Higher wages a surprising success for Seattle restaurant

a reply to: CranialSponge

i suppose that is one way to look at it though i dont agree.

then for every 100 people getting after it, double that refuses to do the work or cant pass the drug test

a reply to: EternalSolace

im done with the drama.
nothing is going to change my mind on this so i will bow out.

i believe what i see with my own eyes.
i have lived in a few different cities in a few different states and there has been plenty of work to go around. above minimum wage fast food jobs yet people are still bitching about being unemployed.

while you and others may see people that want to work or need to work but cant find it, i see jobs that will not be filled for various reasons.
the work is there and i will never be convinced otherwise...

later

a reply to: EternalSolace

Yes, the market is most definitely shrinking.

Through the 25+ years of my career, I've seen the impact of it directly.

As a CFO my job was overseeing several departments within corporation(s) from a financial perspective, therefore I was always the first person to receive any and all job applications/resumes whenever we had job postings in different departments.

I would sift through them, pick out the ones that I thought best suited the needs of the company and that specific department based on production expectations (from a monetary perspective). And then from there, I would handoff the remaining resumes to the manager of said department to sift through for themselves based on their production expectations (from a non-monetary perspective).

And I can tell you that over the years, the volume of resumes coming in easily increased by 150-200%+ as each year went by. Also, the range of types of applicants changed drastically at the same rate over the years too. It literally changed from most applicants being viable for the position (according to how the job was advertised), to eventually anyone and everyone ranging from unqualified burger flippers to people way way overqualified with Master's and Phd's not even relevent to the job they're applying for.

I kid you not, resumes went from on average of maybe 10-30 per job posting, to anywhere from 100-200+ per job posting.

I went from spending an hour or two sifting through resumes before handing them off, to anywhere from 2-4 days of sifting through them.... and usually with an assistant sitting next to me lending a helping hand.

It became bloody ridiculous.

originally posted by: Punisher75

originally posted by: CranialSponge
a reply to: Mugly

last week i looked at a city in kansas at random. all kinds of jobs available.

the work is there...
so, if the work is there why are people not employed?

Because you forgot one very important factor...

For every job that's posted there's at least 100 job applicants fighting for it.

I am not an advocate for raising the minimum wage, for reasons I already mentioned, but this is true. Me and my family are are currently in the middle of moving from Florida to Pennsylvania so that I can find work.

Oh. I just left Pennsylvania. What part? Hope you know someone.

a reply to: Mugly

i have lived in a few different cities in a few different states and there has been plenty of work to go around. above minimum wage fast food jobs yet people are still bitching about being unemployed.

That's correct.

The problem is not going to be all across the board everywhere in every town/municipality, but it is far more common of a problem in large major cities and/or in areas that have been directly impacted from the recession (ie: mining towns, mill towns, etc).

One size does not fit all.

But what that means is people having to relocate in order to have a better chance at finding work if they currently live in an area that isn't economically feasible.

Which ultimately leads to that area eventually becoming saturated too... and so on and so forth down the line it goes.

a reply to: onequestion

I am moving to the more central part of the state about a half hour from Bloomberg.
The wife is already there and has found a full time position and a part time position.
The crappy part for me I am starting all over again after working for the county for 11 years. Kind of a bummer. to be starting all over at my age.
Not so bad for her cause she is 10 years younger than me.
But yea her parents and high school friends live up there so she knows some people, I have never set foot in that state before LOL.

a reply to: Punisher75

By state college is actually not that bad. The amish add a cool element but if your in a metropolitan area run.

The Amish have cool little stores around there with high quality goods and decent prices.

I'm a florida native who has spent equal time in both states . Florida has crazier people but if you get into the right place on pa it's very very affordable and te people are nice. Just not in the cities. The rural part of PA is where its at

Yea that's what I hear. I am from Ohio Originally so I have had some dealings with the Amish. Mainly when I was doing construction work. The crew I was on laid, floors and the Amish would come in next to put up the walls.
We will be around the Millville area, if you are familiar with it. Its a bit north of Bloomberg.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Seriously. We need blue collar jobs in this country. A totally service based economy is NOT sustainable.

