Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums
Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Thread (6 Viewers)
- Thread starter JohnnyU
- Start date
Summer Wheat
Footballguy
Free market means that the best Fast Food employees should go apply to work at In and Out. Leave the below average ones to McDonalds, Taco Bell and Arbys.
Costco pays around 20 an hour, Sams Club pays around 10-12 an hour. If I am a good employee at Sams I am applying at Costco.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
parasaurolophus
Footballguy
rockaction
Footballguy
A free market doesn't include a wage floor, actually, and I can't believe nobody has seen fit to correct you on this. A free market includes the supply of labor freely hired and moving without a floor attached to their condition of employment.
That you see an intervention into the market as beneficial while touting the price of a free market cheeseburger in a similar free market means you're not grasping the concept of prices and inputs here.
Last edited by a moderator:
Then you're not worth as much so you're probably in the appropriate place. Which points to another problem with Denmark's system. Their wages are negotiated with a union so everyone at McDonald's gets paid the same regardless of whether they are a good or bad employee.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
I don't think that it's a "problem" that their bad employees have to be paid a decent wage. Being a bad employee at McDonald's shouldn't consign you to a life of misery.
shadrap
Footballguy
Summer Wheat
Footballguy
quick-hands
Footballguy
Hot Diggity Dog
Footballguy
Maybe get some motivation to become a good employee? McDonald's or any other employer shouldn't be forced to keep bad employees.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
Rich Conway
Footballguy
Hot Diggity Dog
Footballguy
Depending on how bad they are in comparison to a basic level of competence, either fired or paid less.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
FairWarning
Footballguy
I laugh when people use big chains as the benchmark for a livable wage. How about the small independent who has 3-4 employees? These are the businesses affected more than some regional or national chain.
Last edited by a moderator:
Hot Diggity Dog
Footballguy
Well hopefully they realize being a bad employee is a bad thing and whatever they do in life requires a certain basic level of competency for it to succeed. And their next job they do work harder/smarter/better.
Summer Wheat
Footballguy
You can answer that. If you owned a company or managed a business and had a couple of bad employees what would you do?
Last edited by a moderator:
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
What if they never become a good employee? Then we're all good with homelessness and starvation?
FairWarning
Footballguy
These people don’t care. Right now these people are waiting for their tax return, their $1400 stimulus, and the unemployment they the extra $400. They are not looking for anything until the money is cut off.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
I'm talking about public policies of our government, not the personnel decisions of individual business owners.
FairWarning
Footballguy
What if you’re a good employee and making the same as a bad employee because it’s government mandated?
Last edited by a moderator:
Summer Wheat
Footballguy
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
NorvilleBarnes
Footballguy
FairWarning
Footballguy
Lol If I value your work and replaceability at $10 but the government says $15 because you need to pay the cable bill, I guess the government knows how to run my business better.
Cowboysfan8
Footballguy
I say the taxpayers should be on the hook for everything they need in life
Summer Wheat
Footballguy
The term should not be a bad employee but an employee who cares or does not care.
There can be so called "bad" employees that are really trying to improve and do the right things. That are on time, put in the effort to learn and grow but are struggling at first. Those types almost always turn into good employees and are keepers as they care are striving to improve themselves.
Then there are employees that are chronically late, high absenteeism, non caring about shoddy performance, no desire to improve. Those are actually bad employees and then you need to cut bait for the betterment of the rest of the crew. Then hopefully that will be a wake up call for them.
Last edited by a moderator:
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
My judgment of your worth as a person isn't tied very closely to your ability to flip burgers. I think merely being a human should entitle you to certain basic needs in life. There is sufficient wealth in the United States for that to happen for every person in the United States. We've just decided that if you managed to start a successful business you are worth billions of dollars but if you are bad at flipping burgers you deserve a life of poverty and squalor.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
Summer Wheat
Footballguy
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
Sorry, maybe I should lay out my views more plainly.:
1) I think the United States needs to greatly improve its social safety net, either through a UBI and Medicare-for -All or through expansion of the types of programs we already have. I think that, assuming we have the ability to do so, the government should assure that every person can at the very least have shelter and food and education and healthcare. I view this as a moral issue.
2) To the extent that politicians are unwilling to expand the social safety net to provide that sort of life for all its citizens, we should raise the minimum wage so at least all of the employed people in the U.S. can afford those basic necessities. We still would have to deal with the unemployed people, but at least those people aren't in the situation where they are both working AND unable to afford basic necessities. If I'm gonna be poor at least I can have some extra free time.
