Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Unless I've been living under a rock for the past 67 years I've never seen any local grocery chain offer delivery. And what inventory system they did have was far from accurate. And going back further was on pieces of paper.

You just don't want to consider my point, which is nothing new.

Maybe you have. Or maybe you just never shopped at those grocery stores...? I dunno.

mnem
 

Rather than consider opposing points to your so called facts you simply hone in on living under a rock. Perhaps you should go back under yours. 

Dunno what to tell you med. Grocery stores have had delivery since forever. When I worked as a bagger in my little Super Duper store in East Bumblefuck New York, I made deliveries to residences.

My dad has been getting grocery deliveries from his local Gristiede's since I was a baby.

When I was growing up in Peesborgh, we had several local groceries who offered delivery; orders made by phone or a checklist dropped off at the store. My mom often took advantage, as she worked long hours and she had to take care of me.

But hey, go ahead and get pissy aboot it. Not my fault you didn't know this was a "thing".

And lets not even get into stores that offer "personal shopper" services. Those have been around literally longer than the US of A.

mnem
 

[SilverSolder]

[...] The problem is the age-old one of those who have not being willing to pay a living wage for work they believe is "beneath them". [...]

It seems to me that is a pure supply and demand balancing issue?  E.g. if the price of having someone mow your lawn rises to $1,000 a month for an average suburban home, a lot more people would get a lawnmower and (re)discover the fitness benefits of doing their own gardening...   If the price of mowing the lawn falls to $10, a lot of people would take that offer, and find their exercise somewhere else.

So, those jobs that pay very little, probably pay very little because:
  (1) people are not willing to pay all that much for them, instead doing it themselves if the price is "not worth it"  (very elastic demand curve), and
  (2) a relatively large number of people are able to do simple jobs that require no particular skills other than showing up (large supply)

[bd139]

Yeah that's the point of technology. To free us from slavery. You're demanding slavery back there.

See my comment about basic income earlier. The future is going to be different. There's not enough jobs for everyone. And that should be fine. But you've bought into the stigma around it.

No, quite the opposite. I understand that most people have a fundamental desire to be productive at something. The problem is the age-old one of those who have not being willing to pay a living wage for work they believe is "beneath them".

We used to have actual supply & demand applicable to skills. Now we have only menial labor getting paid less than poverty wages and you can't get out of that unless you're willing to mortgage your entire life for ultra-specialized skills that may or may not even have value by the time you're finished getting that education/training.

The problem is not the machines replacing people; it's the machine that makes people into machines or worse, cogs in a machine that may or may not keep working for a lifetime. Med's employment with IBM is the perfect example. Highly specialized knowledge, that was made obsolete by the machine and not given even a chance to retrain for the new knowledge.

We don't need more machines replacing people and free money. We need to flip the pyramid scheme we've turned our economy into upside-down, so that it benefits the many rather than the few again. This half-century experiment with supply-side economics is an abject failure by any metric.

Everybody is good at something. There is more than enough work that needs to be done keep people doing it, and in most cases, better than a one-size-fits-all machine that doesn't really fit anything, which is the way the corporate business model always pushes things.

We just need to get away from the idea that it's okay to allow the big machine to collect all the money for the benefit of the very few while not paying a living wage to anybody but a select few who are willing & able to sell their souls to that machine.

mnem
 

That still conveniently avoids the forgotten folk in society which is a big problem:

1. People who can't work due to physical or mental health problems be they short or long term.
2. People who lose their jobs and are unable to find something in their skill set without having to relocate half way across a country.
3. Positions that are technically obsolete due to technology and manufacturing improvements.
4. Retired people.

The traditional answer to those problems are pensions, insurance and winging it. But if you can't afford those because you're not even earning a living wage to start with then I'm afraid your remaining option is dealing crack and 50 cent blowjobs. And the next thing you have recursive social decay.

Just give people a basic living wage, a housing entitlement that is actually backed up with housing stock and free healthcare and watch the world change. Our corporate structures are efficient enough to pay for this through taxation.

Unfortunately the ethic of reciprocity is somewhat forgotten these days. "as long as I'm ok" is the prevailing attitude. But it's not that even. It's "as long as the other person is worse than me, my life isn't so bad after all"...

