Quote Originally Posted by Bob Penn View Post
Who do you blame, the kids or the $60,000 a year teachers? Or maybe it's the over educated school administrators who pull down more than $100,000 a year. Who really didn't earn their pay the kid who probably never heard the terminology "half dozen" or the educator who was too busy teaching trigonometry (that I've never used since school) to teach basic day to day terminology.
As far as $15 hr goes; I retired 8 years ago and was starting to get a little bored so I went looking for a job more for entertainment and socializing then money. What I found was the nearest available jobs were 26 miles from my house. Which meant I would be burning almost 4 gallons of gas or about $15 (at the time) just to commute. That meant I would be working the first hour and a half for nothing. The second hour and a half paid the federal tax man and the third hour fed the state tax man. In the end I would be working 8 hours for 4 hours pay. So at the $ 10 hr they offered me meant my take home would be $40 a day or less than what I was paid for an hour on my last job. I decide my day was better spent working on my bike and surfing the web; sort of like what our teenagers do today. Unfortunately we really don't learn as much useful information on a computer as we think. Worse yet the kids today become so disillusioned they just don't care or see a future.
IMHO the real problem today stems from the average family earning $53 k a year.
To prove my point I'll use a car as an example. When I graduated and entered the workforce a nice car had a sticker price of about $2700.00 and I started out making $11,000 a year. The car cost only 25% of my income. Today with an average family income of $53 k it cost one half of a families annual income. That same example could be used for a pound of butter.
Not long ago the American worker was the highest paid worker in the world. Today we are in the twenties!! And it all feeds up.
Bob all well said.The middle class worker in this country has lost pace with everthing cost wise over the last 30 years.All the while CEO's pay has risen a 1000% over the floor worker.All capitolism has become is greed.Use to be a day when so called trickle down worked because the owners of large corperations looked at the long range and understood if you pay your workers a good livable wage they would buy there product.They took less profit and kept workers here in the good Ol USA.My wife who is 56 years old has been a Medical supervisor for 25 years and worked her way up the ladder the old fashion way with good work ethic.She was making around 70K a year and had 15 years with the hospital she was with.Well last year they walked in and she and 173 others were given notice,all the while the CEO of the hospital took his 900K salary and gave himself a 400K bonus for saving the hospital costs.She took 8 months to find a job as a receptionist for a small medical firm at 13,00 a hr.Only job she could find as she was told her age and what she use to make were problems.She is pulling down what I made 31 years ago in the Utility industry as a Tech.Like you I am retired and went to look for some work to stay busy and all I could find was a 11.00 a hr pay job at Home Depot.Would of been a 40 mile round trip to work.Hell I make more with my pension pay.As far as the dumb kids thing and our future is in there hands I know a lot of smart driven kids in our area who would like a bright future but they see there parents working two jobs and falling behind trying to keep a house and food on there plate.It can be fixed as the country has seen worse times years ago and my hope is some of these smart driven kids will help do it.I'll get off my soap box now.You guys can go back to your doom and gloom talk