Hov34
Eephus's Great Great Great Love Child
So, what do you want to do with them? Oh, and who is to pay for what you want to do?
Rich Conway
Footballguy
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
I don't think I've been very secretive about my desire that we tax wealthy people more and use that money to help poor people.
Hov34
Eephus's Great Great Great Love Child
Hot Diggity Dog
Footballguy
Lol at poverty and squalor. Americans in general need a lesson both of conditions in the world today and in the past. A person making $30,000 in America lives better and has more then 90% of people in the world. If you look at human history your in the top 1 percent easily. That we don't, as a society, get on our knees and thank whatever God you pray to that you have been blessed to live on this time and place is really unappreciative. The system of government, the personal ideals, the societal values that got us here should be praised and duplicated if we want to keep it. We aren't just lucky that we are a large country with access to raw materials. If that were true China and Russia should be close to us but aren't in terms of per captia income to this day.
And people don't just "manage" to become billionaires. They are usually hyper examples of hard work and intelligent behavior and some skill. They are the reason we have so much wealth for you to want to spread around. One of the core values of that wealth generation is an expectation of competency in the product or service provided. No one will buy a car that doesn't run or a burger that consistently taste terrible unless forced to. If we take that expectation of competency away we are headed down a path of true poverty ourselves.
Rich Conway
Footballguy
$30K = $15/hour
If that's your threshold, then it seems you are in favor of a $15/hour minimum wage?
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
Hot Diggity Dog
Footballguy
Exactly exactly. And trust me I know what poverty is in America. Neither of my parents graduated from high school. My entire childhood good years meant we were in the lower middle income bracket. I never lived in squalor. l have a huge family, fathers side had 10 kids, moms side 6. Of my 16 aunts and uncles maybe 4 were considered middle class income. 4 different ones destroyed themselves and their families with alcohol and being or marrying criminals. The rest were lower middle income families or less. My first cousin my age, early 50s died this week, him and his brother have a spent a good part of their lives in Federal prison. They did everything from drug running and gun smuggling. When my grandfather died I got two small ceramic figurines that had been my grandmother's and i found an excuse to give my parents several hundred dollars to bury my grandfather so they didn't go into debt themselves because most of my Aunts and Uncles had zero to give for it and my Grandfather had the clothes on his back when he died. Myself I have been married and had two kids under the age of 4 and made $28,000 and $32,000 in back to back years.fatguyinalittlecoat said:
You can believe it or not, and i know millions of Americans live the same life i did every day. Trust me I know. But i wouldn't think of spinning the wheel of fate again and take a chance i would ever be born somewhere else in place or time. My life has been, materially, a blessing. I have never lived in squalor. I have eaten a lot of mac and cheese, a lot of ramen, a lot of sausage, and homegrown vegetables but i have never been hungry.
Get out of the bubble we live in in America. We fight over covid 19 vaccinations and how "slow" it is when polio is still a thing in parts of the world. My goodness take a step back and marvel at how well and how much we have. Clearly we have different definitions of the words poverty and squalor if you think some vast percetage of Americans live in it.
Hot Diggity Dog
Footballguy
Possibly, if you use my standard though $20,000 a year still puts you in a high percentage of income world wide. I do believe in a minimum wage, the level is a bit more of a gray area. I get UBI, and the value it may have. A day may come when automation displaces vast amounts of people from jobs they currently have. I dont have answers to all the questions that go with that problem but my experiences in the world i don't think handing out money and material things for "free" is going to be a wise policy because the effect it will have on people, at least not without some other change in human thought processes.Rich Conway said:
Sand
Footballguy
True - her story is similar in tone and exaggeration to Hillary's recounting of sniper fire in Bosnia.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
Thanks for your post. I don't like to address personal anecdotes because of course I don't know your family's situation like you do. I guess I would just make a few points in response:
1) I don't think that a "vast percentage" of Americans live in poverty and squalor, but I do think that there are a lot of Americans that have very difficult lives that could be made significantly better by redistributing wealth, income and opportunity from the wealthy to the poor.
2) I think that the fact that current Americans have more purchasing power than they used to, and more than citizens of many other countries, does not mean we should say "that's enough for them." I think we can do a lot better. The citizens of America as a whole have far more resources to invest than do a lot of other countries. In some countries, there is no realistic way to alleviate these problems in the short term. That isn't true of America, we're not like those countries.
