#and is less than what people at mcdonald's get paid
Text
oof i just wish i knew the magic secret to 'liveable income' re: writing that didn't involve 'taking everything original offline and making people pay for it outright.'
because like...
i like my way of doing things. but my bank account hates it. :/
#i keep thinking like surely there's a way to just...#expand outwards#somehow#but if it requires a lot more labour i can't do it#so i kind of have to do it with what i'm writing now#or what i've written in the past#$30k a year#which is still a good#$20k below the minimum salary in australia#and is less than what people at mcdonald's get paid#i can't keep doing this#the way i'm doing it#i hate kind of thinking about the business side of things because i'd very much like to ignore it#and i'm glad i can with fanfiction and stuff#but with everything else it's like#what do i doooooo#i'm sure $30k (AUD) sounds like a lot to some people#but it's actually *not* a liveable income#there's no rent in australia you could afford with that much#and i should be aiming much higher but right now even $30k will take me#5 years to reach with the growth i'm experiencing#actually maybe 10 years :/
26 notes
·
View notes
Text
ok hear me out
what if April was older
pov you’re like 15, working your after school job at your local pet store, nbd
Then this guy walks in wearing a literal suit of armor. It’s bright blue. He’s got long pinkish hair and golden horns. Are those freaking gargoyles on his shoulders.
he asks for four turtles.
Sure, whatever. New York be like that sometimes. You get him four turtles, different types. While you’re, like, ringing up the turtles or w/ever, he starts droning on about how he’s going to mutate them into the greatest warriors in the universe and use them to reclaim his peoples’ rightful place on the surface
you aren’t really paid enough for this, but honestly it’s either this or freaking McDonald’s, so you deal with it
guy takes his turtles and leaves
maybe you mostly forget
maybe it keeps you up a few nights, idk
you get fired four months later in an incident that Totally wasn’t your fault but the managers just saw thirty hamsters dyed bright pink and jumped to conclusions, yknow? That’s how it be sometimes
Anyways, picture about 3 years later
you pick up a part time delivery job at a pizza place. Not ideal, but when you’ve been blacklisted from the majority of businesses in your general area, beggars can’t be choosers. Anyways, a guy asks for 3 large pizzas. You can hear kids yelling in the background. He sounds tired. Mood.
then he asks you to leave them in an alleyway near a manhole.
uhhhhh
look, you’re dead inside from customer service, but you’ve still got a Little of that investigative spirit that got you expelled from that fancy smancy high school sophomore year
So you wait
A rat man (!!?!???) emerges from the sewer, holding a very small toddler that’s also a turtle (?!???!?)
Wait.
wait.
wait.
that guy from the pet store.
no way.
Anyways, it takes a lot of yelling, panic, a few ninja moves (??) and some really awful lies from the rat man, but they manage to talk it out. It helps when one bawling turtle kiddo quiets after a couple minutes of the April O’Neil flair. (For once’s she’s grateful for her many younger cousins)
besides, she’s basically their aunt at this point. She sold them to the goat man, so she kinda counts. She’s pretty sure Rat Man- Splints- is just glad to have some help wrangling the disasters. He pays her nicely for her services, which is great, so she drops the other jobs and babysits mutant turtles in the sewers. It’s weird, for sure, but it could be way worse.
Plus, they’re all so cute.
Raph is super helpful, always following her around and trying to participate in whatever she’s doing. It’s so cute watching him bite his lip as he carefully fills Mikey’s sippy cup with juice (April holding onto the carton to make sure he doesn’t spill everywhere)
Donnie is super smart already, eagerly recounting to April whatever cool facts he’s learned. April buys him some Legos to build stuff, and he’s over the moon about them. Mikey eats one of the pieces, leading to a few hours of panic and a lifelong hatred of people touching his stuff.
Leo is a little show off, always yelling “April, April!! Lookit this!!” (Those words have proceeded, to date: three broken bones (at least mutants heal quickly), two sprained ankles, a sprained wrist, a nasty cut down his leg, and more scraped up knees that April can count).
Mikey is much less of a daredevil on his own, but he’s quick to copy whatever dangerous stunt Leo is doing. He’s always easily mollified with colorful bandaids, though, and Leo has more than once abandoned a trick when he sees Mikey trying to attempt it too. His drawings cover both the lair’s fridge and April’s own.
((( idk what this was I just think it’s very cute. My brain went “haha Draxum in a pet shop” and then everything else happened.
i don’t know where Splinter gets his money, but he obviously Has it. He doesn’t work, but the boys can still afford pizza and have allowances (I’m assuming, since it’s unlikely they have jobs to earn money, so whatever they get is probably from Splinter.) and also?? Electricity?? (Where do they get that)
anyway I have Many questions that are never answered about that)))
#rottmnt#rottmnt april#rottmnt draxum#rottmnt splinter#rottmnt leo#rottmnt donnie#rottmnt mikey#rottmnt raph#turtle tots#rottmnt au#april babysitter au
563 notes
·
View notes
Text
Something that I don't like so much are complaints about the term "low-skill" labor, because I think it is an economically important distinction; the less training it takes to do a job, the larger the pool of potential hires. The larger the labor supply for a particular job, the lower the wages are likely to be, because of the laws of supply and demand.
Like, that's why Jeff Koontz makes more money than a McDonald's fry cook, isn't it? The "Over 1 Billion served" marquees outside every McDonald's restaurant tell me that the absolute demand for people to make McDonald's burgers is very high.
Conversely, the absolute demand for 50 foot aluminum balloon sculptures made by Jeff Koontz is probably lower; even if those sculptures only cost a dollar, probably a lot of people would decide that they didn't have the space, or the right decor, or just find them ugly and ostentatious.
But there's only one Jeff Koontz. So even though demand is low, supply is low relative to that demand. And even though the demand for people who can cook McDonald's burgers is high in absolute terms, the supply of labor is high relative to that demand.
My other big pet peeve is with people who are really into capitalism will agree with the above analysis, and then turn right around and say things like,
"You're paid according to the value you provide to society"
or
"If you just worked harder, you'd get paid more."
