Best labor & economic relations books according to redditors
We found 555 Reddit comments discussing the best labor & economic relations books. We ranked the 200 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
18. The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality
4 mentions
That the fact that women as a group earn lower wages than men as a group is evidence of massive sexism in America.
My rebuttals, which were brushed aside by a college professor:
>Don't women, though, earn less than men in the same job? Yes and no. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics lumps together all medical doctors. Men are more likely to be surgeons (versus general practitioners) and work in private practice for hours that are longer and less predictable, and for more years. In brief, the same job is not the same. Are these women's choices? When I taught at a medical school, I saw that even my first-year female students eyed specialties with fewer and more predictable hours.
>But don't female executives also make less than male executives? Yes. Discrimination? Let's look. The men are more frequently executives of national and international firms with more personnel and revenues, and responsible for bottom-line sales, marketing and finances, not human resources or public relations. They have more experience, relocate and travel overseas more, and so on.
>Comparing men and women with the "same jobs," then, is to compare apples and oranges.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/opinion/05farrell.html
Farrell's book: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109
A Department of Labor study made similar observations:
>Although additional research in this area is clearly needed, this study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.
http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf
It's more complicated than that. If you read Why Men Earn More, there are a myriad number of reasons. There's maternity like you said. There's also women choosing to earn less because their husband can get a higher paying job if they move. There's also women choosing to work at lower paying jobs with more flexibility because family is actually a priority for them. The list goes on...
Most interestingly - women who choose not to have a family at all and be career women actually get paid more than their similarly situated male counterparts.
Karl Marx's "Lincoln Letter"
> Sir:
>
> We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.
>
> From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?
>
> When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, "slavery" on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding "the ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution", and maintained slavery to be "a beneficent institution", indeed, the old solution of the great problem of "the relation of capital to labor", and cynically proclaimed property in man "the cornerstone of the new edifice" — then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.
>
> While the workingmen, the true political powers of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war.
>
> The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.
>
> Signed on behalf of the International Workingmen's Association, the Central Council
More reading in the book, An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln.
Vous voyez ce qui se passe quand on laisse des entreprises en concurrence à l'heure ou les gains de productivités son faible ? Dilemme du prisonnier classique :
... pas la peine de détailler la suite. On est dedans depuis les années 70/80.
La solution serait bien sur une organisation entre état pour gérer les différences de compétitivités des différents pays et éviter de tomber dans ce piège... mais ça l'UE le fait pas (et sans rentrer dans des détails techniques, la zone euro accentue le problème).
Maintenant Macron propose la même chose, mais dans un même pays. Donc les entreprises qui n'ont pas de concurrences extérieurs et qui échappaient a cette logique néfaste (protéger par une organisation qui imposent un code du travail unique pour tout le monde, appelé état, par le truchement du code du travail) vont pouvoir faire la même logique au sein d'un pays (on appel ça renverser la hiérarchie des normes). Et le clou du spectacle : syndicats et ouvriers/employés vont voté eux même pour se tirer une balle dans le pied (bah oui, il y aura toujours une entreprise pour aller plus loin que les autres; les autres n'auront plus le choix, voter pour garder son travail en dégradant ses conditions de travail comme les Allemands).
A l'heure il faudrait qu'on s'organise collectivement (au sein de l'UE pour commencer) pour garantir un travail, des conditions de travail et un revenu correcte a tous on applique la pire des solutions : celle qui conduit mathématiquement a une baisse de la qualité de vie des populations les plus vulnérable. Tout ça à cause d'une croyance tenace : la compétition créer de la richesse (sauf que aujourd'hui la compétition c'est le management, le coût du travail, et l'automation - la compétition fut une bonne chose dans le passé, car elle se faisait sur les gains de productivités grâce aux innovations et inventions technologiques, ce qui n'est plus le cas depuis les années 70 parce que la productivité a chuté, le tout amplifié par une tertiarisation de l'économie).
Espérer une gauche forte, parce que l'extrême droite attend au tournant... quand le chômage grimpe, quand la misère devient la norme, quand les droits du travailleurs sont détruit le discours de stigmatisation de l'autre devient vite populaire... la classe moyenne s'éffrondre, et elle ne pourra plus tenir le FN en joue infiniment...
Conseils de lecture :
A. Une personne qui a théorisé le Précariat en 2011, et qui montrait déjà que l'extrême droite montait et allait continuer de le faire assez logiquement.
B. Un petit ouvrage sur la théorie de la régulation.
C. Un peu vieux, mais bon, on s'en lasse pas de comprendre les origines de notre modèle économique, ou de se rappeler que le travail n'existaient pas il y a 3 siècle. Ha et un rappel des conséquences d'un modèle économique qui ne marche pas, qui est inégalitaire, et qui laisse les gens sur le carreau.
D. Comprendre pourquoi on ne remet plus en cause le capitalisme, malgré les faiblesses qu'il a.
Edit : il est marrant le livre sur la théorie de la régulation. Ils montrent qu'une financiarisation de l'économie créer de l'instabilité si elle s'accompagne de mesure pour flexibilisé le travail (et d'autre joyeuseté, comme celle d'augmenter les importations et de créer des balances commerciale déficitaires).
I dared to contradict a politically correct textbook, and the professor singled me out for ridicule.
The textbook repeated the old claim that women earn 70 cents for doing that same work that earns a dollar for a man, and that this wage gap is due to widespread sexist discrimination.
I said this statistic was broadly accurate (men due tend to earn more) but misleading. It compares all male workers to all female workers, and neglects to factor in things like experience on the job, overtime, etc. When we compare apples to apples -- when men and women have similar training, experience, hours on the job, etc. -- the "wage gap" vanishes.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109
Here you go:
___
Studies
An Analysis of Reasons for the Disparity
in Wages Between Men and Women
Gender Pay Gap in the Federal Workforce Narrows as Differences in Occupation, Education, and Experience Diminish
The Gender Pay Gap - Have Women Gone As Far As They Can?
Articles
NCPA - The Wage Gap Myth
Forbes - It's Time That We End the Equal Pay Myth
AEI - A Quick Fix For The Gender Wage Gap
CBS News - The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth
Trigger Alert Blog - The Almighty Wage Gap - A Comprehensive Analysis
Market Watch - The Gender Wage Gap is a Myth
AEI - The Gender Wage Gap Myth
Huffington Post - The Wage Gap Myth Exposed - By Feminists
Freakonomics - Goldin and Katz on the Male-Female Wage Gap
Real Clear Markets - [White House, Women's Wages, Myths] (http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/03/03/white_house_womens_wages_myths_98895.html)
Videos
Straight Talk About The Wage Gap [3:00]
Do Women Earn Less Than Men? [4:00]
John Stossel - The Gender Pay Gap [10:36]
Why Men Earn More - The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap [1:16:11]
The Gender Wage Gap is a Myth [2:21]
Thomas Sowell - Gender Bias and Income Disparity: A Myth? [3:30]
The Gender Wage Gap Uses Bogus Statistics [4:45]
The Pay Inequality Myth: Women are More Equal Than You Think [2:37]
Audio
The Myth of the Male/Female Wage Gap by Thomas J. DiLorenzo [7:49]
Books
Warren Farrell - Why Men Earn More
As someone who has gone to college, graduated, and joined the workforce, I can say without question that I wish I hadn't gone.
I had lucrative Navy offers on the table and was also considering trade schools. Instead, I chose to go to a 4-year private university that offered me some scholarship money because it had been drummed into my head that college was the only way to succeed. I didn't know what I wanted to do in life, and I ended up with a poli sci degree and about $40K in debt (even after the scholarships). Useless.
Now, I have friends in the military who are doing great (in or out). I have friends who work in the oilfields, who are mechanics, who are welders, plumbers, electricians, etc... all doing very well personally and financially. And here's the kicker:
Most of them work their 40 and go home. If they work more, they make more. Lots more. They feel a sense of accomplishment when they complete a physical task with tangible results.
Me, I work as many hours as it takes. For the same money, no matter what. My job is ambiguous, the results often unclear. It's sad.
Check out the book Shop Class as Soulcraft if you're more interested in this disparity. But be careful, as it will make you want to quit your job and become a welder, carpenter, electrician, or mechanic.
Also, it's tough to justify going to college when some 50% (ish) of guys my age are un- or under-employed, despite their degrees. Part of that is guys (like me) getting dumb degrees. A larger part of that is that the college education that our parents/advisors enjoyed doesn't pay us the same benefits as it did them.
It is both. I can really recommend The Precariat. The poor working class will favour more obvious and appealing solutions that treat the symptoms of inequality rather than treating inequality itself.
I'm sorry, you have enough money to found, edit, and start a magazine but not to pay $6k in debt?
EDIT: And a published book?! You, sir, can fuck all the way off along with that Republican dickhead who said he needed a quarter million a year to feed his family.
You'll need to clarify your reset point: do people start again earning the same incomes as they were before? If not, how are jobs divvied out and so forth? Do they live in the same places? If not, how is housing divvied up? Are races the same as before? How does the reset work after the reset?
---
I'll just talk about one example, since I don't know the answer to those questions;
The US is perhaps the most car-dependent developed country, certainly more car-dependent than just about any European country, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Maybe Saudi Arabia is more car-dependent, due to them having had a decades-long policy of super subsidizing gas to where it was like 30 cents a gallon. Anyway.
"What do cars have to do with equality, though?" you may ask. And the answer is that a car is a durable good, a high-cost investment item. Yes, most people in the US have a car of some sort, but 1) the quality of those cars varies dramatically, and 2) the poorest don't have cars.
Then consider the fact that our infrastructure is designed around an implicit assumption that you'll have a car. In many towns I've lived in, there simply isn't a sidewalk in most places, and the very layout of the stores and shops and jobs assume distances for driving, not walking, meaning that often the nearest store is miles away, on roads with no sidewalks.
That impacts your choices. If you don't have a car and the nearest grocery store is 3 miles away, that makes it very hard for you to get groceries. Convenience stores tend to be a lot closer, though, so you'll have a tendency to go to the nearest convenience store, even though they sell you smaller quantities for higher prices than the grocery store, because they know they can get away with it.
Imagine having to go to a job, and you've got a car, but it's unreliable. I had a friend in highschool, when he put the key in the ignition, it was even odds whether the car would start. He got a job at the Subway down the hill from where we live, which was still a mile's walk from his house mind you, no sidewalks, down a steep incline (and back up it at the end of his shift), because it was the only place near enough to where he could still get there by walking in case his car didn't want to start that day.
Imagine you're equally qualified with another candidate, but your car is unreliable, and his isn't, and you arrive 10 minutes late to the interview. You know that's going to hurt you.
Most people can't afford a car outright, which is where the car loan comes in. For the middle class, this really doesn't make that big a difference. You might end up paying a bit more than you want, but you'll definitely get the loan. But if you're poor, your credit may not be good enough to even get a loan for a car, or if you can get a loan, you'll get charged a higher interest rate, so you end up paying more money for the same access to transportation.
Or take another scenario: your car randomly blows up and stops working, it'll cost $1000 to fix it. Now, that's a hard pill to swallow for even a lot of middle class people, but they can still manage it. But for the working poor, this is a crisis. They need the car to get to work, they rely on that. But they may not have $1000 to their name upfront, so they're in a Catch-22; they need the car, to get to work, to get the income, to pay for the car, but first they need to pay for the car, so they can get to work, so they can get the income. And that's where shit like payday loans start coming in, an 'advance' on your paycheck that's actually an outrageously high interest short-term loan. You know you're being fucked, but you don't have a choice; you NEED that car to get to work.
It's shit like this that's the most indicative of the difference between the poor and the middle class, when some unexpected financial demand pops up. For the middle class, that's an irritation. For the poor, that's a crisis.
---
This is getting pretty long, so I'll just say, take that example, and then apply it to EVERYTHING.
Etc, etc, etc.
For more examples and a deep dive into the kind of unconscious impersonal economic structures that hold the poor back, check out The Working Poor: Invisible in America.
This actually had nothing to do with unions at the outset. The tradition predates unions by quite a bit. It started with immense economic opportunity driven by cheap land and labor shortages. This tied with English traditions about individualism and free labor.
Unlike workers all over the world, Americans have a tradition of not being bound to one particular job or employer. At will employment benefits the workers when you live in a land of scarce labor, immense availability of land, and enormous opportunity. The conflict between free labor traditions in the North and unfree labor traditions in the South (enabled by a color-coded slave system) was one of the most important tensions between ~1820-1865.
Now, as immigration increases (more labor available) and the opportunity to get new land or new jobs goes down (no more frontier and increasing urbanization and mechanization), then at will employment now benefits employers more. But this was not the case for much of U.S. history.
Citations:
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (available at
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Soil-Labor-Men-Republican/dp/0195094972
Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (https://www.amazon.com/American-Slavery-Freedom-Edmund-Morgan/dp/039332494X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538998439&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=american+slavery%2C+american+freedom&dpPl=1&dpID=51h4aolAGJL&ref=plSrch#immersive-view_1538998477709)
Every minority at IBM gets a 1% raise. Women are considered a minority. They get paid more for the same work at IBM.
The idea that women make less than males in tech is preposterous. There's ample evidence that firms will go out of their way to recruit women by paying them more. The book Whey Men Earn More talks about all of this in great detail.
On the economic side, there's a fair amount to choose from:
There's more I could think of, but this should be a good start.
Edited for format.
Exactly, people should read Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy to understand why developing countries need Sweatshops because they bring with them the proximate causes of economic development — capital, technology, and the opportunity to build human capital.