Ok so I outed myself there as a rampant techno-socialist 

[bd139]

[...] The problem is the age-old one of those who have not being willing to pay a living wage for work they believe is "beneath them". [...]

It seems to me that is a pure supply and demand balancing issue?  E.g. if the price of having someone mow your lawn rises to $1,000 a month for an average suburban home, a lot more people would get a lawnmower and (re)discover the fitness benefits of doing their own gardening...   If the price of mowing the lawn falls to $10, a lot of people would take that offer, and find their exercise somewhere else.

So, those jobs that pay very little, probably pay very little because:
  (1) people are not willing to pay all that much for them, instead doing it themselves if the price is "not worth it"  (inelastic demand curve), and
  (2) a relatively large number of people are able to do simple jobs that require no particular skills other than showing up (large supply)

That's also where the whole basic income comes in. It makes those jobs viable then completely destroying the race to the bottom. It gives fulfilment to the person doing them because they're not breaking their arse so the kids have to eat oats and water for dinner while paying 80% of their income out in rent to stay somewhere that there are lawns to mow. Plus half the year when it's covered in snow, noone starves. The lawns still need to be mowed...

[beanflying]

[...] The problem is the age-old one of those who have not being willing to pay a living wage for work they believe is "beneath them". [...]

It seems to me that is a pure supply and demand balancing issue?  E.g. if the price of having someone mow your lawn rises to $1,000 a month for an average suburban home, a lot more people would get a lawnmower and (re)discover the fitness benefits of doing their own gardening...   If the price of mowing the lawn falls to $10, a lot of people would take that offer, and find their exercise somewhere else.

So, those jobs that pay very little, probably pay very little because:
  (1) people are not willing to pay all that much for them, instead doing it themselves if the price is "not worth it"  (inelastic demand curve), and
  (2) a relatively large number of people are able to do simple jobs that require no particular skills other than showing up (large supply)

Part of the problem is if your background is the USA your view in a world sense is actually WRONG. 18 year olds on checkouts in Oz will be getting about $13 USD/hour and adults more like $15 (The USA is about 1/2 of that I guess). My staff in the Cafe were all adults in the end I got right over Teenage bimbettes without a work ethic were on between $15-20 (Chef).

While we live in a world where some get under $1 a day for work attempting to suggest jobs are beneath the humans in country X 'because reasons' shows a complete lack of touch with the broader reality.

[SilverSolder]

[...] "as long as the other person is worse than me, my life isn't so bad after all" [...]

That is particularly British "thing", it seems to me.   In Northern Europe, it is more like "as long as everyone is approximately the same, my life isn't so bad after all!" (no matter what the real equality actually is).  In the USA, it is "As long as I have a chance to get rich, my life isn't so bad after all!" (no matter what the real chance is!).

[bd139]

Yes I'd agree with that. Apart from Switzerland 

[mnementh]

[...] The problem is the age-old one of those who have not being willing to pay a living wage for work they believe is "beneath them". [...]

It seems to me that is a pure supply and demand balancing issue?  E.g. if the price of having someone mow your lawn rises to $1,000 a month for an average suburban home, a lot more people would get a lawnmower and (re)discover the fitness benefits of doing their own gardening...   If the price of mowing the lawn falls to $10, a lot of people would take that offer, and find their exercise somewhere else.

So, those jobs that pay very little, probably pay very little because:
  (1) people are not willing to pay all that much for them, instead doing it themselves if the price is "not worth it"  (inelastic demand curve), and
  (2) a relatively large number of people are able to do simple jobs that require no particular skills other than showing up (large supply)

The problem is that "the machine" allows a very few people to keep that actual supply & demand artificially skewed in their favor... so that, like in your case, the individual who wants to do yard work has to lay out huge cash expenditure in terms of advertising, upscale trade dress, insurance and permits up front to even be able to work at what he's good at.

Or, in some markets, one has to actually buy into a franchise for that kind of work, because there are regional franchisers who've cornered the market on the higher tax bracket neighborhoods and you literally can be run off as a vagrant if your work vehicle isn't flying the right colors. *coughSquirrelHillcough*

Your hypothetical self-employed gardener, once an honorable if menial profession, now finds himself left with a choice between working under the table for scraps by words of mouth, or going to work for someone who does have the money for all that up front, and getting paid... again... scraps. Okay, maybe he's not that hypothetical; I might have known him once upon a time.

