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Sociologist: Job Insecurity Is the New Normal
Mr.Intel writes: Allison Pugh, professor of Sociology at University of Virginia, and author of The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity, says workers in the U.S. are caught up in a "one-way honor system," in which workers are beholden to employers. She says that the golden era when Americans could get a job, keep it, and expect to retire with an adequate pension are over. JP Morgan Chase has cut 20,000 from its workforce in the past 5 years, last year HP cut 34,000 jobs, and many others have announced layoffs. In this interview Pugh talks about the social effects of this "insecurity culture."
They tookkkurr jeooobs
How about a blast from the past.. "within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital."
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production
Thank you for the blinding flash of the obvious, Ms. Pugh.
Consumers want more product for less money: Greedy.
Companies want higher profit margins off their products: Greedy.
Investors want higher returns on investment: Greedy.
Upper management sees that there is no way to fulfil all of the above and still give themselves huge pay rises without laying off half the riff-raff and making the other half work twice as hard for half as much: Greedy
Cue ever-decreasing circle as consumers earn less and want even more for it, in the hope of compensating for their shrinking earnings, thus repeating the circle. No single tier here is to blame; we ALL are in a more abstract manner. The blame lies squarely with basic human nature and the words "I want".
It's not a surprise really. Right now, unless you happen to live in one of the few states where companies are required to offer you more than simply at-will employment, or you're one of the few people still in a union, you pretty much have few protections against the company deciding to fire you tomorrow, whether in the name of downsizing, outsourcing, or just deciding that they don't want to pay someone with your level of experience instead of getting some fresh undergrad desperate to pay off student loans who'll work for a fraction of your salary.
And yes, as much as people decry unions, and the abuses that comes with unions, that's your answer in terms of balancing the power. One person alone just doesn't have the power, unless they're being hired for an executive/C-level position. Can unions abuse their power? Absolutely, so stay involved, vote in your union elections, make sure your union reps are doing their jobs. It's sometimes easier said than done, but it can be better than the alternative. That's what we had to do the last time things were like this, roughly 100 years or so ago.
The people with unique skills can job hop all they want, collecting big pay bumps as they go. Works both ways. If you do just enough to get by, then yeah, you're always going to be worried your job won't be there, and that you can't compete with people who are always improving.
With no more of this exempt ot bs also X2 ot at 60 hours a week
Fear and Loathing in the Workplace
Soon to be made into a movie, complete with gratuitous nudity & senseless violence.
I tell young people: don't go to college unless you're sure it's what you want, paid for, scholarships, or it's for a degree which will allow you to be well self-employed, like doctor, lawyer, etc. I regret getting a BSEE. It's only useful in working for corporations, and more and more it's useless without certifications, and sometimes certs are worth more than the BS. Be independent of the corporations, or go for CEO (and even they get fired...)
Vote for Bernie
The big corporations have bought enough presidents and members of congress (in BOTH parties) who allow them to violate the rules of the marketplace. We no longer live in the American free market place, we live in a split economy run by cronies. The average person lives in the consumer half, foreign workers live in the producer half, and the big corporations, investor class, and politicians live astride those two halves (enjoying the benefits of each half and dodging the downsides of each half). This is absolutely NOT free market capitalism.
These corporations demand all the protections of the American marketplace (including things like large consistent marketplace, a stable legal system, stable banking system, intellectual property laws that are actually enforced, and more) but then when the natural laws of supply and demand would hurt them (in labor costs) they ship work out of that market or import cheaper workers into it thereby escaping the rules of the marketplace. BOTH parties let them do it in exchange for "campaign contributions".
Do not vote "R" or "D". Vote for the individual, of whatever party and stop letting them destroy the middle class by using "wedge issues" to distract you. They want you to vote R or D to "protect choice" or to "stop abortion", or to "protect marriage equality" or to "preserve traditional marriage" but the reality is that these things are all being decided by judges in courts and the politicians on both sides have no intention of solving any of them (solving them would remove the issue and eliminate a tool for motivating the party base). What is CERTAIN, however, is that most of these politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle will do whatever the wall st investment bankers who fund their campaigns tell them to do (i.e. continue the destruction of the middle class). There is a reason why the establishment candidates of BOTH parties ("->Hillary" and "Jeb!") share so many Wall St banker backers.
