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No not really. What would be more helpful is a economic situation which generates more jobs therefore increasing the demand for labor. That is already happening. Mandating higher wages will have the opposite effect.
I remember in 1999-2000 while in high school there were decent jobs available everywhere. Fast forward a year or two and regardless of how low the pay was, there were zero openings and mass unemployment. It was quite a shock to me in college to see that, and shaped how I have saved/invested since.
Then train and support unskilled, hook them up with better paying jobs with healthcare , not everyone is smart or resourceful enough to change their circumstances. To make society keep going round and round, we need to minimize the hurdles as poverty leads to homelessness, drugs, drinking, violence, crime, domestic abuse, broken families, hatred and what not. We can’t live in individual bubbles. For things to go right for individuals, we have to help each other as a community.
TV,
I find myself with mixed feelings about all this. Let me explain
Like I said earlier, I’m honestly not sure why CNAs make so little. I know my wife complains that they never have enough on the floor yet she’s prevented from hiring more. That being said, I do think a lot of people making minimum wage could get out of that situation, but for whatever reason choose not to.
Take CNAs for example. My wife’s hospital will pay the entire tuition costs for any CNA wishing to attend nursing school, all the way down to the textbooks AND offer a full time nursing job at market rate upon completion. This is the exact path my wife took to get an RN degree free of charge. Yet participation in the program is low, to the point that there were a couple of years they had to suspend the program for lack of interest.
So when I hear CNAS at my wife’s job complaining about low pay, they at least have a way out yet choose not to use it. It’s why the crap pay for CNAs was more annoying to us than anything, because it was a means to an end not the final result. Since becoming manager, my wife has made it a point to encourage as many as possible to get into the program. Some have legitimate reasons such as being single mothers with no relatives to help out, but an equal number have no such constraints and just don’t want the extra work involved.
Same at my job. I’m an accountant. We have clerks who I’ve been trying to mentor to go to school and get their accounting degrees. A couple are looking into it but a few others say no. Too much work.
Again, I’m not saying this is the case for all minimum wage earners, but I suspect a sizable chunk.
As we all know, any job that pays well will in all likelihood require a ton of blood sweat and tears to accomplish. If you don’t want to do the work well you can’t complain about the results.
I don't pretend to have all the answers or even to totally understand why either. It is very complicated.
I also don't think you have to know why to instinctively know CNAs are underpaid. It simply doesn't seem right they make what a fast food worker does.
I will say this though, healthcare is unique, it is highly regulated and very closely tied to public spending. It isn't simple free market economics with healthcare.
As far as people not taking advantage of the free degree. I honestly don't know. If I were to guess, I would say most people doing the job simply don't have the time. I mean I am sure you are right, some people could but choose not do, but I bet most have a good reason not to. Either that or the elephant in the room...undocumented workers who are afraid to make too much of a splash. Going to nursing school is a splash.
I know this. The exposure to diseases and the physical demands of the job should demand a much higher wage than fast food. A CNA isn't a McJob, it should pay more.
Then train and support unskilled, hook them up with better paying jobs with healthcare , not everyone is smart or resourceful enough to change their circumstances. To make society keep going round and round, we need to minimize the hurdles as poverty leads to homelessness, drugs, drinking, violence, crime, domestic abuse, broken families, hatred and what not. We can’t live in individual bubbles. For things to go right for individuals, we have to help each other as a community.
It's not society's job to help those who don't want to help themselves. Yeah that's cold hearted. Churches perform some role in this.
There will always be the low skilled and unmotivated. America was not built to be fair, but to allow those who work extra hard to get ahead to rise above those who don't GAS about bettering themselves.
Even white collar professionals must continually educate themselves to stay relevant. My own job will soon be automated away, I could sit and sulk or I could invest my income into assets that will get me though to the next career...it's my choice, and I don't expect the government to fix it for me.
I probably would agree with you on a lot of things if we were to grab a cup of coffee, but there were a few things about this post that got me:
That is fair. Much more likely than not I'm wrong about many, many things. I've changed my opinion on many things over time and hope to do it again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
1. EDS was actually saying the median pay is $12 per hour, not $10.01. The $10.01 figure was the 10th percentile. Maybe that $3 difference still doesn't matter for you, but I thought I should point out that it's actually $12.
I don't really care to be honest. $12 bucks an hour is a pretty sorry life. His broader point was "No one gets paid 9 per hour to do that" yeah, ok, boomer, people defiantly do. The problem with EDS is his only interaction with "Plebs" is when they serve him in the service industry or though stats he googles.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
2. As a likely Bernie voter (unless Yang somehow hangs on until election day), I don't like the characterization that Bernie is aiming to take anyone's wealth. A progressive (and I mean this in the strict sense, not a normative sense) tax plan is not the same thing as taking people's wealth.
