The new $10 an hour American economy!

What a wildly uninformed post. blame the students for choosing potential career paths to further the well being and knowledge of those around them... You are right, totally the issue here. ALL degrees are "limiting" in there future career options. If one takes a degree in engineering they have drastically limited there career options. No more potential job as a librarian. No more potential job as a city planner. No more potential job as (I can go for a while here). Specialization of trade requires that one limits their options to focus on ONE thing.

Maybe the issue is that the system is rigged to put AMERICANS in debt once they are ready to enter the work force. Perhaps the "universities" offer bullsH#t programs that appeal to young american ideals, but really offer no real skill sets. That employers no longer offer entry level positions, they have been replaced by SERVITUDE positions called "INTERNSHIPS". a reply to: Ameilia

a reply to: onequestion

I can't believe that someone with a degree in Enviro science can't get a job.

He must be looking/applying in all the wrong places.

Problem with people who come out of Uni with degree's, is that they want to start right at the top and be a scientist..

World doesn't always work like that, there's a lot of competition for the top jobs.

Start small..!!

Apply to state government for Ranger/Field officer positions, get to know the people involved in the industry, work hard and show initiative and you'll probably beat all those other Degree holders "also looking for the top jobs", to the top.

a reply to: sean


Source please.

28 years old
Never stepped foot in a college classroom

Job 1-car wash $8/hour
Job 2-factory support (large microchip company) $11/hour
Job 3-supply chain/inventory analyst $16.75/hour
Job 4- Marketing Coordinator $22/hour
Job 5-Marketing Director $25+/hour

Not to be pretentious but my point being there are a few things i learned (take or leave)

1. The market sets all prices, including salaries
2. Your job is a job, meaning your employment is a business descision.
3. Work, learn, apply, risk, repeat.
4. Your only purpose as an employee is to produce more than you're worth and to maximize your output. Simple math up to and including management (his job is maxamize your output, if he does not produce greater output than all of you combined, he did not do his job)


Sick and tired of hearing the rantings of people born into the greatest country on Earth. A place where even the "lower" class can order food from a handheld computer to their door.

You are paid exactly what youre worth by setting a market price on yourself. As long as you produce more than what you claim, you will always have a job.

a reply to: YayMayorBee

What's your location?

And if you think it's all you, go do the same thing in Africa and let's see how far you get.

a reply to: onequestion


I have a LEGITIMATE solution to this problem, but I don't think most people want to hear it much less consider living it.

Buy cheap land somewhere in Montana, Nebraska etc, and be completely self sufficient. Get people together with enough varying talents to build, farm, butcher, blacksmith, glassmake, organize, etc and start living like the Amish do (no not necessarily without modern things, plenty of Amish use electricity and have phones).

Involving outside companies and organizations in your life always comes with a fee. You'd be amazed if you knew how truly wealthy (in spirit, health and finances!) the Amish are. They have weathered the current collapse of America better than anyone.

They are also very wise to limit the outside influence on their lives by limiting exposure to corrupting influences on their children.

a reply to: 8675309jenny

I agree I just did a job in Amish country and the entire area has a different, (feel) to it.

originally posted by: 0zzymand0s
a reply to: Ameilia

Our entire planet is upside down and backwards. We have a continent sized raft of garbage floating around the pacific, and you think a degree in environmental science is worthless.

If you had actually read my post, I said:

"His problem is he got an Environment Science degree. That's very limiting."

Limiting. Not useless.

If you don't understand the difference between these two things, I'll be happy to explain to you.

a reply to: Unity_99

Adapt and improvise. Pipe dreams don't put food on the table. I'm sure most people want a fair days pay for a fair days work. Greed and technology screwed that up for most. Time to think outside the box.

originally posted by: wyrmboy12
Well it depends what jobs you are talking about...All of the bindery and/or factory jobs yes have seriously declined and pay less all the time because you do not need nearly any education or skills to work those jobs....

I just left GE in WI ( 50+K a year )to work in MN for United Health Group ( 65+K a year ) and I started through a temp agency for a contract to hire position as an IT Manager. I do not have a completed college degree but am finishing up a bachelors so in my employers eyes I'm not college educated....

Sometimes, in some cases the lack of a sheepskin is just an excuse to underpay a person that can do the job just fine.

Here is some food for thought ... if you want to get people out of the labor force then drop wages and make it not "worth the time" to be employed at X-job. I see this as the start of an effort to replace humans with machines and robots now that the sophistication of robots and and "smart" technology.