It's becoming a real issue in China now as there is a shortage of women to marry. On top of that, many women are leaving their parents' houses and going to work in the factories. They're earning their own money, which is giving them economic power and giving them more control on when or if they get married. There's a great book about it called Factory Girls
So, I usually don't talk in r/politics, but I thought I might help you out.
Only around 4 and a half million workers in the U.S. are directly affected by minimum wage laws, and out of those 4mil, around half are under the age of 25, and most of those are part-time employees. Importantly, this doesn't really vary that much between racial groups, between women, or between job field (although entertainment industries are the top).
What does that mean? It means that if you eliminated the minimum wage laws and let businesses set their own wages based on the need, you would affect at minimum, around 4.5 million people who are likely in school, living with parents, and not providing care for a family or paying off any loans.
What could it do? Well, businesses could employ more people for low-paying jobs. In literal terms, movie theatres could have the option of throwing hordes of 16yr olds at a dirty theatre to clean it faster. Gas stations might be able to afford pump service. The list can go on. Why does that matter? Well, because teenage work has been shown to increase the wage that they can earn over their lifetime and reduce stress.
Hmm, how would I research this further? Well, thats a good question. You can actually look at some numbers like the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides for minimum wage and make decisions for yourself. You could also trust reporting like The New York Times, Forbes, or the Center for American Progress. Finally, you can read some books by researchers and experts in their fields, like Myth and Measurement, or Minimum Wages.
Be aware that the links above are not one-sided, there is still a lot of discussion going on, and the links show that. However, the statements I personally made are my conclusions from researching this topic. I hope it all helps.
I will echo what was already written, but I will address two major points. The first is your acute state of mental health, and the second is philosophical background on the question you asked concerning work.
If you are having suicidal ideation than you need to get help to stabilize. If its possible, talk to professionals, and develop a support network if possible, that knows how you feel. You need to disconnect from the 'conspiracy' world a bit, and focus on something positive. Enjoy nature, and engage in some activity where you are physically moving with people you love.
Books that are topical and I found very helpful, center around what the meaning of 'work', as a category that structures our world as it actually is. The first books is [Shop Class as Soulcraft]
(https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467). In this work, the author, who actually worked for a Global Warming denial propaganda farm before quitting, engages in an exploration of the difference between skilled manual labor and unskilled labor, and what the differences are for being a human.
The second book, I am somewhat apprehensive to post, but I think it is really insightful. That is the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of Marx, especially the section called, " Estranged Labour". It is an exploration of what work really is, as an activity that connects human beings, where we satisfy each others needs, and in doing so reproduce a social organism, and it is an exploration how we become alienated, and how these activities start to appear as forces outside of our control, that control us, and are deeply exploitative. They don't have to be that way.
I hope this was somewhat helpful, and I hope you feel better soon.
Tbf even in Japan the idea of loyalty between company and employer is slowly dying, replaced by part time work, contracting etc etc.
There’s even a term for workers who have basically zero job security due to these new practices, the Precariat(no this isn’t a lame joke, there’s even a book about it, by uhh Guy Standing(no really I’m seriously not joking)) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Precariat-New-Dangerous-Class/dp/1472536169
I read a book a few months ago that touched on that point (the author seemed like an ass though). The gist was that as we've shifted away from work with tangible things, we've lost our sense of purpose and meaning in our work. A report on a business goal can be changed and tweaked to the point that any result appears like a success. But if you build a wooden table and it's not level, it's objectively not a success. Making it level brings you fulfillment because you've succeeded at something with no abstraction, unlike the other guy who can just move the goalposts in their fantasy world. We can grow most at the level with the least abstraction.
Here's one.
Some relevant parts:
> There are observable differences in the attributes of men and women that account for most of the wage gap. Statistical analysis that includes those variables has produced results that collectively account for between 65.1 and 76.4 percent of a raw gender wage gap of 20.4 percent, and thereby leave an adjusted gender wage gap that is between 4.8 and 7.1 percent. These variables include:
>
> - A greater percentage of women than men tend to work part-time. Part-time work tends to pay less than full-time work.
> - A greater percentage of women than men tend to leave the labor force for child birth, child care and elder care. Some of the wage gap is explained by the percentage of women who were not in the labor force during previous years, the age of women, and the number of children in the home.
> - Women, especially working mothers, tend to value “family friendly” workplace policies more than men. Some of the wage gap is explained by industry and occupation, particularly, the percentage of women who work in the industry and occupation.
>
> Research also suggests that differences not incorporated into the model due to data limitations may account for part of the remaining gap. Specifically, CONSAD’s model and much of the literature, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics Highlights of Women’s Earnings, focus on wages rather than total compensation. Research indicates that women may value non-wage benefits more than men do, and as a result prefer to take a greater portion of their compensation in the form of health insurance and other fringe benefits.
I came across that study a while ago, when reading the Washington Post's fact-checking article about an Obama speech. I've seen a whole bunch of other stuff both before and since then, including possible explanations for the few percent that remain unexplained, but I haven't saved all the links. I do vaguely remember skimming through this book, too.
Mauritania has two roads in the entire country. A vast majority of the country is desert, and the East is referred to as the great nothingness. To travel from town to town requires an ATV or camel. Mauritania is about as remote and poor as it gets, and they've been hit hard by the global food crisis.
A former French colony, Mauritania has been through several coups since. The male land-owning Muslim ruling class enforces a sort of neo-slavery on the indigenous Africans by contractually making them property of the Arabs. The master-slave relationship is similar to that of the antebellum South.
Imagine a land of sand and absolutely nothing else - where even the buildings were made out of the Earth. Where the most technologically advanced equipment most of the population ever saw was the country's solitary streetlight. It's a failed state that is ready to fall into that North Korean mentality. I suspect they will become, if they aren't already, a state sponsor of all sorts of black market transactions. Its proximity to Europe is worrisome, too, because the boogey-man could be using the country as a staging ground for attacks.
But then again, you'd have to first believe in the boogey-man, and zombies, and magic, and the list goes on...
you might be interested in the book an unfinished revolution which is made up of letters written between abraham lincoln and karl marx. lincoln was a great admirer or marx and the first international, and apparently saw parallels between the war to end slavery in the united states and the struggle for worker's emancipation more generally. i am in no way an expert on any of this, so perhaps someone else can add more helpful information, if they have it.
>That's because it became an alternative to public schools. Trade skills have been privatized, from education to job placement.
Only because public schools quit teaching it. The mandate from the federal level came forth that ALL students should be taught to a standard in preparation for going to college. The result was the gutting of "shop class" for classes that teach to the test. It didn't happen overnight. It took a couple of decades to shift the public perception that public schools shouldn't teach some kids just to be farmers or auto mechanics because EVERYBODY should be lined up to go into the highly profitable higher education market.
here's a good book on the need for shop class and why we shouldn't be teaching everyone to work in white collar jobs.
Most people are just fine, until they're not. One medical expense (emergency appendectomy, broken leg, etc) can take you from comfortable to poor nearly immediately. This is far more pronounced with poor people who struggle to save 100 bucks, when a big medical bill can be 5k or more.
Check out the book Nickled and Dimed. It gives you a really great perspective on all the weird exploitations and the thing you never think of when you have money. My family grew up with this kind of lifestyle for the first 12-ish years of my life. It's really heartbreaking to see someone's whole life come crashing down because of one small hiccup, and it takes years to recover. It is pretty controversial (as a book of this subject should be), but for a less emotional look, check out The Working Poor: Invisible in America.
These situations are why universal health care is something I support, even though I know it would ultimately cost me more. If we could take away the single biggest surprise expense that haunts poor people, we give a lot of them the chance to move up the ladder. The people who are against it aren't those at the top, but those just a step up from abject poverty. There's a "pulling the ladder up behind you" mentality that a lot of people have. Same reason that so many people who work low-paying jobs hate minimum wage rises: their wage becomes less "valuable"
> The demos should move into a city their policies raped.
Go read a fucking book, you ignorant wretch.
"If you’re writing crime fiction, you couldn’t pick a better American city," says his son Peter, also a local novelist.
>People have been disputing things like the wage gap, college rape stats, etc since before the MRM even became a thing.
You don't even know what the MRM is, because MRAs existed before feminists started talking about college rape stats to begin with. And Warren Farrell wrote the book on the wage gap
It's a messed up situation all around. While having a college degree may not get you a job, not having one cripples you in today's job market.
But this doesn't speak to the quality of the jobs. People with degrees may be getting the jobs, but those jobs are probably paying much less than today's graduates think they would (or should) earn. With all the debt they assume to get the degree to get the job, this just keeps them on a treadmill of forever paying off student loans. So "getting the job" does not translate to "happily ever after," either.
Personally I think going to a technical/trade school is looking like a better choice by the day. Much less upfront investment (keeping you out of any major debt), you're more likely to land decently-paid work right away, and you probably will find as much--if not more--job satisfaction (if you agree with this book).
> There's still a persistent gap of 5-10% even when corrected for position and hours.
Yes, because there are more variables to correct for. Subspecialty. Qualifications. Years on the job. Willingness to travel.
> You looking at the same stats as everyone else?
Probably not. I read Warren Farrell's book, which goes deeper than most of the other analyses I've seen out there. If women are getting nudged, it's into more comfortable jobs that give them better quality of life, while men are getting nudged into more demanding, more dangerous jobs because they can bring home higher pay.
Start with Playing the Whore, then start with Melrose Gira Grant's research papers and citations thereof and therein.
Also, don't forget 1960's Gloria Steinem!
Hired is an excellent book from a journo who went "undercover" in some shitty minimum wage (and less) jobs. That is, unless you're actually living the nightmare in which case you won't need to read it.
It was a confluence of influences: post-war access to higher education made "manual arts" (i.e. blue collar labor) less appealing to the growing middle class, unions declined from the 1970s forward (further undercutting such work), the trades in general have been devalued through emphasis on white collar work, machines/robots replaced many line jobs in factories, we stopped making "stuff" domestically, and probably most importantly, all those white-collar dads among the Boomers were simply unable/uninterested in teaching their kids any of the skills once reflected in "shop" classes.
Add in major liability concerns about letting kids handle real tools, the cost of insurance, the cost of facilities, and in more recent years the pernicious influence of No Child Left Behind (which only values "skills" that can be assessed through standardized tests) and you see the end of shop class in general.
There's a great discussion of these general trends and the value of manual labor in the book Shopcraft as Soulcraft that I highly recommend.
My point is that teachers are underpaid. That, and we have never put a high enough value on the trades. High schools across the country have shut down their wood, metal, and industrial arts shops and are spending tons of money on technology. For a great alternate take on the value and importance of being able to work with your hands, see Shop Class as Soul Craft.
Not much here to offer in the way of advice but thought I'd express a bit of sympathy. I'm an electrician and naturally persuade people into working in a skilled trade. Maybe something to consider over retail until you get your ideal gig. Maybe climb the chain of another field of interest using existing skills while acquiring more. I love my job, fresh air, no customers, exercise, feeling of accomplishments... I'm testing for my Master Electrical License and would love to have your skills in addition to my own to aid in getting my company going and looking more professional right off the bat.
Best of luck friend, life isn't defined by falling down, it's defined by how you get back up. Read this while you ponder how you'll get back up http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467
> The argument for AA is that it is overt discrimination to cancel out hidden discrimination that happens elsewhere in the process, or historical discrimination.
But that merely shifts the burden onto another innocent. If you could direct that burden onto the people who deserve it, that's one thing, but if someone else is left jobless or denied an application because they share a skin color with previous applicants who were given that job due to their skin color, I don't see how that's any better.
Going forward, counter-discrimination only works if it can be guaranteed to be proportional and targeted properly, otherwise it merely breeds new forms of resentment and discrimination. If it is overdone or mistargeted, you merely create new victims of discrimination. And, of course, better economists than any of us argue back and forth on whether or not affirmative action even works at all. As a libertarian economist, I tend to agree with other libertarian economists and be convinced by arguments against it.
Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story by David Maraniss is really good. It covers Detroit in the mid-1960s, when things were generally 'good,' but the cracks were already starting to show. One of my favorites I have read.
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The absolute best for what you described is Origins of the Urban Crisis, which others have mentioned here.
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I also recommend The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs. It talks about Detroit a lot, but isn't centered around Detroit, but it's very interesting. Her documentary is also on Netflix which I highly recommend, much more Detroit themed. She was a very influential person in Detroit and the United States in general, and I'm always shocked when I bring her up and people haven't even heard of her.
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Oh and Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison by Shaka Senghor is very good. It's a memoir but it also talks about what Detroit was like in the 1980s and kind of gives you a feel for the era of Detroit that we all know about, but there aren't many stories about.
This sums it up pretty well.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0814472109?pc_redir=1407654181&robot_redir=1
The 77% stat tends to get skewed because men work longer hours, have higher risk careers (think firefighter, etc) and tend to log more in sales based or commission goals due to those longer hours.
A woman can take time off for maternal leave, and tend to have less certifications in their chosen field. Yes, a masters degree is important, but is it relevant to an administrative assistant position?
This is the best book I've thought of so far: https://www.amazon.com/Working-People-Talk-About-What/dp/1565843428/
> the feminist movement
There isn't a single major feminist position on this - the Scandinavian circles don't have some end-all-be-all authority on this. You have feminists who claim that sex work is inherently equivalent to exploitation of women, and then you have feminists who claim that these pushes for suppressing sex work not only make it harder to deal with issues like human trafficking or prostitution done solely due to economic destitution, but actually harm sex workers themselves.
