Monetary Tsunami In America!!

Just as a point of interest, floor maintenance (and cleaning in general) is mostly done around here by immigrants too. Many of them do it as a second or third job to make a better life for their children. Some of them are refugees from American foreign policy in places like El Salvador and Chile.By the way, I don't consider floor maintenance an "unskilled" job, though the basic skills can be learned fairly quickly. I'd put it on approximately the same level as cashier.

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If you have nothing to say, you could have done so much more concisely. -- Dr Adequate

Hopefully that percentage would be at least 100% of the poverty level!

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

Kinda, more likely based on the annual poverty level / normal annual hours worked.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

I've been looking at the Consumer Price Index, the Cost of Living and the Federal Poverty Level and in the end focused on the CPI with this table:ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txtIn various places here Buzsaw has made a claim to go back to the Gold Standard from whatever is now.I have always thought that easiest way to stop inflation cold in it's tracks was to renormalize it every year or some other recurring period, even as coarsely grained as the US Census intervals.Base the value of the American dollar directly on the CPI, a basket of goods & services typical of the American family. The methodology of determining this basket is very complex and already well-thought out. This is what a dollar will buy - the same basket of goods (contents vastly changing year by year due to technology, but under the watchful eye of the Bureau of Labor Statistics that the Fortune 500 uses).Problem ended.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

The annual poverty level is based on a single wage earner working 40 hours per week, so it's a system constant of 2080 hours every time in your divisor.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

Why is there pressure to lower our wages then? Who should I blame?

Phat, there is always pressure to lower wages. Paying employees less for the same amount of work increases the profit margin, and that pressure exists regardless of the presence or absence of undocumented workers.Undocumented workers simply represent a class of labor that employers can exploit illegally (paying less than minimum wage, demanding unpaid hours, etc) and get away with it. That's all. The solution is not to stop them from coming, because you can't, and because those jobs do still need to be filled. The solution is to document them so that they can easily become a full part of the system like you or me. Even if you don't grant them citizenship, you need to be able to easily and for free give them a legal status where they don;t need to fear their employer reporting them to immigration and where labor laws are equally enforced.At my last job I took a severe pay cut as new housing construction tanked. So did everyone else in the company. It had nothing to do with illegal immigration, it had to do with the company losing money due to lack of work.That pressure will always exist to varying degrees depending on management, the current state of the company, labor laws, the presence of a union, etc. If the employer sees an opportunity to lower pay without sacrificing productivity, chances are they'll take it. Most employers don't do that over fear that underpaid employees will leave to find employment elsewhere (less a concern in a down economy, but it costs a lot to train a new employee), union contracts, minimum wage laws, etc.What makes you think you should blame undocumented workers? What's your rational basis for determining that they even might be at fault? Do you even know whether your floor workers are actually undocumented, as opposed to simply not speaking English well? Maybe they just prefer their first language?

As the neighborhood changes so that the local language becomes Hispanic, or Asian, or Middle Eastern, it is likely that those workers who are fluent in the locally used first language would be of greater value and so should be paid more than an English speaking only employee.I would think that would be especially true in a business like a grocery store.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

You don't think 12% unemployment (or higher) has something to do with it?

Got to adapt, I am learning Spanish so I can widen my customer base. If I was to hire a new helper, being bi-lingual would be a definite plus for me. NC has a lot of immigrants who speak little or no English. I would make sure he/she is legal though, if nothing more than to make sure I don't have any problems with any potential Govt work I may get lucky enough to get.

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"I hate to advocate the use of drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they always worked for me." - Hunter S. ThompsonAd astra per aspera

Ok, but how many iPods go in that basket? In 1970? In 2040? Your average family spends maybe $600 on the family computer; ten years ago that was more like $2000. In 1970 it was around $30,000. Is that because of deflation, or because of advancements in the fabrication of electronics?Do you see the problem? The "goods and services" typical of the American family has changed quite a bit over not too long a period of time. In 2011, families are buying mp3's, iPhone apps, and Netflix subscriptions on their Xboxen. Ten years ago they were buying CD's, still. Ten years before that nobody had bought a CD. Ten years from now they might be buying schema for the family desktop fabricator instead of any physical goods at all. It's not just technology that changes the content of the basket, it's changes in the American lifestyle. If a significant portion of the American people are on Atkins that year, that's going to change the carb content of the "average American family basket."

My mistake. My assertions are not that illegal immigrants are competing for the back-of-store jobs. You say that noone is competing for these jobs, reason being that nobody in the union who already has a position desires to switch to the available positions.The neighborhood I am in has 200 different cultures within a five square mile radius. It is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the US. And yet English is the primary language that most folks know. We dont need to promote ethnic enclaves where immigrants dont have to assimilate.Besides....While having some workers who speak other languages useful, the union prevents them from displacing a veteran such as myself who is good at what he does and worth every dime he is paid.

Why? Does that make any sense?If the neighborhood changes shouldn't the store change to reflect the neighborhood?How is retaining a person whose value has diminished reasonable?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Thats the problem. The politicians pledge to create new jobs, but the jobs they create are in many cases entry level ones. Labor should be more than simply a line item commodity. Having better paid workers stimulates the economy more than entry level workers can do.Yes, you say that we need to show value to the employer. I agree. if we become more valuable for the company, is there any reason to keep trying to lower wages?At some point, the quality of the applicants decreases. Nobody wants to work as hard as we do for minimum wage.

Really, or do you mean that YOU don't want that?Are you saying no one would take your job at the entry level wage?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!