The Glade 4.0

I seem to recall there was a recent contest that called this bluff.

http://www.scpr.org/news/2010/06/24/imm ... -our-jobs/

As I recall, almost no one signed up.

Goodbye afternoon!

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Rhode island's largest illegal population is Guatemalan.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I remember that as well. I also remember about how it wasn't publicized in the slightest until basically no one signed up.

There's also the fact that I said this, which you conveniently overlooked:



People who aren't willing to do manual labor won't be willing to do a lot of different things.

I don't believe that was the case. I recall seeing a couple of news stories on it prior to the sign up. On both the local and national level, and I live in MN not Cali.

Definite "had to." Yes, they would perform these jobs if it meant the difference between eating/clothes/shelter and not having these things, but welfare in the US is comprehensive enough that I seriously doubt people are going to go do hard labor 90 hours a week in 100-110 degree heat and 90% humidity for minimum wage. The value of welfare is significantly more than minimum wage, so you're asking people to do backbreaking labor on pride or morals alone. It's not going to happen. I personally would never do such a job. I will go work in fast food/movie theater/some **** janitorial job if I have to to make ends meet, but go pick crops on a farm for 90 hours a week? **** that. I'll move to Canada or Europe if it comes to that.

ITT: We have a demonstration of how the minimum wage distorts the labor market, and how our entitlement system combines with it to be completely unworkable.

I should note, the minimum wage doesn't exist in this country so long as we have illegal immigrants on any non-trivial scale. It may be illegal to pay below the minimum wage, yet it is clearly prevalent. Those who declare that we can't crack down on illegal immigration, because then we'd have to pay minimum wage for job X, should consider that eliminating the minimum wage would not be any worse than turning a blind eye to illegals working for less. Either way, the job is worth less than the minimum wage. In one situation, we criminalize it being worth less, and then ignore prosecution. In the other, we don't, and uphold our laws without bias.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

You'd have to completely eliminate all forms of social assistance too or lowering/eliminating the minimum wage still isn't going to do anything. Americans aren't going to do the work unless the alternative is not eating.

I agree. You'll notice the part of the first sentence after the comma.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Right, so take your immigrant *** back to Canada or Europe, because America certainly doesn't need self-important, entitlement driven leeches like you. Seriously, just get the **** out, you lazy piece of ****.

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I earned my white collar job. I paid for college sweating in tobacco fields and working off-term programs doing grunt work in factories. Go **** yourself. Never had less than 3 jobs during my first bachelor's degree. Waited tables and tended bar during school. But, Americans think they're too good for much of this.

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Khross would you honestly take a minimum wage, labor-intensive job over an easier, better-paying alternative that you were qualified for? Let's pretend for a second that you don't already threaten to remove yourself from the United States once in a while.

I can't speak for Xeq, but I also earned my job and worked more than one to put myself through school like you did. Shame that I think my time and work is worth something now. Maybe I should ship my own commie *** over to China so I can have a real appreciation for HARD WORK.

Lenas, seeing as how we're in a Depression. If I had to work in fields to make ends meet, I'd work in fields. All there is to it. Anyone who thinks they're entitled to the job they have (or something comparable) because of whatever effort they put into school and such, can go **** themselves. But, you know, I'm kind of a dinosaur like that. You take the work you can get when you have to take the work you can get. Your time isn't worth anymore than anyone else's time. You're not entitled to a better than subsistence living because you went to school or anything else. You're entitled to try and survive. That's how it is. Social safety nets, welfare assistance, all of it is a poison on this nation and everywhere else ...

Because here's something everyone keeps forgetting ...

Someone has to plow the fields. Someone has to shovel the **** out of the barn. And someone has to sweat bringing in the crops. It doesn't matter how many college degrees you have. It doesn't matter what experience you have. That work still needs to be done. The widgets still need to be made. And until such a time as we can replicate matter at will without any concerns for the insane amount of energy that takes, it's always going to be that way. Physical labor isn't beneath. Carpentry and cabinet making, plumbing and electrician work, and even good, old fashioned, back breaking farm labor aren't beneath me or you or anyone else.

The sooner people figure that out, the sooner this country will start heading in the right direction again.

