somegirl
Poverty and taxes
Posted on: 01/27/2010 19:24
I was helping a friend of mine do his taxes this evening and I am steaming mad!!!! This man makes less than the low income cut off (poverty line) and after already having paid over $2300 in taxes over the year, he owes $76. Is that insane or am I insane for thinking it is?
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jesouhaite777
Are you sure you're doing it
Posted on: 01/27/2010 20:40
Are you sure you're doing it right , because this is how mistakes happen , your friend should sign up for one of the free tax clinics in his area , if it is correct he is lucky that that is all he owes believe me ....
ps your defination of low income is different than revenue canada
somegirl
Beshpin, 57% of 90000 is
Posted on: 01/27/2010 22:50
Beshpin, 57% of 90000 is still 51300, a comfortable income. 19500 is a lot hard to live on. In fact, 51300 is more than my husband and my combined income before taxes. So sorry, no sympathy here.
Jes, we used tax software. I'm picking up a paper copy on Monday and doing them the old fashioned way, maybe we inputted something wrong. I'm hoping that we did. He was hoping to get a refund to get some dental work done.
jesouhaite777
Your friend is probably
Posted on: 01/27/2010 23:30
Your friend is probably making around 22 or 23 grand , to be getting taxed what he is getting taxed if he is single he will be taxed more , if he is a certain age he will be taxed more regardless of the written rules the unwritten rule is that single people who are young are taxed more
if you are thinking that he might get some refund from company benefit dental expenses again if his monthly premium is low or nothing he won't get a refund , unless he is lucky ... you gotta pay a high premium to get a refund of any kind.
tax refunds are not guarantees ..... many many people don't get one .... but have faith the hst rebate is something everyone is going to be entitled too single people get 300 and families get 1000
a single person should be able to survive on 20 grand a year .... if they budget properly ....
no starbucks every single day lol it adds up
Elanorgold
It could be that his employer
Posted on: 02/01/2010 13:27
It could be that his employer has not got him in the right tax bracket for his atomatic deductions from his pay. Also, you only pay no tax if you earn less than $8000./yr per person... or it might be $9000. depending on your province.
This is the first time I've posted in Politics!
Motheroffive
Yes, and in total, when one
Posted on: 02/02/2010 11:43
Yes, and in total, when one considers GST, provincial sales tax, gasoline tax, etc, those on low incomes are paying disproportionately more of their income than those with higher incomes. And, our income tax structure was set up to assist in distribution of income so that the ration between those at the bottom and those at the top was reasonable however, that has changed so that the more wealthy among us make hugely disproportionately more than those in the lowest income ranges. So, our whole fiscal policy has shifted in favour of the more wealthy and the corporate sector, who incidentally, are paying less and less of their share as time goes on yet benefit in huge ways from being here. Our governments cover medical costs to employees (which is a huge cost elsewhere in the world), our public resources are relatively inexpensive for them (such as the tarsands, our forests, our water, etc) and now they're demanding even more.
Anyone making 23000/year is poor -- and anything that can be done to assist those in poverty should be done. While it's true that a tax refund isn't an expectation, that refund means a lot to someone who's living on the margins so I hope, somegirl, that you're finding some way for that to happen.
jesouhaite777
Anyone making 23000/year is
Posted on: 02/02/2010 12:13
Anyone making 23000/year is poor
Not if you are single .....
lets see
700 rent
100 transit
300 food
100 phone
100 entertainment
100 whatever
23000 a year is about 1900 a month those expenses are 1400 which still leaves you with money to play with ...
lets not forget 4 gst checks a year as well
are you at all familar with the concept of budgeting ? MO5 ? or are you frivolous
Motheroffive
I am very familiar with
Posted on: 02/02/2010 12:33
I am very familiar with budgeting, thanks, jes. Let's see...this information it comes from Statistics Canada was last updated in 2008 and provides an analysis of income and poverty levels.
All of the information below comes from: http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/ref/dict/fam020-eng.cfm
Low income before tax cut-offs
(LICO-BT)
Modified on April 21, 2008
Part A - Plain language definition:
Income levels at which families or persons not in economic families spend 20% more than average of their before tax income on food, shelter and clothing.