And if you call people on this, they pretend that these are just fancy ways of saying, "Wages obey supply and demand dynamics just like anything else" even though, I'm sorry, that's obviously absurd. There are very sensible reasons we might use absolute demand as a better proxy for value than demand relative to supply, and it's very easy to work incredibly hard at a low-skill job without making very much money.
In particular, I've been thinking about the industrial processes that make our amazing modern society move along.
The assembly line and other analogous processes are, according to my capitalist acquaintances, enormous creators of value. By replacing inefficient skilled artisans with large groups of unskilled workers they allow the creation of huge masses of goods that were once rare and expensive; as the supply goes up, prices go down and more people can access the miracles of modern industrial society.
But irritatingly, these same people will explain that people get paid according to how much value they give to society, and if they think they deserve more money or resources, then instead of whining, they ought to do something actually valuable and earn that money.
This strikes me as an incoherent and fundamentally unstable idea of value. In particular it says that, say, Jeff Bezos created an enormous amount of value through his Amazon shipping infrastructure, but that everybody who works in his warehouses is basically a worthless parasite who ought to quit and do something else.
What struck me recently is that there's a name for the idea that all workers should earn more money by employing themselves in arenas where demand for labor is far higher than supply:
That's called Luddism.
16 notes
·
View notes
Text
Girlfriends Day <3
Nick Amaro X FEM! Reader
A/N: Happy Girlfriends day, everyone! Enjoy this oneshot that was written by a single person!
You were getting ready for your date with your boyfriend, Nick. Since it was August 1st, national girlfriend day, He wanted to take you out and do something special for you. You were getting your shoes on when you heard a knock at your apartment door. You grabbed the door and saw Nick standing there with a bouquet of flowers.
“Hey! These are for you,” he said with a smile.
He handed you the bouquet. “These are beautiful! Thank you.” You invited him in as you put the flowers into a vase.
“Are you ready to go eat?”
You walked over to him and kissed his cheek.
“I’m ready!”
He took your hand and walked you out to his car.
“Happy national girlfriend day,” He said opening the car door for you, being a gentleman.
On the drive to the restaurant, it was pretty silent. You guys had been dating for a over a year now and had met his daughter, Zara. When you arrived at the restaurant, there wasn’t any open parking spots. So Nick parked a few blocks away and kept profusely apologizing for making you walk but you kept insisting that it was okay and it wasn’t that far of a walk. When you were about to enter the place, you could already tell that the wait was going to be over an hour. There were many groups people waiting outside of the restaurant but you went in anyway hoping that the wait wouldn’t be as long.
“How many,” The hostess asked.
“Two, please.”
“Okay but there is going to be around a 2 and a half hour wait.” The hostess looked up at the both of you before taking your names.
Nick looked at you,”We can just go somewhere else,” you said giving him a smile.
…
After going to three more fancier restaurants and not getting less than an hour wait, he just drove around the city trying to find other places to eat.
“I’m sorry it’s my fault. I should’ve made reservations,” he said sounding sorry. He looked at you with puppy eyes.
“No it’s not your fault! I wouldn’t even care if we were to get fast food! I don’t care as long as i’m with you,” You insisted. Nick was driving past McDonalds when you told him to pull into the McDonalds parking lot. “Let’s just eat here. We could grab Zara something too.” You smiled at him and kissed his cheek.
“I love you.”
You both got out of the car and went into the McDonalds ordering your food. It was kind of funny seeing two people dressed up nice eating and basically having a date at McDonalds. When you both got your food, you sat at a table. You let out a small, quiet laugh.
Nick looked up at you from eating his burger. “What?” Your laugh made him smile.
“It’s just funny that this is where we ended up. It was probably for the best though. You also hav ketchup on you nose.” You leaned forward and wiped it off with a napkin.
“Thank you,” He said smiling at you and blushing.
…
When you got back to Nicks, you saw Zara with her babysitter. When she spotted you, she ran over to you and hugged your leg. Nick paid the baby-sitter and she left; Leaving you, Nick, and Zara alone. You gave Zara her McDonalds and she decided that she wanted to have a princess tea party while she ate her McDonalds kids meal. You,Nick, and Zara sat at a kids table in her room. Zara had gave you and Nick tiaras and feather boas which were super itchy but anything for Zara. It started getting passed Zaras bedtime so Nick had you put her to bed as he started getting ready for bed. When you went into Nicks bedroom, you saw candles lit and a few rose peddles on the bed. Nick came up from behind you and tapped your shoulder before getting down on one knee.
“Will you marry me?”
#nick amaro#nick amaro x reader#law and order: svu#svu#svu fanfiction#fanfiction#fluff#oneshot#danny pino
66 notes
·
View notes
Text
If twitter collapses, I'll be fine. I don't really post there, I just use it to follow artists and occasionally commission them, and the only "mutual" I have is a big artist who follows everyone who follows them, so no big loss. We're not friends, we've only interacted a few times outside of a transaction, they won't miss me.
What scares me more is the knock-on effect twitter's collapse would have on tumblr; tumblr isn't store brand twitter like a lot of blue checks seem to think, but I fear a ton of people will flock here anyway and the site will basicslly be gentrified- tiktokified- bought up by some opportunistic rich nutsack who thinks they can turn it from the imagined store brand twitter to a rival, coke va pepsi, mcdonalds vs burger king, twitter vs tumblr. Or worse, maybe the muskrat will cut out the middleman and buy tumblr himself. It would be pocket change to him; last time it traded hands it went for less than one-ten-thousandth what he just paid for twitter. If he sees a bunch of people flocking away twitter, he can just buy wherever they're flocking to, out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Tumblr thinks it can keep its head down and not get involved in the stupid game of thrones between billionaires and social media and news outlets, but it'll get swept up in the crossfire eventually. It's too mainstream to be left alone, no matter how much we pretend it's an inhospitable hellsite. This isn't Myspace, we still have an active userbase, new people still come here every day, so somebody powerful is gonna catch wind of our goings-on and ruin it for everyone. Twitter can burn for all I care, but when it des, tumblr will burn soon thereafter.
