If you contribute 40 hours of labor to the country’s GDP, you should expect to be able to have shelter, food and medical care. That’s not asking a lot.
That’s 1000% true, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are jobs you can do from walking in off the street with an hour or two of training, and there are jobs that you need more training/background/skills to do.
All full time work should provide enough for a basic standard of living. But arguing that there isn’t a difference in required skill between stocking shelves in an Amazon warehouse and say, diagnosing and treating cancer is absurd.
That’s going to significantly undermine your argument with a lot of people.
As far as your parents go, historically a lot of those jobs were populated primarily by high school students or people trying to make some side cash, and it wasn’t as hard to find employment in a more stable “career” job. The economy worked in a way where having dead end “starter” jobs still “worked”.
They just probably aren’t as aware of the fact that more and more people are getting stuck in those jobs due to no fault of their own. The idea is truly and utterly alien to them if they haven’t had to navigate job hunting since they started their “career” job.
The idea that people who didn’t make poor life choices are trying to survive off working at McDonalds doesn’t mesh with their understanding of how the world works. The idea that someone working at Walmart full time can’t afford to live without government assistance doesn’t seem real.
The last time they had to directly deal with that sort of stuff, no one was trying to survive that way because you could much more easily move to a job you could survive on if you just put in a small amount of effort. It might have been another shitty job, but options were there if you just looked. Not too long ago you could survive off Walmart.
All you can really do is to keep insisting that times have changed. Jobs aren’t just waiting for someone to ask to speak to the manager, and pay has not kept pace with costs of stuff increasing.
Trying to argue that a fry cook deserves to be paid as much as a skilled position will always be a non-starter.
That’s 1000% true, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are jobs you can do from walking in off the street with an hour or two of training, and there are jobs that you need more training/background/skills to do.
All full time work should provide enough for a basic standard of living. But arguing that there isn’t a difference in required skill between stocking shelves in an Amazon warehouse and say, diagnosing and treating cancer is absurd.
That’s going to significantly undermine your argument with a lot of people.
As far as your parents go, historically a lot of those jobs were populated primarily by high school students or people trying to make some side cash, and it wasn’t as hard to find employment in a more stable “career” job. The economy worked in a way where having dead end “starter” jobs still “worked”.
They just probably aren’t as aware of the fact that more and more people are getting stuck in those jobs due to no fault of their own. The idea is truly and utterly alien to them if they haven’t had to navigate job hunting since they started their “career” job.
The idea that people who didn’t make poor life choices are trying to survive off working at McDonalds doesn’t mesh with their understanding of how the world works. The idea that someone working at Walmart full time can’t afford to live without government assistance doesn’t seem real.
The last time they had to directly deal with that sort of stuff, no one was trying to survive that way because you could much more easily move to a job you could survive on if you just put in a small amount of effort. It might have been another shitty job, but options were there if you just looked. Not too long ago you could survive off Walmart.
All you can really do is to keep insisting that times have changed. Jobs aren’t just waiting for someone to ask to speak to the manager, and pay has not kept pace with costs of stuff increasing.
Trying to argue that a fry cook deserves to be paid as much as a skilled position will always be a non-starter.