Part B - Detailed definition:
Measures of low income known as low income (before tax) cut-offs (LICO-BT) were first introduced in Canada in 1968 based on 1961 Census income data and 1959 family expenditure patterns. At that time, expenditure patterns indicated that Canadian families spent about 50% of their total income on food, shelter and clothing. It was arbitrarily estimated that families spending 70% or more of their income (20 percentage points more than the average) on these basic necessities would be in 'straitened' circumstances. With this assumption, low income cut-off points were set for five different sizes of families.
Subsequent to these initial cut-offs, revised low income before tax cut-offs were established based on national family expenditure data from 1969, 1978, 1986 and 1992. The initial LICOs were based upon the total income, before tax, of families and persons 15 years and over not in economic families.
After a comprehensive review of low income cut-offs completed in 1991, low income cut offs based upon after-tax income were published for the first time in Income After Tax, Distributions by Size in Canada, 1990 (Catalogue no. 13-210).
In a similar fashion to the derivation of low income cut-offs based upon total income, cut-offs are estimated independently for economic families and persons not in economic families based upon family expenditure and income after tax. Consequently, the low income after-tax cut-offs are set at after-tax income levels, differentiated by size of family and area of residence, where families spend 20 percentage points more of their after-tax income than the average family on food, shelter and clothing.
Page content follows
Table 18
Low income before tax cut-offs (1992 base) for economic families and persons not in economic families, 2005
Modified on December 11, 2007
GordW
If you are making 23000 a
Posted on: 02/02/2010 12:32
If you are making 23000 a year you are likley taking home 75% of that at best (after EI, CPP and Tax). SO now you are at 17250 which is 1437.50 a month. MAybe doable with no frills--unless of course you have health issues. But no matter what that income, even for a single person, falls into what most people would call poor. Maybe not destitute, maybe survivable, but poor
jesouhaite777
I was quoting the 23000 as
Posted on: 02/02/2010 12:44
I was quoting the 23000 as full time employment after taxes , if you are making less after taxes then you need a second job or to work full time .....
I don't know why people insist on quoting meaningless stats that are a couple years old to begin with .... it all comes down to how you or i spend a dollar or 20 dollars or 1000 dollars ....
.
Elanorgold
You'd all be quite shocked
Posted on: 02/02/2010 14:04
You'd all be quite shocked how little my husband and I make, and how little we've lived on in the past.
seeler
I can't believe how people
Posted on: 02/02/2010 14:12
I can't believe how people are defending the outrageous tax burden the poor are expected to pay in this country. It is riduclous to tax people living at or below the poverty level - actually in my opinion they should be getting a rebate from government to raise their standard of living.
jesouhaite777
I can't believe how people
Posted on: 02/02/2010 15:36
I can't believe how people are defending the outrageous tax burden the poor are expected to pay in this country. It is riduclous to tax people living at or below the poverty level - actually in my opinion they should be getting a rebate from government to raise their standard of living.
Who says that they dont?
Where do you think all the welfare and other benefits come from ..... the rich do pay more in taxes people forget that ....single people pay more , people with no children pay more , men pay more than women , the system is certainly not being defended by me but it seems to work ...
Motheroffive
While the rich pay more
Posted on: 02/02/2010 16:38
While the rich pay more dollars in taxes, they pay less, proportionally speaking, than the rest of us.
Bulls*** on the claim that men pay more than women...if two people earn the same money and have the same deductions, they pay the same taxes, regardless of gender. Oh, unless you're saying that, as a group, women make less, that's correct but that's not your claim...
seeler
Right Mof5. Also, when I
Posted on: 02/02/2010 17:14
Right Mof5. Also, when I worked for a trust company and part of my job was doing income tax returns (mainly for those well off enough to have investment income) it became obvious that people whose main income is from wages or salary pay more taxes than those who have other sources of income. A big part of the job for financial advisors is to find loop-holes for those in higher income brackets.
jesouhaite777
Well duh men make more money
Posted on: 02/02/2010 18:00
Well duh men make more money so they pay more in taxes , lets not forget that if they do have family ........ they are usually the ones who are the main breadwinners if their spouses don't work or work part time ..... so even if they do make more or get taxed less .... it's not like they get to keep the money that they earn for themselves ......
