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The 2018 Trump Presidency thread

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Walmart said on Thursday it would raise entry-level wages for hourly employees to $11 an hour as it benefits from the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in 30 years. Walmart says the increase would take effect in February and that it would also expand maternity and parental leave benefits and offer a one-time cash bonus of us to $1,000
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Aren't they one of the largest employers in the country?

Would you look at that. It appears that when you don't steal 35% of a business' income, they can increase their payroll.
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$11 an hour?! I think the USA is the only developed nation that would consider that adequate, let alone generous or reasonable.
It's an absolute pittance. No wonder there is such a huge 'underclass' and millions of disenfranchised working poor.
I mean - shit, if you want to look at causes of the 'opioid crisis', look no further.
I've been working since the mid 90s and i've never had such a measly hourly rate. Even accounting for exchange rates.
And we're talking about adults here, not kids.

As for "stealing 35% of a company's income" - what nonsense. Taxation isn't theft, it's the price of living (or doing business in society).

Theft is running a multi billion dollar company, and paying your workers $11 an hour.

My god, that's less than $100 for an 8 hour shift. And those poor fuckers pay tax on that. Criminal.

We have a lot of awful american conpanies in australia, but i'm thankful we dont have walmart.
 
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I'm sorry but I really think it should be said that you can't just compare that wage to Australia. Apart from the currency difference, how far money gets you is drastically different. Australia is one of the most expensive countries in the world to live and one of the many reasons is tax. But that's compensated for with a higher wage. Paid more, but shit costs more.

So just taking an American wage and imagining it being spent in Australia is a completely bullshit comparison.
 
Yeah, but american workers get fucking screwed. By companies that make mega, mega profits. And apparently, don't pay much tax.

Why can't i compare australia to the US though? They're not the same, but they're not drastically different either.
Lots of things are cheaper in the USA, but it still doesn't really explain the huge disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor.

And really, the point i was making is still relevant: those workers are getting fucked up the arse.
$11/hr? Jesus Christ.

How much is the rent on a one bedroom apartment in a moderately priced (not NYC or SF) US city, roughly?
Or a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs?
 
Now you're talking about wealth disparity. You were talking about income. If you're gonna change the subject or go in for scattershot criticism so I gotta play whackamole on your points while you dodge to different ones I'm not gonna bother discussing it.

In regards to the original point, income. As for rental costs obviously it varies from place to place, but cost of living in Australia is widely known to be obscenely high. Any American coming here is going to be shocked by how much everything costs just like how every Australian and their godawful nonstop disgusting obsession with travel is in part motivated by the fact their money will go a lot further almost anywhere else on earth.

Which is why you can't legitimately compare an income for somewhereville, USA to fuckknowstown, Australia. The cost of living is vastly different.

That's why Australians constantly import shit, and use VPNs to pretend to be in the USA. Because they feel they are ripped off for over everything.

Some of it really is a rip off of course, then there's a lot more which is just a consequence of having so many expensive government services requiring taxes, crazy amounts of regulation. High minimum wage requirements. And hey not all of that is a bad thing, but this is what comes with it.
But I'm not gonna get into a game of "here's my list of complaints about the USA now you address one then I'll ignore it and give you 2 more then ignore the answers to those and give another 2 more" if that's where this is headed.

One point, one answer, which is you can't legitimately just compare minimum wage between countries while paying no attention to anything else. That's bullshit
 
Um...ok. I'm sensing a major defensiveness on your part here.

I wasn't criticising the USA.
I was criticising greedy employers the states.
Poverty is a major problem over there - and homelessness - as i'm sure you are aware, and corporate greed has an awful lot to do with it.

Some things might be expensive in australia, but i really like not having to tip.
We don't have to tip because there is a decent minimum wage.
And we don't have to work out state tax and whatever other tax that's tacked onto the bill for everything. That bugs me in the US.

There are plenty of things that fucking suck about australia. And there are some things that are great about america.
I'm not a patriotic person, i think national pride - and people being parochial - is really dull.

But minimum wage - that's fundamental.
It has a huge impact on individuals and society when people can't get a decent day's pay for a decent day's work.
I'm not talking about america vs australia - that doesn't interest me in the slightest.
I'm talking about workers' rights, and how fucking shit is for anybody to get paid fucking $11/hr (before tax - tax that apparently huge corporations like walmart don't have to pay. Is that correct?)