The book for anyone wondering is called "Hired" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hired-Months-Undercover-Low-Wage-Britain/dp/1786490145/ref=la_B01EI2AH7G_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1533052280&sr=1-1 and it's amazing. One of the best things I've read this year
The "gender pay gap" issue has been debunked so many times no real academic scholar or serious thinker views this as a legitimate issue. If this is a big issue for you, i strongly suggest you read this book with an open mind.
Men do not "get paid" more, they choose to EARN more on a playing field that is tilted toward women. Yes, men are more than 17 times more likely to die at work. They constitute a similar percentage of workplace accidents that do not result in death. Yet they take far fewer sick days, make fewer insurance claims, including worker's compensation, and so on (relative to events), meaning women receive a disproportionate share of employer-funded healthcare (government healthcare also, but that's another story), while doing considerably less than a proportional share of the work. Consider the research done at the University of Washington in the Department of Vocational Rehab. If a worker takes paid time off for "carpal tunnel syndrome" there is an overwhelming and statistically significant prediction you can make about the worker: It's a woman. All of those paid days off are funded primarily by men, and enjoyed primarily by women. If perquisites are distributed in this way, one must consider that if women's cash earnings are 2% more per hour, their total compensation, including perks, is much more.
Add to that the fact that women take fewer entrepreneurial risks. While they control more capital than men, they like bonds, not starting new businesses. Of course this moves the average earnings of men up relative to women, but does not indicate they are victims of discrimination. In fact, it could be said to indicate that they take an equal or greater share of the benefits of living in a country where men increase the GDP, pay taxes that provide good schools, safe air travel, and medical research, but they are unwilling to contribute equally in sacrifice and risk.
See this landmark books for a deep investigation of why men don't merely receive more in wages and salaries, but why men EARN more in wages and salaries: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1310457878&sr=8-5. Then teach your children the meaning of equality.
>why don't women rule the world instead of men?
I have two replies.
First, in many ways, women do rule the world.
here's the proof:
And second, women are underrepresented in politics and CEO-type positions because women are less willing than men to make the sacrifices required for success. Women are less willing to travel for work, to work long hours, to be responsible for the financial bottom line, to endure at a job that they find unfulfilling, etc. http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109
Maybe get this book, read it, and if you like it as much as I think you will, give it to Nina to read. It was written by a PhD who quit a high-paying think tank job to open his own motorcycle repair shop. It makes a very compelling case for the value of skilled craftsmanship and labor, and for the idea that these sorts of jobs can never be outsourced, while most of the jobs you need a university degree for can and will be outsourced.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467
> home server programming
Pfffft. That just sounds like setting up your home wifi and how we used to set up a LAN to share all our mp3s in a dorm/frat house.
But, for him, I'd think this or this or an AutoZone gift card.
Kind of tough to pick just one, as China is vast and there are so many differect aspects of the society worthy of being explored.
I really enjoyed Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside, which was a pretty solid caricature of just about every type of foreigner you meet in China, and a well written story as well, a bit like a more modern, more dynamic River Town.
I think the two most common answers to this question are River Town, by Peter Hessler, and Factory Girls by his wife Leslie Chang. Both are excellent but tackle very different parts of contemporary Chiense culture.
A touch of sin was already mentioned, and it's a very, very good movie. So I'm mentioning it again. If you haven't seen it, go watch it.
> No it hasn't. Show me this alleged proof.
Here's an entire book that proves it.
Other studies
Here's the data from the department of labour - let me quote it for you:
>Myth: Increasing the minimum wage will cause people to lose their jobs.
>Not true: In a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders urging a minimum wage increase, more than 600 economists, including 7 Nobel Prize winners wrote, "In recent years there have been important developments in the academic literature on the effect of increases in the minimum wage on employment, with the weight of evidence now showing that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market. Research suggests that a minimum-wage increase could have a small stimulative effect on the economy as low-wage workers spend their additional earnings, raising demand and job growth, and providing some help on the jobs front."
Seriously, you're embarrassing yourself. Your silly ideology has nothing to do with reality.
Wow. You're just completely dishonest in reading anything I wrote to ensure that you're still correct. That link doesn't even address my point. It's apparent women have less promotions and lower wages on average than men.
I only mean to show that this wage gap isn't systematic sexism inherent in the corporate structure of America. If women and men did the exact same work, but women get paid less. Then why would a company even hire men? The difference in pay cannot merely be accounted for by sexism. Even if it was, there are legal protections in place. Even from your article, "I think companies want equality, but they will have to redesign jobs so flex-time and working from home aren't negatives for the fast track, says Ms. Bartel, who has also conducted research on women's presence in senior executive positions".
This quote shows us that a significant reason for this wage discrimination is that women use flex-time and work from home more than men, while men work more hours. Career choices have much more influence over wage than gender. William Farrell has a great book on the subject. You can read a summary on wikipedia.
Or one could read "Why Men Earn More" by Warren Farrell and actually understand the intersection of gender with capitalism.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214242962&sr=8-1
Warren Farrell, specifically The Myth of Male Power and Why Men Earn More.
I am what you would call a Marxist.
>Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.
>
>— Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 1858
The perspective of the collective ways that humans make their living stem from economic activity. How we define work is how we define ourselves. Excuse my french but F that. Work is no longer our salvation or the meaning of our lives it is just a paycheck. 27 states have right-to-work laws which means you can get fired and hired in seconds and there is no reason needed. Your economic input is worthless unless it is given value by an employer. I say F that.
but Marx is the enemy of democracy. I mean is it?
>Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.
>
>— Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism
If you are not familiar Engles is Marx's partner and considered to have given huge contributions to the Marxist thought process. The goal of Marxism is to promote egalitarianism and an educated working class that will create self determination. Did that happen anywhere in the communist camp? No. However, has that happened in places where the govt has steadily supported unions and income equality more than the US. YES. HELL Yes.
Marx believed that capitalism was fundamentally flawed. The problems of exploitation and alienation were baked into the basic workings of capitalism, and as long workers didn't own the means of production, there was no escaping these problems. No set of adjustments to capitalism would solve them, the only solution was to overthrow the whole system.
Andrew Yang is looking to give the the means of production back to the people. How?
The freedom dividend is making us essentially "shareholders" in the greatest economy so lets keep it real Yang is serving Marxism's best parts while completely avoiding the disasters of authoritarianism. He wont be the first one Karl Marx had a long standing correspondence with Abraham Lincoln the only "real" republican ever before the first emergence of the military industrial machine after the civil war. https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Revolution-Karl-Abraham-Lincoln/dp/1844677222 you can check this book out.
Have you read Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew Crawford? You might want to check it out.
http://www.amazon.com/From-Folks-Who-Brought-Weekend/dp/1565847768
Read a book. There are citations included! Or just read the citations and check the sources! Neat!
I know that Karl Marx had written to President Lincoln on occasion of Lincoln's re-election, you can find a copy of this letter in German at: http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me16/me16_018.htm
and in English at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm
Engels also commented about the assassination in a letter to Marx, which you can find in English here: http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1865/letters/65_05_03.html
Coincidentally, this magazine published an article about the connections between Marx and Lincoln https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/08/lincoln-and-marx
Google search also recommends this book https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Revolution-Karl-Abraham-Lincoln/dp/1844677222
And found this scholarly article https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/159534/mod_resource/content/1/Marx_Lincoln_Blackburn.pdf
Not true at all. I suggest reading this book.
Before the 1860's and even before the American Revolution, organized labor existed in the United States. In some cases, it was a holdover of the European Guild system that monopolized training in the skilled trades by organization of the masters. However, as the guild system disintegrated under the momentum of American expansion, new independent organizations rose to take its place.
The first labor strike on US soil was in 1619, a fuller, but still notably incomplete list of pre-1860 labor actions can be found here.
I would recommend Shop Class as Soulcraft
Not directly about riding, but an interesting read on the mentality and ideals behind the manual labor of working on motorcycles, or manual labor in general.
Glad to see Tits and Sass put this out, way too many "sex worker rights" activists are industry-apologists. Also highly recommend Melissa Gira Grant's Playing The Whore.
Sheila Rowbotham! Sheila Rowbotham! Sheila Rowbotham! This might be a good place to start. Melissa Gira Grant's Playing the Whore is also wonderful and a must-read.
And then the old classics by Rosa Luxemburg and Emma Goldman, of course.
This only illustrates the priorities that are being forced upon us in this country. People go to school to get a good job, not to study or learn or better themselves. That is one of the reasons we have college graduates who can't understand basic concepts in math, science and literature. They went to school just to get a job.
Making money, in an acceptable profession, is not the culmination of success. That needs to be defined by the individual. Read Shop Class As Soulcraft. That book put into words what has been bothering me about my life for the past 25 years. Now I need to make sure my kids learn the lesson sooner than I did.
Don't fret... everyone loses interest in 3rd year. It's an international phenomena. Find a prof that you like and ask them for some inspiration. Make yourself a design goal and accomplish it. What got me through my tough times was a shift of focus to philosophy and theory. It gave me something to love when studio was failing to hold my interest.
If you really just can't make yourself get into a project, you could try treating your design project as an art project and make the most beautiful graphics possible to convey a simple design solution. It will push your graphic limits and lead you to come up with more effective ways of visualizing an idea.
Also, try looking into aspects of architecture that aren't "architecture school"... like the trades. After finishing my masters degree I worked in an office for a short bit before deciding it wasn't for me. Now I'm a wood worker and am much happier for it. I dabbled in woodworking all through my education and focused my master's thesis on craftsmanship, so it was a fitting transition. I'm now the only person in a woodworking shop with actual design training and the only person with an advanced understanding of the architectural process. I'm also the only one who can really use computer graphics and design tools.
Random: Check out this book.
Hang in there.
While I'm extremely confident that Kelly and Trump's civil war comments are derived from segregationist revisionism that's not based in reality, there's a crucial point that I'm surprised the Black Caucus didn't bring up regarding Republican revisionism of the party's motivations for abolishing slavery and the half hearted effort to fuse the surge in popularity of moral arguments for abolition with its more popular economic arguments that favored northern capital.
We must remember that the moral imperative as a motivator to abolish slavery was not a popular issue until soon after the publication of the emancipation proclamation, which freed only slaves who were inside the confederate states. This by no means was designed to be a moral action, and was only created to deprive the south of crucial resources that stoked its war effort.
Because there were so many voices in the Republican party at the time of the civil war the official reasons for abolition were many, ranging from economic justifications to moral ones. The southern slaveholding states viewed attempts at abolition as a violation of the constitution. The reasons for being against abolition in the south were mostly economic; while arguments over racial inferiority of slaves were used as a rationale for slavery, motivations for maintaining the status quo were always driven by the economic advantages. It's widely known that there was much anxiety in the planter class about northern capital sweeping in to replace the existing aristocracy as the primary powerhouse in the south, and this would prove to hold true when reviewing the choices that republicans made in the few short years of Reconstruction.
WEB DuBois had first revealed republican hypocrisy in 1935 in his book Black Reconstruction in America, and it was dismissed by existing academic institutions whose publications were the voice of record on the civil war and reconstruction. He surmised that the freedmen were the primary agents of change during reconstruction and not white republicans, demonstrating in remarkable detail that northern republicans were far more interested in the economic opportunities for capital in the south than pushing for equality under law. He demonstrated that republicans restored land rights and political power to the planter class, and focused on persuading southerners, both freedmen and whites, to subsidize economic projects driven by northern capital ie railroad expansion, factories, etc. DuBois noted that slavery and Jim Crow affected freedmen and poor whites alike; the only truly free classes were the planters and the capitalists. Everyone else had very little say in antebellum America.
It wasn't until the 1970's when Eric Foner revisited DuBois's work, and validated it; his book Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution that the existing narrative -- That republicans had done absolutely everything that they could to empower slaves; declaring war, abolishing slavery, reconstructing post-war southern states...and still they could not save the freedmen-- was successfully invalidated. Foner had proved most of DuBois' work was in fact spot on. He even validated DuBois' assertions on Republican motivations some time later in Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. The republican effort to make good on the moral imperative of creating equality under the law only lasted at most about 2 years, from 1866-1868. From 1867-1874 republicans had every chance to quell the rising redeemers movement -- the prelude to Jim Crow -- but instead allowed nearly all the southern republican leadership, loyalist scallawags, and community leaders of freedmen to be lynched, murdered, and run out of town. By 1877 what little effort republicans had made to stop the violence in the south had all but disappeared during the economic depression and the subsequent labor strikes in the north. Republicans decided to send union troops to quell the strikes instead of sending them to the south where southern republican leaders needed them as a matter of life and death. In the end, the push for a constitutional amendment that mandated equality under the law was given up as a quixotic venture, explaining away their failures by blaming the freedmen for their plight. This lie persisted for another 100 years.
This is a view of history that no one wants to hear. But it gives credit where credit is due. Our entire society was changed by Reconstruction, and in no small part because of the freedmen. Our view of the role of government, universal suffrage, education, labor, and political enfranchisement are all a gift from the freedmen, and with no thanks to republicans.
Source: Books. Because of Eric Foner's work, he is considered the leading voice in academia on the intellectual history of the Civil war and reconstruction. If you're wondering whose peer reviewed criticisms of ken burns' civil war are legitimate, it's Foner's. He's a heavyweight.