You have rather simplistic ideas that are incompatible with the real world.
Except for some of the most stable blue chip companies, corporations are routinely endangered in a global economy.
How would your simpleton ideas have helped Blackberry or Nokia employees?
Many other examples abound including ones mentioned by others.
We interview many people. We ask several questions but the one that kills me is this:
What do do the registers look like when you call a function with a vaule parameter, a pointer and a reference.
Said function return an int.
computer "scientists" are at ZERO.
Electrical engineers have a perfect score.And History majors are a head of computer "scientists" by one.
And this is in Silicon valley.
BTW, Google "engineers" are at zero. They are morons.
I've been working for 25 years to try and beat this system. I hate it. I hate that I can take a corporate job where I'm told what kind of pants to wear, what angle to sit at in my seat, and be given more work than a person can complete in a reasonable timeframe, complete it anyway, and be given even more as a "reward". Alternatively, I can go work for a startup where I have more flexibility, but less security. My "solution" has been to live cheaply. I live in a small paid-off house. I drive paid-off cars. I owe no one any money. I have a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank. I am occasionally tempted to tell the nasty little bastard I work for to go fuck himself, but I haven't given into the temptation. Knowing that I could helps a bit. The thing I hate about it is that it all seems so unnecessary.
A few years ago the line was "Recession? What are you talking about? Everything's great now!"
Now it's changed to "Losing your job in massive layoffs is the new normal! Why question it?! Relax and enjoy your government cheese!"
I treat most employers with the same contempt. They have to earn my loyalty. If more people were like this...
Perhaps it's time for US employees to take a page from the playbook of their Cuban counterparts. In Cuba, the desirability of any job is judged not simply from the wage, which is typically low, but also from what is called the "lucha" or struggle. In this context, it means what and how much can be "liberated" from the workplace and either used directly or converted to cash under the table. Wall street and corporate America aren't honest, so why should we continue to play by their rules? They lie, cheat and steal as a matter of doing business. Maybe we should too.
So when they let you go, you can say you gave it the *ol' college effort*.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
..because I heard they were hiring.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The idea that US workers are "beholden" to employers is ridiculous; it isn't company loyalty that keeps employees with the same employer, it's the cost and difficulty of changing jobs. A big part of why it is so costly and difficult to change jobs is government regulations and government-mandated benefits.
I don't know if this is representative, but I've found that employees who are treated as disposable often treat their jobs at disposable. In other words, job hopping is often at the employee's initiative. They are ready to look for new work the minute their old job feels a bit more insecure, and are ready to jump at a new job if they are offered new benefits. Note that I said benefits, not security. It is assumed that job security does not exist so it is not something that is worthwhile seeking.
The sad thing is that it hurts employers as much as it hurts employees. It costs money to look for new employees. It costs money to vet new employees. It costs money to train new employees. It costs money to terminate employees or have employees resign. It also costs money in lost productivity in the intervening period. It also adds a great deal of risk, since there is no guarantee that the new employee will be of any value or, if they are of value, that they will be a good fit. Yet a lot of businesses don't seem to realize the impact on the bottom line because churn is not broken out when the accounting is done. Rather, it is a bunch of different expenses that fall in different categories -- if they are even recognized as expenses to start with.
and have always had job insecurity. Any security people may have had is false. Even the best companies go through rough spots and even out of businesses. The people who know this are prepared for it, those who aren't get complacent in their comfortable jobs and are usually not able to find comparable work should the need arise and end up losing their homes. All life is change. Those that can adapt to new situations do well.``
Greed is a problem when others are denied their fair share. G. Gekko's psychopathic (but brilliant) speech used positive examples of greed, such as "greed for knowledge", in order to convince his audience that all greed is good.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The private sector has become very good at identifying human wants and monetizing them. Now if they could just figure out how to provide economic stability as a product/service. Even the illusion of stability would improve people's state of mind, and has value.