Don't you live in sydney?
Sydney's absurdly expensive. It makes perth look affordable - which it ain't - but really, not all of australia is as pricey as sydney.
I was there about 3 months ago, and i was pretty shocked, frankly.
I moved to melbourne about 18 months ago, and i have a really good standard of living, for very cheap.
I mean, i can live really well off very little money. I lived pretty damn well and had a lot of fun when i wss on the dole over here. It's nothing like my experience in other australian cities.
Sydney is obscenely expensive, in my opinion.

I don't get the rant about "every Australian and their godawful nonstop disgusting obsession with travel".
What's wrong with travelling? :\

That's why Australians constantly import shit, and use VPNs to pretend to be in the USA. Because they feel they are ripped off for over everything.
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Uh, no - it's because our shitty fucking government made it illegal to download torrents.
And (apparently) australian netflix has a fraction of the content that is available on the US version.

I know that you don't like people making crass generalisations about americans, but you've made a whole series of them about australians.
I know that you get moronic comments from aussies about america (or being american?) but i'm just trying to have a discussion, using the terms of reference i know.

Honestly, i'm not sure what prompted that response, but i care deeply about workers getting exploited by greedy organisations that do not pay their fair share of tax.
And yes, i'm talking about incomes and wealth disparity. They're not unrelated topics are they?


Can anyone else give me a ballpark figure on what you'd consider a reasonable weekly rent to pay on a small apartment (or house) in an 'average' kind of market?
It's been a few years since my last trip to the US, and i have no idea what most people pay.

But i am curious how anyone survives off $11/hr wages.
 
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spacejunk said:
$11 an hour?! I think the USA is the only developed nation that would consider that adequate, let alone generous or reasonable.
It's an absolute pittance. No wonder there is such a huge 'underclass' and millions of disenfranchised working poor.
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its poverty for sure. the living wage in the US is in general about $15/hour, anything below that is definitely poverty level, and us citizens are subsidizing the refusal of companies like walmart to pay living wages with our meager social safety nets. its critical that we get the minimum wage tied to the living wage so we can stop subsidizing corporate profits and wage slavery like this.

spacejunk said:
Can anyone else give me a ballpark figure on what you'd consider a reasonable weekly rent to pay on a small apartment (or house) in an 'average' kind of market?
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here ya go
 
I have NPR on the background at work and Trump is at it again, putting his foot in his mouth: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/12/5775...es-calling-african-countries-by-a-vulgar-slur

Of course he's denying it but too many other people heard it. Yet another example of "if you say it enough, it becomes true"

President Trump is denying reports, from NPR and other news outlets, that in a Thursday meeting at the White House, he disparaged African nations as "shithole countries," and questioned why the United States would admit immigrants from them and other nations, like Haiti.Trump told lawmakers that the U.S. should instead seek out more immigrants from countries like Norway.
A White House statement issued Thursday notably did not deny that Trump used the vulgarity to refer to African countries, but Friday morning, Trump shifted gears.
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Why would any Norwegian in their right mind move here?
 
Any day now Trump should be dropping the N word.

As upset as ppl are over this. Half of the country loves it. My dad is a trump supporter that came as an immigrant from a shithole country and couldn't speak English...doesn't care.

He just cares about his bottom tax dollar line as well as hatred of other races.

I told him to cancel his trip to visit me if he still supports this asshole.

I have lost friends over trump that are republican. Now he has torn my family apart. This is going farther than turning races against each other. He is tearing families and friends apart.
 
spacejunk said:
Yeah, but american workers get fucking screwed. By companies that make mega, mega profits. And apparently, don't pay much tax.

Why can't i compare australia to the US though? They're not the same, but they're not drastically different either.
Lots of things are cheaper in the USA, but it still doesn't really explain the huge disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor.

And really, the point i was making is still relevant: those workers are getting fucked up the arse.
$11/hr? Jesus Christ.

How much is the rent on a one bedroom apartment in a moderately priced (not NYC or SF) US city, roughly?
Or a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs?
Click to expand...

1 br in big Florida cities. Stsrtimg at.$1ooo to 1500 USD per month

I'm aware of many ppl with college degrees making under 15 per hour.
 