While the rich pay more dollars in taxes, they pay less, proportionally speaking, than the rest of us.
Is math not your strong skill here ?
Look up tax brackets in relation to income streams and tell me how someone on welfare is paying anything compared to someone making 6 figure salaries ?
Motheroffive
Is compassion not yours
Posted on: 02/02/2010 21:31
Is compassion not yours (strong suit, that is)?
My math is perfectly capable of calculating where the system is unfair. It has been well-established that those in higher income brackets pay less, much less, proportionately than the rest of us. First, as seeler says, there are numerous breaks for those with money...RRSPs (which don't benefit the poor even if they can afford them), tax-free savings accounts, investment deductions, deductions related to expenses for work which the working class cannot deduct in spite of the fact that we, too, travel for work. Medical, charitable and political deductions do not benefit the poor at all. Also, there is the Home Renovation Tax Credit which is a non-refundable tax credit (no taxes, no refund) and so results in some people getting up to $1350 back while others can get stuffed, even though they're the people that need help the most.
This article, called "Taxation and Poverty: Injustice built into our system hurts poor the most", states in its opening paragraphs:
"U.S. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once famously declared: 'I don’t mind paying taxes. They buy me civilization.' I completely agree. But in the last 28 years, tax policies have been ever more biased in favour of powerful special interests which dominate our society and dispossess the poor: the unearned income of the rich, tax-evading corporations with teams of tax lawyers, and high-on-the hog business expenses.
"Indeed, the Canadian tax system might now be called a war of the rich against the poor -- which is the way John Kenneth Galbraith saw the North American pattern. Taxes on unearned capital gains and corporations keep declining at a cost to the public of endless hundreds of billions of dollars, while write-offs allow big business to end up paying zero tax or a lower percent of income than the poor.
"The logic of taxation on corporations and the rich, writes corporate law professor Harry Glassbeek, 'is the logic of tax evasion. Tax law,' he observes in his definitive book, Wealth By Stealth, is set to make 'rich people pay less than working people' and 'to maintain the accumulation of wealth by the few.'"
I would encourage you to read the article -- it's a serious analysis of the direction of tax policy in our country, which is not as "progressive" as it claims to be.
jesouhaite777
Is compassion not yours
Posted on: 02/02/2010 22:09
Is compassion not yours (strong suit, that is)?
My math is perfectly capable of calculating where the system is unfair.
Honey
Money and compassion are two words that simply do not go together when it comes to taxes , that is the problem many people don't seem to understand
taxes are not fair or unfair they just happen to run along principles of mathematics ....
everybody has this imaginary war with corporations , guess who made them rich in the first place, you do , i do , we all do and now we can't believe we were that stupid ... every year there is that free tax booklet that you can get that shows anyone , anyone how to get tax deductions how to get write offs , how to get credits.
you don't have to be rich to figure that out but guess what almost no one reads the booklet , and considering how math illterate most of the population is , is it any wonder that the poor get overtaxed
sometimes simple math is all you need anyone who thinks spending say 8 grand to get back less than 2 grand as a tax credit is an idiot no matter how you slice it..... and these are the same people who would go out and borrow money at a high interest rate to do the reno in the first place ....
another thing you have to look at is how people save money , most of them can't, if you saved 50 bucks a month in a decade you could save 6 grand to bury in the garden but most people can't even do that .... people would rather spend 50 bucks on lottery tickets every month ....
Motheroffive
You are wrong about taxes
Posted on: 02/02/2010 23:39
You are wrong about taxes only following the law of mathematics, jes. They are structured based on the value system of the government that puts them in place -- do they reflect social policy that is built to support people in their education, health care, and social well-being? Or, do they reflect a government value that says the rich should be rewarded for their wealth and avoid paying their fair share towards the common good. Yes, formulae work whether one is rich or poor but the kind of formulae used to calculate one's share of the common is not about following the law of mathematics -- presently, our system is following the law of Scrooge.
Did you read the article? For copyright reasons, I didn't want to copy the whole thing here and it's on the long-ish side so I hoped you would click the link and read it. Then we could talk about the point it's trying to make and why you disagree with that position. However, insisting that math is math and that tax systems are bias-free is kind of like plugging your ears and going, "la, la, la".