3) And I often think that looking purely at economic numbers can obscure the amount of suffering that current Americans feel compared even to people in other countries that may lack material wealth. Those numbers often don't capture a lot of the things that make us happy as people but are systematically stripped away from poor people in the United States -- dignity, autonomy, leisure time, community, etc. Just because the American poor have big screen TVs doesn't mean that their lives are necessarily better than someone in another place that has fewer material possessions.
4) Without commenting specifically on anyone in your family, I think that people with limited opportunities are more likely to suffer from alcoholism and other substance abuse/mental health issues. They are also more likely to engage in criminal behavior. They're more likely to spend time in prison. They're more likely to die young. While none of these things are entirely preventable, we can do a lot of things to mitigate them if we're willing to use this country's great wealth to address them. But that would require a level of sacrifice from wealthy people that we are unwilling to impose on them. I think that's a shame.
Hot Diggity Dog
Footballguy
To your points
1. My verbage is bad, my way thinking say 20% would be vast, 20% of 350 million is 60 million plus people, a vast number by my thinking but yes it is not vast in the sense of a majority of people in America. But still a large number that is not inconsequential.
2. My objection is to the assertion that Americans live below the poverty line live in "poverty and squalor ". And if someone has a lot more wealth than you do they are lucky/greedy/evil/undeserving of it. To me these are tropes meant to fire political passions to be used to agendas like our thread's name sake AOC. I think it is a different discussion to ask if someone should be worth, let's say 100 billion dollars. Maybe maybe not, but the country that produced the billionaire also provides so much material goods and convenience to its poorest citizens people from other countries risk everything to become those poorest citizens. It is an accomplishment we do not appreciate enough.
3. We just have very different perspectives of what dignity is I guess. To me you rob people of their dignity and autonomy when you give them things. I would much rather be the person that knows how to fish than the person that is given a fish everyday. Even if the person next to me catches ten fish a day i still know i can feed myself. That gives me dignity and autonomy. My dignity and autonomy is stolen from me if I have to depend on the government to give me my fish. In that case i am a child again.
For some reason this reminds me of the Eddie Murphy bit in Raw where he is talking about his father at the BBQ at his house. Beyond the jokes there is a basic value Eddies dad is conveying in the bit, this is my house and however humble it maybe if you disrespect it or mock me in it , you will be shown the door. To me that is dignity and autonomy. I will respect you in your house because I recognize the hard work you put into getting it, no matter how humble, and I expect the same back.
As far as leisure time that would have to be proven to me by a study.
As far as communities I am not sure exactly what you mean, gentrification perhaps?
4. Yes more could always be done. Yes there is a debate to be had about how much one person should be worth. BUT things aren't as simple as throwing money at people. Raising the minimum wage to $15 isn't going to change the world and you just might end up where you started in 5 years due to loss of jobs and inflation. And people seem to tap dance around it but part of whatever plan to improve the plight of the poor is changing some of their attitudes and behavoirs.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
I'll concede that "squalor" might not be an apt description of most American poor (and if you look back in the conversation I was using it more as an argumentative device than a description of the state of people's lives today). So I'm happy to withdraw that word and just say that American poor are "suffering." I don't think that should be too controversial.
But I won't concede anything about the second sentence. I truly believe that that luck is by far the most important factor in determining financial status. I'm not trying to fire political passions, I am stating my honest opinion. I do not think that some people "deserve" to live like kings while others have such hardship.
Yup, we're complete opposites on this. I honestly have a hard time seeing how someone can look at the way we treat lower-income workers and say they're being treated "with dignity." Did you read the reports of how employees at meat processing plants were treated at the start of Covid? At least according to some accounts, their lives were treated as completely expendable, managers were literally forcing sick people to come to work in poorly ventilated facilities and then gambling on which employees would get sick. Lately I've been reading a bunch of articles about what it's like to work in an Amazon warehouse because of the union fight happening in Alabama. They literally track the location of every single worker in the warehouse every second of the day and keep statistics about exactly how much time an employee is "off task" every day. Every time an employee goes to the bathroom or has a casual conversation with a co-worker it's tracked by the data and is used in work evaluations. And it's not like these sacrifices are made for giant paychecks -- working in a meat processing plant or an Amazon warehouse doesn't pay for much. This is not a dignified way to live in my opinion. The employees lack any power to effectuate change. In my judgment it is much more dignified when people do not have to degrade themselves every single day just so they can feed their kids.
People respond to their environments. In my view the "attitudes and behaviors" of poor people are largely the result of the situations that they've been placed in. In my view the best way to change the plight of the poor is to make them not be poor.
psychobillies
Footballguy
Loving this back and forth between Fatguy and Hot diggity. No gotchas, no vitriol, just an honest conversation between two smart guys who see things differently.
