Wealth inequality

[Ellener]

4 hours ago, basil67 said:

Melania's body language when they present together is not unlike Princess Diana's when her marriage was beyond repair.  

 

Which brings me to my final point- he's not our King.

 

[thefooloftheyear]

8 hours ago, Weezy1973 said:

@thefooloftheyear what’s harder now is home ownership vs income and education vs income. In the US also healthcare vs. income. Those three things have risen in cost far more than salaries have. 

Tradespeople in many areas make more than white collar...Most of the blue collar guys I know, are in fact millionaires...Most of these professions don't require specialized formal education and most people who are proficient can go on to own businesses..I live in an area where an "average" home runs around 8-900K...Travel 40 miles west of here and you can actually buy a decent home for under 100K...Home prices spiked in this area back in the 90's, but have remained stagnant since then...

Heck, even if two people individually make 75K/yr(which around here is nothing)...that's 150k coming into the pot...You can live pretty comfortably on that amount of money...Sure, you wont be able to buy a house around here, but you can a short drive from here....

Here is one other aspect...I started my adult life with absolutely nothing...But I wasn't unlike a lot of my peers and friends,....There just wasn't any money...If you wanted to go to college, you got whatever aid you could and then paid the rest...Most people since then have gotten head starts from their families...They buy their kids new cars and help with down payments on houses and such...This wasn't a thing when I did it...You basically had to buy a piece of shyt house and keep moving up as you made money ..

Now I will say, after looking around for college spots for my daughter, the costs of some of these schools is absolutely criminal...This college deal is a racket really and I have no idea why its allowed to continue...

TFY

[schlumpy]

One of our biggest mistakes, in my opinion, was getting rid of shop classes that started in Junior High school. I took electronics, metal working, drafting, and print shop. My exposure to those trades increased my awareness of how things worked and were put together.

In ninth grade I took a business course where I learned to type and do shorthand.

It doesn't matter that I didn't make full use of everything learned. It's the exposure that matters.

That's why the children of doctors become doctors. They have exposure and realize they can do that job.

I think everyone has had to sudden understanding that a profession they were sure was out of their reach, could have been attained if they had only had some inside knowledge of what was required.

Fool is right about the money available to trades people. It can be hard work but it pays well.

Everyone can make money but it's what you do with it that determines the future.

 

[Ellener]

I have thought about trainng as a plumber. 'Woman Plumbers' I'd call the business! 

[pepperbird]

5 hours ago, Libby1 said:

I live in a country with universal health care.  It does of course take a huge chunk of taxpayer funds (it's supposed to be funded by National Insurance contributions) and there are a lot of problems with it.   Tourists visiting without getting health insurance and benefiting from costly treatment is a problem.  Binge drinkers ending up in accident and emergency is a costly problem.  There are certainly issues with it, but I don't really know how a person looks at a system of universal health care and ascertains whether the inevitable problems and imperfections mean it has failed.  

Is there a private health care option in Canada, Pepperbird?  In the UK, a lot of people get Bupa cover either privately or through their work.  Others will sometimes pay for private treatment if they can afford it and don't want to wait.  So it isn't a case of having no option but to use NHS services.  There are private medical facilities too, but they are of course expensive.

technically, we're not supposed to have private health care here, but we do. If you can afford the $1,000.00 you can jump the line, so to speak, and get diagnostic imaging and other services at privately run clinics. Basic dental care and eye care are user paid services, except for kids. There's also a sort of nebulous system where one can pay to speak to a doctor online and get a scrip for medical cannabis.

It's so bad here right now that last month, our premier got caught travelling to the next province over, closed borders and all, for medical treatment. Meanwhile, one of the cleaners I was talking to when I was int he hospital was telling me he works all day around doctors etc., but can't get one for his own little girl. A great example of wealth inequality.  Health care here is also very political, which doesn't help the situation at all.
 

[pepperbird]

20 minutes ago, schlumpy said:

One of our biggest mistakes, in my opinion, was getting rid of shop classes that started in Junior High school. I took electronics, metal working, drafting, and print shop. My exposure to those trades increased my awareness of how things worked and were put together.