No, it's the "Ponzi Scheme Economy" money pyramid we need to fix first... we need to stop letting the machine which is directed by the very few set the price on a man's labor; they've proven again and again they will do anything rather than pay a man a living wage. After that, actual Supply & Demand will level things out.

mnem
 

[beanflying]

[...] The problem is the age-old one of those who have not being willing to pay a living wage for work they believe is "beneath them". [...]

It seems to me that is a pure supply and demand balancing issue?  E.g. if the price of having someone mow your lawn rises to $1,000 a month for an average suburban home, a lot more people would get a lawnmower and (re)discover the fitness benefits of doing their own gardening...   If the price of mowing the lawn falls to $10, a lot of people would take that offer, and find their exercise somewhere else.

So, those jobs that pay very little, probably pay very little because:
  (1) people are not willing to pay all that much for them, instead doing it themselves if the price is "not worth it"  (inelastic demand curve), and
  (2) a relatively large number of people are able to do simple jobs that require no particular skills other than showing up (large supply)

The problem is that "the machine" allows a very few people to keep that actual supply & demand artificially skewed in their favor... so that, like in your case, the individual who wants to do yard work has to lay out huge cash expenditure in terms of advertising, upscale trade dress, insurance and permits up front to even be able to work at what he's good at.

Or, in some markets, one has to actually buy into a franchise for that kind of work, because there are regional franchisers who've cornered the market on the higher tax bracket neighborhoods and you literally can be run off as a vagrant if your work vehicle isn't flying the right colors. *coughSquirrelHillcough*

Your hypothetical self-employed gardener, once an honorable if menial profession, now finds himself left with a choice between working under the table for scraps by words of mouth, or going to work for someone who does have the money for all that up front, and getting paid... again... scraps. Okay, maybe he's not that hypothetical; I might have known him once upon a time.

No, it's the "Ponzi Scheme Economy" money pyramid we need to fix first... we need to stop letting the machine which is directed by the very few set the price on a man's labor; they've proven again and again they will do anything rather than pay a man a living wage. After that, actual Supply & Demand will level things out.

mnem
 

Again you are showing your USA blinkers. Next door is paying there lawnmowing guy $50AUD or about $35USD for 40 minutes of work plus some travelling.

And if you keep bleating about the 'machine' while promoting Amazon as gods gift to the masses I am going to call you a hypocritical asshole! Oh wait I did 

[SilverSolder]

[...] The problem is the age-old one of those who have not being willing to pay a living wage for work they believe is "beneath them". [...]

It seems to me that is a pure supply and demand balancing issue?  E.g. if the price of having someone mow your lawn rises to $1,000 a month for an average suburban home, a lot more people would get a lawnmower and (re)discover the fitness benefits of doing their own gardening...   If the price of mowing the lawn falls to $10, a lot of people would take that offer, and find their exercise somewhere else.

So, those jobs that pay very little, probably pay very little because:
  (1) people are not willing to pay all that much for them, instead doing it themselves if the price is "not worth it"  (inelastic demand curve), and
  (2) a relatively large number of people are able to do simple jobs that require no particular skills other than showing up (large supply)

Part of the problem is if your background is the USA your view in a world sense is actually WRONG. 18 year olds on checkouts in Oz will be getting about $13 USD/hour and adults more like $15 (The USA is about 1/2 of that I guess). My staff in the Cafe were all adults in the end I got right over Teenage bimbettes without a work ethic were on between $15-20 (Chef).

While we live in a world where some get under $1 a day for work attempting to suggest jobs are beneath the humans in country X 'because reasons' shows a complete lack of touch with the broader reality.

I am not a "native" American, but I've lived there a couple of decades - I don't claim to understand everything about this big country, but I have picked up a thing or two!

It is definitely a strong American cultural norm that success comes from work, and that handouts are a bad thing.  With my European background, I do think that America has traditionally taken this concept too far (as you seem to think as well).  Things are changing, though.  Slowly...   but they are changing.

US wages may be a little higher than you think.  A teenager working at McDonalds will get ~$10 an hour.  More senior staff will make more than that,  plus they get health coverage etc.
https://www.indeed.com/cmp/McDonald's/salaries

European wages are high, but the most advanced nations tend to claw claw more than half of it back via income and consumption taxes.  When you take everything into account, it gets harder to nail down which "system" leaves you with the highest standard of living overall.