All my friends are here. I'm only in contact with two of my mutuals in real life, and I don't want to lose the rest. I have half a mind to exchange phone numbers or mailing addresses just so to keep in touch in the eventuality. I don't know, it just wouldn't be the same without posts to share; it's hard to keep so many conversations going, it's easier to just reblog something funny and acknowledge the funny things other people post, no words, just a mutual sense of camaraderie. Is mutualship the same thing as friendship? Sometimes. I would like it to be, but I don't know how that would shake out; I get the feeling a lot of mutual interactions would devolve into "hey," "hey," "how was your day," "good, yours," and then peter out into silence when we no longer have dumb shit to bond over. I have friends in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Texas, Alabama, California, a bunch of places, and I don't want to lose contact with any of them.
Social media is really important to me, because there are very few people to socialize with face to face in my hometown (everyone my age moved away for college, I'm one of the only people to come back, and everyone else down here is either a rich retired republican or a wage slave who actually lives a hundred miles away on the mainland but commutes back and forth every single day so they have no time to socialize...)
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
I live in a really small town right now. It has less than 9,000 people. When I first moved here we had a KFC and a Taco Bell in the same building and no matter what time of day or what season you went over there they were probably out of whatever you wanted. About a year and a half ago the place burned out. It was pretty obviously and inside job because the place just was horrible as far as service. So a few weeks ago they finally got back in business. Now it is separated into two separate businesses. When I went to the Taco Bell they have an open for about 2 weeks and it still took me over an hour to get an order of nachos. So it has been a long six weeks in between paychecks and the entire time I have been dreaming about getting a chicken sandwich at kfc. There is only one place in town to get a chicken sandwich which is McDonald's. So I was really looking forward to this KFC sandwich. The KFC opened a little later than Taco Bell but it was still open for business. So I got paid today went down to KFC after work and for whatever reason it was closed. Which is something that can only happen in town the size of mine. No reason was given for it being closed it just was.
So instead I go to Dairy Queen and get a chicken fried steak sandwich which is insanely expensive. And I got a cherry coke. Again very expensive more expensive there than probably any other place to get a drink in town. But the Cherry Cokes at Dairy Queen are so much better than anywhere else. Got everything home was picking up my steak sandwich to take it over and sit down and eat it and I tipped over the Cherry Coke and it's filled everywhere.
No chicken sandwich.
No drink.
It rained it was cold all day. I was sick as hell all day. For breakfast I had coffee and Mucinex--- if that tells you anything.
My nose has not stopped running all day long. It just was not my day.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Honestly it's crazy, like categorically insane to me, what kinds of money people get paid to do jobs meaningfully more stressful than mine. Like I'm firmly "working class," I'd struggle to support anyone but myself, and I still make almost double minimum for much less effort on the average day than, say, a McDonald's employee. Like not even counting the emotional stress of being a service industry employee, I mean in sheer quantity of tasks. Like I just do fewer things a day, frankly. More complex things, maybe, requiring more knowledge, but like, that can be learned.
Idk labour market is fucking insane and I don't wish it on anybody
#if ur in the toronto area id be happy to help a mutual but that certainly isnt the issue i suppose#this isnt bragging itz just like... guilt almost#like i know that's just how it is i literally don't even make much money but...#yikes ylnow
1 note
·
View note
Text
I got my second apartment on my own, 800 sq. Ft, for $763/mo including water and trash, making only $14 an hour back in 2010. This country is asking people to still only make $10-$15/hr and either duck and cover while they bring in groceries or afford $1200-$1700/mo for studio size apartments, no utilities. God forbid you add children to that. (Yes I have well-taken care of children)
A 2 bedroom apartment me and Kev rented back in 2015 for $1050 is now $1532/mo with no updates or changes. (No we do not still live there)
I could fill my Honda for $25 instead of the $60+ I spend on my current car.
A pack of chicken wings was $2.65 not $8.00 or even $20.
A 10 piece nugget meal at McDonald’s was maybe $7 after tax, not $10 after tax.
Cell phones didn’t cost a mortgage payment.
& I will not even begin to talk about the cost of childcare. Moms staying home like they did back in the day is not feasible for everyone. & the childcare workers are also underpaid.
Student Loan debt! (YES I HAVE DEGREES BY CHOICE)
Medical Bills! Insurance??? What does it even cover anymore???
Job posts on INDEED are requiring degrees and starting people at $15/hr.
You pay $1500 in rent on time to a landlord and the bank won’t approve you for a $1200 mortgage, then people belittle you for renting. (Mind you, IM A HOMEOWNER but the hoops I jumped through to get approved for less than what we were paying to rent was insulting)
Adults keep talking about what they could afford and how our generation wants a money handout but the same house my parents bought back in 1990 for $90,000 now goes for over $300K. I know people say that they made less back then, but the same job that paid me $14/hr in 2010 is still only offering that same $14/hr despite price changes in the economy. (NO I DO NOT STILL MAKE 14/HR)
Times are not the same. & this country isn’t exactly changing with it. Somehow the poor get poorer, the rich get richer, and the middle class just gets the foolery.
JUST MY VIEWS NOT MY CURRENT SITUATION FOR THOSE READING AND ASSUMING. THE POINT IS WHO WANTS TO BUST THEIR ASS THEIR WHOLE LIFE JUST TO LIVE AND SURVIVE OR BE TOLD “well just work harder”.
0 notes
Text
This became the pattern: every few weeks I'd run away. When I was caught, I'd be placed in a home in whatever city I was caught in. If no home was available, I was returned to Diane's. The first couple of times, I'd called Daddy collect. He would cry as he told me his hands were tied and that no matter what he or Jr. tried, everyone said there was nothing they could do. After awhile, I quit calling Daddy. It was useless and I didn't want to being my pain and trouble down on him.