In ninth grade I took a business course where I learned to type and do shorthand.

It doesn't matter that I didn't make full use of everything learned. It's the exposure that matters.

That's why the children of doctors become doctors. They have exposure and realize they can do that job.

I think everyone has had to sudden understanding that a profession they were sure was out of their reach, could have been attained if they had only had some inside knowledge of what was required.

Fool is right about the money available to trades people. It can be hard work but it pays well.

Everyone can make money but it's what you do with it that determines the future.

 

When my oldest finished high school, she thought going to community college would be a good transition from high school to university for her. We went to one of their open houses, and the "non trades" tables we packed while the trades displays had few visitors, especially the bricklaying one. I felt so bad for the guy!
 

There's so much value placed on going to university, and maybe that needs to change. There's also a tendency in some to see trades and jobs as being "less than",  but I don't understand why. The guys picking up my trash each week may not be the best educated,  but they do a hard job, don't get thanked all that often and perform an essential service. The same is true for trades people, many of whom are highly trained in the work they do. Why do we not value these professions more?

[preraph]

14 hours ago, CautiouslyOptimistic said:

The only thing I think is harder now than then is teenagers finding jobs.  So many places require 18 as a minimum age! When we were young it was so easy to find a job at 15 or even 14.  Where I live that is impossible these days and some kids actually want to work.  

You can still mow lawns at any age or rake the leaves or wash somebody's car. My regular lawn man had his son mow my lawn last week who looked about 12. He neglected to tell him about the wire in the ground around the perimeter so I told him about it and then it could tear his mower up so that he had to weed eat around the perimeter instead of mow, and the twelve-year-old said "S**t YEAH."

 

In Texas, Illegal immigrants working under the table make it a lot harder for teens to find work in Texas that they would normally be doing such as lawn work. Construction also. Handyman work. I bought a used stove off a perfectly nice guy last year who said he's actually remodeler buddy can't find enough work because of the situation here. that's just the way it is down here on the border and it's spreading. Glad we're at least trying to make it stop.

[preraph]

53 minutes ago, pepperbird said:

When my oldest finished high school, she thought going to community college would be a good transition from high school to university for her. We went to one of their open houses, and the "non trades" tables we packed while the trades displays had few visitors, especially the bricklaying one. I felt so bad for the guy!
 

There's so much value placed on going to university, and maybe that needs to change. There's also a tendency in some to see trades and jobs as being "less than",  but I don't understand why. The guys picking up my trash each week may not be the best educated,  but they do a hard job, don't get thanked all that often and perform an essential service. The same is true for trades people, many of whom are highly trained in the work they do. Why do we not value these professions more?

It does need to change and actually that is one of the things that Trump advocates about education, that we get more people into the trades. When I was in high school, that was a perfectly acceptable alternative and I guarantee you some of those people are making more money than people who spent hundreds of thousands going to college. A lot of it's hard work. my plumber makes a lot of money and he does most of mine for free because he's a good guy. And still has a pool and an RV. He's built up his business twice and sold it. 

[Ellener]

In Texas illegal immigrants do work other people don't want to do. And they pay tax.

[Libby1]

Agree with everybody who says there isn't enough emphasis on the trades any more.  A worker in our local park often stops to chat.  He's often spoken almost apologetically about what he does for a living, and is clearly a guy with a lot of intellectual interests.  I've told him before that the reality of going into a profession that's supposed to be intellectual is that a lot of the time what you're doing really just boils down to common sense and people skills.   Sure there are intellectual challenges, but more often than not they aren't the intellectual challenges you would seek out if you had the choice.  

I remember being round at this professor's house and having a sneaky peek at his bookshelf.  It was packed with Dick Francis novels.  My best friend at school who always got superb marks and did very well at university is a reality tv addict.  A couple of times I've tried to interest her in a book that I thought was great but that she maybe thought would be a bit arty farty...and she's like "come on...remember when you and I used to go on holiday with a stack of Jackie Collins books?  They were FUN!"  Lots of people in allegedly intellectual professions just want to kick back and enjoy trashy films and tv in their spare time...which is understandable.  Then you have guys like my park friend who wants to fill his spare time with intellectual pursuits because he doesn't feel like he's using his brain enough in the working day.