I am so happy to own my own condo. Rentals in this place are $1200 and this is a shitty part of Orlando. Not exactly the ghetto but for sure lower middle class. My credit is shit so I had to find a place for which I could put cash on the barrel. Rents in nicer parts of town would easily be $2000+

I would really like to believe Donald Trump isn't racist, but he does have a malady of which my high school industrial arts teacher was fond. He has diarrhea of mouth.
 
spacejunk said:
Can anyone else give me a ballpark figure on what you'd consider a reasonable weekly rent to pay on a small apartment (or house) in an 'average' kind of market?
tathra said:
here ya go
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wow. that's fucked up.

thank you for posting that - i knew it was bad, but it's worse than i was expecting.

when there are such problems with housing affordability, it has a huge amount of flow-on social effects.
like, when people in bad situations (like violent relationships) they realise that being able to sustain themselves financially would be impossible on their own, they're kinda forced to stay.

i mentioned the opioid crisis in passing a post or two back - and that's just part of the mental health aspect to it. working all the time for so little must take a serious mental toll on people - especially when they're employed but still struggling to keep a roof above their heads.
then if you look at the cost of psychiatric treatments - they're generally not cheap are they? health treatment costs generally... not good.

it's irrelevant to me what country this is - i'm not having a swipe at america by pointing out how fucked it is that so many american workers are so exploited so badly.
when mammoth companies like walmart post huge profits, they're not just profiting off their customers, they're profiting by underpaying their employees.
if fulltime workers can't afford to pay the rent on a two bedroom house...there's something drastically wrong there.

the irony - that some of the people getting paid $11/hr must certainly have voted for this gaudy rich howard hughes wannabe who shits in a golden toilet bowl - is pretty hideous.

but what's worse than that, is that before trump, there was actually a growing class consciousness in american political discourse, especially amongst some of the younger people. this has been pretty absent in mainstream american politics, from what i know of it.
it's a lot more about religion (predominantly christian, with a big evangelical presence?) and 'race' (often referred to indirectly - vaguely, euphemistically, or using stereotypes)
"identity politics" right?

this was helped along by sanders who even put clinton into a position where she had to commit to increasing the minimum wage (not as high as he was pushing for - but still, a positive proposal that could make a significant improvement in the lives of an awful lot of hardworking people who deserve a living wage.

instead, a buffoon who incoherently blamed and scapegoated people got in.
a buffoon who unapologetically governs in the interests of those doing the under-paying (making them also undertaxed...) and definitely not the people being underpaid.

his various distraction tactics - ranging from crass comments to escalating global nuclear tensions by bullying on twitter - have robbed the discussion, as well as the airwaves and the news columns - of discussing serious - real issues.

i've said this many times before about racist politics, which is bad enough in the effect it has on the people singled out by it, but it shifts the blame for things like unemployment, housing affordability issues and decreases in standards of living onto immigrants, and other people struggling economically and socially - but they're not at fault.
a lot of the social issues people are contending with are symptoms of poverty and wealth inequality. it ain't the 'dreamers' fault, is it? do people asctually believe that, or is it just an effort to have deportations for the o

but are people still talking about about things like? sadly, we've spent much of the last year grappling with absolutely inane shit relating to trump's infantile behaviour, his ignorance and his hate.
he's shifted the focus away from working people campaigning to improve things for common people, and onto him and his bizarre worldview.

it's pretty bleak, but i hope the backlash that follows his presidency is able to gather a lot of steam and introduce some long-overdue increased protections for american workers.
i hope the shit storm of the trump presidency doesn't make people on the progressive side of things lose focus on what's important.
 
indeed.

“Completely Racist”: Edwidge Danticat on Trump’s “Shithole Countries” Remark Targeting Africa, Haiti

RUPERT COLVILLE: These are shocking and shameful comments from the president of the United States. I’m sorry, but there’s no other word one can use but “racist.” You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as [bleep], whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome. … The positive comment on Norway makes the underlying sentiment very clear. And like the earlier comments made vilifying Mexicans and Muslims, the policy proposals targeting entire groups on grounds of nationality or religion, and the reluctance to clearly condemn the anti-Semitic and racist actions of the white supremacists in Charlottesville, all of these go against the universal values the world has been striving so hard to establish since World War II and the Holocaust.
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(my emphasis)

the trump fanboys will deny. as always. but i think we can now safely say that trump is racist.

alasdair
 
I used to make roughly $12/hr and my woman makes less than that to this day, and we lived paycheck to paycheck. No fancy dinners. I stopped buying weed. Couldn't afford repairs my car needed. Yeah sure, $11/hr gets you so far. Thank you so much shopmart, I'm sure your hourly employees are ecstatic.