Running away, turning tricks, and hitchhiking seemed to go hand in hand. Since my experience with Candy and Money, I would never again stand on a corner to get tricks because it was too risky. Money's threat to kill me if he caught me on one of his corners, and info I'd heard here and there on the street, convinced me that pimps would kick my ass if I worked their corner without being in their stable. Also, being young and of school age, I knew I was more likely to be noticed by the cops if I stood in one place for an extended period.
Besides, it was easy getting my tricks hitchhiking because most folks who picked up hitchhikers wanted to turn a tricks. For me, hitchhiking ended up being a double bonus: I got to make some money, and I got a free ride, although I was never going anywhere in particular; I just wanted a ride that was going away from whatever home I'd been placed in. I learned to eat cheaply - when I did eat - which most times meant half-eaten hamburgers out of the trashcan at Mcdonald's. I'd watched some homeless people do it. At first, I said, "Ugh!" and turned up my nose at the thought. But, being hungry, I soon followed their lead. Anyway, eating was never my number-one priority - getting high was.
During these escapades, I learned about free clinics that gave free birth control pills. Problem was, I stayed high so much that I had a hard time keeping up with them. I often forgot where I'd put them. Or I'd forget to take them.
Diane never really seemed to mind my running away. It just gave her extra pleasure in mistreating me upon my return. And, I was always returned because I was a problem child. No one wanted problem children; they all wanted the cute children. I had long ceased being cute.
Nor did Diane fear any more accusations of abuse. The system wasn't asking, and the children weren't telling. As long as the system continued paying Diane for me, even during my absences, she could care less about where I was or what I was doing. (I later learned that she got paid twice for me and Larry. Larry and I were entitled to social security payments as orphans. Somehow Diane figured out how to get those checks and the foster care checks.)
So, she didn't really mind my running away. In fact, she stopped calling me by my name (when she used my name and not b***c, sl*t, ho, darkie, etc.) and began calling me "Runaway, Child Runnin' Wild," after the title of the Temptations song.
One day, a druggie friend invited me to a party that night. When I got there, I grabbed a drink, stood in the corner, and checked out the crowd. Once the dope kicked in and the booze told me I was feeling good, I decided I wanted to dance. A man was standing up against the wall, chillin' and checking out the center of the living room where the crowd danced. Although I was in the center of the crowd, I was still dancing by myself. As I passed the man against the wall to get more booze, he grabbed my arm and said he liked the way I danced. I thanked him and continued on my mission to the bar. He followed me and we began to talk. His name was Tim. He was twenty-five. I actually told him my real age - thirteen. (I had become partial to older men.) He was a tall, thin light-skinned black man with light brown eyes and round thick lips. He wore his hair in a huge afro.
I felt comfortable around Tim because he didn't ask too many personal questions, though he did comment that I looked and acted older than thirteen. Another thing I liked about Tim was that he didn't try to have sex with me right away, probably because we were so busy getting high.
I fell in love instantly, or what I thought was love. I loved him for several reasons. First, he saw me as a person. He asked about my hopes, dreams, and fears. I told him about the abuse from Diane. He told md about the abuse he'd suffered from his own father. But mostly, I think I loved Tim because he said he loved me.
Tim lived with his elderly mother and hung out all day running his business, which was selling pills - uppers and downers - known on the street as black beauties, yellow jackets, and red devils. As his girlfriend, I got as many pills as I wanted - for free. I also loved Tim because what money he didn't use to "re-up" and buy more pills, he used to refill my arsenal of other favorites - booze, weed, LSD, and cocaine. Another great thing about Tim was that he didn't like the idea of me turning tricks, so he fed me and let me live with him so I wouldn't have to sleep on the streets. He'd just sneak me into his mother's house at night when she went to sleep.
1 note
·
View note
Text
The policy levers that will transform economic opportunities for women are well understood. Indeed, if you ask the many passionate researchers and advocates tilling the policy ground in this area, they will rattle off pretty similar priorities.
One is to boost economic security for the most vulnerable. This means a safety net that ensures short-term financial hardship doesn’t translate into a lifetime of poverty.
Single-parent families – 82 per cent of whom are headed by women – are at particular risk of poverty. A series of changes to policy during the past two decades – including moving parents off the single-parenting payment when their youngest child turns eight (previously 16) and indexing these payments to prices rather than wages – has substantially reduced disposable income for this already vulnerable group.
A second priority is to improve economic opportunities for women.
This goes to closing the massive lifetime earnings gap between men and women – particularly those with children – that currently sits at more than $2 million over the lifetime. The single biggest thing we could do to close this gap is to dismantle the barriers for women with children wishing to take on more paid work.
High-quality, low-cost childcare supports women’s workforce participation in the first decade after a child is born. That is why so many advanced countries pick up all or most of the bill. Just as we don’t baulk at governments investing in roads so people can get to work, or supporting education and training for people to be job-ready, we should applaud leaders who understand that childcare underwrites current and future workforce participation for Australia’s highly educated women.
The third priority is properly remunerating care. This is critical to economic equality because women make up 80 per cent of the workforce in key care sectors.
High workloads and low pay are pushing people out of these sectors and creating acute shortages of workers. When aged-care and childcare workers on award wages – as most are – are earning about the same as someone working at Bunnings or McDonald’s, is it any wonder they are leaving these jobs in droves?
The unvarnished truth is that these roles pay less because most of the workers in these roles are women. We pay less for care work because we expect women to do it selflessly and, therefore, for modest pay.
But now the market has caught up with us. We will not be able deliver the services we need or boost workforce participation unless we boost the pay and quality of these crucial enabling roles.
Women are tired of hearing that measures to lift them out of poverty, to pay them what they are worth, or to enable them to participate in the workforce, are unaffordable. This government has lifted women’s voices in economic policy discussions. This has been symbolically powerful. But if the prime minister thinks women will be silent in the face of a lack of real policy progress, he has another thing coming.
1 note
·
View note
Text
Okay, I'm not a communist or a Marxist, but for a long time I've felt that one of the major problems with capitalism is that individual laborers sell their labor on the open market, but, because of the nature of being a person, they are subject to constraints and pressures that larger entities like employers are not, which distorts the market.