Oh goodie, someone spouting Karl Marx. What's next? Lennin, Stalin, Mao, Obama? I'll take my chances with free market capitalism over socialism ANY DAY. Name one country, where the people have moved UP in life, that runs under socialism. China doesn't count because the MAJORITY of it's citizens don't live in Hong Kong or Peking (Beijing).
evil lives at the extremes
Wish I had mod points.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Use to be the government have strong job security. The government shutdown has deeply impacted morale. There is STEM-ridge and people are leaving for the private sector. Who can blame them?
So I know that stories are created, but it's not the new norm just because a really small percentage have lost their jobs! Horrible for them yes, absolutely. But that's just another scare story which does not do anything positive or valuable to anyone. Promoting negative articles is for the boys that only get paid to make negative stories, not the open press that don't have to cowtow to "paid for" editors. Who in turn have to answer to someone who want crap like this published as they think it's the only thing that sells. Is this not an open forum which does not have to follow their guidelines?
The US is the most well-suited country on the planet, for pursuing a Job Guarantee as an official and permanent government policy.
What this is, is a government provided jobs program (think 'New Deal Forever', but with a much wider range of potential jobs available - remember, government can afford to hire people to perform almost any kind of socially beneficial roles, the jobs don't have to turn a profit), where people are temporarily employed at the minimum wage, and then workers are gradually re-employed by the private sector, as the private economy improves.
This policy:
1: Helps the private sector recover in economic bad times (through boosting Aggregate-Demand/GDP).
2: Reduces both Public and Private Debt burdens in the medium/long run (by boosting the 'GDP' component of 'Public/Private Debt vs GDP', and providing workers with money to pay down debts)
3: Works against the threat of deflation (when banks are unable to increase the amount of money in the economy through loans, this public spending makes up for that).
4: Provides a more efficient way for preventing excessive inflation (presently, central bank policies for avoiding inflation, involve constricting the economy and increasing unemployment - a Job Guarantee is more efficient, as the central-bank/government can constrict parts of the private economy that are overinflating, flowing workers into the Job Guarantee, where they can be put to work on jobs that put less of a strain on inflation, or e.g. infrastructure jobs which make the economy more efficient and thus less inflationary).
5: This policy can put a permanent end to unemployment - instead of wasting workers potential and letting their skills stagnate through unemployment (as well as suffering the negative health effects of unemployment), this puts them to good use an keeps them sharp.
6: Less job insecurity, as private sector business will have to offer better incentives to lure workers out of the minimum wage Job Guarantee, and no worker will ever be in fear of having no job again due to the Job Guarantee (increasing workers bargaining power, relative to employers).
7: Disability and other serious impairments will no longer be a barrier to having a job, in many (maybe most) cases, as the Job Guarantee would be able to offer almost any kind of work that is socially beneficial. The US already has a Job Guarantee of sorts for disabled folk, though not of the same breadth.
The Chartalist/Modern Money branch of the Post-Keynesian economic school have pioneered this idea, and they have an entire complete policy framework that can be used for implementing this - more people should be learning about this, and demanding that it be implemented.
Aside from a few decades of prosperity following WWII things have been pretty rough for 99% of Americans all along.
Some decades ago, the multinational I worked for was all excited to get us to work like the Japanese, who were so gungho that they gathered before work to sing the company song. We responded that we would gladly do that in return for guaranteed lifetime job security. (Crickets.)
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I have started my software dev career in 1999 just before the techno bubble have bursted. I was working at Nortel Networks at that time. It feels that what is described in this story is pretty much the norm since at least the last 15 years, at least for me.
Move along folks, there is nothing to see here...
Did we really need a sociologist to tell us that job insecurity is the new normal? Did they talk to anyone who works for a living?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Does it really take a Sociologist with a masters degree to state the obvious fact people have actually been living with for the past 30 plus years? Is this some shining light piercing the darkness?