IMHO, defend our own shores, &^% the "global" economy and outsourcing, make it all here and put the middle class back on the map. Every time a US based corporation outsources work, they are growing another country's economy. Personally I think the whole thing was a conspiracy to systematically break the unions by outsourcing until the populace would beg to get their blue collar jobs back.

To those with the over simplified knee jerk response of "get an education and work harder" when dealing with the minimum wage issue - we didn't have this problem of folks trying to raise families on minimum wage jobs 50 years ago - wonder why??

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: johnwick

I didn't thhink Id agree with you ever... ha.

So true!

Lowest on the totem pole holds everyone else up...

Kali, I hold uncovetional views on many topics, you might be surprised about the way I think about things.

I'm more of a peel back several layers of the onion type.

Nothing is usually as it seems, for a reason.

It is by design, I just see the methods employed, and comment from the actual reasoning, not the way it is presented.

This isn't to say you and others aren't as smart, or even smarter than myself.

Many of you are much smarter than I am, I am just greatly gifted at math and pattern recognition, and have a 99 percent retention rate of anything I read( that is confirmed in long term testing btw).

I see the world quite different than most, because my mind doesn't work the same way as most.

You see the nytimes report " the Republicans this or that ", I see the nytimes reported this because they are covering some dems scandal, that was created by the repubs , to defame the dems, because the repubs actually had a note worthy scandal they are trying to deflect away from.

It is my gift, but it has draw backs.

I am woefully terrible at life, I remember everything, which causes extreme tension IRL ,because I remember every lie, every slight, and factor all that into my perception of others around me.

This makes me a loner, and lonely I am.

Because we are all just people, and people eff things up as often as not all the time.

Most folks forget them, I don't, ever.

I could name the times and dates my exwife cheated on me, I knew because her patterns changed, her cheating was not something I couldn't deal with, she couldn't deal with the fact it was so obvious to me.

Still to this day, 10 years later, she believes I had people spying on her, because she can't believe I could just see the pattern.

My brother, besides you ATSers, are the only people I can actually talk to.

My brother has the same effliction to a lesser extent.

We both scored in the 99th percentile, on the ISTEP in elementary school for reading comprehension, and retention.

I did as well in math and science.

They put me in gifted and talented classes, I had my mother get me taken out, if you think being singled out in a large group is bad, try it in a small group of upper middle class kids when you are the only poor kid, that remembers all the dirt from 2 years ago about the rich kids( well rich from my perspective growing up), it was a hang up on me everyday, because I was the poor kid, could do math in my head, the othets could do with calculators.

I went to college for computer and electronic engineering, the professor was giving me bad grades for not showing my work, so one day after class he wrote 3 trigonometry equations, I proved to him I could do it in your head without pen and paper.

He never questioned me again.

I was poor though, and couldn't afford to finish college so I have no degree.

So I joined the military, I took the 4 hour ASVAB in 20 minutes(my recruiter was A POS and I got to MEPS very late, like closing in 1/2 an hour late)

And qualified for every single job in the military.

I chose FDC, cannon fire direction control.

It is a very specialized skill set, it can't be taught, you can or can't do it, period.

One of the single most important jobs in the military, artillery is THE KING OF BATTLE for a reason, that reason is folks like me in 30 seconds or less can do the math feed to numbers to the gun line and have rounds flying down range every single time.

Anyone that served and interacted with FDC knows we are different, we don't think or act like 11brabvos ( infantry )or even 13bravos(gun bunnies ).

It is actually in military terms very chill in FDC, they leave us alone to do our work, because nobody else can do what we do.

Anyone can load powder or rounds, or spin a handle to the numbers I gave them, few can give them the numbers under extreme stress in a very short term frame exactly correct, every single time.

