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Comment by zacharytelschow | Hacker News Reader

> turning your employees into welfare-dependent wage-slaves

I wasn't aware staying with a particular employer was compulsory.

You're out of touch with the job market and reality itself. It's not easy for these people to just "get a new job". They get paid minimum wage and are probably living paycheck to paycheck. If these people just "move jobs", they're out a paycheck for weeks and may lose their car, their home, not be able to eat, etc.

It's also hard to interview for another job when you're working and if you're not, the bias kicks in when you tell them you're currently out of work.

Salaried people sometimes forget that this is a luxury that's afforded only to them.

> If these people just "move jobs", they're out a paycheck for weeks and may lose their car, their home, not be able to eat, etc.

This gets floated around a lot. At least in the US I can't imagine a scenario where not paying bills for 1 or 2 months results in homelessness and a repo'd car.

Being both a homeowner and a landlord, I could not pay my mortgage for a year before legal processes kick in, and if my tenants don't pay rent for a month or two there isn't much I can do about it. I most assuredly can't kick them out.

>This gets floated around a lot. At least in the US I can't imagine a scenario where not paying bills for 1 or 2 months results in homelessness and a repo'd car.

>Being both a homeowner and a landlord

You're in a totally different economic situation, and probably have little to no economic struggles at all. I'll call this out of touch as well.

A lot of the problems encountered in poverty are due to ignorance; of how things work, where to get help, where the line is, it actually makes a lot of sense that low-wage workers think that being without a job for 1 to 2 months is a death sentence.

The real problem though is that "just get a new job" may or may not be possible, but if it is possible, the mechanics of how to do that are not available to low-wage workers. It doesn't really matter that there are plenty of jobs out there if the people who could work at them are not aware they exist, or how to apply for them.

Education, as per usual, ends up being a barrier.

So my current economic situation dictates my past economic situation? You're comfortable making that assumption?

> Being both a homeowner

I'd wager that the vast majority of these people are not homeowners. I'm personally not a homeowner and if I missed a rent payment, my apartment complex could start eviction proceedings against me.

Now I've personally got more than enough in savings to be able to move jobs if I so desired, but when a large percentage of this country has little to nothing in savings, they don't have the same luxuries that you and I enjoy.

I got an eviction notice on my door once for being late with rent. I had the money, I think in that case my auto-pay had expired, so it wasn't transferred. My first notice that I was late was the eviction notice.

There's a ton of people that live in crap motels with weekly rent.

Er.. your imagination must be weak if you can't imagine that. Every state has different landlord laws with different thresholds....

> It's not easy > may lose their car, their home, not be able to eat, etc.

That's unfortunate. But that's also not what compulsory is.

After we create a Universal Basic Income, you can say this without looking callous.

In some parts of the world, it is - often local economies are dependent on one large employer.

Working for low wages is better than no wages, but I don't believe dollars that I pay in taxes should go towards compensating underpaid Amazon employees (or Walmart, or whatever). The multi-billionaires should be the ones paying the people who work for them, not me.

And, this might astound you, but sometimes the choice is between several employers paying low wages. And regardless, the work still needs to get done; so someone has to have that job. That person should be paid appropriately.

Edit: error while editing

Well, this is a nation that has a religious belief that merely educating people magically creates jobs requiring higher ed, so its not surprising our economy is also based on a magical belief that if people need jobs that are not welfare dependent wage slave tier, then that need, in and of itself, will magically create the those better jobs. Posting stuff like that on twitter is just like prayer, surely it'll be answered eventually.