I think modern capitalist ideology, to the extent that it bothers to be coherent at all, understands people like me as tiny owners of capital. I own a piece of capital called my physical body, and with my physical body I produce man-hours of work which I can then sell to buyers on the open market, in the same way that the owner of a widget factory produces widgets which he then sells on the open market.
Here's one problem with that. Say you own a widget factory, and you sell 50 widgets at $100 apiece. I own a different widget factory, and I sell 100 widgets at $50 apiece. We make the same amount of money, and there's a good chance that neither of us is better off then the other. In fact, maybe I'm better off than you; if my widgets are just as good as yours, then my low prices will give me a big opportunity to take your market share.
Meanwhile, suppose you make $50,000 a year and work 40 hours a week. I make $50,000 a year and work 80 hours a week. In this case, I am strictly worse off than you. Working that much will erode my life in a lot of ways and be very hard on my body. In addition, there is an absolute hard cap on how many hours of labor I can produce. I can't work 30 hours in a single day.
In other words, owners of capital can react to lower prices by moving more product, but if the price at which I can sell my labor decreases, I have a lot of trouble moving more product and at some point it's entirely possible that I just can't increase production anymore.ro
Problem number two: As an individual laborer, particularly a low-paid one, if your little piece of capital called your body shuts down, you, what's that called? Oh yeah, you die.
For a variety of reasons this tends to be far less true of owners of other kinds of capital. People in my circle like to talk about the razor-thin margins on which Wal-Mart operates, but I promise you the Walton Family is not operating on such thin margins. If government interference destroys Wal-Mart's profit margin and shuts the whole company down, you still won't see Sam Walton wrapped in a dirty blanket begging for change on the corner.
The laborers who work for Wal-Mart, on the other hand, are very often operating on exactly those kinds of margins, where they themselves will end up on the street if something changes the margin on the sale of their man-hours.
This, of course, results in an asymmetrical negotiating power between the company and the laborer.
Industrial processes exacerbate this asymmetry; because a lot of large profitable companies rely primarily on a large work-force of low-skill laborers, they can often afford to leave a position unfilled for long periods of time.
For example, say I'm the best McDonald's fry cook who ever lived, and I have moved to a new city. I go to the local McDonald's, and say, "I'm the best fry cook ever, so if you want to hire me, you'll need to pay me a higher salary and give me six weeks paid vacation."
McDonald's may well say, "No, we aren't doing that. The best fry cook ever doesn't add much value to our assembly line over a C- fry cook, so we'll just leave the position unfilled until we find someone who is willing to take our offer, which we will."
There's a chance that you might go, "Well, never mind, I'll take the position you offered" because you need a position as a laborer today more than McDonald's needs the position filled today. In fact, it's exactly that need to support your physical body that makes McDonald's so certain they'll eventually fill even a bad position. Someone who doesn't have any better prospects will come along soon enough and if he's desperate enough we can get some unpaid overtime to him.
The idea that people who are committed to capitalism as an ideology always float is that you should get gud, if you don't like how much you are paid go into a field where the supply and demand ratio allows you to sell your work at a higher cost.
As I have pointed out before, the idea that all workers should work in high skilled jobs where the demand for workers is far higher than the supply is called Luddism. It's also a bit like explaining that the Army should be made up entirely of generals.
Which brings us to problem the third: As mechanization becomes more sophisticated, more and more jobs that used to be high-skill jobs can be done by masses of low-skill workers; a potential end-point, perhaps not so far off, is a world in which all labor can be performed more cheaply by robots then by human laborers. How could a person possibly sell enough man-hours of labor to survive in a market like that?
There are a bunch of ways to deal with this dynamic, but fundamentally as far as I can see they all involve some sort of structure in which workers band together to take advantage of economies of scale used by the capitalists, whether that's unions, UBI, workers owning the means of production, whatever.
My big problem with capitalism is that I see no reason why it must produce such structures; it seems equally plausible that a functioning capitalist labor market might simply continue to concentrate wealth in the hands of a small number of owners who exploit an increasingly desperate and disorganized proletariat. Such a world seems perfectly in line with capitalist ideology and, it seems to me, is one of the paths of least resistance in the capitalist world.
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
Anthony’s Stupid Daily Blog (471): Sat 1st Jul 2023
Up at half five this morning to catch my train down to Londern Engerland to see Iggy Pop live in concert. There were four lasses in the booth of chairs on the opposite side of the aisle from me and one of them popped open a bottle of champagne that went all over her. Luckily none of it went on me because it would be bad enough having to travel on a train for four hours all wet but champagne is what I was drinking when I blacked out on that cruise ship to Amsterdam 15 years ago and ended up falling out of my bunk bed and getting a black eye. Being drenched in the stuff would mean I’d be getting constant flashbacks for the whole trip. I arrived in London four hours ahead of check in time but luckily I was allowed to leave my bag there so I wasnt dragging it around for the rest of the day. I checked the gigs website said that Iggy wouldn’t be going on until half 8 so I decided I would get the chance to relax and enjoy a walk around London (for the first of three times this year) and wouldn’t need to set off for the gig until about five o’clock. I wanted to buy a new jacket and some new shirts but despite walking from Kings Cross to Leicester Square I didn’t see a single fucking mens clothing store. For the second time in my life a trip to London has happened to coincide with London Pride Day (if I still hung around with my college friends this is the moment they would say “yeah right”). Five years ago I came here to see Richard Herrings podcast recorded and it happened to be the pride festival and new the same thing has happened with the Iggy Pop festival. I walked through the pride festivities to get to Leicester Square and I could sense all the gay people were thinking that I was bringing the mood down with my miserable face but were too polite to ask me to leave. I needed a loss when I got to Leicester Square. The nearest place with a toilet was McDonald’s but I suspected that like in Edinburgh they would require you to buy something and the code to get into the toilet would be printed on your receipt. I went in and paid for an orange juice and once I got my receipt went downstairs to use the toilets only to discover there is no code and any cunt can come in and use it for free. Fucks sake. I was so angry that I took my orange juice and threw it at a trash