I like Yang as well. He and Gabbard are prob the only 2 democratic candidates who could pull me over from voting 3rd party. I'm sure some of the reasons we both like yang are different, but I like how he has appeal from both sides. UBI makes sense from a conservative or liberal perspective.
As far as taking people's wealth, sorry, but that is what Taxation is. I mean we are all ok with it to some extent, right? Anyway, I mean that as more of a way of hopefully shocking EDS into understanding that hes got alot of his own money to lose if we don't fix the problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
3. CNAs are in a weird spot. Many CNAs are either in or planning to do nursing school, and CNA experience is viewed as good experience to have, so there's an abundance of workers who don't care too much about the pay. It's like how surgical residents only make $50k even though they are doing surgery on people (admittedly to varying degrees). A four year degree plus medical school plus multiple years of on-the-job training seems like it would be worth more than $50k per year, but most of the workers are in it for a payoff other than money (and yes, I get that residencies are training, but CNAs have a similar effect with future RNs).
The thing is a pretty high number aren't going to nursing school, and going forward we will continue to have demand for CNAs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
4. Various jobs don't pay more or less than other jobs because they are gross or demanding. They pay more than other jobs because market forces require employers to offer more for them. To me, it's not a problem that CNAs don't make more than burger flippers. What is a problem to me is that neither is really a livable wage. There are two responses to this. First, we can require employers to pay more (raise minimum wage). The problem with this is that it will inevitably lead to employers seeking ways to hire fewer people, and fewer jobs will be available. The other option is to have the government make up for some of the difference, and that's what we currently do through our tax structure. I'd personally like to see this approach expanded (hence my Bernie and Yang support), but it's of course a political fight.
A lot of wealthy people are way off in their views on this stuff, though. We have to recognize right up front that there are not enough jobs that pay a livable wage. The "work hard, stay in school" answer is great advice for an individual person, but that is not a response to the societal problem. There aren't enough jobs available down that path to fill the need if everyone took that path. We've seen the start of this with the devaluing of college degrees in recent years. As automation and technology progress, there will be even fewer of these jobs.
I totally agree with pretty much all you just said there.
To add my own take:
I feel very fortunate. Historically I enjoy more material wealth than kings and have seen more of the world than some of the greatest explorers.
Within our modern context I'm lucky to be born into the 1st world.
Within that context I was lucky to be born white with all that privilege. I was lucky enough to be born to parents who love me. I was lucky enough that even the minor struggles I've had have been mostly taken care of. With different parents my dyslexia might have been debilitating...instead I'm just a terrible speller...mostly a blight on y'all who have to read what I write.
I'm prob a little above average intelligence and definitely make better than average money. Life is pretty good.
Most of this isn't my doing. I mean yeah, of course I had to do the course work to get a college degree. Of course I need to go to work and take care of business to get paid. I know plenty of people who were born with more who managed to screw it up....but still in the grand scheme of things I've got it pretty easy.
One of the problems with the wealthy is we allow them to take too much credit. I'm not a fan of Obama, but he was spot on when he said "You didn't build that"
While there are genuine rags to riches stories there are tons of rich to richer stories. And no one does it without the help of other people's tax dollars. If you make it, you owe a debt to society.
Yet, we let rich people think they are their own self made god. We let them think that their kid got into law school or medical school because they worked harder and are smarter than the kids who didn't have all the advantages they did.
We praise them for charitable gifts that don't really effect them...basically all wealthy charity is out of surplus. Most of it is the equivalent of me giving someone 20, or maybe 100 bucks. It doesn't really merit more than a "Gee, thanks" but we name buildings after them and make a big deal out of it because we want that 100k, 500k or million dollar donation is worth more to the people they give it to than themselves.
Basically, we have set up wealthy people to have a skewed view of the world. I don't totally blame them, it's a nice view of the world, and there aren't a ton of benefits for them to challenge it.
I'm as much of a capitalist as anyone, but when people like you explain away and justify inequality, poor pay for essential services etc they make capitalism less and less appealing to the less ideologically inclined.
I mean I think you should be able to keep your wealth out of principal, even if you are a jerk, but I'm sure lots of people don't see it that way.
This is how we end up with someone like Bernie. I blame people like you.
The fact that you are an old rich white guy lecturing people and who comes off as elitist and apathetic to the struggles of others doesn't make your ideas appealing. Honestly, you think of yourself as an independent thinker and a maverick, but you're takes are the same as all your other WASP peers. I mean that's fine and all, it is what is to be expected, but it doesn't sell your ideas.