Now where do I start? 1. The "Luxuries" you speak of are pretty much Cell Phones, cable tv / Internet and eating out once a week. These are a drop in the bucket next to the cost of a car/house/college education. Get rid of all the luxuries you want, it won't make up for the 40 years of declining wages while productivity has more or less doubled.
2. I like this one: "learn a practical skill". Reminds me of a neighbor of mine who'd been to night school 3 times and each time seen her new career outsourced. What you really means is "Somehow develop a significantly higher IQ as if by magic so you can get the STEM degree that you couldn't get when you were 18".
3. The working class doesn't get to pick where they live. It's expensive as hell to up and move. You live where you're born and hope for the best. If people could just move somewhere that's better there'd be no 3rd world countries.
4. See Point # 1.
5. See this. Specifically the chorus ("Turning 30, 40, 50 gotta move in with my Parents...").
Fuck the American Dream. It's a bill of goods we've all been sold.
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I arrived at America in the 1970's, and immediately plunged into the job market (Chinatown) because I practically had no money with me
After schooling and so on (paid for with the slave wages I got from working in Chinatown and other places) I 'upgraded' my career into research institutions
After that I was (repeatedly) head-hunted and ended up working in a string of tech companies
None of the places I worked had any of the 'job security' clause in the agreement - and in fact, more than one time I've seen long-time employees being escorted by security guards out of the building, with only an envelop with the pink-slip inside and a cardboard carton of personal belongings cleansed out of the cubicle of that employee
I do not know where the that 'sociologist' got his 'new norm" from, but in the good ol' U. S. of A., I never had any sense of 'job security' since 1970's, at least not until I started my own businesses
Unlike research papers dealing with real science, many of the 'research reports' from those 'sociologists' make no freaking sense whatsoever
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
It is more important to tax these companies more then to make an environment where they can keep employees longer. --Democrats
While I understand your point, in the US at least ERISA laws do protect pensions to a reasonable extent. If you have one already, you generally get to keep it, although it might get frozen. But if you don't have a defined benefit plan, you're not going to get one.
That's as full of bullshit as "if you like your insurance, you can keep it." OP was specifically referring to the major employee-screwing that is converting defined-benefit pensions into a "cash balance" (aka 401k equivalent). Led by IBM http://www.forbes.com/2003/04/16/cz_jn_0416beltway.html, as of 2003 24% of S&P500 firms had stolen pension plans from employees who had already earned one.
Out side of the usa your job is not tied to your Health Care and they don't have to pay for it.
So a professor with academic tenure finally figured out what everyone else knew for over 100 years? Who woulda thunkit. Wecome to the real world professor.
Our parents didn't have to settle for crappy little houses. Why do we have it worse than our parents did? Why are things getting worse, not better?
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There hasn't been "job security" in America for DECADES. This isn't recent phenomenon, you dimwits.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
it was a fascist dictatorship. It didn't even look a little like socialism, let alone communism. It was just a bunch of thugs looting and pillaging. I'm sorry you got caught up in all that, but you've never lived in a socialist society, any more than I (as an American) have lived in a Representational Democracy.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Uber only works when there are lots of drivers who used to have good jobs or who had family that had good jobs. That's because the $15/hr that Uber drivers max out at (if you account for gas & maintenance) isn't enough to buy a new car when the old one starts falling about at 200k miles. Maybe in a country w/o safety regulations, professional drivers insurance and emission standards Uber could work. But again, it all falls apart as soon as Uber stops externalizing it's costs onto either the driver, their family or society at large.
Uber isn't a solution. It's a symptom of a very diseased and dysfunctional system that'll eventually collapse in on itself.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
First, kill off the idea that agency/temporary/PT/third-party work can be a condition for accepting work with any particular entity. Take the toys away that businesses misuse for the primary (if not sole) purpose of dodging benefits laws. They'll have to play by the same rules as the rest of the workforce.