can outside. However it bounced off the can and splashed all over a drag Queen in the front of a gay pride float and the whole crowd thought I was some sort of anti gay protestor and an angry mob minced after me. Luckily I saw that the Prince Charles Cinema was showing The Wizard of Oz so I ran inside knowing that this was the last place a group of angry homosexuals would expect a homophobe to hide. Needless to say this entire story was completely 100% true. Anywho after a few hours shopping in the sunshine I headed off to catch my train to Crystal Palace. Some fat smelly dude initially sat next to me on the packed train but thankfully he got straight back up and moved a few seats forward. Presumably he must have spotted that someone left a half eaten Mars Bar on one of the seats. I thought that I was going to struggle to get from Crystal Palace station to the park without Google Maps but luckily as soon as I existed the station there was a lass with a sign instructing people where to go to get to the concert. Man I wish the trip to WrestleMania had been this fucking straightforward. The park wasn’t as full as I expected but then again this was five hours in to a nine hour concert in he baking heat so a sizeable amount of people just have fucked off. I missed Generation Sex but that’s no big thing since the only Billy Idol song I like is Super Overdrive and by all accounts they didn’t play it. The next act was Blondie and for 78 Debbie Harry is still really good. She has a naturally charm and charisma and even though her voice is obviously a lot more gruff and less melodic than when she first started she nevertheless still has a great singing voice. I enjoyed hearing Heart of Glass live but they left without playing One Way Or Another which is my favourite song of theirs so I’m guessing g they muse have played it shortly before I arrived but that’s no big deal. One of the food carts was selling veggie noodles and while I expected them to be shit they ware some of the nicest I have ever had. Easily better than any and all of the shit I had while I was in America. It was so good I went back about four times for some more. I wish I’d thought to get this bitches number and asked about employing her to live in my house to cook me noodles every day. For the hour in between Debbie Harry leaving the stage and Iggy arriving I walked around the venue listening to an episode of Eric Bischoff’s podcast in my headphones. Even though I vowed I would resist it at all costs ok realized I was going to have to use the toilet and fuck me what a disgusting sight / smell it was. They basically have dozens of makeshift urinals erected around an area of the field which are essentially walls which shield the sight of you pissing into a giant barrel. Even if you agreed to supply me with free noodles for the remainder of my life I don’t think it would be enough to get me to to accept a job where I would have to empty these fucking urinals. At long last Iggy finally took to the stage and the crowd started dancing along with him. I know Iggy isn’t everyone’s plate of noodles but his ability to entrance and command an audience is undeniable. It was like myself and the rest of the crowd were hypnoses and felt compelled to dance along with him (for someone who hates dancing as much as me getting me to join in was quite an achievement). Over the next hour we were treated to The Passenger and the iconic Lust For Life which were amazing but sadly this will not be what kind remember most from this gig. What I will remember most is some drunk bloke who climbed up on a wall at the top of a hill and began drunkenly dancing until a security guard ushered him back. The drunk man did start to carefully inch himself back along the wall but then, weary of the fact he would probably be thrown out of the gig, jumped from the wall to the grass near the top of the hill but then lost his footing and rolled down the hill like a drunken Boulder from Indiana Jones. Another security guard at the bottom of the hill apprehended him and attempted to thrown him out. However his friends sprinted down the hill and asked the guards to give him another chance and their he was sorry for making a drunken fool of himself. At this point the drunkard broke the security guards grip and ran laughing into the crowd while the security chased after him like a fucking Charlie Chaplin film. This is by quite some margin the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. After Iggy performed his penultimate song “I Wanna Be Your Dog” I felt a slight trickle of rain on my arm and decided to call it a day and made my way back to the station. Iggy must hate having to perform at festivals in the UK because there’s a good chance he’ll get soaking wet. In fact I’m surprised that after fifty years of performing without a shirt that he hasn’t contracted pneumonia. I bet in the early seventies performing with one’s shirt off was probably a good idea for a gimmick that set you apart from the other acts at the time but I bet that Iggy couldn’t have foreseen that he would still be doing it fifty years later on a cloudy day in a park in England while looking like something you’d see hanging in a butcher shop window. I bet he would just love to put a shirt on but he’s being doing it for so long now that it would look out of place. People would go “but what about all the times you didn’t have a shirt on?”. I missed out on my chance to see Iggy at the Royal Albert Hall in 2018 because I was in New York in the date of the gig. It sounds horrible to say but due to his advanced age I worried that I might have missed my last chance to see him (especially when covid hit). I was delighted therefore when he announced this gig because it meant I would be able to see an all time legend in one of my favourite cities in the world no less. Iggy is a true innovator and one of those artists who you can tell doesn’t give a fuck what people think of him which endears me to anyone (unless it’s a politician obviously). I left the gig happy that I finally got to cross this legend of rock off my band bucket list and now the only true must see artist I have left in there are Devo who I will be seeing in a month and a half. I was one of the first concert goers to arrive at the station and saw that the train wouldn’t arrive for another half hour. I waited patiently but when there was five minutes left to wait some bloke from the station came out and loudly told us that the next train back to kings cross was actually going to be at a different platform and ushered us up the stairs. I was furious because now I was unlikely to get a seat and I was even more furious when we got to the other station and was told by another station representative that the bloke who told us to come here had ducked up and we needed to go back where we came from. I got back to the platform just as the train arrived and had to cram myself in and got squashed to the very front of the carriage. Even though the train was full more people still squeezed on when we arrived at the next platform. Someone actually shouted at me to move down to let more people on. I just made a motion illustrating to him that I couldn’t move any further but what I want to do was scream “IF I MOVE ANY FURTHER DOWN I’LL BE DRIVING THE TRAIN YOU STUPID CUNT!”. Anywho i finally arrived back at Kings Cross at about midnight and my hostel was only a short walk up the road. I still had a biting a buzz on from the gig and worried I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep but thankfully after 30 minutes or so I felt my eyelids getting heavier and I stood drifted off. I haven’t had many good days over the last 34 years but today was definitely one of them.