And I live in a place with 'low' cost of living/rent compared to many in the States.

Oh yeah, and both of us have bachelor degrees.
 
It's so hard to imagine having anything comparable to the last generation.
Home ownership, even college education, and children are prohibitively expensive for the middle class.
Now Trump wants to cut entitlements and allow states to force people on Medicaid to get jobs... how many is that days Melania and Barron stayed in Trump Tower.
 
spacejunk said:
wow. that's fucked up.

thank you for posting that - i knew it was bad, but it's worse than i was expecting.

when there are such problems with housing affordability, it has a huge amount of flow-on social effects.
like, when people in bad situations (like violent relationships) they realise that being able to sustain themselves financially would be impossible on their own, they're kinda forced to stay.

i mentioned the opioid crisis in passing a post or two back - and that's just part of the mental health aspect to it. working all the time for so little must take a serious mental toll on people - especially when they're employed but still struggling to keep a roof above their heads.
then if you look at the cost of psychiatric treatments - they're generally not cheap are they? health treatment costs generally... not good.

it's irrelevant to me what country this is - i'm not having a swipe at america by pointing out how fucked it is that so many american workers are so exploited so badly.
when mammoth companies like walmart post huge profits, they're not just profiting off their customers, they're profiting by underpaying their employees.
if fulltime workers can't afford to pay the rent on a two bedroom house...there's something drastically wrong there.

the irony - that some of the people getting paid $11/hr must certainly have voted for this gaudy rich howard hughes wannabe who shits in a golden toilet bowl - is pretty hideous.

but what's worse than that, is that before trump, there was actually a growing class consciousness in american political discourse, especially amongst some of the younger people. this has been pretty absent in mainstream american politics, from what i know of it.
it's a lot more about religion (predominantly christian, with a big evangelical presence?) and 'race' (often referred to indirectly - vaguely, euphemistically, or using stereotypes)
"identity politics" right?

this was helped along by sanders who even put clinton into a position where she had to commit to increasing the minimum wage (not as high as he was pushing for - but still, a positive proposal that could make a significant improvement in the lives of an awful lot of hardworking people who deserve a living wage.

instead, a buffoon who incoherently blamed and scapegoated people got in.
a buffoon who unapologetically governs in the interests of those doing the under-paying (making them also undertaxed...) and definitely not the people being underpaid.

his various distraction tactics - ranging from crass comments to escalating global nuclear tensions by bullying on twitter - have robbed the discussion, as well as the airwaves and the news columns - of discussing serious - real issues.

i've said this many times before about racist politics, which is bad enough in the effect it has on the people singled out by it, but it shifts the blame for things like unemployment, housing affordability issues and decreases in standards of living onto immigrants, and other people struggling economically and socially - but they're not at fault.
a lot of the social issues people are contending with are symptoms of poverty and wealth inequality. it ain't the 'dreamers' fault, is it? do people asctually believe that, or is it just an effort to have deportations for the o

but are people still talking about about things like? sadly, we've spent much of the last year grappling with absolutely inane shit relating to trump's infantile behaviour, his ignorance and his hate.
he's shifted the focus away from working people campaigning to improve things for common people, and onto him and his bizarre worldview.

it's pretty bleak, but i hope the backlash that follows his presidency is able to gather a lot of steam and introduce some long-overdue increased protections for american workers.
i hope the shit storm of the trump presidency doesn't make people on the progressive side of things lose focus on what's important.
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the numbers in NY and CA are heavily skewed by NYC/Long Island and LA / SF....
 
"vukojebina" ahahahaha. foreign journalists are struggling to translate "shithole" for their readers. a croation paper used "vukojebina" which means "the place wolves like to fuck" lol. seems its an idiom for the middle of nowhere, like the US's - or maybe just midwestern US - "bfe" (bum-fuck egypt - dont ask me where these colloquialisms come from, i dont know). all these foreign outlets should have simply gone with "toilet" for "shithole", its a nice, clean synonym that carries the same idea in a less vulgar way.
 
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