That is, someone could ask for FTE, get it, and not have to settle for dealing with a benefit-dodging third party. That would make secure arrangements the default, and require less secure arrangements to provide a compelling advantage above and beyond the job itself.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The only kind of unions that are going to form are ones that the employer controls or is the primary benefactor - which are staffing firms, contractors, consulting groups, and other third-party types that see the worker as a butcher would see animals in an abattoir.
Try that in any other arrangement, especially in the South, and one does so at their career's own peril.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Your naturalized citizenship betrays you in that respect. It also provides you with an easy "Diversity Candidate" card depending on the company, which seems to have favored you more than merit.
While it was harder to find, it was possible to easily see it well into the 1990's. Seeing it past the dotcom crash was quite hard. Seeing it past 2008 was a PITA. Seeing it past 2013 for non-diverse individuals (both you and myself) is asking for the nigh-impossible.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
In truth, black and white gets us no-where and in order to be successful companies will need to leverage whip-smart contract labor,
Given permatemping, there's just the whip and no real smarts beyond devising something that no person should be able to meet to get a regular job.
Precarious work needs to DIAF.
while building capable internal teams to support their efforts after they have been sent off to their next world-building exercise.
In other words, people that managed to be the token few that weren't permatemped.
Maybe the 'stability' from 1950 to 1980 was the real 'aberration' and the constant changes driven by an influx of new workers is the real American norm
Then do whatever it takes litigatively/legislatively/extrajudicially to bring back stability and make it a epic, royal, and complete PITA to dodge it. After that, make it hard to not hire citizens by making it worth more to hire any citizen FTE's by default.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
JPMorgan added something like 30,000 jobs after 2008 specifically to handle excess defaulted mortgages. Now that the world is back to normal and defaults are at a reasonable rate, eliminating jobs that were temporary to begin with is an alarming cultural shift?
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/jpmorgan-to-scale-back-troubled-mortgage-jobs/
Welcome to the world of being a small business owner, workforce! What it means is that if you want to run your architectural office for 35 years through booms and busts, you might have to take in and feed your family with a nurse's salary, which is less than that of a college engineer's due to salary bias. Sometimes you go out to collect the free-roaming nettle to make a delicious soups and sauces with second grade potatoes.
Over 15 years ago, when I moved from the Midwest to California to start my new career in Silicon Valley, I noticed a pretty dramatic difference from how employers would treat their employees.
Before I got into tech, go back even further for me, 20 years. I had a good old factory job making steel for Detroit. My mentors were guys who have been there for 30 years and had stable jobs. They had free time and money to own RVs or boats and take their family on vacation every year. People who had a job, gave it respect, showed up every day, and did what they were hired to do. A job was stability for your family, and part of your identity, once you had a good job you were expected to keep it until you retire. The people who did well at work tended to like their jobs, the people who hated their jobs tended to not stick around. But overall, the employers treated people right. Of course, this is only after many years of labor unions teaching employers what is required of them. I have no illusion that big wig executives would have gotten to this point on their own without the hard work of unions and the looming fear of strikes. But labor and management had a gentleman's arrangement and it worked pretty well in most industries up into the 90s. Each side got most of what they wanted, and we were able to cooperate and live our respective lives.
Now after leaving the steel mill, I went to the Golden State, to start my real passion: Programming. This was when the job market was still booming, and a young man with no college education but impeccable personal referrals could get his foot in the door and kick off an engineering career. But along the way, I was lured in with the idea that my unvested shares would make me rich, so I worked hard. And as soon as new management moved in, either because the company was succeeding or because it was failing, I would be let go to make way for the new direction (before people started calling it "pivot"). On termination, my shares would evaporate, and I would get my banked PTO(Paid Time Off) and not a penny more, no severance for me. It was up to me to find a new job living off about 4 weeks of vacation pay. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The result, I am afraid of companies succeeding, I update my resume every time we launch a new product. I take the absolute minimum of vacation time to visit aging relatives, because I need that PTO when they eventually let me go.