0 notes
Text
Extreme Pounds Reduction - 7 Nutrition Tips To Lose Weight Fast (Part 1)
(2)Next do backward leg lifts. Raise right leg backward will not be it will go, lower it and repeat 15 times. Plunge to the left leg and repeat the cycle.
The thing about weight loss is in which it shouldn't actually be that really difficult. Don't get me wrong, it is slightly more difficult for some going without shoes is others and its certainly harder to be rid of bodyweight than to keep it through. However, again, ColonBroom Ingredients isn't that difficult, precisely why all the exaggerated fuss and bother and trials. The answer is concerning is a good amount of junk online available to us in which it is running over all the natural and healthy food choices. There is a Burger King, KFC, McDonalds as well as a multitude of fish and chip shops available at every street corner.
The Sunshine of the smaller waist line exercises is hula-hooping! Who would of considered this hands you a compact waist? Well, it's undeniable. This is a definite way to pay attention to core waistline muscles while fun. Lunges is another, though not absolutely targeted, it works the upper shoulders and back while tightening the stomach and waist areas. The key is, look for activities that are exciting and full of enthusiasm to use as smaller waist exercises. You'll notice a massive improvement.
Do it is well known your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR? BMR is the resting fat burning capacity. This is the total involving calories required to maintain your own weight your current products are completely sedentary. Your current several kinds of online calculators that can allow you this rate as well as the calculators are different as it is based on several factors including weight, age, and gender. Different calculators use different to be able to determine final results. BMR does not take into consideration the calories expended through exercise and other daily family activities. For example, any time a BMR is 2100 kcals and your workout for day time burns 500 kcals, would certainly end the day with 1600 kcals.
You requirement to picture whole lot look. What specific improvements do well-built to make- a slimmer body, healthier hair, clearer and softer pores and skin? Imagine yourself in several months, after a little effort has paid and you look and feel wonderful. Each one of these changes are realistic and attainable, somebody you are unique- acceptance is the pinnacle point you really need to reach in order to start help make matters changes.
There are a lot of merchandise in the market that help individuals get the skin tone they want; self-tanner is example. You encounter them in different forms: cream, spray or lotion. Some promise to have built long lasting effects; other people like paint that last only for a period that will be easily washed off; and other people are made the to give a good golden brown color but can also optimized to convey the skin some nutrients and survive smoother.
Hold your breath for finding a moment or ten seconds the most then exhale through mouth area. You can do this for 15 minute everyday and when you get we get use more than process, carry out the same help different position, this can be done anytime or whatever the activity 's. One thing possess to to inside mind is, be comfortable in writing this article.
One great way to trick yourself into eating less is with a smaller plate. If you use a large plate, anyone might have tendency to want to grow it. You can fill the plate sort of a dessert plate to the perimeters without feeling guilty about eating everything on doing it.
0 notes
Text
Pricing Tactics With Online Price Monitoring For The Upcoming Holiday Season
The holiday season is a time of year when you can make your store shine. If you're not sure how to do this, Online Price Monitoring can be the best option. Experts have identified pricing tactics that will help increase sales and profitability for the holidays in 2022. Read on!
Chance to improve profitability
Dynamic pricing is a system that allows you to set prices based on the demand and supply of products in your store. Online Price Monitoring can help improve profitability and customer experience, which will make your business more successful during Christmas.
Track competitors, set dynamic prices
Use price monitoring tools to track your competitors and set dynamic prices.
A dynamic pricing tool will automatically adjust your prices according to your competitor’s average sale price on a product, allowing you to make changes in real-time.
You can then use a price optimisation tool that uses advanced algorithms to simultaneously change the prices of all of your products based on their sales performance and market trends.
These tools can also help you discover what specific factors are affecting sales volume or margins so that you can adjust accordingly.
Additionally, there are many free websites where you can see what other businesses are charging for similar products; although this information may be slightly outdated since it isn’t updated in real-time, it will give you an idea of what people are willing to pay for similar items at different retailers across the country (or even internationally).
Use loss leaders
A loss leader is a product that you sell for less than its cost, or below the price of its ingredients. You might think this sounds like a bad idea, but when done right, it can be a great way to ensure people come into your store.
You've probably heard of McDonald's famous "dollar menu." It's not just popular because they're selling cheap food—it's also because they're using their biggest sellers as loss leaders.
If you go into any McDonald's restaurant during lunch hour and order a burger, fries and drink combo meal then chances are you'll get something like this: hamburger patties with cheese (which costs about $1 each), french fries (about $0.15 per ounce) and soft drinks (about $0.50 per can).
But here's the thing: The total cost for all three items combined is about $4-5 dollars!
To put it simply, if someone buys one of these combo meals at lunchtime then they'll probably spend more money on other items from their menu such as milkshakes or desserts which means in some cases customers spent more than four times what they paid for their initial order!
Adopt up-selling & cross-selling
Up-selling is a means of increasing revenue by selling a more expensive product or service. Cross-selling increases revenue by selling an additional product or service that complements the original product.
These tactics are commonly employed during times when your customers are likely to be making big purchases, such as the holiday season.
One way to incorporate up-selling and cross-selling into your business process is through online price monitoring software, which tracks prices across channels to alert you if competitors have lowered their prices in response to yours.
Conclusion
Don’t forget to keep track of competitors and set dynamic prices. You can also use loss leaders as an incentive to customers. With up-selling & cross-selling, you can increase your overall profit by selling complementary products or services as well.
source : https://bestpricemonitoringsoftware.blogspot.com/2022/10/pricing-tactics-with-online-price.html
0 notes
Text
Cost of a big mac meal in denmark
COST OF A BIG MAC MEAL IN DENMARK MAC
Denmark’s unemployment rate is 6.8 percent, despite its close ties to the depressed eurozone. That compares to $6 and $1 in Seattle.Īccording to Bloomberg View’s Caroline Baum, such a high minimum wage should mean that scads of Danes can’t find work because it “violates the most basic principle of economics”: the law of supply and demand.
