear about something funny. snakes or cats or something. later y'all.
You were warned :)
I'm sticking with holding American business accountable. That is something we can do. It's not even hard to do. Phone them, write them, don't buy their stuff. First, I gotta find a phone/internet service that doesn't ship out jobs. grr.
I'm sick of the griping from "small" business about not being able to afford these outlandish demands for a living wage or healthcare. If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage, either work for change or you just don't need to be in business.
Next post will be about paperdolls or something.
Laura? [oops, stumble] (my best Dick van Dyke, but it came off more like Chevvy Chase. Need to work on that)
NAFTA was supposed to make things better for Mexico, and it did for a while. Factories closed in the US and moved South of the Border, and some Mexicans made decent wages.
Then it became cheaper to move the factories to China, and now the e.g. textile mills that closed in the Carolinas and opened in Mexico have closed, and the plant equipment shipped to Shanghai. Americans out of work, Mexicans out of work, but hey, boxers are 10 cents cheaper.
And what is it about kids and their loud music nowadays? Why can't we have more songs like, "I'd like to buy a paper doll" by the Mills brothers?
(how's that for changing the topic? :) )
Rob
Great Comics!
I have a question for you. Have you been out of the work force for 16 years raising children? I am a stay at home mom who is working on my journal graphic novel, in my spare time. It is hard with two kids and trying to drawing and have a part time job working with a mortgage broker. I feel that I should stick with the job so I don't feel left behind. At least with working part time I can still be part of the market.
Happy Star Wars Day!
"May the Fourth be with you."
Dear Anon,(nothing to click, so I guess you're not a bot.)
Nope. I'm not a mom and I have been (over)working steadily until this past year.
Good luck with your project and I assume it is best to keep working. You'll certainly have a better social security check later...
Oh, yes.
And Happy Star Wars Day to you, Rob. For me, May 25 is the real Star Wars Day.
OK. I'm like an oldschool geek, so how is it this year is the first I've heard of this? LFL promoting that DVD set, perhaps?
Yes, May 25 is the real "day that takes us through the darkness."
I don't think Mucha Lucas has had anything to do with it; it's more like the Australian "Jedi Census" movement. I first heard about it when looking up May 4th on Wikipedia.
It is funny, though. I guess today is Johnny Walker Scotch day -- May the Fifth be with you.
Y'know, as far as Ep IV goes, there's not much the "special features" added to it. The new special effects aren't much better than the old, and they're sometimes _much_ more obvious and distracting.
Then there's Han vs. Greedo. I shall speak no more of this.
The bit with Han vs. Jabba was odd, since Han was trying to be a tough guy, but _now_ we all _know_ that he's not, because -- I shall speak no more of this.
The only part I would miss from the Episode IV.1 is Luke & Biggs on Yavin IV.
Speaking of Star Spiffs, I heard that Lucas will finally release the theatrical versions, so that guys who really care about that stuff will be able to enjoy them. I am thinking of picking some up for my girlfriend as a gift for her birthday.
Since I have the day off tomorrow, I'll look around the campus and find out where my classes will be held on Tuesday.
I heard that the new DVD set will have both the original and the modified versions.
You sure have one lucky girlfriend!
Well, yeah. That's the set of DVDs I was referring to. Since I'm one of those "guys", I'll think about it, but I still haven't opened the VHS set I got of the unscrewed-with trilogy from like 11 years ago.
Rob, we cannot speak of that scene. It is unholy.
Say, does anyone get the impression that Jake may have a ladyfriend?
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