Whatever success you have enjoyed in your life, I'm going to take a wild guess as suggest it wasn't in any form of sales.
You argue about the wrong things. $10.01 vs $9 ? Fine, but both are terrible. Neither are wages you could live on. You'll live and die by the $1.01 on this one because details matter, but you are missing the important details.
Bottom line, people who work as CNA are very much underpaid. We take advantage of them and EMTs because they don't do it for the money, they do it because they care about people.
It's complicated, but brushing it off is a bad look. Pretending it isn't a problem or arguing about the specifics of the bad wages won't help your cause. Admit we underpay, full stop.
I mean you are the one who has the most to lose. Fail to sell you vision and people will take your wealth away. No one will care about you bragging about how successful as they take more of your money. You won't come off as a sympathetic victim. "It was $10.01, not $9" won't do you any good at that point.
I mean, the irony is I actually agree with more of your takes than I disagree with, I just don't like your style, it doesn't help our, your, cause.
You come off as just being defensive of the status quo, which is fair, you are old and wealthy, it worked for you, why change it. Fair enough, but that isn't a good selling point. Really the main thing I disagree with you on are about urban structure, but loving cars and suburban style development is to be expected of an old Dallas native, so whatever.
Call that bitter, but I'm just trying to prevent the Bernie bros from taking you to the proverbial guillotine, dude.
Or maybe you think arguing about $10.01 vs $9 and bragging to strangers on the internet that you think you made more money than them at their age is the way to sell people. Who knows.
Negative on all counts. My comments were limited to the validity of PV's quantitative claims and implications, which were and remain almost completely false. I made no commentary at all regarding the propriety of CNA pay/where such pay fits on the equity continuum. You fancied-up every bit of that in your head - presumably after a night of partying.
VWG correted part of your emotional fusillade relative to the $9.00 - $10.01 spread elsewhere and you said, "I really don't care to be honest". That paints a Mona Lisa quality picture of how you operate.
1. I agree. It will be interesting to see how we deal with this issue once human effort has little value. When the machines are smarter than us, our best efforts would be a bit like Forrest Gump trying to solve Fermat's Last Theorem. I truly believe the key question humans will have to answer in the next hundred years is what to do when we don't have to do anything. This sounds far-fetched, but I anticipate virtual reality allowing us to jump into a different time or place and have an ordinary "job" as a means of fulfillment rather than necessity. We could be a wild west sheriff from 9-5 and have Fridays off.
2 and 3. This is a very real concern, but I am hopeful that the machines will hold more of the power than we do, at least eventually. Once we have actual AI, and machines are significantly smarter than we are, I hope they can solve some of these problems. In the meantime, while a universal basic income would represent a larger government in the fiscal sense, I'm not sure much of the basic power structure of our government would need to change. The power concern here is about the handful of people who control the technology, and that is a problem we need to solve before it arises.
When machines are smarter than we are they will likely kill us
It seems that you've already noticed the issue. If people from other countries can pass the 4-10-week training and happily accepts $9-10/hr, why is it necessary to raise the wage?
I definitely think CNAs should get paid more than they currently do. But sadly, this is true. The Philippines in particular is known for having a very aggressive nursing program that is set up to send massive amounts of young Filipinas to the U.S. to happily take low paying CNA jobs. As long as cheap labor from the Philippines and other poor foreign countries keeps filling CNA jobs, CNA pay is never going to go up to anything even HALFWAY respectable.
I definitely think CNAs should get paid more than they currently do. But sadly, this is true. The Philippines in particular is known for having a very aggressive nursing program that is set up to send massive amounts of young Filipinas to the U.S. to happily take low paying CNA jobs. As long as cheap labor from the Philippines and other poor foreign countries keeps filling CNA jobs,
CNA jobs are not "filled up:" That is completely false.
It may be true that people come here from the Philippines to take CNA jobs, but the job field is still not filled up - far from it. There is still a shortage of CNAs. Importing foreign labor has not affected that.
CNA jobs are not "filled up:" That is completely false.
I didn't say all CNA jobs or the CNA field were "filled up." I said low wage workers from other countries like the Philippines FILL CNA job openings (as in significant enough numbers, but not ALL) which is a COMPLETELY different meaning and context. Please don't quote me and then MISquote me...
i didn't say all cna jobs or the cna field were "filled up." i said low wage workers from other countries like the philippines fill cna job openings (as in significant enough numbers, but not all) which is a completely different meaning and context. Please don't quote me and then misquote me...
ok
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