Pilgrims Progress
I'm not familiar with your
Posted on: 02/03/2010 15:58
I'm not familiar with your tax system, but I have a question.
Is 21,666 low income cut off obtainable by working any full-time job? Would this apply to waitressing etc?
(Oops, before you go all fiesty on me Jes - I'll get the maths right - I have two questions).
seeler
I'm not sure what the minimum
Posted on: 02/03/2010 16:07
I'm not sure what the minimum wage is in each province so I took a guess at $8.00 per hour. I'm not great at math but according to my calculations a person working full time, 40 hours a week, for 52 weeks, would make $16,640 before taxes and other deductions each year. Many jobs in the service industry (fast food, Walmart, and Mall stores) pay minimum wage. Many of these jobs are not full time - so the person would have to juggle two or more part time jobs to make $16,640 a year. Waitressing is hard to figure - some high end establishments probably pay more than minimum - and tips need to be figures in. Some areas of the country, some types of waitressing, yield more in tips.
jesouhaite777
Oh yes any full time job Min
Posted on: 02/03/2010 23:25
Oh yes any full time job
Min wage might be up to 10.00 an hour depending on the province
But at that rate not a whole lot of tax is taken off
Also bear in mind that the first 8 or 9 thousand isn't taxed at all
Personal allowance or something like that
GordW
Minimum wage across
Posted on: 02/03/2010 23:58
Minimum wage across Canada:
Found it here
There are some who claim that minimum wage at full time should be high enough to place one above the poverty line. However fairly basic inflationary economics says that will never be possible. So how to enforce a living wage? I think we need ot seriously consider a Guaranteed Annual Income system. One that actually ensures people have enough to live on (which the current social assistance/welfare system doesn't even come close to) with a degree of comfort and enough for real life, not just survival. And I repeat, the curent system fails in this regard, and fails miserably
jesouhaite777
I think that people forget a
Posted on: 02/04/2010 00:12
I think that people forget a simple again mathematical formula
When you raise minimum wage you eliminate many many jobs because most of the job growth is supposed to come from small and medium sized companies .... since large companies are shedding and downsizing
if these small busineses have to raise min wage there won't be any jobs for anyone to complain about ....
now if the govt would help small business this could possibly work
if you've noticed the high unemployment rate for students say , this could be a direct result of raising min wage too high too soon
Income and education also go hand in hand ..... an investment in education could get people out of the min wage bracket altogether ... again with govt help ... but as we all know that is not where the govt's intentions seem to lie
Pilgrims Progress
Australia is one of the few
Posted on: 02/04/2010 00:50
Australia is one of the few countries in the world that doesn't have tipping as part of it's general culture. If we eat out at a good restaurant we might tip 10% as a reward for good sevice and good food. (Even so, a lot of folks don't - and it's not considered obligatory.)
This is due to our early history - we were originally convicts or free settlers who were disgruntled with the British class system. Also, there was a belief that "Jack was as good as his master" -so to be tipped rather than paid a fair wage was seen as demeaning.
Now, when I was young this was possible, as the basic wage was a living wage - but this seems to be fast disappearing.
Ah well, it was good while it lasted. As Mike mentioned in another thread, we've been seduced into becoming insatiable consumers. That's one lot - the other lot can't afford a roof over their heads. We used to accept the idea that in a civilised society taxation was a way of evening the score a little.
One thing that makes me puke is wealthy people complaining about how much tax they pay. "I worked hard for my money, etc." Yeah right, tell that to the labourer who helped build their Mc Mansions and got arthritis at an early age.
Motheroffive
jesouhaite777 wrote: I think
Posted on: 02/04/2010 03:23
I think that people forget a simple again mathematical formula
When you raise minimum wage you eliminate many many jobs because most of the job growth is supposed to come from small and medium sized companies .... since large companies are shedding and downsizing
if these small busineses have to raise min wage there won't be any jobs for anyone to complain about ....
now if the govt would help small business this could possibly work
if you've noticed the high unemployment rate for students say , this could be a direct result of raising min wage too high too soon
Income and education also go hand in hand ..... an investment in education could get people out of the min wage bracket altogether ... again with govt help ... but as we all know that is not where the govt's intentions seem to lie
Actually, this meme, repeated often by the various spokespersons for the business community, has been proven to be false. When examined, the effect was that more people had more money to spend, and low income earners generally aren't travelling, so that money was spent in their home communities, creating an economic lift.