[mnementh]

...We just need to get away from the idea that it's okay to allow the big machine to collect all the money for the benefit of the very few while not paying a living wage to anybody but a select few who are willing & able to sell their souls to that machine.

mnem
 

That still conveniently avoids the forgotten folk in society which is a big problem:

1. People who can't work due to physical or mental health problems be they short or long term.
2. People who lose their jobs and are unable to find something in their skill set without having to relocate half way across a country.
3. Positions that are technically obsolete due to technology and manufacturing improvements.
4. Retired people.

The traditional answer to those problems are pensions, insurance and winging it. But if you can't afford those because you're not even earning a living wage to start with then I'm afraid your remaining option is dealing crack and 50 cent blowjobs. And the next thing you have recursive social decay.

Just give people a basic living wage, a housing entitlement that is actually backed up with housing stock and free healthcare and watch the world change. Our corporate structures are efficient enough to pay for this through taxation.

Unfortunately the ethic of reciprocity is somewhat forgotten these days. "as long as I'm ok" is the prevailing attitude. But it's not that even. It's "as long as the other person is worse than me, my life isn't so bad after all"...

Ok so I outed myself there as a rampant techno-socialist 

Yes, but to do that you have to tax the fuck out of a few thousand uber-rich motherfuckers. Or, more reasonably, do as I said and tax corporations based on the disparity between their net worth and the number of human beings they pay a living wage or salary.

As they're the ones who have the money to buy politicians, not gonna happen. 

Flipping the pyramid is something that can be done... by ordinary people... because they have the numbers. All we have to do is stop listening to the lies those very few keep feeding us about how it's okay to fuck everybody so long as we tell you it's okay, and it's supposed to be a dog-eat-dog world, and you like it that way...

Even though history has shown us over and over again that humanity only ever really does well when they work together, and that when they do, there's more for everybody.

mnem
 

[Brumby]

Yes I'd agree with that. Apart from Switzerland 

What is it with Switzerland?

I know I'm missing something here, but from the general "vibe" I get the feeling that Switzerland is a land of it's own idiosyncrasies ... and that maybe I shouldn't dig any deeper.

[BU508A]

Yes I'd agree with that. Apart from Switzerland 

What is it with Switzerland?

I know I'm missing something here, but from the general "vibe" I get the feeling that Switzerland is a land of it's own idiosyncrasies ... and that maybe I shouldn't dig any deeper.

Some relatives of bd139 are living there. Wearing white socks, probably. 

[SilverSolder]

[...]
While we live in a world where some get under $1 a day for work attempting to suggest jobs are beneath the humans in country X 'because reasons' shows a complete lack of touch with the broader reality.

I didn't say I like that reality, or that it is how things should ideally be.

The $1 a day is what happens when you let the "hard" laws of supply and demand rule the roost, with no intervention e.g. from the state or anything else to put a floor under how low things can go.

This isn't just a problem in third world countries.  While I lived in the UK, I encountered cleaning ladies that cleaned commercial premises who told me they were paid 1 pound an hour (say, $2).  The UK does have free health care which does set a floor, though.  -  I also encountered suppliers to well known manufacturers that were transgressing health and safety regulations very badly, handling unhealthy chemicals in a manner that was a clear health hazard to the employees (this firm was later shut down). -  then you have the Tory party complaining about EU interference...  I think they just liked the cheap and cheerful approach and couldn't stomach the costs of doing things properly, so they gunned for Brexit instead...

So if this kind of stuff goes on in "first world" countries, it seems to me we have a long journey ahead of us to get things fixed in the emerging economies...

[SilverSolder]

[...] The problem is the age-old one of those who have not being willing to pay a living wage for work they believe is "beneath them". [...]

It seems to me that is a pure supply and demand balancing issue?  E.g. if the price of having someone mow your lawn rises to $1,000 a month for an average suburban home, a lot more people would get a lawnmower and (re)discover the fitness benefits of doing their own gardening...   If the price of mowing the lawn falls to $10, a lot of people would take that offer, and find their exercise somewhere else.