I am essentially on call at all hours during the week and weekends. I once was taking time with my girlfriend in Santa Cruz to see the sites on a Saturday, I get a call from my boss. There was some problem with a project I was not a part of, but he promised his boss that he would send me in to fix it. Without warning, and without asking me first. I told him "No, I've worked the last two weekends and I'm out of town.", and he used words like "disappointed" and "unacceptable". I actually felt really bad, like I've let them all down. When I returned on Monday, I had a meeting invite on my calendar, with him and a representative from HR. I was being put on 30-day PIP (Performance Improvement Plan). And was given a list of tasks I must complete by then. Little did I know that PIP is a code word for "we're going to fire you, update your resume". I worked my ass off and completed everything, and was informed that my employment was "at will" and they chose to terminate me anyways.
I still work in the Valley as a Software Engineer, I make a good wage at it too. But there is no "me" time, even when I come home every evening, I still take my work home. Because I'm always afraid of losing my job. And because I'm unofficially on call. It wasn't just one bad place, it's a culture that permeates the Valley. And my greatest fear is that this toxic and abusive policy will escape the Valley and be applied to people who are not working professionals or tech workers. When this kind of nasty business starts to be applied to cashiers, factory workers, and just about everyone, then we're all in trouble. And we can go back to the 80s to give
Why does the author think it's a one way system? First, let's get this out of the way:
"the golden era when Americans could get a job, keep it, and expect to retire with an adequate pension are over"
That age ended in the 1960s, or maybe even in the 1950s.
"workers are beholden to employers"
Actually, it goes both ways. In the US, afaik two weeks notice is pretty typical, if you get fired. That surely does lead to insecurity. But it goes both ways: you can also leave your job on two weeks notice. With a bit of accumulated vacation, you could effectively be leaving from one day to the next. If you're an important employee, holding critical responsibilities, that leaves your employer in a really shitty position.
Any company in the US could adopt a different model. Just as an example, in much of Europe, you have to be given three months' notice that your employment will be ending. Would that be better? Do note that this goes both ways: if you are unhappy with your job, you cannot just leave. You must also give three months notice, continuing to do you job, and giving your employer a chance to bring in your replacement and arrange for a smooth transition.
Both models have their advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I prefer the European model - it gives more stability. But it does reduce flexibility and mobility, both for companies and employees.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I am no historian, so lacking perhaps hitorical details, I've always wondered if having women at work, was more about increasing the workforce than thinking that women deserve welfare.
I am now wondering if say neocon's want women back in the kitchen.
Presumably every economist would tell me that minimizing the workforce this way would be terrible in all kinds of ways.
Your parents weren't forced to trade in their genes and their kids for food and basic comforts.
You just got more comforts available. That's all those 4 continents boil down to.
You think you made a choice.
Instead you got pushed to invest into worthless toys (some of which you don't even "own") which will all be raked up and dumped into a landfill once you die.
Cause you bought the lie. Congratulations.
Might wanna plant a tree. It's not your genes but at least it feels like doing something.
BTW, are you living in a war-torn country with a history of genocide?
Cause I do. And what you are describing looks a LOT like the lives of much of my generation.
Only with less travel. We're poor. Luxuries and comforts reflect that.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You are setting up a one dimensional scale from zero to totalitarian.
It is actually a multi-dimensional graph.
You are basically looking at a scaleless shadow of a 3D object and calling it a line.
THEN, you set an arbitrarily determined (i.e. made up, guessed, fake, wrong) middle of your scaleless shadow, and jam a shadow of a completely different 3D system inside.
I.e. An ECONOMIC one. You know... like bartering. Or communism.
It is akin to setting up a scale to describe movement, putting lying down on one end and flying through space at the speed of light on the other, and then deciding that the middle between those two options is a carrot.
Why a carrot? Well, because orange.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The male's dream is to marry a girl child (or 2..).