At any rate, should business make a profit when the workers they employ aren't making enough to feed and cloth themselves in a modest fashion and keep a roof over their heads? That's quite a bizarre concept but it seems to be taken for granted that businesses should thrive while the people who actually do the work that allows that to happen go hungry.
jesouhaite777
Actually, this meme, repeated
Posted on: 02/04/2010 08:02
Actually, this meme, repeated often by the various spokespersons for the business community, has been proven to be false.
You really are in the dark about a lot of things ....
somegirl
Actually, no she isn't. The
Posted on: 02/04/2010 20:18
Actually, no she isn't. The state economies in the US that are doing the best and have always done the best are those with the highest minimum wages. It makes sense. The trickle up theory works. Why? Because poor people don't have enough money to by the things that they need, let alone the things that they want. When you give them money they go out to local businesses and buy the things that they need but have been making do without or maybe a little something special, like a night out or a coffee at the local coffee shop. They don't save it, they don't put it in offshore accounts, they don't hide it in tax shelters, they don't spend in on vacations in other countries, they don't use it to pay off debt. Money given to the poor is money pumped directly into the economy.
mrs.anteater
Interesting. It would be even
Posted on: 02/04/2010 22:21
Interesting. It would be even better, if we all bought locally and "made in Canada" instead of cheap made in China, where people have an even lower minimum wage....
jesouhaite777
People don't get local
Posted on: 02/05/2010 01:23
People don't get local economics much less global economics .......
Motheroffive
Economics is not a science,
Posted on: 02/06/2010 12:22
Economics is not a science, though, jes, in spite of what many economists would like us to believe. Just like religion, it has its different facets and a range of values are represented within it. So, just because someone declares that global economics work in a certain way, that doesn't mean there are immutable laws, but rather that there are human-made constructs within that framework.
jesouhaite777
Economics is not a
Posted on: 02/06/2010 12:51
Economics is not a science
WOW
Sometimes i wonder if you actually believe what you are saying ...... and i wonder if you make such statements in real life around other people .......
Motheroffive
Sorry, should have said that
Posted on: 02/06/2010 17:48
Sorry, should have said that economics is not a hard science -- that is, there are no fixed rules of which it's made up. Rather, it is a social science that changes as people change, etc.
Here's what I'm trying to get at in Economics for Everyone by Jim Stanford:
"Nothing better exemplifies economists’ know-it-all attitude than debates over free trade. Conventionally trained economists take it as a proven fact that free trade between two countries always makes both sides better off. People who question or oppose free trade – unions, social activists, nationalists – must either be acting from ignorance, or else are pursuing some narrow vested interest that conflicts with the broader good. These troublesome people should be lectured to (and economists love nothing better than expounding their beautiful theory of COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE*), or simply ignored. And that’s exactly what most governments do. (Ironically, even some conventional economists now recognize that traditional comparative advantage theory is wrong, for many reasons – some of which we’ll discuss in Part Four of this book. But that hasn’t affected the profession’s near religious devotion to the doctrine of free trade.)"
Motheroffive
He goes on to say: "Worse
Posted on: 02/06/2010 17:56
He goes on to say:
"Worse yet, the arrogance of economists is not value-free. Outside the academic world, the vast majority of professional economists work for organizations with a deep vested interest in the status quo: banks, brokerages, corporations, industry associations, and governments.
Inside academia, meanwhile, most economists (though certainly not all) are wedded to a particular, peculiar version of economics – called NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMICS. This kind of economics is as ideological as it is scientific It was developed in the late nineteenth century to defend capitalism, not just explain it. And it still goes to great lengths to try to prove a whole portfolio of bizarre, politically loaded, and obviously untrue propositions: like claiming that merely owning financial wealth is itself productive, or that everyone is paid according to their productivity, or that unemployment doesn’t even actually exist."
jesouhaite777
everyone is paid according to
Posted on: 02/06/2010 18:19
everyone is paid according to their productivity
well that part is somewhat true earnings and market value go hand in hand .