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I'm not saying you wouldn't work in fields to make ends meet, nor am I saying I wouldn't be there right next to you if I had to be. You ignored my question, though. Would you honestly take a minimum wage, labor-intensive job over an [available] easier, better-paying alternative that you were qualified for?

Yes, I am very glad I wasn't born elsewhere. However, the fact that I wasn't doesn't mean I (or we) are responsible to take everyone born there in here. These countries are responsible for themselves. Like I said before, we are enabling a great deal of what goes on elsewhere.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Good. Then we need to get rid of welfare, and ship out as many illegals as we can, and then hopefully we can get rid of all the people who have your attitude.

As for this 90 hours a week at minimum wage, these jobs would pay a lot more than minimum wage if they had to recruit Americans or not get the work done, and you'd be getting a hell of a lot of overtime on top of that.. if, indeed the work week would be 90 hours which sounds like a complete asspull number.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No, Lenas, I would not. Is anyone demanding that of anyone else?

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Not if both jobs jobs were available to me, but so what? What has that got to do with anything.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Khross basically told Xeq/Me to **** off because he doesn't like our outlook. That's okay. I just wanted him to answer the question so he and I could be on the same page.

I don't have time to type out a long response, but basically my agreeing with Xeq's comment hinges on the assumption that our country will never be reduced to a state in which farm labor is required of all its inhabitants. Since that would be the case, alternatives would always be available for Xeq or I to take. If our country does indeed decline so far that farm labor is required of me, then the USA no longer meets my living standard and I'll happily look into another country's citizenship. Hell, maybe I'll even sneak across a border!

As a person who performs labor intensive work, I applaud the cubicle gophers and their monitor tans. The more of them our educational and entitlement systems churn out, the more secure I will be. So while I hate the cold, and I hate climbing steel in the hot sun, I hate being poor and on the public dime even more.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

You know, I've got no animosity toward illegal immigrants; I've actually got a healthy dose of respect for those who hopped the border to get here and keep their head down, working in order to provide for their families. The rest are nothing more than common criminals, not worth the level of energy it takes to stir up even small levels of animosity. What I do care about is the influence they have on the well-being of my country.
It's not an individual thing, it's a collective thing, and I can see where the vitriol comes from when people can only assign it to a very large group of "them".

As a side note, I've often found myself wistful that I train to be an electrician.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

One thing I'd like to get straight, I'm not ideologically opposed to long hours or physical labor. If I somehow magically developed the skillset to do Hannibal's job, for example (construction?) I'd do that if I had to even if it involved long hours for hard labor. What offends me is the notion that people in the first world should be forced to do hard physical labor for 80-100 hours a week and only receive basic subsistence wages (or not even that) from it. That means you barely get enough food and shelter, and nothing else. You know, conditions reminiscent of The Grapes of Wrath. One is left with no upward mobility and is stuck doing that one job for basic survival for the rest of their life. Injure yourself and we invite you to go die in the nearest corner because you're not worth helping. Yes, someone has to shovel the **** out of the barn. These people should still receive a livable wage for doing so, even if that means subsidizing them.

I guess that's why I'm called a liberal, but very, very few things offend me more than people who believe that, in a country where GDP per capita is >$70,000, we should first stoop to having tens of millions of our own citizens barely surviving at backbreaking physical labor jobs that will destroy their bodies before the age of 40, as well as many unemployed persons (because you won't reach 100% employment, no matter what your government is like) having to literally beg for their continued survival, before taking a single dollar away from the ultra rich millionaires and billionaires that have everything. That kind of political construct is what you start shooting politicians over.

EDIT - Before anyone says it, yes I realize that minimum wage especially at such hours is far more than subsistence. I'm referring to the people who think we should get rid of minimum wage and welfare and "force" people to do these jobs for their true market value, which is to say almost nothing.

People in the 1st world usually have problems that keep them that way. Frequently, it's the government taking from them and making them poorer with various awful economy managing techniques. Some of the most natural resource rich places have the worst GDPs, due to what their governments do or have done to deter wealth generation outside of a privileged few.

...Or maybe the US is supporting their dictator and giving him funds. So many things can go wrong.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Can you expand on that? I'm not sure I understand what you mean about their influence and what you're defining as "them".