COST OF A BIG MAC MEAL IN DENMARK MAC
In Denmark, taxes are included in list prices, unlike in the US, so backing out the 25 percent VAT gives us $8.20 for a Big Mac meal and $1.41 for the “dollar” menu. To add insult to injury, the Dane gets at least five weeks of paid vacation while the American is lucky to get off (unpaid, of course) when her daughter is home sick with the flu.Īnd so at the Aalborg McDonald’s, for instance, a Big Mac extra value meal costs 58 kroner, or $10.25, while the Dollar Menu is the 10 kroner menu, which means it’s the dollar-seventy-seven menu here. Forty-five thousand dollars! Even after high Danish taxes, that average worker will take home some $28,000 a year, roughly double what a full-time American McDonald’s worker will. The average full-time equivalent McDonald’s employee in Denmark makes about $45,000 a year in total compensation. Not coincidentally, labor-intensive restaurants have very high prices, while less-labor-intensive grocery store prices are much less shocking. The minimum wage in Denmark (ADDING: I should say that this is an effective minimum wage negotiated with unions, not a legal one) is roughly $20 an hour (though teenagers can earn somewhat less). One of the things that’s striking here is the disparity between the cost of food at restaurants and at grocery stores. Last week, I moved to the workers’ paradise of Denmark, where I will man the Audit Aalborg bureau for a year while my wife is here on a Fulbright. If labor costs doubled suddenly, restaurant owners would have to raise prices significantly in order to stay in business. No, expert opinion is not mixed on whether doubling minimum wages would “affect consumer wallets,” even if the LAT found one academic to sort of say so. “There are so many other factors at work.” “Many people have assumed that if you increase the minimum wage by X percent, the meal costs will increase by the same percent, and that’s simply not true,” she said. Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist and co-chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley, said it’s unclear whether a minimum wage bump would have enough of a ripple effect to affect consumer wallets. More than doubling that level would be an unprecedented leap. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Writing about the burgeoning protests by low-wage workers for a $15 an hour wage, the paper writes this: That raises the question: If they’re successful, will burger prices soar?Įxpert opinion is mixed. Even the bad-math types we’ve seen in the last few weeks have always assumed some price increases.īut the LAT runs with this dumb-question headline: Would a higher minimum wage mean pricier burgers? Malaysia, the Philippines, and Egypt also price their Happy Meal below two-and-a-half dollars.The Los Angeles Times drops into the debate over whether or how much prices would have to rise at fast-food restaurants for their employees to get $15 an hour.Īctually, this is the first time I’ve seen the question of whether prices would rise treated seriously. Today, the happiest Happy Meal is in Pakistan, cheap and cheerful at $2.11. The Happy Meal began life as a one-off innovation at a Guatemalan McDonald’s in 1979, but was soon homogenized and offered to young gluttons around the world. The World’s Cheapest Happy Meal is in Pakistan We’ve also used World Bank national income figures to show how these prices measure up relative to local wages. Following our world beer price index, Expensivity has now mapped the price of key McDonald’s meals and items around the world. The cost of McDonald’s varies across the 118 countries where Ronald lays his hat. And if the menu diversified – Masala Scrambled Egg in India Japan’s savoury, potato-based Purple McShake – the commitment to consistent quality prevailed.īut the prices are not so consistent. Soon, the golden arches spread around the world. When travelling salesman Ray Kroc discovered the brothers’ ‘Speedee Service System’ six years later, he decided to sell McDonald’s identical burgers in 1,000 locations around the US. And by focusing on a limited menu, the brothers ensured the hamburger and its sides tasted exactly the same every time. The McDonald’s affordable hunger-buster brought the customers in. That was the price of Dick and Maurice McDonald’s centerpiece hamburger when they opened a stand selling just nine menu items, back in 1948.
0 notes
Text
I got my second apartment on my own, 800 sq. Ft, for $763/mo including water and trash, making only $14 an hour back in 2010. This country is asking people to still only make $10-$15/hr and either duck and cover while they bring in groceries or afford $1200-$1700/mo for studio size apartments, no utilities. God forbid you add children to that. (Yes I have well-taken care of children)
A 2 bedroom apartment me and Kev rented back in 2015 for $1050 is now $1532/mo with no updates or changes. (No we do not still live there)
I could fill my Honda for $25 instead of the $60+ I spend on my current car.
A pack of chicken wings was $2.65 not $8.00 or even $20.
A 10 piece nugget meal at McDonald’s was maybe $7 after tax, not $10 after tax.
Cell phones didn’t cost a mortgage payment.
& I will not even begin to talk about the cost of childcare. Moms staying home like they did back in the day is not feasible for everyone. & the childcare workers are also underpaid.
Student Loan debt! (YES I HAVE DEGREES BY CHOICE)
Medical Bills! Insurance??? What does it even cover anymore???
Job posts on INDEED are requiring degrees and starting people at $15/hr.
You pay $1500 in rent on time to a landlord and the bank won’t approve you for a $1200 mortgage, then people belittle you for renting. (Mind you, IM A HOMEOWNER but the hoops I jumped through to get approved for less than what we were paying to rent was insulting)
Adults keep talking about what they could afford and how our generation wants a money handout but the same house my parents bought back in 1990 for $90,000 now goes for over $300K. I know people say that they made less back then, but the same job that paid me $14/hr in 2010 is still only offering that same $14/hr despite price changes in the economy. (NO I DO NOT STILL MAKE 14/HR)
Times are not the same. & this country isn’t exactly changing with it. Somehow the poor get poorer, the rich get richer, and the middle class just gets the foolery.
JUST MY VIEWS NOT MY CURRENT SITUATION FOR THOSE READING AND ASSUMING. THE POINT IS WHO WANTS TO BUST THEIR ASS THEIR WHOLE LIFE JUST TO LIVE AND SURVIVE OR BE TOLD “well just work harder”.
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
swift-swiftly
falling feels like flying
harkart
WIP CITY
fairyfaced-blog
STALKER. (indefinite hiatus)
trickyandwicked-archive
The Mad Kids They're All Scared Of (closed)
xamenh-agkalia
Girl in Red!