...the people who bitch the most about poverty are often the same people that drop out of high school , can't hold down a job and scorn any kind of self improvement or higher education because they loathe the responsibility of paying for it themselves
you earn based on skill sets ..... that offer value to an employer .....
Motheroffive
Sadly, you aren't the only
Posted on: 02/07/2010 05:11
Sadly, you aren't the only one who holds the old stereotypes as truth.
jesouhaite777
Sadly, you aren't the only
Posted on: 02/07/2010 11:43
Sadly, you aren't the only one who holds the old stereotypes as truth.
That's it ? the best you can come up with ? no links to some article to back it up ?
Some of us are those stereotypes that refused to remain one through hard work and perseverance .... i know what it's like to have earned min wage when i started in the workforce .. i did not want that to be the story of my life down the road so yeah i upgraded time and time again took out student loans time and time again .... saved money and paid them off got promoted and even changed careers .... life is what you make it but if you wanna sit around and mope and blame the rest of the world when you have so many options well , nothing is going to happen for you ... i'm not rich or have any special connections ... but you have to have some vision as to where you want your life to go and then go there .... all the social policies in the world can't change human laziness no matter what you think.
seeler
jes - I understand from your
Posted on: 02/07/2010 14:06
jes - I understand from your posts that you believe that everybody is born equal and that if anybody who doesn't take advantage of getting an education, getting a good paying job, its their own fault.
What about those with limited intelligence? Do you believe they exist? I'm not talking about those who obviously are challanged, but rather those who fall into the 60 to 80 or so IQ. Perhaps elementary school is about as far as they are able to advance. Perhaps even with job training they are not able to find well paying jobs, and they will always be earning minimum wage if they can find employment at all. Where do they fit in your world?
jesouhaite777
They don't have to the govt
Posted on: 02/07/2010 14:33
They don't have to the govt takes care of them
seeler
Many low income people are
Posted on: 02/07/2010 15:21
Many low income people are among the working poor, and get no help from the government. Besides, in this province a single employable person receives less than $300 a month in welfare. Could you live on that? Could a person of limited intelligence live on that?
Pilgrims Progress
jesouhaite777 wrote: They
Posted on: 02/07/2010 16:55
They don't have to the govt takes care of them
This is usually said by folks who just happen to live on a great deal more. (yeah, right - they "work hard for their money". They tend to ignore the assistance they've been given by genetics and environment, "I can do it, and so should they").
jesouhaite777
Besides, in this province a
Posted on: 02/07/2010 19:28
Besides, in this province a single employable person receives less than $300 a month in welfare. Could you live on that? Could a person of limited intelligence live on that?
You're assuming that most people that live below the poverty line have learning disabilities ?
An employable person should not have to live on 300 bucks a month but then again they are supposed to be employable .....
If you qualify for a mental or physical disablity pension you do get one and it's more than 300 bucks a month ......
So i wanna tell you a story but i doubt it will change your perception of everyone as a potential victim ......
A friend of mine was a recruiter for Kelly's Employment Services for a couple of decades .... retired last year, she worked in one of the more depressed parts of the city where there were lots of people looking for work .... now most recruiters are snakes but ever so often you find a good one , she was one of those people who had a very idealistic attitude towards her clients and wanted to get them the best jobs that they were qualified for on the market .....
Whether the economy is good or bad you she found that people were amazingly picky about the kind of job that they wanted to get ..... understandably most people don't want low paying jobs ..... but how do you explain people who turn down good jobs with great benefits because
they don't want to work evenings or weekends
holidays or past 9pm
commute more than 20 minutes to work
or people who get the job and are let go for constantly being late , stealing , taking days off while still under probation, falling asleep on the job ..... time and time again she would try and place some of the same people over and over and they would blow every chance that they got .... preferring to settle for lesser paying jobs , or even go on welfare so that they could have the freedom to do whatever they want ..... ?
of couse these people eventually became impossible to place even the agency did not want to deal with them anymore .... so lies a less than bright future ahead.
whose fault is that , who made the choices , how much can you help people who sabotage themselves ?