Danke für den Buchtipp und vor allem den Kauftipp beim BPB! Mehr über das Thema und die Einordnung in den größeren Kontext der USA gibts in Klassikern wie The Working Poor von Shipler und mein persönlicher Favorit Empire of Illusion von Hedges (welches auch einen Pulitzerpreis gewann) nachzulesen.
Can you please elaborate on what specifically you're referring to as sweatshop labour? If you're talking about factory work like that in Shenzhen (Foxconn et al), I'm not sure I'd call that "sweatshop conditions", but I can at least answer your question if that's the context. So, assuming that's what you're referring to:
Let's start by looking at Shenzhen, which is a Special Economic Zone set up under the Reform and Opening (改革開放) period. Shenzhen was established as such at the end of the 1970s, and developed so rapidly from that time that it gained the nickname "the Overnight City". There are other factors such as geography which have contributed to its success, but the biggest factor is that the Central Government took a different free-market based approach. Shenzhen is home to many of the Taiwanese and Chinese factories that make your stuff. If you have an iPhone or a Galaxy, it probably came out of Shenzhen.
Shenzhen also has the reputation of the Overnight City for how quickly the population skyrocketed. Suddenly people from places like Sichuan and Anhui moved in to the city to find work, having fewer opportunities back home, and seeing the promises of economic success in the SEZs.
> What were migrant workers doing in China before these factories?
For starters, there were far fewer migrant workers in the past, and certainly before the 1980s, you didn't have people flocking to factories in other cities like you see in Shenzhen. Moving to other cities to find work was difficult and for many it would be impossible. But beyond that, the majority of migrant workers still don't end up in these Shenzhen-style factories. They go to places like Beijing to help on construction projects for the Olympics, or to Shanghai to help with the World's Fair, or to anywhere really to build roads and work in other industries. The Chinese New Year is the worlds largest human migration, and it happens every year, and it covers all of China. Here's a map of the migration. They're doing jobs all over the country in all areas of nonspecialised labour. Every major city has construction going on, and on every site, you'll hear dialects from all over the country. This is much of what the migrant workers are doing outside these places.
> What factors lead to them accepting these conditions?
In the news you sometimes hear about issues at Foxconn, the Taiwanese multinational most known for making Apple devices. You hear about terrible work conditions and suicides, which may be what prompted you to think of sweatshops. It's well known that workers in these factories typically have 6-day work weeks (itself not too uncommon in Asia) and long hours each day (again, not terribly uncommon, even for white collar workers).
The first thing to note is that for most of these workers, the worst entry-level job that you hear about most often in the news are only held by most workers for one or two years. After that, many try to find other jobs in the company, in other companies, or they move to another city and do something else entirely. The worst jobs are seen as just paying your dues to get your foot in the door. After that you have more opportunities to find work elsewhere. Many workers just come for one or two years anyway. In the pictures that come out of the factories, you'll notice many of the workers are in their late teens for these reasons. The populations in these places is constantly shifting, and no one stays in one place for very long.
There's a common phrase in Chinese: "For those that cannot endure suffering, suffering will last a lifetime; For those who are able to endure it, it is just a passing phase." The ability to endure suffering is highly regarded. If you know that your job of shining iPhone screens is just for a year and then you'll seek out a better situation, it's easier to put up with that year.
If you are interested in the topic of migrant workers and their conditions in South China, you should read Factory Girls by Leslie Chang. It follows the stories of a number of such workers, giving their personal accounts.
There are also a number of fantastic documentaries that follow the lives of migrant workers.
This post is a little rushed because I'm about just about on the way out the door. If anything is unclear, let me know and I can clear it up.
I think this is a very interesting move from the Chinese government. Along with their recent shift on child birth restrictions I hope that rural citizens will have a better life there.
A couple years ago in my degree program we read a book on migrant workers from rural China (our teacher was from China and really great!) and it was very eye-opening. I believe the book was [Factory Girls] (http://www.amazon.com/Factory-Girls-Village-Changing-China/dp/0385520182)
According to Kevin Bales, there are "more than 27 million men, women, and children living in slavery today."
Many of the products you buy have been produced by people who have been enslaved. Chocolate is often collected by children who were simply sold to the plantation, for example.
Prostitutes are often coerced and/or psychologically "conditioned" (i.e., abused) into their trade and kept there with violence.
Children are kidnapped or 'collected' off the street and forced in the sex trade. Often, these children are too young to understand or to fight back.
Here is the Department of State's website about the problem.
I'm not sure about Thailand's trans rights - they must be pretty decent though - but (massive TW human rights violations) Thailand has a pretty huge human trafficking/illicit sex trade industry and I was under the impression (anyone who reads this please correct me if I'm wrong and I damn well hope I am) that young boys can be sold into the sex trade by their parents and given gender reassignment treatment.
So, given redditors' tendency to over-simplify, they see Thailand = lax prostitution laws = make jokes about exploited people. A good book for those who want to learn about modern-day slavery is Bales' Disposable People, but it's a tough one to read. The chapter on Thailand made me ill at times.
So yeah, fuck anyone who makes a joke about this stuff
Let's call it what it is, slavery.
Regarding some of the other suggestions so far: Reading Payne's book is fine, but keep in mind that her work is quite controversial. Moreover, much her work is self-published. There are many who feel her research lacks the academic rigor typically found in a field where research is peer-reviewed/published. Plus, there's also the profit motive, since she sets up workshops around the country and does quite well for herself. I'm not saying this is inherently wrong, but just to keep this in mind.
"The Invisible Thread" was an enjoyable read, although I found it to be a bit contrived. It's a feel good story, but I don't think you'll learn all that much from it.
Here are some additional suggestions going from more academic to less. Honestly though, to truly understand poverty from a big picture standpoint, it's best to draw from a wide range of topics and scholars.
The Origins of the Urban Crisis, by Thomas Sugrue. Pretty much required reading for those studying the roots of poverty in America. You'll learn about various factors like segregation, redlining, and other urban policies have formed the historical foundation for the cycle of intergenerational poverty that reverberates to this day. It's academic, but not nearly as bad as a lot of journals.
More Than Just Race, by William Julius Wilson. He actually has numerous books in this field that are great. As an African American and Harvard sociology professor, he has quite a bit of credibility in this field. That said, he does face some criticism, as his approach leans heavily toward structural factors and is said to be overly deterministic. Note, however, that just about every scholar has critics.
Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market, by Katherine Newman. This is a bit more accessible and personal, as she uses ethnographic portraits to complement facts and figures, giving the narrative a more personal feel, and offering readers real people they can empathize with.
There Are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz. This is a non-fiction book by an investigative journalist that is meant to be read by the masses, making it far more accessible. Great stuff.
The Other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore. An accessible autobiographical account of two boys name Wes Moore, both of whom grew up minutes away from each other, but ended up taking very different life paths.
By the way, where in the midwest are you? I just moved to Iowa City a week ago. The weather here is...weird. Everyone is warning me of the winters here.
> If we could acknowledge that good people can unwittingly be part of a bad system, so that we could tackle the systemic issues without pointing fingers, then we could make some progress
Strong finish, and I hope we can all hop aboard that train. That said, time for some form finger pointing. (haha, apologies, sarcasm :-)
> The fact that the pay gap exists at all is a problem that needs solving.
The whole premise of the article is that there is no gap in pay, only differences in how one chooses to work. Apparently, studies show that men work longer hours, in more dangerous, uncomfortable jobs, and prioritize their job over family. Source: OP's article, and [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109) book, which I read ages ago. Yes, the title is highly unfortunate, may even strike one with modest sensibilities as grotesque. Its important to not that the author - a man - was once a prominent feminist, but who later because a Men's Rights Activist? Puke. I hate that term. It shouldn't have to exist, except for the unfortunate fact that it may have to soon.
All I'm saying is that much of the data in the article above is either old news; or else a better, more accurate analysis of old news (one should hope).
You may enjoy [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Never-Remember-Women-Forget-ebook/dp/B001LF3YHE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396987980&sr=1-1&keywords=why+men+never+remember) book as a way of approaching a common ground. I found it fascinating, and its been one of the most helpful books I've ever read.
In it you will find that there are very good reasons why a man is 4 times more likely to bargain over salary, and why a vast majority of engineers are men. It has far less to do with power structures or discrimination, and more to do with what testosterone does to the hominid brain. Most great mathematicians are male, and probably always will be. So also, most great serial killers and psychopaths are male, and always will be. In a vacuum, males will more naturally enjoy activities such an engineering, gaming, gambling, doing drugs, and other risky behavior. The reason for all of these attributes? Testosterone's impact on the brain! Dont believe me? Look it up!
Women use FAR more unique words per unit time, are FAR better in social situation, and, in my option, are the better half of humanity.
Buuuut, men and women are really fucking different! And, there are reasons for this. There are inherent differences between people, and the sexes. That's just the way it is.
Now, how does all of this all relate to creating a fair and equitable society? That is the tough part, and is open for debate.
As per this issue of why a "pay gap" exists. After reading this articles - and ones like it for the umpteenth time - I think its okay to entertain the idea that maybe the "pay-gap" has at least something to do with the inherently different choices either sex is likely to make.
Edit: spelling
>Statement: Women earn a fraction of what men do.
>Source: http://gao.gov/new.items/d0435.pdf
response:
___
You completely rephrased your statement from before.
Your original statement was this:
>women being paid less than men to perform the same jobs,
this is what I refuted, with this challenge:
>If you offer me a solid reference proving that women are being paid more than 10% less FOR IDENTICAL JOBS, WITH THE SAME TIME IN JOB, AND THE SAME NUMBER OF SICK DAYS, I promise I will look at it.
>But you won't.
And you didn't. The GAO report does not show that women in the same jobs, with the same time in job, and the same number of hour worked, are paid less. It explicitly states in bold letters on the first page of the report that work patterns partially explain the difference between mens' and women's earnings.
I determined this by reading the first page of the report, where it said, "Work Patterns
Partially Explain
Difference between
Men’s and Women’s
Earnings "
You have failed here to meet my challenge.
However, by eliminating the challenges:
you created your own challenge and met it.
Here's a book for you:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109
Even the AAUW cites a differing amount if time at work and time in job as significant factors in the wage gap:
http://www.aauw.org/research/behindPayGap.cfm
THis looks at the AAUW study closer, and finds flaws in
http://feck-blog.blogspot.com/2009/09/pay-gap-persists-women-still-make-less.html
This report by CONSAID, included this statement from in the a forward. this statement was from the US Department of Labor:
> However, despite these gains the raw wage gap continues to be used in misleading ways to
advance public policy agendas without fully explaining the reasons behind the gap.
http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf
(CONSAID did the research, US Dept. of Labor provided the forward.)
and look at this:
>"At any given level of the career hierarchy, women are paid slightly more than men with the same background, have slightly less income uncertainty and are promoted as quickly," it concludes. "We concluded that the gender pay gap and differences in job rank in this most lucrative occupation is explained by females leaving the market at higher rates than males."
Quoting a Carnegie Mellon University study.
http://feck-blog.blogspot.com/2009/09/pay-gap-persists-women-still-make-less.html
"Why Men Earn More" by Warren Farrell, PhD
A self-described feminist wrote a reasonably unbiased book exquisitely sourced... on why 'Men Earn More'. The book sums up 25 reasons.
> Farrell clearly defines the 25 different workplace choices that affect incomes–including putting in more hours at work, taking riskier jobs or more hazardous assignments, being willing to change location, and training for technical jobs that involve less people contact–and provides readers with specific, research-supported ways for women to earn higher pay.
Source: Cato Introduction to 'Why Men Earn More'
Because the man is a feminist, he also adds prescriptive lessons for how women can earn more. However, by the end of his book, it becomes clear that there is more than mere misguidance that leads to the pay gap. Men and women make different choices, have different temperaments, and different desires for sociability, which all make them unlikely to heed the author's advice. This is discounting the tail-end men who put in absurd hours and years of commitment to rise to the top of their respective industries, wherein this inclination is far less often seen with women across cultures.
Warren Farrell's Why Men Earn More.
A thorough review from an ex-NOW member who realized that if women really made $0.70 for every $1 men made, any company which didn't hire only women would be driven out of the market due to overhead...
This is an earlier work by Warren Farrell, author of the EXCELLENT book
Why Men Earn More
Both should be required reading for anyone interested in Mens rights and the fabricated victimhood that feminism portrays.
Wow. So there's a lot here - are you asking for purely written books or are websites OK?
First, look in your local bookstore! That being said, Amazon has a ton (these are ones I've read):
Gar Alperovitz - America Beyond Capitalism
William Whyte - Making Mondragon
Marina Sitrin - Horizontalism
Frank T Adams - Putting Democracy to Work
Encrico Masseti - Coop: Made in the USA
Seymour Melman - After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Democracy
David Schweickart - After Capitalism
Also, take a look at this PDF on Tech Worker coops which I contributed to.
Amazon has a bunch I haven't read.
Websites (which list quite a few books/articles relevant here):
http://usworker.coop/education
http://usworker.coop/faceted_search/
http://www.american.coop/
http://american.coop/node/119
http://www.geo.coop/
http://www.geo.coop/replication-of-arizmendi
And finally, the article that got me started on the road to cooperating:
A Cooperative Manifesto by Tim Huet.
Films - there are a lot, but the only ones that are easy to get a hold of are:
The Take
Capitalism: A Love Story - though this only has a small portion on coops and some more in the extras
Some More:
This Way Out
Shift Change - not out yet but based on the trailer it looks off the hook.
Argentina Turning Around
Do I have to back up everything I say with at least 50 peer reviewed scientific articles? Most of what I said was not just opinions, they are economic facts.