Would you be able to give up your paycheck, knowing that if you don't have another by next week you would literally be homeless? With no savings, no healthcare, no "fallback", no help, nothing. Sit down, and really decide if you would be able to quit your fulltime job that is giving you about $100 a week after taxes, and have to decide how to make that $100 last paycheck last until you find another job? Maybe you'll sell your car, but then how do you get to your new job? But still, that's like $500 you could get now for it, and that will at least give you a few more weeks to think and figure this out. You think about renting out your studio apartment, but with your landlord about to evict you because you are behind on rent, you aren't sure if that will even buy you anything. And that's assuming your landlord doesn't find out you are doing that and just evict you once and for all. But first things first, you need to reduce spending no matter what, so you'll probably have to stop going into college, because you can't afford the gas or lunch or anything. Then you think about canceling your cell plan, but it's your only internet connected device, and without that you can't apply for jobs. Not to mention that you already work every weekday, so you have to spend your weekends appllying to jobs, hoping that if you get an interview that they will hire you because if you take off another day you'll get fired. So it's this game of poker where you need to determine if the job is a real offer, and if it will be better, and what your chances are of actually getting it after the interview, before you even interview. Because taking that day off from your job will not only push the little bit of money you have even lower, but could cost you the whole job entirely. Maybe you'll just save up another few vacation days to spend on interviewing at other places. It will only be another 6 weeks before you have a full 8 hours to take a day off, and maybe you can plan a few interviews that day, and save up some money by not eating as much so you have gas to drive around that day.

And if you get sick, or you get in a car accident, or there's a fire in your apartment, or anything happens, and it's all over. the house of cards all falls down and you are left with nothing, but you can't think of that, because you are too busy trying to spend every waking moment to find a way out of the miserable job that is literally breaking your body in ways that will impact you for the rest of your life. And the real kicker? You consider yourself lucky. Because you had a friend a few months ago that got fired because of his drinking problem and now is homeless and has literally nothing, and you are so happy that you at least don't have that to deal with.

It may not be "compulsory" in that someone is holding a literal gun to their head, but it's compulsory in a lot of cases by the fact that the workers have literally no other choice. They can either stay at their job that is barely keeping them alive, or they can quit and lose what little they have (a roof over their heads, and food).

I was in that position, I ended up getting fired from that minimum wage job, and by sheer luck it was the same day I had gotten another job, i was going to start working 1st shift (overnights), and luckily they were okay with bumping up my hours to 30 so I could spend my now free days to look for a second job again. I eventually stumbled into a job that paid me $10 an hour to write html and style emails to match what a designer made, and I worked on that during my overnight job until I saved up enough money and vacation days to pivot from there into a job where I was paid about $15 an hour, and from there I was finally able to save a little and get out of the hell I was in.

I have my feelings about amazon, but I will say that for a lot of people I'm sure this raise is literally their savior. And anyone that is against this, especially because they feel amazon is doing it for the "wrong reasons", need to look at the positive impact this is going to have in these peoples lives. Because this is going to get a significant number of people back on their feet, and turn them from slaves just trying to survive, to productive members of society.

> Would you be able to give up your paycheck, knowing that if you don't have another by next week you would literally be homeless?

Nope. This idea gets bandied about all the time. How is missing a paycheck for 1 week going to result in homelessness?

Ya know what, you are right. I should remove that part of my comment, because while it's possible to find situations that you could be a week away from losing your house or apartment, it's not as likely as the situations of:

* having to ration your food out, or just go hungry. After all, they say humans can go something like a week without food right? You can handle that.

* not being able to travel because you don't have money to pay for gas or any other kind of transportation. And it's not like you have the time to walk to the store between your 2 jobs since it's almost 30 minutes away walking, which is better than the bank which can be an hour away. And that's assuming the hours of operation let you go outside of your day or night job.

* losing your phone plan, which cuts you off from the internet and the world in a lot of ways, which in turn makes it much more expensive to apply for jobs (you have to go to a local library for internet, because all applications require online access now), manage what little money you have (no online banking, no paying bills online, no ability to cash checks from your phone, now you are going into the bank), and more.

* resorting to theft to get enough money to pay for the above things, which then does risk you getting caught and losing everything.

And every day you don't pay your rent or your bills brings you one day closer to being kicked out, and if you do get kicked out it's all over, because without a few thousand dollars and a lot of luck you aren't ever going to get another apartment, and will have to resort to living in shitty motels which is much more expensive.

So yeah, you most likely won't lose your house or apartment from one missed payment, but you can absolutely lose your ability to get to any job, which means that you then lose all of your income, which means that you are now not just missing one month's rent, but the next few as well, and you can't move at that point because nobody will rent out a place to someone that doesn't pay their bills. Meanwhile you are getting those fun yellow pieces of paper taped to your door telling you just how deep in the hole you are, and how long you have to fix everything before it's really over.