they can't all have learning disablities ...companies have high turnover you would be shocked how many people cannot make it past probation ...
there has to be more to it than labeling everyone as incapable .....
seeler
No, I am not presuming that
Posted on: 02/07/2010 19:51
No, I am not presuming that everybody who is underemployed or earning minimum wage is below average intelligency. Nor am I talking about those who are considered mentally handicapped. I am talking about those who have limited intellectual abilities - those that could work, and often do work, but at unskilled jobs. They mop floors, wait on customers, take out garbage, serve as school crossing guards. They do worthwhile, honest work, the best they are able, and earn below the poverty line. The government does not top up their wages. They are considered employable, but employable does not mean that there are jobs available or that they pay a living wage.
Yes, I am sure that there are people who are fussy about the jobs they take. But not everybody fits that picture.
Pilgrims Progress
jesouhaite777 wrote: Whether
Posted on: 02/07/2010 21:52
Whether the economy is good or bad you she found that people were amazingly picky about the kind of job that they wanted to get ..... understandably most people don't want low paying jobs ..... but how do you explain people who turn down good jobs with great benefits because
they don't want to work evenings or weekends
holidays or past 9pm
commute more than 20 minutes to work
or people who get the job and are let go for constantly being late , stealing , taking days off while still under probation, falling asleep on the job ..... time and time again she would try and place some of the same people over and over and they would blow every chance that they got .... preferring to settle for lesser paying jobs , or even go on welfare so that they could have the freedom to do whatever they want ..... ?
of couse these people eventually became impossible to place even the agency did not want to deal with them anymore .... so lies a less than bright future ahead.
whose fault is that , who made the choices , how much can you help people who sabotage themselves ?
What you are saying here, jes, is that there are some folks who are unemployable.
So, what to do? Personally, I would far rather have someone working for me who wants to work. Unemployment in a democracy is a fact of life - so it makes more sense to me to let those who don't want to work stand aside for those who do.
Next question - does the government support them, or not? Those that say no, believe in throwing the good ol Protestant work ethic in their faces. Gosh, we can't have folks being lazy. (despite the fact that technology has made a lot of jobs obsolete). Besides, you can't legislate on morality - a society will always have those that don't "pull their weight". It's all too easy to look at the comparative few to provide a comfortable excuse not to help others.
Problem is, folks still need food and shelter - and, it seems to me, if we - as the government - don't provide them with welfare then they'll resort to crime.
Gosh, they might start stealing our "stuff". Then we'll have to pay from our taxes to put them in prison and feed and clothe them!
mrs.anteater
Making bad choices and
Posted on: 02/07/2010 22:39
Making bad choices and feeling "right" about it is a mental poverty I often see on my job. You can see them in the news, too, like the mother, who's three year old got run over by the car, who is complaining on TV about the driver being at fault, or the town, while she had her kid playing unsupervised in the unfenced front yard....
I don't know how this kind of poverty could be "fixed", how do you improve an adult's judgement? At what point of live is it too late?
jesouhaite777
(despite the fact that
Posted on: 02/07/2010 22:47
(despite the fact that technology has made a lot of jobs obsolete). This is a common misconception technology has actually created 3 times as many jobs ..... it did not make jobs obsolete . it also made simple jobs more specialized
case in point when bank machines atms first came on the scene people thought that bank teller jobs would no longer exist but 40 years later we still have bank tellers why is that ? because bank tellers do a lot more than just cash checks and deposit your money , they had to upgrade their skill set , which is the same situation today most people would be shocked to know the huge shortage of skilled technology workers in the market ....
it's all about having the right skillset
Motheroffive
The issue about people being
Posted on: 02/09/2010 12:59
The issue about people being picky when offered job possibilities is worth looking at more closely. Many people I know who have worked in that area tell me that what they see is people who are scared and who have barriers that aren't recognized. For example, a woman with school-aged children and who can't afford daycare may very well need to say that she can't work weekends but this does not count as a valid reason to turn down a job offer.
A person who has trouble reading may not want to confess to that and so makes other excuses, that don't look reasonable, to hide that fact. Someone who has breathing difficulties that aren't really diagnosed may not be OK working in an industrial setting. Someone else may not feel comfortable around large crowds of people but are being directed into the hospitality industry....
