Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

$15 an hour!?!

Hi everyone!
         So I've been seeing a lot of memes and lazy thinking floating about my Facebook feed concerning people pushing for a minimum wage hike to $15 dollars an hour from $7.25. The main gripe I see from people who are against it is that they have been busting their asses going to school for years and have worked hard to get their own wage to $15 an hour. I understand that, I would be pissed as well. My question is, are they focusing their anger in the right direction?
         I think there are many contributing factors to this problem, greed being the main one. Greed of Business owners, Wall Street, Property management companies, basically anyone who makes a business decision and never has to look at the effects of their decisions in their daily life.
         - Owners. They have a huge weight on their shoulders, we can't argue that. They workered harder than most of us, smarter than most of us and I don't think we should spite them for wanting to do better in life. My grip isn't with the owner who created a fair business model, who sees the value in his/her employees and compensates them accordingly. My grip is with the guy who has a shitty business model and they only way they can make it work is by underpaying his/her own countrymen. One of the best excuses I've ever heard to underpay someone is saying that a job is only meant for a teenager. Work is work Party People. We all can't be management, we all can't be specialists, or doctors, or business owners. Some people just want to work and live a simple life, does that mean they should live in poverty? Does that mean they shouldn't be able to raise a family? Or be able to work one job of 40 hours a week so they can spend time with their family? I think everyone should be able to live on their own in a shitty apartment of of one job at 40 hours a week. If you have to work 50-60 hours to make ends meet do you really think you're a free person?
         - Wall Street. A place where being a sociopath is respectable, for not caring about anything but yourself is considered a virtue. When the company you work for is publicly traded the management is responsible to the share holders first, make no mistake about it. If the share holders insist on seeing quarterly growth in a business like food service but don't see that growth they will "cut spending". One of the best ways of doing that is cutting labor, consistently. If I can make you work twice as hard as two people then it makes sense to do that as working the shit out of you saves my bottom line.
            For some reason my friends in the medical field have been very much against the wage increase. Seeing as how they owe money to student loans and they get paid $15 bucks an hour and to get paid the same as a fast food workers would be a slap in the face to them. I would be more pissed that the multi-billion dollar medical industry thinks that $15 bucks an hour is a fair wage for an educated worker.
           - Property Management companies. You hear the ads on the radio that says you could become rich and solve all your problems? How do you do that? Easy! All you have to do is learn how to flip houses! You too can make money by inflating the value of homes and apartments by using the modern day magic of "Potential value"! That's where you by a house at $50k but sell it at $80 because it could go as high as $100k! What's so awesome is that the next guy who buys it at $80k? His potential for that house is $120k!!!! Can you believe it? Let's hope so because at some point people will realize that the $120k house is only worth $50k and someone is going to feel the bite. (*see the last housing crash).
             I bring this up because a property management company can do the same thing. You know how much money you can make selling a house? Imagine selling an apartment complex! You'd have to take out a huge loan to do it and in order to be able to make those payments you'll have to charge more rent than the place is worth. So who is going to feel the burn? People who can't buy a home and have to live in an apartment. The higher the rent goes, the less fair a person's wages seem. You can screw over the workers, or maybe the property management companies, or maybe even Wall St, in the end we all get burned.
             What got us into this mess? Greed.
             What can get us out?That's a good question. I don't have an answer to be honest. I'd like to think if we started looking at all the contributing actors we'd have a better shot at fixing this.
            Then again what do I know? I'm just someone you saw on T.V.

Monday, July 6, 2015