In short Kali, I am an antisocial recluse, with very few friends, and genius level intelligence, that is refined to a very small set of abilities.

I am basically worthless outside of being used to kill.

Or correlate data, it is a type of gift, but basically, it ruins my life daily.......

originally posted by: Mugly

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: CranialSponge

There was a job in Kansas everyone is fine.

more drama.
there were 2 jobs

I had to start that!

That was we timed, even if I think it misguided, it was quite well done sir.

originally posted by: Mugly
a reply to: Punisher75

i suppose.
buying power has been pretty constant in my life though.
things are more expensive in general than when i was say 18 but i make more than i did when i was 18.
its all been relative for me.
middle class my entire life.

Then you're pretty bad at measuring your purchasing power. $22/hour has the same purchasing power today as $1.60 (the minimum wage) had in 1967.

originally posted by: Mugly
a reply to: EternalSolace

you guys talk with so much drama.
i never said they dont deserve a life. i never said they dont deserve a roof. i never said they should share a toilet with 15 people.
what i am saying is mcdonalds does not warrant 15 an hour.
what i am saying is people should learn to live within their means and budget their money.
what i am saying is people should gain some skills and/or look for better work

Rent is supposed to cost no more than 30% of your income and 25% is the budget number that's preferred. $15/hour works out to $487.50 post taxes. How many rents can you pay in cities for that much per month? $15 is barely enough.

Lets flip it around. How many minutes of work per month do you think it should take pay rent in one of the less expensive places in a city? Multiply that by rent and you'll come up with what a "fair" wage is.

originally posted by: EternalSolace
Raising the Minimum wage isn't a solution.
Business owners and CEO's taking a cut isn't the solution.
Business cutting prices isn't a solution.

Raising the minimum wage is part of the solution but it doesn't solve the issues on it's own. We also need to start making sane CPI calculations (which involves addressing our underlying inflation issue), and we need the government to step in and not allow corporations to use overseas labor at slave wages in place of American labor.

originally posted by: johnwick

originally posted by: truthseeker84

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: Mawiss

Why don't you want your waitress to make more money?

Quite simple really, how much do you want your average college graduate with a BS degree make?

www.payscale.com...=Bachelor's_Degree/Salary

Look at that chart, and tell me you are not crazy for asking that question.

We have Engineers, Operation Managers making $50k to $100k a year. You want a table buster to make $80,000/annually?

Why in the ass would anyone, ever take a 8 year college/university course to become an Engineer in the future? What is the freaking point? Why not just all go work for your local fast food chain and make a comfortable $80k a year?

Unless they raise EVERYONE's pay rates, put the tiers back in, this is simply absurd.

Let me repeat this back to you, so I can make sure we are all on the same page here. What you want to see, is for a person with a High School Diploma or an GED, to make the same amount of money or even more, than an Engineer or C Level executive that busted their ass in school?

Am I taking drugs or something, or is this society going straight to the #ters?

Um....
$15 an hour 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year is $30,000.

You can't do simple math, but think you deserve more than folks that can count?

That is the funniest thing I have seen all week.

Sigh... you have no idea just how ironic your post is.

Read the f'ing Original Post again and tell me you did not see this:

Revenue has soared, supportive customers are leaving additional tips even though they don't need to, and servers and bartenders are on pace to increase their annual pay by thousands, with wages for a few of the best compensated approaching $80,000 a year.

Stupidity shows no boundaries.

So since you can't really pick on the logic of my post, you go on to pick on numbers.

Did you see anywhere on my post where I said: Working for 40 hours a week, on a $15/hr minimum wage job nets you $80,000 a year.

Where did you see me post something like that?

Yeah, go ahead and keep trolling with your gifted mathematical abilities. I wonder what that even means when it comes to this $15.00/hr discussion.

So you're good at math? Therefore, somehow your words carry more weight over mine?

Or perhaps that I work for a fortune 1000 company and my word is worth more than yours?

If you like to measure dicks, I can keep it going for quite sometime, I assure you.