So, those jobs that pay very little, probably pay very little because:
  (1) people are not willing to pay all that much for them, instead doing it themselves if the price is "not worth it"  (inelastic demand curve), and
  (2) a relatively large number of people are able to do simple jobs that require no particular skills other than showing up (large supply)

That's also where the whole basic income comes in. It makes those jobs viable then completely destroying the race to the bottom. It gives fulfilment to the person doing them because they're not breaking their arse so the kids have to eat oats and water for dinner while paying 80% of their income out in rent to stay somewhere that there are lawns to mow. Plus half the year when it's covered in snow, noone starves. The lawns still need to be mowed...

I think the basic income idea makes sense -  I see it as a payoff to society for getting to the kind of highly efficient agriculture and manufacturing that we have achieved "as a species"... 

But, think of how that would feel to people in regions of the world that don't have that,  and think of the immigration pressures it would create.   It would be very difficult to implement in practice, and would probably have to be "disguised" as all kinds of other payments...   e.g. the US stimulus checks may be an early example of this?

[mnementh]

[...] The problem is the age-old one of those who have not being willing to pay a living wage for work they believe is "beneath them". [...]

It seems to me that is a pure supply and demand balancing issue?  E.g. if the price of having someone mow your lawn rises to $1,000 a month for an average suburban home, a lot more people would get a lawnmower and (re)discover the fitness benefits of doing their own gardening...   If the price of mowing the lawn falls to $10, a lot of people would take that offer, and find their exercise somewhere else.

So, those jobs that pay very little, probably pay very little because:
  (1) people are not willing to pay all that much for them, instead doing it themselves if the price is "not worth it"  (inelastic demand curve), and
  (2) a relatively large number of people are able to do simple jobs that require no particular skills other than showing up (large supply)

The problem is that "the machine" allows a very few people to keep that actual supply & demand artificially skewed in their favor... so that, like in your case, the individual who wants to do yard work has to lay out huge cash expenditure in terms of advertising, upscale trade dress, insurance and permits up front to even be able to work at what he's good at.

Or, in some markets, one has to actually buy into a franchise for that kind of work, because there are regional franchisers who've cornered the market on the higher tax bracket neighborhoods and you literally can be run off as a vagrant if your work vehicle isn't flying the right colors. *coughSquirrelHillcough*

Your hypothetical self-employed gardener, once an honorable if menial profession, now finds himself left with a choice between working under the table for scraps by words of mouth, or going to work for someone who does have the money for all that up front, and getting paid... again... scraps. Okay, maybe he's not that hypothetical; I might have known him once upon a time.

No, it's the "Ponzi Scheme Economy" money pyramid we need to fix first... we need to stop letting the machine which is directed by the very few set the price on a man's labor; they've proven again and again they will do anything rather than pay a man a living wage. After that, actual Supply & Demand will level things out.

mnem
 

Again you are showing your USA blinkers. Next door is paying there lawnmowing guy $50AUD or about $35USD for 40 minutes of work plus some travelling.

And if you keep bleating about the 'machine' while promoting Amazon as gods gift to the masses I am going to call you a hypocritical asshole! Oh wait I did 

Not to be a dick aboot it bean, but you live in the ass-end of nowhere, and modern business practices don't apply to you because those motherfuckers just haven't gotten around to you yet. Don't worry; they will soon enough, unless you fight it tooth and claw.

Obviously, they're going concentrate their efforts on the major population centers, as that's where they can control the most people for the least amount of expenditure and reap the greatest profit. Your neighborhood will be included in the next generation's efforts; rest assured.

As for me "promoting" Amazon... come on, you know me better than that. But just like you buying all your China-direct 3DP and Laser Cutter parts, I have to go where I can get what I need.

Right here, right now, that is NOT the brick & mortars. They are all just an outlet for the same megas you and I are decrying. We don't have the small, local merchants here to buy from... they're all closed down due to COVID. The ones who are open are located downtown, right in the middle of the COVID petri dish.

When I post aboot Amazon, it is more a matter of amazement that they can offer "XYZ" at all, much less at a competitive price and delivered in timely manner to my door.

Of course, that all relies on people like bd and their software expertise and the corporate machine that pays for it all to make that kind of selection possible from my own living room.

