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Old 04-01-2017, 05:40 AM   #41
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Families are falling apart too, so people don't even have the support at home that they once might have had. I am surprised that more people aren't turning to religion in their time of need, but that doesn't seem to be happening either.
I see lots of turning to religion. If you look at maps of economically depressed areas, especially rural areas, these seem to be in areas that are traditionally very religious. And from what I see with new churches, etc., that trend is still on the rise.

Of course the family in the article didn't appear to have any contact with the local religious community.
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Old 04-01-2017, 01:56 PM   #42
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So, I am guessing, this - getting disability though not truly disabled - is considered acceptable?
I'm fairly sure that virtually any community has some pockets of population where this is true. I worked in a county that was and is one of the wealthiest in the country and there were definitely segments of the population where that was the case. No reason to believe that other places would be different.
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Old 04-04-2017, 10:07 AM   #43
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She didn't go to college. She was a waitress cum singer. She didn't have a proper bed. She had some loose woods in her bed. Never could afford meat, ate vegetarian food. But if I invited her out to Chinese food on a free gift certificate, she had no problem with meat. Oh yes, she drank beer like fish too. Poor Irish from Boston.
So this is the person you use to justify that most poor people - families, mothers, fathers, kids - use drugs? A young, alcoholic musician from Boston.

(FWIW, I will personally vouch for the fact that most musicians do.)
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Old 04-04-2017, 03:27 PM   #44
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They just happen to be able to get by on a lot less because they are willing, and used to sacrificing more (living together, making the most out of the least, and even living in homeless conditions) and being less aspirational than Americans. Their expectations are far different and their behavior appropriate and predictable under the circumstances. The question is, should this be the norm for American workers too? For corporations looking at their largest variable expense, the answer would be "yes". The stick has taken the place of the carrot in Management circles. The 2009 crash opened the floodgates that had started after the dotcom bust.
I think this is already on its way to becoming the norm for Americans as the associations with certain work are revised to be socially acceptable. For example, 10 years ago, nobody would think being a cab driver was a reputable choice for a side gig or even a full time occupation. Uber has changed this association with a bring-your-own-car policy and a polished app as driving people around for money is more acceptable. The same thing goes for AirBnB as renting personal, living space to travelers is completely normal. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program has opportunities to earn pennies per hour to partake in repetitive, low-skilled tasks. Americans are being increasingly reconditioned to work on tasks that may have been relegated to non-industrial and lesser-educated populations. Basic technology skills of working apps and internet sites has Americans more willing to partake in what were once undesirable occupations.

We have a Goodwill center in our city that takes up what was once a large K-Mart store. A section of the center has large, unsorted bins of clothes/books/gadgets brought out every 30-45 minutes. People wait around for these bins to come out and then converge like hyenas on a kill, as they elbow their way through the clothes that will later be sold on ebay and flea markets. There are incidents of fights breaking out, people being bitten to let go of what they have in their hand, etc. This is yet another example of how Americans are being reconditioned to work in ways that would have been considered the work of the uneducated and immigrants. The end result is a somewhat entrepreneurial and technically savvy workflow to sell things online, but it is (once again) the technical “dressing” over a fundamentally menial event of sorting through discarded goods.
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Old 04-04-2017, 03:57 PM   #45
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If she could afford to go to college, she may not have had money, but she was not in the 'poor' category socio-economically speaking. Living a life of poverty is chronic, being educated and broke is not.
My company (in the food service field) has many jobs available for the unskilled. We hire minimum wage and up employees for providing school lunches. We have a heck of a time filling jobs because of failed drug tests and having no felonies. Turnover is huge from year to year.
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Old 04-04-2017, 03:59 PM   #46
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Wow - failed drug tests and felony records. What % of the population does that keep from employment?

Not to mention turnover (I assume due to not sticking with the job, although being fired for cause must certainly play a part).
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Old 04-04-2017, 04:01 PM   #47
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My company (in the food service field) has many jobs available for the unskilled. We hire minimum wage and up employees for providing school lunches. We have a heck of a time filling jobs because of failed drug tests and having no felonies. Turnover is huge from year to year.
If a person is hired at the entry level and is able to maintain employment, does the company offer some assistance (education, training) and encouragement to move up in the chain of command? I imagine that the company would want to retain these individuals who have real potential.
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Old 04-04-2017, 04:09 PM   #48
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Wow - failed drug tests and felony records. What % of the population does that keep from employment?

Not to mention turnover (I assume due to not sticking with the job, although being fired for cause must certainly play a part).
These are issues that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP MorganChase, speaks about in this year's letter to shareholders.
https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corpor...areholders.pdf Discussion starts on Page 32.
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Old 04-04-2017, 04:30 PM   #49
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If a person is hired at the entry level and is able to maintain employment, does the company offer some assistance (education, training) and encouragement to move up in the chain of command? I imagine that the company would want to retain these individuals who have real potential.
They do. Many of the Supervisors and "leaders" started as entry level workers and even temps.
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Old 04-04-2017, 04:33 PM   #50
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Wow - failed drug tests and felony records. What % of the population does that keep from employment?