Hot Diggity Dog
Footballguy
Having read your posts in the Is Capitalism Good or Bad? thread i have a good idea now why you consider it luck to be wealthy. I would disagree but it is probably better to pursue it there if we want to.
In regards to worker dignity and the examples you brought up. The meat packing plant i remember and it sounds like a criminal situation. I don't know what the resolution was to that situation' whether that be lawsuit or criminal action. In my opinion that is very much a people problem, being cruel and sadistic to your fellow human being isn't exclusive to an employer / employee relationship.
For Amazon, if you have ever worked in a warehouse setting I can understand it from an employers point of view. And no I don't think that is undignified situation. Do you get upset when stores have cameras to make sure people don't steal? Any type of electrictronic surveillance? Photo enforcement of traffic laws? In any case If you don't like it don't go to work for Amazon. there are plenty of 17 dollar an hour jobs out there.
Summer Wheat
Footballguy
After tweeting more than 24 times the last 2 years AOC has been stangely silent on Bidens border crisis and people who are locked in pens. Can we now admit that many of the people in congress and senate on both sides are pretty much hypocrites. Everything now is about politcal gain or loss.
Surge: A sudden powerful forward movement, especially by a crowd or natural force.
AOC: This is not a surge. These are children, and we are not being invaded,” she said on Tuesday. “Which, by the way, is a white supremacist philosophy. The idea that if another is coming in the population, that this is an invasion of who we are.”
Never mind the fact that the term “surge” is a factual way to describe the flood of migrants currently seeking access to the United States. The word simply means that there is a very high volume of people heading to the border. It has nothing to do with white supremacy, nativism, the military, or whatever else Ocasio-Cortez is trying to tie it to.
But at least she’s decided to weigh in on the border crisis. During the Trump administration, she tweeted about the border’s “cages,” “concentration camps,” and “internment camps” more than two dozen times. She posted pictures of herself crying in front of one of these facilities. She, along with many of her Democratic colleagues, used Trump’s “children in cages” to slam his administration’s immigration policy repeatedly. But now, she can’t even be bothered to refer to the border crisis as a surge.
What changed?
The conditions for Guatemalan children haven't. Biden’s migrant detention facilities are up, running and overcrowded . Pictures from inside the centers show thousands of children huddled on concrete floors with access to few resources. Border officials expect more mass detentions to continue over the next few months as they work to get control of the influx.
So, why isn’t Ocasio-Cortez tweeting or up arms about this like she was during the Trump administration? Because this is politics, and Ocasio-Cortez is more than willing to play by Washington's rules.
Surge: A sudden powerful forward movement, especially by a crowd or natural force.
AOC: This is not a surge. These are children, and we are not being invaded,” she said on Tuesday. “Which, by the way, is a white supremacist philosophy. The idea that if another is coming in the population, that this is an invasion of who we are.”
Never mind the fact that the term “surge” is a factual way to describe the flood of migrants currently seeking access to the United States. The word simply means that there is a very high volume of people heading to the border. It has nothing to do with white supremacy, nativism, the military, or whatever else Ocasio-Cortez is trying to tie it to.
But at least she’s decided to weigh in on the border crisis. During the Trump administration, she tweeted about the border’s “cages,” “concentration camps,” and “internment camps” more than two dozen times. She posted pictures of herself crying in front of one of these facilities. She, along with many of her Democratic colleagues, used Trump’s “children in cages” to slam his administration’s immigration policy repeatedly. But now, she can’t even be bothered to refer to the border crisis as a surge.
What changed?
The conditions for Guatemalan children haven't. Biden’s migrant detention facilities are up, running and overcrowded . Pictures from inside the centers show thousands of children huddled on concrete floors with access to few resources. Border officials expect more mass detentions to continue over the next few months as they work to get control of the influx.
So, why isn’t Ocasio-Cortez tweeting or up arms about this like she was during the Trump administration? Because this is politics, and Ocasio-Cortez is more than willing to play by Washington's rules.
Last edited by a moderator:
glvsav37
Footballguy
in other news...water is indeed wet!
I joke but in reality I blame us, the general public who buy into and blindly defend these types of hypocrisy on both sides. If we could actually wake up and stop fighting each other, we would realize that the dude next to you is not the enemy and we can focus our attention toward Washington and getting them in line.
supermike80
Footballguy
Similar threads