•MTV->LTV
Marginal revolution was a straight and powerful response to LTV. If there's no intrinsic, objective values as suggested in LTV, how can you derive Marxist Surplus Value theoy? Your explotation theory is wrong because it's based on a falsified theory.
•Market Prices
Ludwig von Mises showed how we need market prices to rationally use resources. Although many economists such as Oskar Lange-Abba Lerner, Maurice Dobb, Paul Sweezy tried to show Mises was wrong, they couldn't success. For detailed discussions:
Collectivist Economic Planning-FA Hayek
Socialism and Entrepreneurship-JH De Soto
Rivalry and Central Planning-Don Lavoie
Socialism and International Economic Order-Elisabeth Tamedly
•Competition and entrepreneurship
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctp39a/ABBGH_QJE_2005.pdf
Paul Romer on Innovation and Economic Growth
For the entrepreneurship parts Israel Kirzner is excellent.
•Regulations
It should be obvious. Higher entry barriers harm competition and thus benefit big capitalists. Also there's a regulatory capture phenomenon.
•Freedom
You don't want bosses, we say in society there can be bosses and it's totally OK. So if there are bosses one should be able to choose his own boss. This is also freedom.
•Global Capitalism
This one is also obvious, most of the economists say international trade is good for the poor. If you want to read emprical data, Jagdish Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization is perfect. Also Out of Poverty by Benjamin Powell is yet another important book. If you wonder what went wrong in third world countries I suggest Tyranny of Experts by William Easterly.
•Income Mobility
Do I have to explain even this concept?
•Leftist exclusivism and mumbo jumbo
Did you ever read any book from the New Left? I mean, did you read Deleuze, Badiou, Baudrillard etc? Libertiarians use economic and sociological concept with clarity. Even if we exclude Post-Marxist left, you still have fancy words like "proleteriat" or "socially necessary labour hour" or all this Marxist/leftist terminology. And yet we libertarians are who love "buzzwords" Are you fucking kidding me?
See Ben Powell's book about Sweatshops. Factories create wealth. There's no exploitation, it's mutually beneficial exchange.
Out of Poverty: Sweatshops In The Global Economy (Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice, and Society) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1107688930/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_w9zVDbHMEMQY1
For the uninitiated, here's a general rundown on Guy Standing's restructure of the classes in an effort to accommodate the effects of globalization:
>"At the top is an elite of billionaires and such like. Below them is a salariat, comfortable but limited in numbers, with employment security and an array of non-wage benefits. Then there is a growing body of what could be called proficians – professionals and technicians usually receiving high incomes, but without employment security. Below them in terms of income is the old, a shrinking industrial working class, not yet dead, but dying. Those in the core are fearful of dropping into the next and rapidly growing class fragment, what should be seen as the global precariat. Below the precariat are the chronically unemployed and a lumpenised minority of socially wretched people."
If this interests you, give his two books a read: The Precariat and A Precariat Charter.
>Are you a member of the precariat, or do you think someone you know is?
Yeah. Anecdotally, one thing I've noticed with people I know is that the idea of even being a wage-slave is becoming a much sought-after privilege. Neoliberal Capitalism is regressing us economically to the middle ages (much to our neoreactionary friends' delight) and it doesn't take an accelerationist to tell you that there's not much we can do to stop its effects at this point because we're already feeling it. Otherwise this new class wouldn't exist, the bourgeoisie wouldn't be dissolving and automation wouldn't be a talking point for every would-be leftist today. People's understanding of class struggle is only going to become even more warped as time goes on.
>How would you include this new class in the struggle for a better life?
The Precariat is defined by its global, highly connected nature. When Occupy happened, I can't think of any other social movement in history that indexed so many splinter groups across the world after the first week. Alter-Globalization and #EuroMayDay come to mind but I don't think they ever reached the level as Occupy has since the decade started. Unions have failed to respond to the needs and aspirations of the Precariat because they still think a corpse is worth fighting for. In my opinion, the formation of the Precariat is the biggest motivator to abolish work and further create automated systems to better utilize anarchist ideals - as soon there won't be any industrial workers of the world to unite in the first place.
Interesting thing about bikes, they get your adrenaline up, but also get cortisol up as well.
Burning through traffic at 100+mph is awesome, but guys who just get off their bikes tend to have their eyes bulging out of their heads. Great for energy, but the extra good vibes don't really come until you've come down. Someone advised me against getting a panigale because it would roast my nads, and there are motorcycle related ED issues with some models.
If you are going to ride, get involved with the new wave custom scene by getting a cheap machine and building it out. The physical knowledge will be the real transformative aspect. If you are intellectual, read "Shopclass as Soulcraft," and check out sites like BikeExif to get the idea.
Also, mandatory viewing includes:
I'll answer very briefly, but /u/NoraTC covered a lot of really important things, the biggest being the variation in work. I'm answering as a line cook in what most would consider a good, upscale restaurant.
Working as a cook is both a tremendously rewarding and challenging proposition. The hours and schedule and pay aren't good. Many of your co-workers will be derelicts. It is hard, repetitive, stressful work. On the average day, you'll get there a couple hours before service (whether that means 4:00 am or 2:00 pm) and you'll get your station set. If your restaurant has lunch and dinner, you'll hope the person working the opposite shift didn't screw you over by using all your mise en place (abbreviated to meez generally). If so, hope you're good at what we'll call dispute resolution techniques. You need to make sure you're set for that day and you're staying ahead for the next few days too. Are there parties coming up? Better make sure you have what you need. If you have to rely on a sous chef to help you get set, it's bad news. The whole time, you'll be working quickly.
You eventually get to the point where your hands know what to do and your mind can wander a little. But you'll get done at whatever time and then go home exhausted. Usually, the managerial style is brusque. People get fired; practical jokes are played. The best source is Bill Buford's Heat, which is also an excellent read.
But despite its less great qualities, working in a kitchen can be really rewarding. It's satisfying to make stuff with your hands. See e.g. Shop Class as Soulcraft for more on this topic. The folks you'll work with form a real sense of camaraderie. It teaches you a lot about life. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely. I'm probably even happier I'm done with it.
Edit: One of the things that's really rewarding, but I didn't touch on above, is knowing you can do it. There's a lot in life where you get a participation award. In a kitchen, it's not like that. If you're good, you survive, then you thrive, then you move to a new station and figure shit out all over again. If you can't cut it, you're out.
Here's a list, off the top of my head - I know all these are on my bookshelf, but I'm probably missing a few more:
Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club by Sonny Barger
Freedom: Credos from the Road by Sonny Barger
Ridin' High, Livin' Free: Hell-Raising Motorcycle Stories by Ralph Sonny Barger
Dead in 5 Heartbeats by Sonny Barger
Under and Alone by William Queen
No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels by Jay Dobyns
Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library) by Hunter S. Thompson
Street Justice by Chuck Zito
The Original Wild Ones: Tales of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club by Bill Hayes
Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart
The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa by Neil Peart
Against the Wind: A Rider's Account of the Incredible Iron Butt Rally by Ron Ayres
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford
Honda CB750: The Complete Story by Mark Haycoc
Shovelhead Red The Drifter's Way by Roy Yelverton
Shovelhead Red-Ridin' Out by Roy Yelverton
A Twist of the Wrist 2: The Basics of High-Performance Motorcycle Riding by Keith Code
Total Control: High Performance Street Riding Techniques by Lee Parks
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig - Still my favorite. A high school english teacher bought it for me when he found out I had just passed my motorcycle road test. I've read it at least 15 times, and get something new from it each time.
But the best recommendation - Buy the FACTORY SERVICE MANUAL for your bike and read it. Read it often, until you can almost turn to the exact page for each procedure.
Not pure woodworking, but I this book was enjoyable- https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467
There is a great book, Shop Class as Soul Craft.
I would highly recommend it for you and your students as well.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143117467/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdb_t1_7tf0Cb1Z48XY6
Suggest you read this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467
Or one of the others by the same author (all are on basically the same theme)... which is that office work, while financially rewarding, is nevertheless "soul deadening."
That may seem a bit nonsensical to you, and I don't know how to explain it better than the author of the book does -- but there most definitely IS something significantly different & more satisfying/fulfilling about doing literally "tangible" work (or hobby-crafts) that involves making/fixing things with your hands (i.e. "manual" labor) -- and you probably won't (can't?) really understand what I mean by that until/unless you actually get out and DO it.
That and Shop Class as Soulcraft are my two favorites!
If someone says that Thomas Sowell doesn't look at empirical data, they are either ignorant or lying. Which error have you made? One of many examples:
http://www.amazon.com/Affirmative-Action-Around-World-Empirical/dp/0300107757
Thomas Sowell received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1958 and a master's degree from Columbia University in 1959. In 1968, he earned his Doctorate in Economics from the University of Chicago. What is your experience with empirical economics?
"His father died shortly before he was born, and his mother, a housemaid, already had four children. A great-aunt and her two grown daughters adopted Sowell and raised him.[2] In his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, he said his childhood encounters with white people were so limited that he did not believe blond was really a hair color.[3] When Sowell was nine, his family moved from Charlotte, North Carolina to Harlem, New York City. He attended Stuyvesant High School, the first in his family to study beyond the sixth grade. However, he was forced to drop out at age 17 because of financial difficulties and problems in his home.[2] He worked at a number of jobs, including at a machine shop and as a delivery man for Western Union,[4] and tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948.[5] Sowell was drafted in 1951, during the Korean War, and was assigned to the United States Marine Corps."
What hardships have you overcome in order to acheive an understanding of economics empiricism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell
For those who enjoy reading, there is a book called Affirmative Action Around the World and it is a very interesting attempt at a non-biased review of the implications and effects of AA. I enjoyed it and it was a pretty good read, and/but there are a lot of statistics.
Last Train Home. It follows a young girl who leaves home to find work in a factory, as well as her parents who have already done so. It has some truly heartbreaking scenes, but it's also beautiful, and it paints a picture of migrant workers and their situation that is much more nuanced and personal than any I've seen outside of the book Factory Girls (which everyone should read). Easily one of my favourite documentaries ever.
> secondo te, perché - nonostante il "boom" - lo stesso benessere non si osserva in Cina o in India
Lo si osserva eccome! Il problema e' che entrambi i paesi oltre a essere enormi sono partiti con molto ma molto svantaggio. In Cina durante la rivoluzione culturale milioni di persone sono morte (fra carestia e violenze); la stessa cosa in India, durante le carestie degli anni 70.
Un libro interessante che ho letto di recente: Factory Girls. Fa vedere molto bene quanto gli squallidi lavori in fabbrica siano di fatto un progresso sostanziale per un popolo che letteralmente moriva di fame..
Per quanto riguarda l'India, le cause sono diverse; ma io credo che sara' l'India e non la Cina la potenza emergente di questo millennio.
There is a huge difference between labour practices and conditions in China today compared to what went on there in the 1970s and 1980s. An awful lot of opinion of conditions in Chinese factories comes from these early decades, with many people assuming that what went on then is still going on.
While it's true that there are bad factories, this is not the norm. While it's also true that many if not most factories in China would fall foul of some US labour laws, it's just as true that virtually every US factory and work place would fall just as foul of EU labour laws. Different countries, different rules and expectations.
I've visited many small factories in China, and I've placed many orders with these factories. I wouldn't like to work in them myself, but they are not the slave labour camps that some people suggest.
Are there exceptions and outlying cases? Of course. But China is a country with a population of over 1,000 million people, and a massive proportion of these work in factories, so the number of factories with poor working conditions is going to be high. If you want to get a true picture of what it's like to work in these factories, I suggest you read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Factory-Girls-Village-Changing-China/dp/0385520182/
Of all the books I've read on China, this one comes closest to the reality that I've seen on the ground.
If you are really interesting in all this i recommend reading "Factory Girls"
http://www.amazon.com/Factory-Girls-Village-Changing-China/dp/0385520182
So yeah this documentary is interesting in the visual parts, showing the dimensions of things and how integrated those factories are but it failed to make the viewer understand what truly drives the workers.
Sure, Here's a book on the topic as well
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Measurement-David-Card/dp/0691048231
and an interview with the author that discusses his findings
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/12/an_interview_wi.html
I don't think the racial issues are the sole problem plaguing Detroit, only that they were the first major problem in a long line of issues that have plagued that city for fifty something years. Hence their being the "spark," but not the sole cause. Other cities, like LA for instance, have had greater capital investment, more stable and sustainable economic bases, etc., and that's why sprawl and suburbanization affected them differently. And you're right, there were other reasons for suburbanization than simply race, but race was one of the major factors.
Quite frankly, the main reason I felt the need to highlight race is that there is this eagerness to completely dismiss it among a lot of people, because a lot of people don't want to deal with it. The person who posted above and started this discussion turned out to be a little extreme and painfully blinkered, but I saw where this was leading and felt inclined to jump in. There's often a lack of mature discussion about the issue on here, just a lot of people jumping down each other's throats.
Edit: further comments on LA I forgot to add -- I think that greater stability is a major factor in why they've been able to weather riots and their consequences. There were much fewer reasons for people to invest in Detroit than places like LA. And obviously LA is sustainable in an environmental sense. There's also a pretty good book on all of this in Detroit, and it does a good job of highlighting all of the factors involved (not just race): http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-Urban-Crisis-Inequality/dp/0691162557.
For those interested in learning more about the earnings gap, and how it's not a result of discrimination but rather is a result of the different choices men and women make in their lives, I recommend reading the book Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It.
> And my generation is the one full of people pushing for progressive reform and big on activism.