Why are you so sure this isn't the case?

"no healthcare"

How does that work, exactly? To produce this post I googled up the actual data for the state I live in, civilized area far from the coasts (near Chicago but not too close thankfully).

Hopefully this isn't too docs droppy but where I live any single adult making $1011.67 or less per month, or any pregnant woman or any under 18 year homeless kid making $3035.01 or less per month qualifies for the totally free medicaid. Its not like they cut you off at a penny over, there's a sliding scale.

Its actually much more complicated and for my 4 person household, we would get medical coverage totally for free if we make less than $2091.67 per month and my kids are completely free until we make more than $6275.01 per month, and if my wife got pregnant again she'd also be covered to the $6275 per month limit.

So... what kind of unemployment bennies do you guys get such that an unemployed soon to be homeless dude is making that much money? Actually, if you have that much income while you're unemployed (trust fund baby or whatever) how can you be homeless without a very expensive drug addiction or similar problem, if the average single apartment rent is about $700 around here?

I'm very sad to say that medicaid coverage in my state is not very good, but vastly better than my current corporate insurer; the copays and deductibles are so insane I'm considering signing up for medicaid and not working too hard on contract work next year. My kids would get better medical care, I'd get more time off, I have enough investments that I already make too much money for completely free medicaid without working at all...

That's actually another part I should have not included in that rant, because the truth is that healthcare didn't even enter my mind for the most part.

I didn't actually even have any medical coverage at all at that point in my life. There was no reason to. If I got sick or injured to the point that I couldn't work, i'd lose everything anyway, so the worry of some extra medical bills didn't enter my mind, and I didn't exactly have a ton of free time, so I just never bothered to look into medicaid.

I also didn't look into unemployment, so I don't know what my options there were either, since I wasn't really ever unemployed at any point (luckily!)

I'm trying to show what it's like to have to juggle that kind of stuff, while looking for another job as a way to get across what it's like. That kind of stuff is why people don't report workplace issues, it's why unions don't get started, it's why people will do anything to keep the job they have, because the alternative is much much worse in a lot of cases. Not to mention the crushing blow to your morale when you have to use the few hundred dollars you managed to save up over the last few months, it feels like you are taking 2 steps backwards and none forwards, and it really hurts.

And while there are often ways out of each problem individually, the crushing pressure of all of them all building up at once and the feeling that you won't ever get out of it is just so much to handle. And even if there are ways out of it, nobody wants to help you, nobody wants to explain the process. Even at this point in my life, I would have to google what to do to even start the process of getting medicaid. And if I were back then and my phone had just been cut off, I wouldn't know how to even do that. If i'm being completely honest, at the time I thought medicaid was another term for medicare, but different (and in my mind, medicare was for old people, and still didn't cover everything). I knew there was something for poor people, but I had no idea if I would qualify, what i'd have to do to get it, and even what to look up.

Medicaid is often limited in its scope and there have been times when I'm on it, it wouldn't cover diagnostic testing for more serious disorders. Also, there was the knowledge that trying to take advantage of medicaid requires experience and time and education, none of which is often afforded to the poor.

Well, OK... but depressingly its still better scope and coverage than my current corporate plan which is also very expensive. So I get more coverage at lower cost from medicaid... Its insurance season (october) and its going to be hard to pay more to get less given the info I've found about medicaid.

For example taking your diagnostic testing example, I can pay cash on the barrel for an awful lot of testing before I reach my corporate deductible and copay levels which are also cash on the barrel just different form of accounting swindling.

Culturally "I'm gonna go medicaid" is very much like cord cutting, right now very few people are doing it, but in a couple years I think its going to be the majority.

It's not compulsory, but it's where you find a job, whether it's because you're in a transition phase, a student, an immigrant, in hard times. And it's better than no job, and it sucks, and it doesn't have to be that the company reaches a 1 trillion market cap enriching stock holders and the owner makes 150+ billion dollars while the workers piss in bottles making minimum wage.

This strikes me as being out of touch to the perils of being a non-tech employee in modern day American. I hope this thread has been enlightening.

Congrats to Senator Sanders for forcing Amazon’s hand (and forcing Amazon itself to advocate for a $15 minimum wage increase). This is how you deliver positive policy change.

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