Vice-President Kamala Harris

The average hourly pay for all the bolded jobs in my state is 15-18 dollars an hour, and they don't pay much more than working at Walmart or McDonald's. Even jobs in nursing and a lot government jobs only pay about 30k-35k a year after taxes.

Yeah. And the reality is you can drive down a big street in a major city. Someone has to clean all those buildings. Someone has to work at all those Targets, home Depots, Starbucks, Pet Smarts, Grocery stores, etc. Someone has to drive those Ubers, bus the tables at restaurants. The only question is, do they deserve to suffer or not?

Yes, we have 2 parties who think all those workers are morally blame worthy and deserve to suffer.

There are political perspectives other than RW neo liberal austerity ghoul, but they have no one to vote for.

First one I looked up, dental assistant, said $18-29 per hour depending on experience. Granted this could be based on location but if you change the location cost of living also goes down.

So maybe provide some citations on those because I’m not believing it. Even if you’re right on the other ones, I specifically chose jobs where there is at least some chance of moving up if you happen to be good at it.

Also customer service definitely not uniform, 15-18 is starting salary not factoring in any possible pay increases. Also not factoring in moving up to supervisor roles or developing other skills or parlaying that job into a sales job etc.

lol at the idea of moving up in blue collar employment

i don't mean to dig on you, but this is very typical of far left technocracy where they imagine a world that doesn't exist and then create policy around it

Wait hold on, I’m really curious, how high do you think the minimum wage should be? Because right now the minimum wage in CA is 15 and hour, plus there’s a proposition to raise it to 18 an hour mostly supported by democrats, and democratic cities have minimum wages for fast food workers up to 20 an hour or more. But here you are virtue signaling about both sides bad and dems neoliberal austerity blah blah blah without giving credit for the principled ways in which they absolutely are not the neoliberal right wing party that you pretend they are.

See this is why I absolutely advocate for the dems to stop trying to reach out to cancerous people on the progressive side because no matter what they do, people keep using the same tired both sides bad talking points. Utterly frustrating.

Hello, have you seen how much trades people and union members make nowadays? And yeah, I started from the bottom of banking, I know plenty of people in banking with no college education. You have no idea what you’re talking about if you think the only good jobs require a college degree. Most of the people that say that have useless meme degrees anyway and are brainrotted on left wing twitter.

It’s funny because the radical pro-trans people that you constantly crap on probably have identical braindead economics takes as you do. You’d fit right in on far left twitter with this take bud.

til banking is blue collar

I think we discussed this before, but Detroit has really bounced back. It's also one of the last places an average person can still easily afford a house, as the population is still lower than before.

However, the average person probably doesn't realize that, so it's probably a dumb message.

The Dems also love to have wealthy celebrities lecture us about stuff, which I think is annoying AF and I'm sure lots of people agree. These people live on another planet from me and their interests are opposed to mine. Then she starts rattling off CEOs... awesome. Just what I'm concerned about: female CEOs.

I gave multiple examples of all types of jobs from blue collar to not blue collar all that don’t require a college degree and make decent money. But sure, because it doesn’t fit into your narrative let’s make a bad faith comment like the good little populist doggy you are. For as much as you complain about other people’s intellectual dishonesty you’re really showing your true colors rick.

I'd rather not post the area I live in. For dental assistants, the Google AI overview said 17 per hour and another source says it's about 20. One of my best friends worked as an assistant for an oral surgeon for years. He didn't make much. Going through job listings from my area, they range from 16-27, and most of them fall around 20. I live in a blue state, just outside a major city, and 1 bedroom apartments run around 1500-2000 per month.

The main point is the average salary held up against cost of living has been getting worse for a while, and a lot of people who do well or live in certain area don't realize how much the average American is struggling.

I know this is going to sound horribly neolib based on my other takes in this thread, but housing policy in blue states is absolutely atrocious. There is so much demand to live there and yet almost all new development is blocked on a local level for a variety of reasons. And so many old people with huge houses only using one or two rooms etc etc. I’m not pretending everything is perfect but even making 30+ an hour that housing price is going to be a LOT.

The solution to housing isn’t going to be raising the minimum wage.

Yeah I’m not disagreeing, but you have to realize the solution isn’t always going to be social safety nets or regulations, sometimes good ol deregulation is the solution. Regulatory compliance is a supply side input.

And struggling is relative. Humans have historically struggled, but we have to sometimes take a step back that not every problem is “people are literally dying on the street in abject poverty” like ES2 seemed to be hinting at.