But if I am going to be forced to buy from a mega anyways... which in this market I am, I'm going to buy from the one that has what I need, not pay huge markup for whatever's close enough according to some asshole 5000 kliks away who doesn't even know what he's selling; only that it supposedly can fill hot buzzwords on somebody else's list.

mnem
 

[Specmaster]

Yep. Nothing wrong with that either. Also delivery drivers get paid a lot more than the actual supermarket checkout staff do.

Interestingly perhaps, our supermarket delivery vans here are mostly electric now as well.

Yeah, unless you drive for Uber, etc. Then you make just enuf to pay for the car you're driving the wheels off of while they take your profit margin. 

mnem
 

Yeah, much the same thing with many couriers as well, I think you will find that most of their drivers are employed as self-employed drivers / owners and that also includes drivers for Amazon in their white vans and most of these drivers are delivering up to 9:00pm 7 days a week to make the payments on their vans and make enough to live a basic life. No matter which way you look at this situation, you end up with the same reasons, corporate and personal greed, which is the hideous face of capitalism. Money does corrupt, and it's morally wrong that most of the wealth ends up in the hands of a comparative few globally. I have a view that it might be because once you have made your first million, the second takes that much longer and so does the third and so on, as the profits increase, the growth seems to slow. At this point accountants and owners motivated only by percentages  etc kick into a higher gear to step up the increase and this leads to looking at removing costs and people are costs that can be removed easily and are the first step of that process.

[McBryce]

Yes I'd agree with that. Apart from Switzerland 

What is it with Switzerland?

I know I'm missing something here, but from the general "vibe" I get the feeling that Switzerland is a land of it's own idiosyncrasies ... and that maybe I shouldn't dig any deeper.

Some relatives of bd139 are living there. Wearing white socks, probably. 

Birkenstocks are too cold without the white socks!

McBryce.

[bd139]

Yes I'd agree with that. Apart from Switzerland 

What is it with Switzerland?

I know I'm missing something here, but from the general "vibe" I get the feeling that Switzerland is a land of it's own idiosyncrasies ... and that maybe I shouldn't dig any deeper.

Some relatives of bd139 are living there. Wearing white socks, probably. 

Yes that’s about it.

The only things I find that unite my Swiss family members are when they invent some hatred towards someone other than each other and on being uncharitable. It’s both amusing and cringeworthy at the same time staring at their Facebook feeds. The thing is they’re like it in person, just louder 

[beanflying]

Not to be a dick aboot it bean, but you live in the ass-end of nowhere, and modern business practices don't apply to you because those motherfuckers just haven't gotten around to you yet. Don't worry; they will soon enough, unless you fight it tooth and claw.

Obviously, they're going concentrate their efforts on the major population centers, as that's where they can control the most people for the least amount of expenditure and reap the greatest profit. Your neighborhood will be included in the next generation's efforts; rest assured.

As for me "promoting" Amazon... come on, you know me better than that. But just like you buying all your China-direct 3DP and Laser Cutter parts, I have to go where I can get what I need.

Right here, right now, that is NOT the brick & mortars. They are all just an outlet for the same megas you and I are decrying. We don't have the small, local merchants here to buy from... they're all closed down due to COVID. The ones who are open are located downtown, right in the middle of the COVID petri dish.

When I post aboot Amazon, it is more a matter of amazement that they can offer "XYZ" at all, much less at a competitive price and delivered in timely manner to my door.

Of course, that all relies on people like bd and their software expertise and the corporate machine that pays for it all to make that kind of selection possible from my own living room.

But if I am going to be forced to buy from a mega anyways... which in this market I am, I'm going to buy from the one that has what I need, not pay huge markup for whatever's close enough according to some asshole 5000 kliks away who doesn't even know what he's selling; only that it supposedly can fill hot buzzwords on somebody else's list.

mnem
 

Now you are being a DICK about I spent my 'real working life' in Melbourne including traveling a couple of time to the USA for work. Your 'assumptions' about the world and in this case me are again WRONG. I CHOSE to live here to get away from some of the BS and I chose what I wanted to do with my first and second early mid life crises. Most of the guys I grew up with and still play socially with are  in the Rat race of Melbourne so I am more than aware of what is going on.

I have spent most of the last 20 years as an employer in either Retail or Hospitality and your ideas on both are only looking at a USA based system. So stop trying to tell others this is the way of the world! The USA Internationally SUCKS on how to treat its low paid workers but that is not how the world works.