Think of it like this .... Humans are going to rebel once the trend for robotic workers takes off. If you break the labor market now... you won't have much problem replacing workers with robots ....

break the labor market and the will of the people while having a chorus of sheeple complain about the price of labor and how those jobs are starter jobs and should not pay a fair wage .....

Isn't this the typical Hegelian Dialect program being pushed through

a reply to: SubTruth

ya know I am really getting kind of tired where every thing that is wrong is blames on "progressive" ideas.
ya see I've noticed something
it seems that the conservatives on these boards are always and have been for at least a decade telling us that if we don't get a job we should get an education!!!

it was pointed out at least a decade ago by some that hey all these kids going to college will degrade the value of the degree.. these conservatives didn't chose to listen to that either.
$10 an hour huh?? There was a time when I thought that if I could only get to the point where I could be making 9/hr I could make it in the world without relying on others. By the time I actually reached that the cost of living had gone up and my new goal was $10. And here are people griping that $10 isn't enough for them?
Try living on minimum wage!!!

a reply to: dawnstar

I have never once told people to go to school to get a degree.

And since the shoe does fit, the Progressives will wear it.

People need to stop crying woes me and go and get/earn what they want. Instead of coming up with excuse after excuse as to why they can't do "insert whatever".

And if you don't have a skillset that garners more then $10 hr, you have no one else but yourself to blame. There are hundreds of avenues to better your career based skills. 0bama and everyone else have made going to college very very easy, by just signing some paper.

How is it that someone like me, with no college degree can command $80k+ a year from my day job, and open and run my own business?

a reply to: dawnstar

And let me tell you a story. Many years ago, I was a LEO in AZ. I had to take a guy down to the Maricopa County Jail in Downtown Phoenix and the place was packed. The holding facility between the prison and the outside sally port was about 25' X 25'. There were about 15 people getting booked and about 5 LEOs. This one loudmouth dirt bag was going on and on, ragging on the Phoenix PD guy that arrested him. How he was able to outrun the LEO for X amount of blocks only to be caught when he, the badguy stopped to take his breath. The whole place was like a comedy show. This guy had everyone laughing. After about 15 minutes of this, the Phoenix PD guy, without saying a word, raises his hands to silence the crowd and walks to the center of the room. As everyone expects him to start bashing on the guy, all he does is lift up the pants leg on his left leg, reveling an aluminum prosthetic lower leg. All he says is "I still caught you". The room roared with laughter, and the POS dirtbag shrank into the corner.


Moral??? Stop making excuses. If a cop with half a leg can catch someone in good health, there is no reason why anyone can't get a decent paying job.

originally posted by: onequestion
Welcome to the American dream people!

In today's America you can expect to work for a temp agency making $10 an hour for every job! If your lucky we'll hire you! But we'll probably get rid of you right before you qualify for benefits.

Funny you mentioned this as it literally happened at my job today. I was attending a meeting for all the "temps" hired through a hiring agency to work for a national insurance company. Well, I and about 20+ others just began employment on 9/1, and today the tenured temps were notified that they were all being let go.

I'm currently being trained by one of the tenured temps and she was furious. She knew she had an open ended contract with no set end date, but what pissed her and everyone else off the most was that they were all let go before any of them met the required number of hours worked in order to qualify for any health benefits.

So instead of the hiring agency paying for all of their benefits, the tenured temps were let go and new temps were hired to replace them starting out at $15/hour with 40 hour work weeks + overtime available. However, we don't receive any bonus holiday pay, vacation leave, or health insurance. And in about a year's time I'll be facing the same situation as the people who were let go today.

At least I'll have insurance experience under my belt I guess. I'm going to try to make the most of it while I'm here, and be proactive toward the end of my tenure. Hopefully I don't get let go sooner than expected.

originally posted by: macman
a reply to: dawnstar

And let me tell you a story. Many years ago, I was a LEO in AZ. I had to take a guy down to the Maricopa County Jail in Downtown Phoenix and the place was packed. The holding facility between the prison and the outside sally port was about 25' X 25'. There were about 15 people getting booked and about 5 LEOs. This one loudmouth dirt bag was going on and on, ragging on the Phoenix PD guy that arrested him. How he was able to outrun the LEO for X amount of blocks only to be caught when he, the badguy stopped to take his breath. The whole place was like a comedy show. This guy had everyone laughing. After about 15 minutes of this, the Phoenix PD guy, without saying a word, raises his hands to silence the crowd and walks to the center of the room. As everyone expects him to start bashing on the guy, all he does is lift up the pants leg on his left leg, reveling an aluminum prosthetic lower leg. All he says is "I still caught you". The room roared with laughter, and the POS dirtbag shrank into the corner.