Not to mention turnover (I assume due to not sticking with the job, although being fired for cause must certainly play a part).
It's pretty amazing, really. They know they'll have to take a drug test and they still apply.
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Old 04-04-2017, 05:08 PM   #51
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Wow - failed drug tests and felony records. What % of the population does that keep from employment?

Not to mention turnover (I assume due to not sticking with the job, although being fired for cause must certainly play a part).
8.6% - 6.5% of adult non-blacks and 25% of adult blacks. Do you still think it doesn't have an impact? It represents instant disqualification for almost any employer. About one of 11 people in America are affected. It's a huge deal.

How do you think white America would feel if one in four people were permanently disqualified from gainful employment? Pretty heavy s**t...
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Old 04-04-2017, 05:19 PM   #52
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8.6% - 6.5% of adult non-blacks and 25% of adult blacks. Do you still think it doesn't have an impact? It represents instant disqualification for almost any employer. About one of 11 people in America are affected. It's a huge deal.

How do you think white America would feel if one in four people were permanently disqualified from gainful employment? Pretty heavy s**t...
Well we're talking about the struggles of middle aged white Americans here.

Things are apparently not as rosy as they were.
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Old 04-04-2017, 05:23 PM   #53
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About one of 11 people in America are affected.
I note the passive voice. If only we could figure out what is causing these felonies to be committed.

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Old 04-04-2017, 05:35 PM   #54
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I note the passive voice. If only we could figure out what is causing these felonies to be committed.
There is an element of a feedback loop going on with that. Naturally, folks with felony convictions have a harder time finding jobs and for garyt's company they wouldn't dare hire them because of the liability of employing convicts who are going to be around school kids. Same with known drug users. There may even be a state law prohibiting them from doing so.

So, faced with fewer options, they are more likely to make another withdrawal from the local convenience store.
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Old 04-04-2017, 09:28 PM   #55
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It's pretty amazing, really. They know they'll have to take a drug test and they still apply.

It is not just low level people that do that... I would hire accountants and would say that we are going to do a background test and the things that would disqualify them right off the bat... sooo, please tell me if we do not need to do one...

I had only one person tell me that I did not need to do one.... I had many fail... and this was not a drug test!!!
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Old 04-05-2017, 12:53 AM   #56
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These are issues that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP MorganChase, speaks about in this year's letter to shareholders.
https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corpor...areholders.pdf Discussion starts on Page 32.
Thanks for sharing. It is a good discourse on other topics regarding the state of the nation too.

About the topic at hand, it has a chart showing that the labor force participation rate for men aged 25–54 has dropped from 96% in the early 70s down to 89% today. It's the lowest among OECD countries, and about the same as that of Italy. Fifty seven percent of the non-working males are on disability.
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Old 04-05-2017, 08:22 AM   #57
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It is not just low level people that do that... I would hire accountants and would say that we are going to do a background test and the things that would disqualify them right off the bat... sooo, please tell me if we do not need to do one...

I had only one person tell me that I did not need to do one.... I had many fail... and this was not a drug test!!!
To Audrey's point, I DQ'd way more candidates for failing an intelligence test than a drug one...most couldn't even follow the instructions - these are white collar jobs.
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Old 04-05-2017, 03:47 PM   #58
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As a reference, the local community college tuition is $42/hr, or about $2520 for a typical AA.
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Old 04-05-2017, 04:43 PM   #59
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I wonder if part of this can have similar causes to the situation in the Soviet Union and Russia after the fall of the Berlin wall. Here is a quote from an abstract on this:
Abstract: Male life expectancy at birth fell by over six years in Russia between 1989 and 1994.
Many other countries of the former Soviet Union saw similar declines, and female life
expectancy fell as well. Using cross-country and Russian household survey data, we assess six
possible explanations for this upsurge in mortality. Most find little support in the data: the
deterioration of the health care system, changes in diet and obesity, and material deprivation fail
to explain the increase in mortality rates. The two factors that do appear to be important are
alcohol consumption, especially as it relates to external causes of death (homicide, suicide, and
accidents) and stress associated with a poor outlook for the future. However, a large residual
remains to be explained."
For the US add opiod additiction to the Alcohol issue. I do thing the poor outlook for the future is a common factor. (In essence that current folks will not live as well as their parents). I do wonder if the base time frame after WWII was an anomalous time and should not be used as a benchmark. If you go back to the 1920s factory workers were not really middle class for example. The unions succeeded because there the big countries were not involved in trade with us and many others were rebuilding and did not have capacity to export much.
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Old 04-05-2017, 05:19 PM   #60
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I do wonder if the base time frame after WWII was an anomalous time and should not be used as a benchmark. If you go back to the 1920s factory workers were not really middle class for example. The unions succeeded because there the big countries were not involved in trade with us and many others were rebuilding and did not have capacity to export much.
There is also the issue that the U.S. industrial base was untouched by the war, while most of Europe and the industrialized Asian countries had to completely rebuild since their infrastructure was destroyed. So for perhaps the first decade the U.S. had virtually no competition to it's industry. This put the unions in a good bargaining position because of the labor shortage.

So yes, I think it was a very unusual set of circumstances that the U.S. benefited enormously from.
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