Your selective ignoring of fact and tangential arguments to cover likely the single biggest Tax evader and the best example of what is BAD about Corporate USA is completely two faced and hypocritical if you want your rantings on the evils of that Corporate system to carry any weight.

[SilverSolder]

[...] The problem is the age-old one of those who have not being willing to pay a living wage for work they believe is "beneath them". [...]

It seems to me that is a pure supply and demand balancing issue?  E.g. if the price of having someone mow your lawn rises to $1,000 a month for an average suburban home, a lot more people would get a lawnmower and (re)discover the fitness benefits of doing their own gardening...   If the price of mowing the lawn falls to $10, a lot of people would take that offer, and find their exercise somewhere else.

So, those jobs that pay very little, probably pay very little because:
  (1) people are not willing to pay all that much for them, instead doing it themselves if the price is "not worth it"  (inelastic demand curve), and
  (2) a relatively large number of people are able to do simple jobs that require no particular skills other than showing up (large supply)

The problem is that "the machine" allows a very few people to keep that actual supply & demand artificially skewed in their favor... so that, like in your case, the individual who wants to do yard work has to lay out huge cash expenditure in terms of advertising, upscale trade dress, insurance and permits up front to even be able to work at what he's good at.

Or, in some markets, one has to actually buy into a franchise for that kind of work, because there are regional franchisers who've cornered the market on the higher tax bracket neighborhoods and you literally can be run off as a vagrant if your work vehicle isn't flying the right colors. *coughSquirrelHillcough*

Your hypothetical self-employed gardener, once an honorable if menial profession, now finds himself left with a choice between working under the table for scraps by words of mouth, or going to work for someone who does have the money for all that up front, and getting paid... again... scraps. Okay, maybe he's not that hypothetical; I might have known him once upon a time.

No, it's the "Ponzi Scheme Economy" money pyramid we need to fix first... we need to stop letting the machine which is directed by the very few set the price on a man's labor; they've proven again and again they will do anything rather than pay a man a living wage. After that, actual Supply & Demand will level things out.

mnem
 

It seems to me that consumers are as much to blame for the situation as anyone else...   instead of buying from smaller web sites, we tend to flock to the "safety" and "trust" of Amazon, eBay, etc. because it is easier and less stressful.  In other words, "the machine" as you call it may be an emergent property of ourselves, as consumers!

Back to the gardening example, there is still a limit to what people are willing to pay for lawnmowing.  If a worker can optimistically mow 8 lawns in a day, whatever those 8 homeowners are willing to pay becomes the ceiling.  Say each homeowner is willing to pay $30...  that would put $240 on the table, max. - and there will be many days where you won't get 8 customers, due to competition, the season, or whatever.  Then you have to pay for your pickup truck, your mowers and other tools.

Basically, paying a "living wage" for a job that people simply are not willing to pay all that much for, is always going to be tough!

[Specmaster]

Unless I've been living under a rock for the past 67 years I've never seen any local grocery chain offer delivery. And what inventory system they did have was far from accurate. And going back further was on pieces of paper.

You just don't want to consider my point, which is nothing new. 

Delivery service has been in existence over this side of the pond for some time now.

[bd139]

Yep. Nothing wrong with that either. Also delivery drivers get paid a lot more than the actual supermarket checkout staff do.

Interestingly perhaps, our supermarket delivery vans here are mostly electric now as well.

Yeah, unless you drive for Uber, etc. Then you make just enuf to pay for the car you're driving the wheels off of while they take your profit margin. 

mnem
 

Yeah, much the same thing with many couriers as well, I think you will find that most of their drivers are employed as self-employed drivers / owners and that also includes drivers for Amazon in their white vans and most of these drivers are delivering up to 9:00pm 7 days a week to make the payments on their vans and make enough to live a basic life. No matter which way you look at this situation, you end up with the same reasons, corporate and personal greed, which is the hideous face of capitalism. Money does corrupt, and it's morally wrong that most of the wealth ends up in the hands of a comparative few globally. I have a view that it might be because once you have made your first million, the second takes that much longer and so does the third and so on, as the profits increase, the growth seems to slow. At this point accountants and owners motivated only by percentages  etc kick into a higher gear to step up the increase and this leads to looking at removing costs and people are costs that can be removed easily and are the first step of that process.