The rise of two income families changed expense / income dynamics. High income earning units can drive up housing costs and increase the costs of other services. It can also change the vacation and time off dynamic of families with the need to sync work schedules, school schedules and paid time off.
Singles can't live on their own in many places because they are competing with pooled earning couples. Blue collar working families are now at double the disadvantage when looking for housing, child care or other social and physical services.
No we should not return to the past. Yes, we should realize that single parents and single income families have a long term disadvantage. Societies movement away from long term unions around children creates significant financial disadvantages for large portions of the US population.
They actually are full of Somalis.
Another Eurotrash frame with an underpowered engine?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Underpowered engine? C7 Corvettte / 6th Gen Camaro's base V8 LT1's 455hp, 455lb-ft of torque from a Naturally Aspired engine is not underpowered. And the 5th Gen Camaro Z/28 and ZL1 performance trims beat out cars 5x+ its price on Nürburgring, let alone the C7 and C7 Z06 with the same engines.
A couple jobs ago I was chatting with another employee, we were discussing some "ominous signs" such as HR shredding documents like she was preparing for a parade. The topic of "giving notice" came up. The other guy said that if he found a good job somewhere else he'd walk with zero notice.
The manager overheard this and stepped in on the conversation, trying to berate us with "that's not how it's done in business, I expect you to give me at least two weeks' notice if you're going to quit!" I turned to him and said "so, how much notice will you give ME if you're going to lay me off or fire me?" (huff) (huff) (snort) is about all I got back, he couldn't even form words let alone a coherant sentence to respond to that. So I added, "I'll give you as much notice as I believe you'll give me." So rather than answer me, he just stomped away.
I don't think they consider just how much more inconvenient being unemployed is, compared to having to hire someone to replace a single employee that departs unexpectedly. For the boss, it's inconvenient. For the employee, suddenly losing their income, possibly the only income for an entire family, can be devastating. And yet they expect to be provided with notice, while providing none themselves. Sselfish, arrogant, and inconsiderate!
So everyone with a clue began job hunting. I had found new work, it wasn't nearly what I had now, but the writing was on the wall in pretty bold print at this point, so I accepted it. I showed up on a Thursday evening to start my (3rd) shift, and the gal from HR was in the parking lot with her hatch open, handing out unemployment packets. The entire center had been closed, everyone there got laid off that day, no one even was offered a transfer. I found out later that our manager had known this was going to happen for months.
My new job started on Monday. (total time unemployed - two days) Unfortunately, that's how they play the game, so that's how I have to play it too. If they don't like that, they have no one to blame but themselves, I'm just playing by their rules.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
No business wants to shrink, or find out they have to lay off thousands of employees to survive. They are every bit as interested in stability and security as their employees. But it seems nobody wants to talk about that, everyone would rather assign blame or demand radical changes to fix a symptom without asking what the cause is. Or worse, saying "we know what the cause is, it's the greed of evil [corporations/unions]!", assuming their bias is correct and going no further.
Maybe, the "era of security" was an aberration stemming from the absence of international competition in the aftermath of WWII and the devastation wrought on the industrial base of every other developed nation? Is it actually good for workers or the economy if workers spend their entire working lives in the same job? Have we forgotten that a dynamic economy means even established businesses can be forced to shrink in order to survive? What about the high levels of economic uncertainty they have had to contend with of late?
What if it's better this way? Maybe not having a guaranteed job-for-life is better for everyone in the long-term. Can we consider that? What if too much security causes stagnation, making it an unstable condition that necessarily leads to less security in the long term?
Does this article do anything more than let people vent their biases? Flamebait from the start?
"in which workers are beholden to employers"
No one who works in America today needed a book to tell them this.
For free markets to stand a chance, consumers need to be able to be able to quantify an employer's track record at purchase time.
Without this information being easily accessible at purchase time, lower price will always win no matter what. So instead of advocating socialism (which breaks down because who wants to work when they don't have to?) lets focus on exposing the employer-record metric.
That's what our ancestors fought and died for: Job insecurity.