I think going to university is fine if you're doing something vocational.  Whether that's law, medicine, engineering etc...but when it comes to the arts, the internet is chock full of free resources people can use to educate themselves.  A lot of people are just not able to get a job with their arts degrees, and maybe they'd have been a whole lot better off if they'd studied something like catering, plumbing, learning to become an electrician etc.  You get women doing those jobs too.  But I guess a lot of the time it's because people want to prove themselves intellectually by getting that degree.  When I was at university, independence of thought and expressing dissenting opinions (from the lecturer's) was positively welcomed so long as you did it in a thoughtful way as opposed to just being a contrarian. 

The stories I've heard from younger people indicate that it isn't so much like that any more...and that it's just a case of regurgitating the lecturer's opinion, much like people do well at secondary school by regurgitating whatever they're taught.  What's the point of paying out money for an arts degree if really all you're getting for your money is several more years of regurgitating a teacher's opinions back at them?  I suppose there's the social aspect of tertiary education, but the old style colleges offering trades courses can easily offer that social aspect...and a lot of people would probably benefit from the mix of social backgrounds colleges like that offer.  

[preraph]

So true, Libby. None of us should be looking down our nose at people in the trades. A good honest mechanic is a gem. The money has eroded down around the border because you can get people to do some of that stuff illegally for less money and so that's hurt some of the trades. But they're still trades that you maintain a certification for that you can make a really good living at. 

[schlumpy]

13 minutes ago, Libby1 said:

The stories I've heard from younger people indicate that it isn't so much like that any more...and that it's just a case of regurgitating the lecturer's opinion, much like people do well at secondary school by regurgitating whatever they're taught.  What's the point of paying out money for an arts degree if really all you're getting for your money is several more years of regurgitating a teacher's opinions back at them?  I suppose there's the social aspect of tertiary education, but the old style colleges offering trades courses can easily offer that social aspect...and a lot of people would probably benefit from the mix of social backgrounds colleges like that offer.  

What you described is not a University but a re-education camp.

[CautiouslyOptimistic]

2 hours ago, preraph said:

You can still mow lawns at any age or rake the leaves or wash somebody's car. My regular lawn man had his son mow my lawn last week who looked about 12. He neglected to tell him about the wire in the ground around the perimeter so I told him about it and then it could tear his mower up so that he had to weed eat around the perimeter instead of mow, and the twelve-year-old said "S**t YEAH."

That is true.  I was thinking more along the lines of work that is not under the table like retail and restaurant work.  A local restaurant near me is hiring and it's 18 and up.  It's a shame for teens who want summer jobs.  

[pepperbird]

3 hours ago, Ellener said:

In Texas illegal immigrants do work other people don't want to do. And they pay tax.

We've been warned up here that food prices will go up because there's no one to plant the fields right now. The jobs were offered to uni students, but they got few to no applicants. The same is expected when it's time to harvest.
I get it, farming is  hard work, and if it's anything like today, we're sitting at 35 degrees celcius (95 F) even before the humidex, so it wouldn't be pleasant, but it pays well.  I did the raking blueberries thing one fall to earn money for school, and quite frankly, it sucked. I was willing because it meant less student loans for me.

 

[pepperbird]

4 hours ago, Libby1 said:

Agree with everybody who says there isn't enough emphasis on the trades any more.  A worker in our local park often stops to chat.  He's often spoken almost apologetically about what he does for a living, and is clearly a guy with a lot of intellectual interests.  I've told him before that the reality of going into a profession that's supposed to be intellectual is that a lot of the time what you're doing really just boils down to common sense and people skills.   Sure there are intellectual challenges, but more often than not they aren't the intellectual challenges you would seek out if you had the choice.  