If your Amazon drivers have a basic income to fall back on then Amazon will have to work hard to retain staff rather than keep them a prisoner of circumstance.  Another benefit.

[mnementh]

[...]
While we live in a world where some get under $1 a day for work attempting to suggest jobs are beneath the humans in country X 'because reasons' shows a complete lack of touch with the broader reality.

I didn't say I like that reality, or that it is how things should ideally be.

The $1 a day is what happens when you let the "hard" laws of supply and demand rule the roost, with no intervention e.g. from the state or anything else to put a floor under how low things can go.

This isn't just a problem in third world countries.  While I lived in the UK, I encountered cleaning ladies that cleaned commercial premises who told me they were paid 1 pound an hour (say, $2).  The UK does have free health care which does set a floor, though.  -  I also encountered suppliers to well known manufacturers that were transgressing health and safety regulations very badly, handling unhealthy chemicals in a manner that was a clear health hazard to the employees (this firm was later shut down). -  then you have the Tory party complaining about EU interference...  I think they just liked the cheap and cheerful approach and couldn't stomach the costs of doing things properly, so they gunned for Brexit instead...

So if this kind of stuff goes on in "first world" countries, it seems to me we have a long journey ahead of us to get things fixed in the emerging economies...

No... that's just it. It is not Supply and Demand. It is Supply-Side Economics which makes this possible, as it deliberately perverts the proper market normalization that actual  Supply & Demand produces.

In an actual Supply & Demand market, they wouldn't be able to ship all those jobs overseas to a slave wage nation with zero repercussions... they would be tariffed to death when they bring those goods back here because the goods are not produced where they are sold. But because they can buy corrupt trade laws which suit them, they can get away with it. On and on, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

The idea that you can have both no taxes on the rich and not pay human beings a living wage is the cornerstone of this ideology, and it is an obvious lie. As soon as you allow yourself to believe this lie that it is okay to make money more important than people, it becomes much easier... necessary even... to tell yourself even more convoluted lies, and to make yourself believe them.

Then ultimately you wind up with this whole big lie we're all living right now... and that is why the lies from our leaders get more and more blatant, as does their overweening greed.

Trump could not have happened in any other sociopolitical climate. He was just the distraction they used this time while they broke the rule of democracy even more, like Bush/Cheney before him... and don't you dare believe he is gone. The people who own him still own Congress. And they are The Machine.

EDIT: And as long as they are allowed to continue to control the US economy this way, they will similarly influence the world economy. It's not a matter of if this ideology makes it to your corner of the world... but how long your corner will be able to hold out.

Your only hope is that the US economy finally does collapse before it gets to you... and if that happens... well, you're going to see a lot of even worse before it gets better.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Yep. Nothing wrong with that either. Also delivery drivers get paid a lot more than the actual supermarket checkout staff do.

Interestingly perhaps, our supermarket delivery vans here are mostly electric now as well.

Yeah, unless you drive for Uber, etc. Then you make just enuf to pay for the car you're driving the wheels off of while they take your profit margin. 

mnem
 

Yeah, much the same thing with many couriers as well, I think you will find that most of their drivers are employed as self-employed drivers / owners and that also includes drivers for Amazon in their white vans and most of these drivers are delivering up to 9:00pm 7 days a week to make the payments on their vans and make enough to live a basic life. No matter which way you look at this situation, you end up with the same reasons, corporate and personal greed, which is the hideous face of capitalism. Money does corrupt, and it's morally wrong that most of the wealth ends up in the hands of a comparative few globally. I have a view that it might be because once you have made your first million, the second takes that much longer and so does the third and so on, as the profits increase, the growth seems to slow. At this point accountants and owners motivated only by percentages  etc kick into a higher gear to step up the increase and this leads to looking at removing costs and people are costs that can be removed easily and are the first step of that process.

If your Amazon drivers have a basic income to fall back on then Amazon will have to work hard to retain staff rather than keep them a prisoner of circumstance.  Another benefit.

Yeah, but that's the problem, isn't it? In a world where even basic medical care has been turned into a profit center, how do you imagine we'll ever get something like Basic Income made real? It's a fucking crack-pipe-dream.

Like I said before... flipping the Pyramid is possible. What you're talking aboot... as sensible as it may be... is just not going to happen. 

mnem