Every home I ever visited within my extended family was under 2000sf, and many of them were under 1300sf
When some people say "smaller house", they're thinking triple digit sf or double digit m^2.
Well... aren't "we" at the core of the problem -- "we" being EE / CS folks. We create new machines that displace more and more jobs. We now have technology where corporations can out source almost every job to countries like Vietnam, Mexico, etc. "We' (the public at large) tolerate poorer and poorer quality goods. "We" (the voters) continue to elect THE most corrupt bunch of people on earth and WE continue to bicker amongst ourselves that "the other side" is at fault -- like life is some type of football game with my side and your side.
"We" (EE/CS) also lead the path to job hopping back in the 1980s in Silicon Valley and other places greatly enticing the old large companies to stop their pension plans and opt for 401Ks which were never designed for retirement. Generally the EE/CE group turned their coats first ahead of the corporations turning their back on us.
"We" also have created our own unreasonable expectations. Only for a very brief time in history did people retire at some golden age with enough money saved to not need to work, keep their house, and possibly even travel somewhat. "We" are also generally further in debt due to our lust for goods and the need to keep up with the latest shiny object than any of our forefathers.
I mean seriously... I bet your car is less than 5 years old, I bet you have internet at your house as well as a cell phone with a data plan. I bet your TV, mobile phone, and computer are less than 5 years old. I bet your children also have mobile phones with data plans and texting plans. I'm sorry... but you are just not in NEED like you pretend to be. Generally (especially in America) we've grown to feel entitled while actually no one ever ever ever ever really promised us anything that we've come to expect.
Now some of you will probably step and say "no me". But, in general, on average, WE ARE THE PROBLEM.
Companies are writing nastier Non-Compete agreements, no longer to protect their intellectual property, but to indenture employees they wish to keep and punish those they REALLY want to suffer, with hiring and discharge agreements that essentially prevent workers from changing jobs, or former workers from looking for jobs in their industry for 6months to 2years.
Was this paper written or statement made in the 90s?
The Camaro? No, even if you ask for the V6. The only problem I have is that there's no sub-$25k 4-door equivalent in GM's lineup. It's either 2 doors and a good V6, or straight to $30k+ land.
The ATS? Definitely, since you're paying for more bling and less engine. For their existing price points, I'd rather see V6/Turbo V6/V8.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Tax Corporate Revenues, Not Profits;
http://news.yahoo.com/warren-b...
Casteism
Make it hard to not hire someone legally present in that country and very painful to hire anyone with any less-than-legal status..
Even better yet, remove any ability to require a person to associate with any third party or on any non-FTE basis as a condition of working with any entity. Granted, that does include unions, but it also hits the benefit-dodging contract firms - hard. It also discourages the benefit-dodging forms of casualization of labor, as non-FTE labor would have to outcompete FTE labor.
That, and it makes quitting that much easier when even the least competent have a chance to find good work and improve.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Christians have no problem with voluntary socialism as described in Acts 2:44, 45. The communal sharing of early believers possessions was completely voluntary and existed inside of the larger capitalistic society. The problem comes when you try to have your entire society be socialistic. For one, sinful nature is inherently selfish and people want to do the minimum work for the maximum reward. Without the transformative nature of hard core Christianity, the only way to motivate people to work for the good of others is at the point of a gun, or for cold hard cash. The much gentler path is capitalism. All you who are complaining about the exploitation of works, go look at the communist countries, they exploited everyone, and also murdered hundreds of millions via execution, starvation, and mistreatment and then collapsed (USSR) or became capitalistic (China).
You are clearly playing a different and rather pathetic one where the actual topic does not matter but some kind of pointless childish yapping to get people angry does. An epic failure in a normal discussion is probably a triple word score in the pathetic little game you are playing while others are attempting to seriously discuss and issue.
Being a psychopath is normal? WTF? Clearly you are either playing with us or trying to justify something in your own life that I doubt matters to anyone other than yourself.
I've run across a couple of psychopaths - normal is something they really have to work hard at and is not a word that fits them.