I remember being round at this professor's house and having a sneaky peek at his bookshelf.  It was packed with Dick Francis novels.  My best friend at school who always got superb marks and did very well at university is a reality tv addict.  A couple of times I've tried to interest her in a book that I thought was great but that she maybe thought would be a bit arty farty...and she's like "come on...remember when you and I used to go on holiday with a stack of Jackie Collins books?  They were FUN!"  Lots of people in allegedly intellectual professions just want to kick back and enjoy trashy films and tv in their spare time...which is understandable.  Then you have guys like my park friend who wants to fill his spare time with intellectual pursuits because he doesn't feel like he's using his brain enough in the working day.

I think going to university is fine if you're doing something vocational.  Whether that's law, medicine, engineering etc...but when it comes to the arts, the internet is chock full of free resources people can use to educate themselves.  A lot of people are just not able to get a job with their arts degrees, and maybe they'd have been a whole lot better off if they'd studied something like catering, plumbing, learning to become an electrician etc.  You get women doing those jobs too.  But I guess a lot of the time it's because people want to prove themselves intellectually by getting that degree.  When I was at university, independence of thought and expressing dissenting opinions (from the lecturer's) was positively welcomed so long as you did it in a thoughtful way as opposed to just being a contrarian. 

The stories I've heard from younger people indicate that it isn't so much like that any more...and that it's just a case of regurgitating the lecturer's opinion, much like people do well at secondary school by regurgitating whatever they're taught.  What's the point of paying out money for an arts degree if really all you're getting for your money is several more years of regurgitating a teacher's opinions back at them?  I suppose there's the social aspect of tertiary education, but the old style colleges offering trades courses can easily offer that social aspect...and a lot of people would probably benefit from the mix of social backgrounds colleges like that offer.  

Agreed.
The world only need so many fine arts majors.
There's a movement here to make post secondary free. I am not sure how i feel; about that. While I'd like to help people achieve their goals, I fail to see the value in funding some of the mickey mouse style classes that are out there. Vampire studies? Come on!

[preraph]

Yeah, and graphic arts.  It's the new basketball.  

Pepper, I've harped on here before that we don't need 4 years of college, if they'd get down to business instead of having people repeat the basics they did or should have gotten in high school.  These schools are only in it for the money, and need some regulation.  

[Ellener]

Vampire studies is a thing? @pepperbird I googled and sure enough...there are people who claim to be vampires as in requiring human or animal blood to feel well, and there are people who study them.

 

 

[pepperbird]

3 hours ago, preraph said:

Yeah, and graphic arts.  It's the new basketball.  

Pepper, I've harped on here before that we don't need 4 years of college, if they'd get down to business instead of having people repeat the basics they did or should have gotten in high school.  These schools are only in it for the money, and need some regulation.  

At one time, Ontario had grade 13. It was supposed to help prepare people for uni.That's been gone for a while now.

[pepperbird]

2 hours ago, Ellener said:

Vampire studies is a thing? @pepperbird I googled and sure enough...there are people who claim to be vampires as in requiring human or animal blood to feel well, and there are people who study them.

 

 

ah, but that's not what this is. It's more about the culture, myths and legends around them.

 

[Ellener]

1 hour ago, pepperbird said:

ah, but that's not what this is. It's more about the culture, myths and legends around them.

 

So a film/literature type degree? It does seem to have become a big genre. 

Rocky Horror Picture Show came out when I was at school, our music teacher decided we would do it as the High School musical. We didn't, the principal ( headmaster we called them ) said no way! We did Wizard of Oz instead, with some rather camp performances and in-jokes to get back at him 🤣 I still play/sing the Judy Garland numbers so I guess it was useful to my education...

My friend's son is majoring in Film Studies, she works in the industry herself, a props person. He's going to be a professional footballer by the looks of it but he was interested in that as his degree.

 

[preraph]

If everything didn't have to be repeated in two languages at school, there would be plenty of time by grade 12 to learn what you needed to know to take more advanced university courses. I think they need to cut that out in high school. 5 in someone's old enough to take themselves a night course somewhere they still need to learn English.

[pepperbird]

16 hours ago, Ellener said:

So a film/literature type degree? It does seem to have become a big genre. 