Yeah, thank god. Mine rolled back countless worker protections that people fought and died for and still drinks the "good job = personal merit" koolaid that continues to roll back the social safety net. We started out at the end of an actual golden age and then helped the boomers stomp it out.
And don't think you're alone in the "bachelors is the new HS diploma". I have a BS and 25 years of work experience but it keeps me out of fast food and retail and not much else. My spouse with a HS diploma and 20+ years of work experience actually works in food service. Experience is highly specialized and if you don't fit 100% of what a company is looking for, they have no use for you.
I'm reading this right now, and it makes a lot of sense. It will definitely get a lot worse if we don't start collectively demanding otherwise.
This book explains it in great detail: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/1542751292
Pulitzer Prizewinner Studs Terkel wrote a similar book years ago called "Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do." I read it on my own in high school, and it was a great introduction to the real world. It was originally written over 35 years ago, so he wouldn't have interviewed people who worked as web designers or video game testers, unless there is an updated edition.
JoeSki42's recommendation sounds like a winner too.
Working is a goldmine of research ideas. Some of it's a bit dated because the book was written in the mid-70s, but a lot of the interviewees express ideas that are truly timeless.
Try something by Studs Terkel.
> I feel like not defining yourself by your work can definitely make it easier to deal with.
In that regard, yes. I have very few memories of my parents every talking about work or complaining about their day. I knew they went to work but that was about it.
I was first asked that question by an old therapist of mine who was really big on environment: home, family, work, etc. I have never defined myself by what I do and sometimes others equated that to "lack of ambition". Sorry, there is more to life than 80 hour work weeks. My parents were always home in the evening and seldom worked OT.
Several good books if you have time:
For inspiration on this project, I highly recommend Working by Studds Terkel which is a set of actual interviews of people from all sorts of different jobs talking about their jobs and lives. a great way to see actual different voices all together
https://www.amazon.com/Working-People-Talk-About-What/dp/1565843428
The Fall of the House of Labor by David Montgomery
Noam Chomsky calls this man the greatest labor historian. Here's his book that covers the real start of the labor movement, up until the US government becomes scared of the labor movement, and largely the IWW, and crushes it.
From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend by Priscilla Murrolo, A. B. Chitty, and Joe Sacco
Another general book on unions in the US.
History of the Labor Movement in the United States: The Industrial Workers of the World by Philip S. Foner
Philip S. Foner has written more than 8 extensive books on the history of labor in the US. Here's his book on the IWW.
The Industrial Workers of the World: Its First 100 Years by Fred Thompson
This one comes from the IWW itself.
Here's chapter 13 of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, titled A Socialist Challenge. He concentrates on the beginning of the 20th century as a whole, and the role that socialist organizations like the IWW played. But it's a beautiful introduction to the names and events you may dig more deeply into with the other books. You can read the entire book on that website, and you should if you haven't. It is required reading for any socialist who wants to understand the history of the US.
Finally, here is Labor History Links, the most extensive labor history website ever created. The amount of information and primary documents here is staggering. You can click on the chronological tab at the top, and it will take you to the page with links to pieces of labor history throughout the development of the US. Search for the IWW in your browser or any related terms, and have a blast.
The reason I posted here is because it came off as another example of how websites like these exploit sensationalism about sex work in such a way as to reinforce the toxic narrative that human sexuality is something inherently degrading or negative. If anything it's an attempt to sext/slut shame anybody who enjoys the labors of any sex workers, because the implication is that they contribute to whatever negative experiences they had.
An example of a feminist writer who I enjoy tries to break the stereotype is Melissa Gira Grant. I highly suggest checking out her book playing the whore: the work of sex work
EDIT: added link
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1781683239?pc_redir=1412741594&robot_redir=1
Shop Class as Soulcraft
The joys and benefits of working with your hands are vastly undervalued.
I haven't read this book (though I did read the book alanpugh mentioned, second his recommendation), but I hear it's very good.
hahaah! it's actually available on AmazonUK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hired-Months-Undercover-Low-Wage-Britain/dp/1786490145
Everyone concerned should read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Playing-Whore-The-Work-Jacobin/dp/1781683239
Easily one of the most consciousness-raising experiences of my life.
Buy all fools this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1565847768/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_YDKvCbST4BYF5
Excerpts:
>“Power concedes nothing without a demand,” abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass declared 161 years ago. Last week saw that truth on broad display as Amazon, facing growing political and organizing pressure, announced it was setting a minimum wage of $15 an hour for its US workforce and also raising wages in England.
>
>The company’s declaration followed months of mounting bad publicity for Amazon. US workers have been speaking out in greater numbers about the punishing pace of work, high injury rates, and a plantation mentality on the warehouse floor. A British journalist went undercover at Amazon and wrote a book describing workers forced to pee in bottles and extraordinarily high rates of depression. (Ironically, Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain is selling remarkably well on amazon.com.)
​
His book is available now. Oddly not many people seem to have bought it from this book dealer.
https://www.amazon.ca/Unfinished-Revolution-Karl-Abraham-Lincoln/dp/1844677222
It’s in this book, Marx deplored slavery and being a historical materialist believed the expansion of capitalism to the southern US would only be possible through the abolition of slavery and then the slave feudalism of the South could finally be conquered by capitalism, which could then be eventually replaced by socialism.
I never denied war crimes. You just made the false, and ignorant assumption that those crimes are directly because communism and Marx and stuff, and I just pointed out you have no idea WTF you're talking about.
Reading Zinn makes you aware. Just like reading Marx, Engels, Proudhon, Chomsky, Abraham Lincoln, Weber, Dr. King, Malcom X, Che Guevara, Trotsky, etc etc.
People illegally flee from America to Mexico just to get dental care, so if "people fleeing" is your best argument for capitalism and against communism...... good luck! XD
>Look, just because Marx said Communism is democratic doesn’t mean it’s not authoritarian and capable of violating human rights.
The father of communism, and one of the most respected genius intellectuals to this day, and defender of human rights, idealizing and describing it as democratic... means communism originally is democratic.
You can choose to pick any random sociopaths and claim they were "communists", and therefore somehow (no explanation provided) that invalidates communism as a whole... but that doesn't make it remotely true. It's just you starting from "communism is bad" and walking back to try to justify your bullshit.
>It would be perfectly “democratic” for all right handed people to vote that all left handed people be killed and their possessions stolen.
No, that would be discriminatory and totalitarian. What a horrible, stupid example.
The bourgeois exploiters weren't just "born left handed". They made the conscious choice, just like today's CEOs and landlords, to exploit other people's labor, instead of getting a real job and career of their own.
>To look at actual history as well, the French reign of terror was extremely democratic.
That reign of terror inspired the founding fathers, and American democratic principles, still in use today.
Soon enough you'll realize the most revered American heroes were "commies" - like Abraham Lincoln, whose goal for the civil war was to free slaves as part of his plan to strengthen worker rights in the USA, as he exchanged letters about ideology and strategy with his friend and supporter overseas, Prof. Karl Marx.
If you're against Marxism, you're on the wrong side of history - you're pro-slavery, pro-Nazi, pro-war, pro-human rights abuses.
>So what specifically about Communism’s economic system makes it immune from these atrocities?
The simple fact that these atrocities had nothing to do with communism, and everything to do with psycho, evil idiots who carried them out, and really didn't have one communist bone in their body. The people they oppressed were communists - but like you said, they were dictators, and didn't give a shit what their people wanted.
I recommend anyone interested in this subject check out the book Shop Class as Soulcraft. It's a good, informative read.
Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:
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http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/1594202230
Reading this might help you. It's about who college can help, and who it can hurt (as well as tons of other useful knowledge about making yourself happy in the American workforce).
Have you read Shop Class as Soulcraft? This is one of the many interesting points raised in the book. It's a great read. Completely changed my opinion of vocational school and blue-collar jobs.
Please read: "Shop Class as Soulcraft" http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/1594202230 I am not the author of this book and I am not an employee of the publisher. I read this book last year and it explains your exact question. It's actually a really good read.
Shop class as soulcraft is an excellent book about the fanatic push to get us into information jobs, which are the ones most easily shipped away.
You must really love what you do to put that much of your life into it. It's great that it lead you to Buddhism too. If you want to share the info on your store, I'll be sure to check you first if I ever need some quality wood work. I'm in the market for a house/home at the moment, so I'm pretty serious. Do you build tinyhouses?
Also, here's a book I've never read, but it looks like its right up your alley:
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work
https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485716747&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=shoplass+as+soulcraft
Before I begin, let me say this: in asking this question at your age, you are several spots away from the bottom of the totem pole.
This is not to say "oh don't worry about out, you're still young." You need to be serious about becoming competent, but very few people are competent at anything meaningful at your age, and very, very few fields require that you be already competent by age 19 (most of the fields that do require this are things like sports or music, which are so competitive that you basically have to grow up with it). So you're not behind. I think the above comments have been useful, but incomplete. Yes, your mentality is of the upmost importance here, but you do need things to do. Especially if you have interest in trades.
I'll tell you a little bit about myself. When I was 19, I was finishing a degree in automotive technology. I was working as an entry level technician and a cook, and I had plans to attend the University of Northwestern Ohio for a Bachelors in High-Performance Motorsports, which would have put me among the most elite technicians in the country, where I would have been able to get into just about any kind of motorsports I wanted.
Now I'm 23. I have a Bachelors, but not from UNOH. I completely switched fields. When I was 20, I found myself drawn toward Philosophy and Literature, and so I completely dropped motorsports as a career path. I'd spent 2 years getting my associates, I'd spent tons of money on tools, I'd studied to pass ASE certifications test, but I dropped it all, went back to school and got my Bachelors with a double major in English and Philosophy. I'm now working for a while, and I'll be going back to graduate school next year to get my PhD. I'll probably be 27-28 years old before I have real, meaningful competency. This time frame has been a real challenge, since I'm impatient, and don't want to waste my 20's. Here's how I handle it: I love what I'm doing in the academic world (I'm starting a podcast soon just because I can't get enough of philosophy), and so hypothetically, I would be okay with doing it even if it never paid off financially (and it's a humanities PhD, so that's not unlikely).
Your goal, at least for the next couple of years, should be to figure out what you either already love, or what you are likely to come to love if you tried it. Very, very, very few people do this, and so they end up being moderately competent in something that they don't hate, and require all kinds of other things to make their life meaningful. Let me emphasize that this is absolutely, not a bad thing, and if you really think that creative pursuits are your thing, you may want to find an additional career to pay for your creative work.
In any case, you can almost certainly find things that you love without college (though you may need it once you get started). In fact, college often gives a distorted view of what the field is really like. Take psychology, for example. The world of acutally practicing psychologists is radically different than psych-academia, and if you used college classes with postmodern profs to gauge whether you'd like psychology, you might falsely assume that your practice will consist of talking to transgendered sexually abused black handicapped gay attack helicopters rather than the real client base. If you find you want to be an academic, then...sorry fo ya.
What I would do is expose yourself to as much as possible. Try something as simple as youtube. If, for example, you find that you like watching youtube videos of motorcycles, maybe you should try going to a race or a bike show, or reading a book about it. Keep in mind though, that it takes real engagement (more than just youtube) to see if it's something you could learn to love.
Notice I said "learn to love." The reason for this is that its perfectly likely that you won't absolutely love anything. Most people are like that. It's maybe 1/1000 people that naturally know instantly that they love something that they end up doing for the rest of their lives. Let's go back to motorcycles. Maybe you know nothing about them, but you know that you're analytical, so you might like diagnosing them, and you have an adrenaline-junkie streak, so you might like riding them, but right now you know so little about them that you don't really feel any particular way toward them. You need to have the self-awareness to know what kinds of things you might like. If you're analytical but don't have the adrenaline junkie in you, then maybe you need to try being a boat mechanic, because of how much you've enjoyed time on the river, and the people you've met who are also into boats.
One last thing. You may have noticed that I have a soft spot for mechanical things. I noticed that you said you may be interested in the trades. If what I've been saying resonates with you, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend reading at least one of the following books by Matthew Crawford: either Shop Class as Soulcraft or The World Beyond Your Head. They're truly unconventional ways of thinking, and unlike what your high school counselor or typical self-help are likely to teach you.
I highly recommend reading this:
http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467
The basic premise is that paper-pushing isn't intrinsically satisfying, but being able to point at tangible accomplishments at the end of the day is.
also in IT, checking in. Just finished re-reading this book which does a pretty great job of explaining why us IT types are drawn to physical creation in our free time. also available in audio book if you like to listen to stuff in the shop. really worth a read. it will change the way you think about business today.
http://smile.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467?sa-no-redirect=1
Relevant, and a great read.
There's a wonderful book called Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. One of the things I learned from it was that shop class was invented to try to instill a sense of craftsmanship and pride into a population that had known only soul-numbing assembly-line work, so that they would do a better job at the soul-numbing assembly-line work.
I read this book Shop Class as Soulcraft than you may be interested in. It touches on a lot of the issues you mention and I recommend reading it to help sort out exactly what kind of work it is that you want to do.
www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/books/review/Fukuyama-t.html
www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467
Shop Class as Soulcraft
I think part-time police work would indeed be an option, primarily in small rural towns.
You mention your desire to interact with real people and contribute to society in a positive manner. I wonder....how important is it to you to work in the field and "get your hands dirty", so to speak? I suspect social work (Child Protective Services comes to mind) might offer these things in spades.
Side thought: Check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467
That book changed the way I look at the world, and I bet you'd get something out of it, as well.