Yeah, I'm not arguing that raising the minimum wage is the fix or proposing any solutions; just drawing attention to the fact that there aren't a ton of options out there for a lot of people who want to have families. Generally speaking, I agree with your last comment.

Fair enough, I’m sorry for being combative, it’s just one of these things that really triggers me when we talk about left wing policies as if they are automatically going to be the best policy.

I’m actually pretty open in principle to massive welfare states, education spending, free college, universal healthcare, affordable housing, social security, etc. I’m pretty much the opposite of an austerity neoliberal in terms of people who believe in capitalism. But this whole idea that we need to just side with every progressive policy, details be damned, economic literacy be damned is super triggering. Or that people without certain qualifications have no ability to move up in the world under capitalism and can only rely on big government is also a triggering idea to me.

You're the one saying everyone should go into trades. (I.e. it's their fault). If everyone went to trade school, there wouldn't be enough jobs. Back to target.

To cut to the chase, I simply think those people should have a goid quality of life. It's done in other countries. It could be done here.

I think a lot of right wing Dems here have no idea what life is like when you make like $30-50k (depending on area).

I've done it. I've gone years with no HC. The rest of the time, to have a couple tests run would cost me a month's pay out of pocket, so basically I was covered for just emergencies. If you feel chest pains, or other symptoms you just hope it's nothing bad. If it turns out to be a cancer that could have been treated, oh well.

28 million have no vacation or holidays. For example all gig workers, like Uber drivers.

I had a casino job where we had 5 days a year, including sick days, vacation and holidays.

It's miserable. You worry about money all the time. Something like a car repair makes you feel sick and lose sleep.

I know you think "service workers shouldn't live in misery" is some kind of far left position. But it isn't. That's billions of dollars in propaganda and a completely bought and paid for duopoly speaking.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country

en

List of minimum annual leave by country - Wikipedia

Just compare the US to the UK or others.

Here are some. (Note, these people don't get any of those 10 holidays. Maybe 2)

Everything is like this. Taxation. HC. Worker rights. Incarceration rates. It's all much worse here.

It's a pretty good country to be upper middle class or better though. Fortunately, I've gotten there by gambling. But I just got lucky and found a glitch in the matrix. I don't think that makes me a better person, and that my old coworkers deserve to live in poverty.

i explicitly said blue collar in my example - you seem to want to ignore that - yet it is incredibly relevant because you decided to state my comment about blue collar employment was wrong because of your own personal white collar journey

Did you read the first sentence brother? I said have you seen how much trade and union jobs make? Are you denying that trades and union make good money?

Also who the hell considers fast food workers blue collar either which is exactly what this conversation is about. I don’t think you’re tracking any of what’s going on at all because you’re entering into your ideological blindspot.

Truuuuue, let’s make the minimum wage 40 dollars an hour adjusted for inflation. That’s going to solve all poverty and our country will finally be a utopia. Good one brother.

Truuuuuue. Jill Stein 2024 so that the working class can finally end their suffering from this neoliberal civility fascism! Based brother!

I didn't say that. And I kinda agree with you about housing.

I said we should have the same HC, time off, benefits and rights as people in the UK, Austria, etc.

Just having free HC and 3 weeks PTO (still less than many) would be huge. (Another thing UMC don't understand is grinding a job that you really hate).

Not possible as both candidates are way to the right of Tories on this stuff, and always will be.

If we want to talk about any individual policy, I’m sure we will find a lot of agreement.

If we want to talk about who is clearly better than who for those that are center left or further, no I’m never going to agree that the people that brought us the child tax credit, social security, medicare, medicade, the GI bill, and pretty much any substantial social policy are worse than the party of Regan, Trump, and Bush.

I’ll make a real plea to you, and I’m dead serious but you probably won’t like this: we neeeeeeed people like you in the democratic party. Join your local Democratic Party chapter, join a local democratic political club, vote in primaries, etc. You won’t win every battle, but your voice can make a huge difference at the local level and move up to the national level.

That’s how we can actually change Dems for the better, not by complaining that they are more right than the Tories and doing nothing.

he's usually better than this, probably having a bad day and taking it out with the keyboard, i'd just try again tomorrow to engage

Yeah just like that one day you were like “Jill Stein 2024!” to every post. You were so good that day bro. lmao you are such a condescending you know what with absolutely no merit. Love you though.