Rocky Horror Picture Show came out when I was at school, our music teacher decided we would do it as the High School musical. We didn't, the principal ( headmaster we called them ) said no way! We did Wizard of Oz instead, with some rather camp performances and in-jokes to get back at him 🤣 I still play/sing the Judy Garland numbers so I guess it was useful to my education...

My friend's son is majoring in Film Studies, she works in the industry herself, a props person. He's going to be a professional footballer by the looks of it but he was interested in that as his degree.

 

he's smart to pursue his education.
There used to be a programs like Katimavik and CUSO ( Canadian university students overseas) that would give youth work experience. Katimavik was more trades related, while CUSO personnel would volunteer to teach, build communities, install wells that sort of thing. Great real world experience.

[some_username1]

On 6/18/2020 at 12:58 PM, Libby1 said:

Lots of people I know experience difficulty finding good tradesmen.  It raises the question of whether schools do enough to encourage pupils to develop skills and interest in these areas while they're still at school.

This is symptomatic of the issues you speak about in your first post.

When I was in school I worked on a building site as a general labourer for “pocket money”. I used to get Told by the bricklayers and electricians that if I didn’t knuckle down at school I’d end up like them. The irony is they were probably earning back then more than I am now!

Over the years the trades have sneaked under the radar and we live in an era where the skills are so rare and valuable that you can earn a lot of money from them and will never be out of work.

When I got made redundant a few years back I investigated what support the government would provide to re-train in a trade. The answer: sod all. Because a trade requires a 3 year apprenticeship of college and work experience, which is not subject to the minimum wage it is a major commitment to undertake as an adult male who has rent and bills to pay. You either move back in with your parents (if that’s even an option- it’s not for me) or you fund it yourself and if you’ve got 3 years work of rent plus subsistence money just lying around then you probably don’t need to learn that trade in the first place!

For me such lack of opportunity in being able to re-train in a good career with solid long term employability (the most the job centre offered me was security guard work when I am from a technical background!) sums up the social mobility issues facing the UK. There is very little quality provision for learning for adults, if you aren’t from a wealthy background and don’t get it right first time at school then you are left relying on a fair bit of luck to change career direction later in life.

In general I agree with your appraisal that there is an upper class who are running their hands with glee about the fact that the under class are squabbling in the dirt over issues such as race, gender, climate, sexuality etc which allows the big issue of social mobility to exist in full view of all of us yet no-one is taking to the streets to protest about it.

In the two week period since George Floyd’s death we’ve seen BLM talked about, we’ve seen JK Rowling generate headlines re: trans rights and we’ve seen the U.K. government’s own watchdog  announce that government progress on improving the life chances of disadvantaged people in England has been "disappointing’.

There has been very high profile coverage of the former two news items yet the government’s watchdog’s own assessment of it’s performance with regards to social mobility has been almost completely ignored when It arguably has a massive impact on the institutional racism narrative. It makes me furious how little we seem to care about inequality in the UK, for a country that generates as much income as we do it’s simply not acceptable. Successive Tory governments have not helped though, they are not even trying to pretend anymore that they are about anything other than locking the young out of home ownership and cementing in place an ‘under-class for life’ to serve the moneyed elites.

Affordable housing, affordable rents and a social security facility that doesn’t trap people in a poverty spiral are the key pillars of a bright new future but given the Tories record on affordable housing what hope is there of that? Jenrick getting caught sanctioning 1,000 luxury apartments on the isle of dogs against his own advisers advice (because they should be building affordable housing) and where the property developer was a Tory donor Shows the sheer utter contempt that the government has for the proletariat.

 

 

[Libby1]

46 minutes ago, some_username1 said:

Over the years the trades have sneaked under the radar and we live in an era where the skills are so rare and valuable that you can earn a lot of money from them and will never be out of work.

When I got made redundant a few years back I investigated what support the government would provide to re-train in a trade. The answer: sod all. Because a trade requires a 3 year apprenticeship of college and work experience, which is not subject to the minimum wage it is a major commitment to undertake as an adult male who has rent and bills to pay. You either move back in with your parents (if that’s even an option- it’s not for me) or you fund it yourself and if you’ve got 3 years work of rent plus subsistence money just lying around then you probably don’t need to learn that trade in the first place!