Learn a trade any you’ll never go hungry. If you know what you’re doing, you’ll always be able to find a job. As far as pay goes, it depends on where you live. I’m in New England and make around $100k/year with overtime and bonuses doing 100% residential. Drawbacks are long hours in bad weather - both hot and cold, you’re the oncall guy for your family, friends, neighbors, etc., carrying equipment up stairs, ladders, through attics, across rooftops, etc., and dealing with idiots. It’s worth it? Absolutely! If you’re trying to decide between learning a trade vs going to collage read this book, it’ll give you some perspective from someone hat been in both sides of the fence.
Edit: correct link below
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143117467/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top_nodl?ie=UTF8
If the idea of that kind of workplace scares you (and it is a realistic depiction), pick up a copy of this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143117467/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1594202230&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1042PF1K7R3TC6WVVACX
It can be a bit dense at times, but it nails a ton of issues that the current workforce is facing. Separation of thought from work, "production" of only abstracts, etc. GREAT book.
Thanks for that!
> The work of builders and mechanics is secure; it cannot be outsourced, and it cannot be made obsolete. Such work ties us to the local communities in which we live, and instills the pride that comes from doing work that is genuinely useful.
On Amazon
http://amzn.com/0143117467
Shop Class as Soulcraft!
To add a bit of background to your question I highly recommend a book that Eric Foner wrote about Republic ideology on the eve of the Civil War: (https://www.amazon.com/Free-Soil-Labor-Men-Republican/dp/0195094972). Incredibly paraphrased it states the general Republican belief was that slavery brought down American exceptionalism because we were producing materials using sub-human labor
You may also want to check out Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men
That has no relevance to what we were talking about. That the DNC and RNC plays favorites in nominating their candidates is not new in history.
As for you, you should read:
> Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War
http://www.amazon.com/Affirmative-Action-Around-World-Empirical/dp/0300107757
sure!
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives
Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes
This one wasn't written by a mainlander but it's about modern girls who work in factories. Factory Girls I also have The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices in my reading list, I believe it's supposed to be a collection of stories from women around the country. Unfortunately my chinese is elementary at best, so I can't recommend any chinese language books other than the wuxia stuff that got fan-translated.
It’s complicated.
Leslie Chang wrote a great book about this world called Factory Girls: https://www.amazon.com/Factory-Girls-Village-Changing-China/dp/0385520182
Check out the book factory girls, interesting read on this subject. Seems to be voluntary from the factory workers point of view.
https://www.amazon.com/Factory-Girls-Village-Changing-China/dp/0385520182
They're not terrible, and they're not slaves. Would I give up being a middle class American to work in a factory? No, but they're not terrible. educate yourself before speaking next time
An interesting view point I had been blind to: https://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_s_workers?language=en
She (Leslie T. Chang) also has a book about her experiences: http://www.amazon.com/Factory-Girls-Village-Changing-China/dp/0385520182
Only going off your citation, I'm pretty sure that is comparing private industry wages and the wages at non-private industry, which are the Stated Owned Enterprises. It is reasonable the SOEs pay more, but the SOEs are widely regarded as not being sustainable - they take in more than they output, and only survive off of government subsidies. I do not believe the quote is comparing private manufacturing to agricultural work.
So even if the citation is true, which I dont contend it is, it is not an argument against private manufacturing.
I agree there is unacceptable exploitation (such as places that dont let their workers leave or do things like in-debt them), but I do not believe it is the majority. A great book on the matter is Factory Girls, by Leslie Chang, which explains that, on average, conditons in the factories are worse than we have in the US or Europe, but they are better than what the alternative village life is and people willingly go, not out of necessity but out of idleness. In fact, the largest human migration in history is currently happening between Chinese villagers and the coastal cities.
http://www.amazon.com/Factory-Girls-Village-Changing-China/dp/0385520182/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427836139&sr=1-1&keywords=factory+girls
How to Win Friends and Influence people simple tips on how to be a better human being
The Richest Man in Babylon Simple tips to keep and grow the money you have
Factory Girls true stories of the modern Chinese migration of young women from rural farm areas to cites to work in factories
Hyperspace "Wil Wheaton recommended" blow your mind with science!
This is an excellent book that opened my eyes to this subject. Really thought provoking.
http://www.amazon.com/Disposable-People-Slavery-Global-Economy/dp/0520224639
Hi bad talking point, I'm Mr. Facts and Studies please take the time to get to know me, and understand why what you said about minimum wage is wrong!
Department of Education doesn't fail at everything, and the recent changes in its budgets will make it a lot better, at around 70 billion, its not a huge waste of money nationally speaking because it does succeed at some things.
http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Urban-Crisis-Inequality-Princeton/dp/0691162557/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
If you want a great book exploring why Detroit is the way it is, I recommend The Origins of the Urban Crisis by Sugrue. He does a great job of exploring the reasons the city emptied out.
http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-economist-explains-the-gender-wage-gap-2016-3
http://www.aei.org/publication/there-really-is-no-gender-wage-gap-there-is-a-gender-earnings-gap-but-paying-women-well-wont-close-that-gap/
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109
the salary gap is a myth because:
(a) it's been illegal for a company to pay men and women different salaries for doing the same job since the Kennedy administration.
(b) if business could really get away with paying women 70% of a man's salary, then businesses would hire 100% female crews given that labor is by far the largest expense for most businesses.
(c) the pay gap myth is based on the a logical error called "the ecological fallacy". in short, information that accurately describes groups does not necessarily apply to each individual in that same group. for example, most pro basketball players earn higher than average salaries (true). most basketball players are also taller than average (true). but from this accurate facts, you can't conclude that all taller than average people earn higher salaries than average.
(d) there is a pay gap between men and women. but the gap is not due to discrimination or sexism. instead, men and women make different career choices that tend to lead to higher salaries for men and lower salaries for women. for example, women tend to prefer lower salaries but more stable working hours, less travel, better fringe benefits. men tend to do more traveling, have unpredictable working hours (e.g., commission sales) and want more cash and fewer fringe benefits. men tend to work more hours overall, something like 45hrs/week while women work an average of about 37hrs/week.
for example, there was a claim years ago that male doctors earn more than female doctors. however, a closer look at the data showed that male M.D.s tended to work very different jobs from female M.D.s For example, men were more likely to be on call for high risk medicine (e.g., trauma surgeons) while women MDs were more likely to work steady office hours with lower risks. (e.g., pediatricians). after adjusting for those variables, there was no pay gap. male and female pediatricians earned the same pay; male and female trauma surgeons earned the same pay.
when you compare men and women in the same company, who do the same work, with the same seniority, same qualifications, same productivity, etc, men and women earn salaries within about ~3% of each other.
the pay gap is largely a feminist myth that's used to make women feel like victims.
read this book for more info on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109
short intro here: http://www.warrenfarrell.net/Summary/
Read this: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109
There is no systematic discrimination against women with respect to pay in the US today.
Most of the reporting you see on this stuff tends to ignore most factors which would tend to explain differences in income for different work. So it's a god of the gaps argument that you are (unwittingly?) making. If we take into account one or two things the "gap" shrinks, if we take account one or two more it shrinks further, if we take account of five or six there's maybe 5% left. And then we stop because that way leads to trouble.
So Warren Farrel identified about 20-30 factors to take into account. This included some that even by themselves reduced the gap's size of the order of over 90%. Obviously there's a lot of overlap. The point is that no study has attempted to do what you say and take into account, "all the other factors". Not even close. The studies don't even take into account the factors which are greatest in reducing the gap.
As a result your figure of 10% or so was pure bullshit. Mine was too; the data just isn't there. However the end result is certainly in favour of women because women have a greater value than men as employees because of the various anti-male laws feminists have introduced. You can certainly find some studies that result in a negative wage gap although it's usually more like 2%, but for the most part the research here is chasing ghosts. Indeed literally it uses the same technique as ghost hunters: throw out a few sensible sounding ideas for a phenomena, then after rejecting them say "therefore the answer must be ghosts" as an explanation for any remaining phenomena.
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109
The single factors that tend to explain almost the entire gap by themselves tend to be something along the lines of comparing like with like as to family earning responsibilities. That is to say childless unmarried men and women tend to earn the same. Once people get married and have kids women choose to earn less and force the men to pick up the slack by earning more. So the pay gap is essentially a result of anti-male discrimination forcing men to work harder to support women's choices.
As a result you get odd results of things like black women earning more than white women (if you take into account education level) and lesbians out-earning straight women. I would explain these results in terms of the responsible-to-earn for someone else's consumption factor.
Hmm. Hard to find a nice link to a study on this one factor. But it typically knock out over 90% just by itself. These days if you Google those terms you get the various studies showing how much more young women are earning compared to young men. Of course that's mostly because women are 60% more likely to go to college.
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ETA: Also the wage gap is smaller in developing countries than in the West. As a general rule of thumb the better off you are in terms of privilege, the less you can afford to earn, which is why white women have the biggest "gap" of all. The entire topic misrepresents privilege as a oppression, which is exactly what you need to do if you're a feminist of course.
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ETA: Yeah I can't find any nice reports on family responsibility as a factor (usually it's referred to as "unmarried, childless"). It was common enough 20 years ago but these days the search results get swamped by by the stories of YOUNG and "unmarried, childless" women earning about 8% more than men. But as I say this is really more because women are getting college degrees far more than men are due to the massive amount of sex discrimination in education in the USA (though these results hold all over the English speaking world). maybe you'll have better luck if you want to pursue it.
> Women are statistically more likely to depend on their husband's wealth because (surprise surprise you moron) WOMEN MAKE LESS MONEY.
Hypergamy
> A woman with no money of her own is either homeless or somebody's wife. If she's convicted of a crime it's usually because she was an accomplice.
Married women don't have agency or free will, then? Okay. You're also forgetting that women have priority in social housing queues, especially if they have kids. All kinds of unmarried women, with or without kids, in geared-to-income social housing. Oh, I get it. Leaving a criminal's house to spend a couple months in a shelter before getting her own place just isn't an option. Better to have the criminal buy you shiny things, then play stupid or fake-cry in the courtroom than have morals, I guess.
> employment status of the husband in a relationship is the single outsize factor in predicting divorce.
Husband is required to be breadwinner, to maintain the hypergamous status of the relationship, and is disposed of as soon as this is lost. So far, you're doing a great job of upholding traditional gender roles, and positioning women as the weaker sex who can't make their own decisions. Well, aside from the part where the woman keeps half or better of the assets in a divorce, and bleeds the rest out through alimony and/or child support.
> You may find a screenshot from /pol/ or an article on Breitbart that claims to disprove it, but adults have accepted the wage gap is reality.
Nice Drumpfy Drumpf poltard projection. Here's a whole book by an adult.
> peer-reviewed study
I've seen enough of RealPeerReview to know that "peer-reviewed" in the social sciences doesn't mean shit. American Association of University Women? Yeah, no bias there. I like the part where their CEO is a fucking white male, though.
So, literally stop. I'm embarassed for you when you simultaneously cry about the "wage gap" and expect it to persist for your benefit.
yeah, it's sexist and unfair.
but as you get older you'll discover that women bitch & moan only about double-standards that work against them.
>I sometimes hear the complaint that women only make .80 cents to the men's dollar
this isn't exactly true. women as a group tend to earn less than men as a group. but that's mainly because women tend to make different career choices than men. men work more overtime, for example and prefer more cash, while women prefer lower wages to more comfortable conditions and better fringe benefits. when men & women have the same levels of dedication, training, expertise, experience, etc, they earn almost exactly the same wages in the same careers. more info in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109
There are a lot of factors involved in the wage gap. http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109
I love being my gender because of the higher incarceration rate! er, what?
http://consad.com/index.php?page=an-analysis-of-reasons-for-the-disparity-in-wages-between-men-and-women
http://www.learnliberty.org/content/do-women-earn-less-men
http://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=2a1f8ad4-f649-4ad3-a742-268d946962db
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb_6v-JQ13Q
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2084582,00.html
I'm sure I don't have to link you any information on child support law and enforcement, because that would be like linking to a source that provides evidence that water is wet.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1451964248&sr=8-1&keywords=why+men+earn+more
At the end of the day, women and women alone bear the decision to have a child so long as they have access to abortions. Men are not allowed, nor should they be allowed, to decide for a woman if she should bear a child or not. If she chooses adoption, all costs are paid by the parents. If she chooses to have a child, and if she chooses to include the father in that child's life (choices she alone makes) then the father must by law pay for a portion of the cost of that child.
I do think that single parenthood is an burden more so on the mother in most cases. This is one area we still need work on for both men and women, I agree. I personally am a proponent of a single payer health care system, which would mitigate the prenatal and OB issue altogether. But until that happens, health care will cost more for women because women cost more to maintain their health on average. If you don't like that then you have to overhaul the insurance industry to make everyone pay the same regardless of genetics. So the person with huge amounts of preexisting conditions due to genetics would pay the same as a very healthy person.
The book Why Men Earn More by Warren Ferrel has all the information you could ever want on the Wage Gap Myth. I did agree that a small number (around 5% I believe) is due to unknown causes which could be bias. But when you account for all other metrics, the 75 cents on the dollar is blown out of the water. We have laws making it illegal to discriminate against women, we have every ability to contest when we are paid less. It is our job as women to demand we get paid what we are worth, just as men tend to do.
The IWPR link was exactly the methodology I explained, and the gap is 80%. Median of all workers. That does not take into account career choices, hours worked, time off, education, etc.