These are all issues that I've seen in my community and among my family members. When some are privileged enough to have their health, and reasonable social skills, this isn't true for everyone yet, the system does not acknowledge this. Also, as I'm typing I'm reminded of a young woman who used to live with us. If you met her and spent time with her, you would never in a million years realize that she is dealing with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and has been assessed as having the ability to function in life as that of a 12 year old. Yet, she's in her mid 20s and goes from job to job because she can't quite figure out what it takes to hold one. Her tolerance for things that bother her is limited and that's part of her disability but most people don't even realize this about her.
We also haven't even talked about people who have suffered through trauma and abuse, of which there are many. For some, going through traumatic or abusive situations are some they are able to overcome -- maybe they have great support systems (internal and/or external) but lots of others just don't have the care they need to shake these events off and engage in what we consider to be "normal" lives. How does these folks tell a counsellor that they just don't cope with life very well?
A very good book on the subject of addictions which could also apply to this discussion is called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Maté, a Canadian physician and author who is working in the downtown east-side of Vancouver. He describes the neurological processes around trauma and abuse and how events of this nature change the brain and its chemistry. I would highly recommend it.
Tyson
jesouhaite777 wrote: (despite
Posted on: 02/09/2010 13:04
(despite the fact that technology has made a lot of jobs obsolete). This is a common misconception technology has actually created 3 times as many jobs ..... it did not make jobs obsolete . it also made simple jobs more specialized
case in point when bank machines atms first came on the scene people thought that bank teller jobs would no longer exist but 40 years later we still have bank tellers why is that ? because bank tellers do a lot more than just cash checks and deposit your money , they had to upgrade their skill set , which is the same situation today most people would be shocked to know the huge shortage of skilled technology workers in the market ....
it's all about having the right skillset
Read, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future, by Daniel Pink. You might just whistle a different tune.
jesouhaite777
Read that ...... I don't
Posted on: 02/09/2010 13:58
Read that ......
I don't disagree with the concepts so I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be
Many of those concepts are in place today so the book is not as futuristic as you might think
At the end of the day though knowledge workers are always going to be needed to build and design the nuts and the bolts......... no point starting a journey with a inadequate vehicle ....
MO5
There are many people who suffer these issues , yet they still get out of bed everyday and go to work .... you seem to love making excuses for everyone ... and you seem to think that employers give a damn , sorry but they don't ... they are not in business to babysit anyone ..... and we can't all get on disablity for our neuroses .... some of us have mortages to pay ....
either way there are jobs for those who want to work and social services for those who want to bitch ...
How does these folks tell a counsellor that they just don't cope with life very well?
Life has a way of leaving you behind , if that's your desire .....
Tyson
jesouhaite777 wrote: Read
Posted on: 02/09/2010 14:35
Read that ......
I don't disagree with the concepts so I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be
Many of those concepts are in place today so the book is not as futuristic as you might think
At the end of the day though knowledge workers are always going to be needed to build and design the nuts and the bolts......... no point starting a journey with a inadequate vehicle ....
Agreed. But, when one machine can replace 10 workers or their jobs are outsourced for cheaper labour, there will be nothing that sets these people apart. Left-brainers better start using their right-brain attributes. The book is dead on correct.
jesouhaite777
Agreed. But, when one machine
Posted on: 02/09/2010 15:40
Agreed. But, when one machine can replace 10 workers or their jobs are outsourced for cheaper labour, there will be nothing that sets these people apart. Left-brainers better start using their right-brain attributes. The book is dead on correct.
I guess you're holding out for the robot invasion , I'm not about factory jobs here ......... I'm talking Information Technology jobs of which , there is a glaring shortage for qualified skilled workers .... an industry that cannot grow without left brainers hence the tech bleed from a decade ago , that industry has been evolving ever since .....
In case you bought into the hype outsourcing saved a lot more jobs in the long run than it supposedy took away ... outsourcing took away a lot of the simple jobs but the sophisticated jobs are still waiting to be filled at home ..... you just gotta upgrade.............. that 20 year old diploma is just not gonna cut it anymore ........ dig deeper willya ?
the book is just one many books that are exploring various theories some are good and some are on the ball and some are just out there ....