Moral??? Stop making excuses. If a cop with half a leg can catch someone in good health, there is no reason why anyone can't get a decent paying job.

Interesting trivia about that. People with prosthetic legs are actually faster than those without, assuming they have the right prosthetic of course. For an example of this you can look at Oscar Pistorius. It's not obvious at first glance, but the cop with the aluminum leg actually had an advantage in your story.

a reply to: macman

actually it's harder now than it was when I graduated from high school.
unless of course you want to take out one of those gov't subsidized loans!! or go into the military and hope and pray they don't screw you out of the benefits before you get out and manage to get the degree!!
But when I got my associate's degree I was intending on going to work and paying for the rest of my education from my earnings instead of grants. Well guess what. I applied all over the place and then started having people tell me that since the times were bad well the employers would be hiring men any man regardless of their qualifications before me since well they had a family to support and I had a husband supporting me or should have!
so well why go on in school if no one gonna hire me anyways.
The degree was in data processing and well by the time society caught up to the point where women had anything close to an equal chance well they weren't using fortan and rpg anymore and the computers didn't take up the equivelent of my house!

My guess is your are a man.
I am a women!
I've seen companies bring in someone with no experience whatsoever to do one part of a job that I'd already proven I was able to do and get more money starting out than I was making!

originally posted by: SubTruth
a reply to: onequestion

Great.....Great post OP. You are 100% correct. I believe anyone making under 15 dollars an hour is going to be screwed because of inflation.


I know I harp on this but the progressive mindset is the root cause of all of this. From letting illegals take over the country all the way to the apathetic youth. We are truly screwed and anyone making under 15 dollars an hour will not be able to survive in the next few years.


Think I am crazy.......Look at your grocery bill and compare it over time. Look at the price of new cars and the fact they have to give out 10 year loans just to sell them.

progressive mind set???....you do not know what you are talking about...I don't think the business round table or the chamber of commerce, or any of the other corporate entities has anything to do with the "progressive mind set"....

some truths in business............
1...businesses are always trying to figure out a way to replace a worker with a machine.
2...workers are never hired until they are absolutely necessary
3...when business is bad, workers are always laid off first, while the ones that are left, pick up their workload
4...when business is good, workers will be laid off, if paying overtime to the workers that are left, is economically viable
5...if your job can be done overseas in an economical way, it will be.
6...if your job can be done by a minimum wage new hire, no matter how much experience you have, you will be replaced.
7...yes, good looks and appearance does matter.

originally posted by: Unity_99
Sorry man but I'm not going to ever accept a hellzone, where if your child dreams of being an archaelogist, a marine biolgist, a philosopher, a psychologist, an artist, you say, hell no, you need to scrub floors.

I'm very happy that people still dare their dreams and have every right to. Also, don't pay for anything if the government crashes wages and your economy. I'd send the bills for the college to Obama and tell him he can take the enema ever day on me.

Well said! Our school systems are akin to the scene in "The Wall" where the kids all had masks on making them look the same and all were marching into a meat grinder.

Our government keeps saying we need to fix our educational system, as we are falling behind competitively in the world markets.

The problem is everything they do to "fix" the problem is aimed more at effectively forcing everyone into one mold, making nice docile robots, worker drones for the big corporations. I suppose somewhere someone is profiting from this, but they fail to see the bigger picture. While they are busy molding everyone through their educational system, they are effectively squashing and destroying creativity, and creativity is what drives innovation and excellence.

Currently our school aged youth get up early and spend around 8 hours at school, in what is considered a healthy means of teaching them to be competitive sports and athletics are pushed as a high priority and they spend an hour or two before or after school at practice, even longer when an official competition is held. They come home from school with 2 or more hours of homework to finish for the next day (and to my surprise when my daughter was in HS that homework was just something to keep them busy as the teachers never graded or examined the finished work, they just wanted to see that it was finished), then finally squeezed into the brief time left to the day they have to eat, maybe enjoy a little family interaction, shower and hopefully get somewhere near the 9 to 10 hours of sleep that they need at that age to grow.

Do people ever wonder how come we don't see geniuses like Einstein, Tesla, Edison and so forth anymore? All of our great thinkers and innovators had time to spend thinking, daydreaming, imagining and creating. Time that our youth really doesn't have.

Einstein admitted he was horrible in math, his teachers thought he was a very poor student who wouldn't amount to much, but look how wrong they were.