IN the second link this quote is telling:
> And even in 2014, women and men still tend to work in different kinds of jobs. This segregation of occupations is a major factor behind the pay gap.
So again, boiling down to women's choices. And again, this report depended on median income alone, although they did at least break it down to basic industries. But again, we do not know all those mitigating factors which make a worker more valuable to a company.
Third source is the same. These are not telling us much of anything. The studies are too broad to be of use.
Interesting link about choices "A new survey from PayScale this morning finds that the wage gap nearly evaporates when you control for occupation and experience among the most common jobs, especially among less experienced workers."
I would certainly be interested in the residual pay gap especially at the top and take it seriously if we started the conversation on a national level with the actual facts. But the pervasive 75 cents on the dollar just won't die in the national consciousness even though it is absolute bunk.
My bottom line on wage gap- the sniff test. If it were truly so easy to save 25% of the costs of hiring someone, why would anyone hire a man? Business is all about the bottom line. If truly you could save that much money (we are probably talking billions of dollars for some companies) why on earth would they not be taking advantage of this? You think they are so sexist they are unwilling to save a ton of money? I think you underestimate most businesses joy of money.
Yes, there are far more men in politics, I never said otherwise. Nothing is stopping women from entering politics except their own choices. Women do not run for politics in very large numbers and women do not vote for other women in large numbers. This is not patriarchy, it is women's choices.
Women control the same amount of income in the US as men, so money is not stopping them. Yes, there probably is an old boys network among the older politicians, but there are enough women and progressives around to give a hand up to anyone interested in trying. The republican party is practically begging women to join, they flaunt every women politician they have in order to try to seem more supportive of women, even though they are obviously not in many ways.
Have you ever heard of Mondragon?
It's the world's largest network of worker owned, democratically controlled businesses, a couple hundred associated cooperatives, with over 80,000 worker members controlling the companies through the principle of one person, one vote.
Whenever a millionaire/billionaire IAMA comes up, I always share this info in the hope that they will become interested in and support the cooperative movement. I think that these cooperatives give the lie to a lot of ideology/mythology that emphasizes the unique exceptionalism of the elite controlling class, and point the way to how a more balanced, equitable, healthy and humane world economy could be organized. I think it's also pretty urgent, considering the trajectory our species is on.
A really good book on the subject of Mondragon is
Making Mondragon: the growth and dynamics of the worker cooperative complex
I'm not out of points. You need to read more. There's plenty of places to start. Here's a book
Beyond that you can google.
> ... why not focus on a robust and transparent regulatory state rather than against capitalism itself...
This thread isn't made for an economics discussion so I don't want to go too far into it here.
Capitalism in any of its incarnations can't exist without a State. De facto, de jure, it doesn't make a difference. State's themselves are power centers. The only thing that imposes constraints on them is either outside force, or their own populations.
> America will always be essentially capitalistic.
That's just categorically incorrect. Capitalism's been challenged here all the time. Many hybrid socialist models were developed here early in our economic development. The socialist principle that the workers should own the means of production was an official slogan of the Republican Party at one point in our history. The AFL-CIO, socialist and communist parties in the US are the reasons we have an 8 hour work day, occupational health codes and so many workplace protections that persist to the present day. All taken for granted now by people who think history began on the day they were born.
History is full of examples, (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). And that's just a place to begin.
http://mises.org/library/sweatshops-way-out-poverty this.
http://www.amazon.com/Out-Poverty-Sweatshops-Cambridge-Economics/dp/1107688930
There's a book on that very topic:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Precariat-New-Dangerous-Class/dp/1472536169
Guy Standing on The Precariat.
https://www.amazon.com/Socialist-Manifesto-Radical-Politics-Inequality/dp/1541617398/ref=sr_1_2
OP read this book
The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality: Bhaskar Sunkara: Books
https://www.amazon.com/Socialist-Manifesto-Radical-Politics-Inequality/dp/1541617398
[From one of the most prominent voices on the American Left, a galvanizing argument for why we need socialism in the United States today
With the stunning popularity of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Americans are embracing the class politics of socialism. But what, exactly, is socialism? And what would a socialist system in America look like?
In The Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's history since the mid-1800s and presents a realistic vision for its future. The editor of Jacobin magazine, Sunkara shows that socialism, though often seen primarily as an economic system, in fact offers the means to fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to healthcare, education, and housing, and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities. A primer on socialism for the 21st century, this is a book for anyone seeking an end to the vast inequities of our age.]
I haven't once 'complained about diversity'... do you even know who you're responding to anymore, or are you just randomly lashing out?
You actually made two claims:
You've provided not one shred of evidence to prove either accusation, or even compelling reasoning, and have instead resorted to some pretty lazy logical fallacies even by the standards of the internet
You then attempted to conflate these two claims with the purported 'wage gap' theory, which, again, you've provided no evidence for
While, on the other hand, the data all seems to indicate the 'wage gap' is a fiction and that the idea that any observable difference is due to discrimination is an unsupported assumption (save for a trivial minority)
These videos, articles, and book are a good starting point if you're truly interested in the subject
https://youtu.be/QcDrE5YvqTs
https://youtu.be/8EK6Y1X_xa4
https://youtu.be/EwogDPh-Sow
https://youtu.be/7fCBsugN_g0
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/1542751292
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy-into-the-gender-pay-gap-myth/#ccf4e825969c
http://www.aei.org/publication/there-really-is-no-gender-wage-gap-there-is-a-gender-earnings-gap-but-paying-women-well-wont-close-that-gap/
Try this: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/1542751292
No, women don't always have a choice, because they have a choice of working, which means now they have to work, see how that works? hehe.
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are - Alan Watts
Working - Studs Terkel
/r/BookSuggestions
Personally I liked Working by Studs Terkel
Get her a copy of Working by Studs Terkel. It's a little dated, but it's a great look into various careers.
And if she doesn't know how to Google, chalk it up as a loss. Wow.
Is it from the book Working by Studs Terkel? It's a collection of interviews with people talking about their work.
Edit: Nevermind, just re-read the lawyer chapter and it's not there.
The pay gap is almost entirely explained by a combination of all listed factors, not just family.
> AAUW’s The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap succinctly addresses these issues by going beyond the widely reported 77 percent statistic.
Nice! So do we get to hear what the real gap is, rather than the grossly, disgustingly misleading 77%? A couple of inches down the page:
> In 2012, as in 2002, among full-time, year-round workers, women were paid 77 percent of what men were paid.
Nope.
The idea of a pay gap for equivalent work doesn't really hold water. If women were paid less for equivalent work, companies would aggressively hire women because that would cut their costs. For most companies, wages are a significant % of total costs.
Warren Farrell's book Why Men Earn More sums it up:
> Men work longer hours at more dangerous and disagreeable jobs. They more readily accept night shifts, hardship postings to Alaska and entrepreneurial risks. Men get in-demand degrees in engineering, while women get degrees in French literature. Female librarians earn less than garbagemen, not because of discrimination, but because so many applicants compete for the safe, clean, comfortable, convenient, fulfilling jobs women prefer. Indeed, the author insists, statistics show that women and men with equal experience and qualifications, doing the same job, for the same hours, under the same conditions-get paid the same.
> qui s'exprime à la fois économiquement (salaires)
Déjà partons de là, ce n'est plus vrai. Il n'y a pas de différences de salaire entre hommes et femmes aujourd'hui, l'INSEE mesure aux alentours de 3-4% une fois retraité des différences de secteur, ancienneté, temps de travail, etc. C'est pareil partout en fait. Why Men Earn More, réponse courte, parce qu'ils prennent plus de boulots que personne ne veut faire, à des horaires à la con, dans des jobs relou.
La preuve irréfutable de ça, c'est que si les femmes étaient 20% moins chères que les hommes pour le même travail, dans un monde capitaliste aucune entreprise n'en profiterait pas massivement et il n'y aurait plus que des femmes employées.
Tu vois, ça part déjà en ovaire. Pourquoi est ce que les femmes veulent, plus que les hommes, s'occuper des enfants, de leur famille, ou d'elles mêmes, quitte à y sacrifier quelque chose qu'elles considèrent comme moins important ? Est ce qu'elles veulent plus s'occuper des enfants ? Est ce que c'est un impératif social ? Biologique ? Réponds à ça t'auras déjà une partie de la vérité. Spoiler, c'est parce qu'elles le veulent.
Les femmes font pourtant de bien meilleures études que les garçons, elles sont environ 70% à réussir médecine, idem en droit, et dans pas mal de professions intellectuelles supérieures. Elles sont systématiquement devant au bac. Dans les banlieues ça monte à 30% de réussite au BAC au dessus des garçons. Ce sont elles qui choisissent leur propre vie.
A New York, les femmes en dessous de 30 ans sont mieux payées que les hommes tout postes confondus. Du fait des meilleures études. C'est au premier enfant que ça commence à changer.
Alors bien sur, le 0.1 % des postes comme dirigeant d'une boite du CAC40 ou vieux ponte dans je ne sais quelle commission reste l'affaire d'une vieille garde de vieux croulants et d'hommes tellement toxiques pour leur famille que de toutes façons personne n'en voudrait. De l'autre côté les hommes sont aussi immensément majoritaires dans la population de SDF.
Bref, ce n'est pas parce que ce mouvement part d'un postulat faux et qu'il censure tout ce qui ne va pas dans son sens que ça en fait la vérité. Ce n'est pas parce que vous vous polissez de la merde à longueur de journée (l'oppression systémique de la femme) entre vous que ça se met à sentir bon. C'est juste un peu plus luisant.
Wage Gap:
Washington Post - Wage Gap Gets New Pinocchio Rating Author: Glenn Kessler
The Daily Beast - No, Women Aren't Paid Less Than Men
Slate - The Gender Wage Gap Lie Author: Hanna Rosin
CBS News - The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth Author: Steve Toback
Time - 5 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die Author: Feminist Christina Hoff Sommers.
Real Clear Markets - The Female Wage Gap Is a Major Economic Myth
Wall Street Journal - There is no male-female wage gap Author: Carrie Lukas
Market Watch - The gender wage gap is a myth Author: Diana Roth
Does a Gender Wage Gap Really Exist? - By Mark Mullen
Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It by Warren Farrel
Warren Farrell wrote an entire book on the subject: "Why Men Earn More".
>It is both. I can really recommend The Precariat. The poor working class will favour more obvious and appealing solutions that treat the symptoms of inequality rather than treating inequality itself.
Sounds classist
Typical Millennial attitude reinforced by dubious boomer social engineering politics.
A teacher's job is to teach and evaluate mastery of learning. Some kids will never master certain subjects. That's why we have grades. This society is falling off the wheels with this idea that everyone is equally capable of everything, and therefore our standards are racing towards the bottom. Lousy student with a lousy degree from a lousy university? That's okay we'll bail out your student loans as if the younger generation were too big to fail too.
Note, that a lot of people are figuring this out. The fastest growing rate of enrollment right now is in community/junior colleges that actually teach people trades that will lead to a job. Our public schools used to do this, but somehow the boomers settled on the idea that all their special little snow-flakes, especially their second franchise millennial kids after they were done dumping on the first round of GEN-X) all deserved to go to college. Note, the word deserved versus the concept of being afforded an equal opportunity. So now our institutes of higher learning are stuck with the OP's problem. I'll bet he spends all his time with the kids who don't belong versus the truly bright kids who will engineer our future.
No amount of self-esteem, standardized test tweaking, money dumping, student loan bailouts or teach for America b.s. will produce the type of educated people this country needs to succeed without a clear-headed reevaluation of our now basic assumptions about education. I'd like to see it start with some math teachers failing the shit out of people.
Stop watching Fox news. Start reading books. http://www.amazon.com/The-Working-Poor-Invisible-America/dp/0375708219
Replaced by a precariat - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Precariat-New-Dangerous-Class/dp/1472536169
Also, expect to see the figure shoot up again when the upcoming recession hits on the back of conservative economic mismanagement
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/davos/12108569/World-faces-wave-of-epic-debt-defaults-fears-central-bank-veteran.html
US CEO's earn more than 360 times the yearly income of their average worker. This gap grows by 5-10% every year.
What do the next 10-20 years look like with this trend? The extinction of the middle class. It's already happening now. My father did not have a college education but he worked hard and was able to be the sole income for a middle class family of 5. That simply is not possible today.
Capitalism will not correct this. It will continue to reward the greedy until there is nothing but the poor and the wealthy.
If you're afraid of socialism, you must be filthy rich. If you're not, then you need to do some more reading.
Source
Here is a book I just finished that is written perfectly for my generation. I highly recommend if you want to know what socialism truly is.
EDIT: [Here's an article](http://www.startribune.com/ceo-pay-up-940-3-over-last-four-decades/547872572/
) showing that over the last 40 years, CEO pay is up 940% while wages are down almost 12% (adjusting for inflation). It's insane to me that more people aren't alarmed and appalled by this. The fruits of our labor are being stolen by the wealthy and most people feel indifferent.
Except it doesn't do that at all.
That may have been the intent, but in practice it violates the civil rights act as it excludes whites from jobs based on skin color.
There was a case in the 60s where a white plumber was not given a job despite having more qualifications than the black man who was hired. He took the employer to court as the civil rights act had recently passed. The judges told him the CRA only applied to/protected minorities, despite the language of the bill being quite different.
It's in this book
Regardless of if it's racist or not, it still violates the language of the CRA. it also treat blacks as subhuman, implying that they can't gain a job via skill, and need the government to get jobs for them, which is a disgusting implication if you ask me.