For me such lack of opportunity in being able to re-train in a good career with solid long term employability (the most the job centre offered me was security guard work when I am from a technical background!) sums up the social mobility issues facing the UK. There is very little quality provision for learning for adults, if you aren’t from a wealthy background and don’t get it right first time at school then you are left relying on a fair bit of luck to change career direction later in life.

 

Right.  And that is such a missed opportunity on the government's part.  Skilled tradespeople are absolutely essential in maintaining our infrastructure.  There is, of course, always the risk that somebody will take whatever government funding is on offer then scoot off to work in another part of the world, but even as an apprentice people are still contributing a great deal.

Quote

in general I agree with your appraisal that there is an upper class who are running their hands with glee about the fact that the under class are squabbling in the dirt over issues such as race, gender, climate, sexuality etc which allows the big issue of social mobility to exist in full view of all of us yet no-one is taking to the streets to protest about it.

I think this is a main part of the reason that Trump got in.  The left believes it's onto a winner with identity politics, and that any dissenters can be brought into line by accusations of bigotry.  That just alienates a lot of the left's traditional base.  Noam Chomsky spoke about this years ago when he rebuked an audience who sneered about the tea party who he described as being people with genuine grievances.   He did a subsequent interview in 2016 with Harry Burgess and Sanjeev Braich where he talked about the left's preoccupation with identity politicis:

Interview by Harry Burgess and Sanjeev Braich:

In the last generation the Left in the United States, Britain and much of the West has been driven by issues which are extremely important but are not class issues — identity politics basically. Women’s movements, gay rights, Black Lives Matter: all these things are extremely important, but they divert the Left away from the fundamental class issues which are being picked up by the Right, like Trump and elsewhere. That’s a real failure, and it’s connected with the attack on the labour movement and the decline of the labour movement. Here’s where maybe Corbyn’s hopeful, if he can fight off [those] that are trying to destroy him — from the Guardian all the way over.

But these are serious failures of the Left. It’s not that they pick topics that are wrong — these are really important things, but they have to be integrated into something which also deals with the basic problems of life that people are facing: you’ve gotta put food on the table, have security, get your children to college, things like that. If you don’t deal with those questions you’re going to lose much of the population. The Democrats just say they don’t care about them, but that’s conservative Democrats and also New Labour — the Left shouldn’t agree with them.

It's a pretty relevant interview for the current times.  If you google Noam Chomsky and the interviewers' names you should find it pretty easily.  The lack of security is a major one for many people.  It's all very well for people to say "the jobs are out there" but if they're zero hour contracts or the sort of jobs that will potentially take a toll on people's health with their physical demands, without paying them at a wage level reflective of that, then there's very little security.

Quote

In the two week period since George Floyd’s death we’ve seen BLM talked about, we’ve seen JK Rowling generate headlines re: trans rights and we’ve seen the U.K. government’s own watchdog  announce that government progress on improving the life chances of disadvantaged people in England has been "disappointing’.

The JK Rowling thing was an absolute joke.  She made a comment that she doesn't like the term "people who menstruate" and people react as though she's assembling the Third Reich.  As Ron Weasley (though not the actor who played him) would say "they need to sort out their priorities".

 

[Ellener]

1 hour ago, Libby1 said:

The JK Rowling thing was an absolute joke.  She made a comment that she doesn't like the term "people who menstruate" and people react as though she's assembling the Third Reich. 

I don't know about Nazism ( though I suppose choosing gender or referring to it as a disorder could easily become eugenics ) but her essay is very conceited, assuming understanding of so many other people's individuality https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

It's very difficult to read, convoluted, but my first response is 'what business is it of yours?' She cites child protection and mental health issues. And mysogyny:

Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

Er, isn't that what we've always been told. Along with anyone else who, to use her own words has 'a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions.'

I don't agree with all the verbal abuse she said flooded her twitter account, don't do that people!