welfare

[Member243850]

Stinky,
Perhaps I misunderstood you, or even RiverofIce. I didn't believ eeither of you were arguing that every person that is white will get more pay, regardless of circumstances. I believe river was arguing her own point, and I was arguing that it does happen, unfortunately. I did not mean to imply that this is the norm in any way (as I think is obvious by my statements reguarding my girlfriend's carear).

Also, in your specific situation, you are talking about whites getting screwed. I see that as no different than what sometimes happens here in the states, it just seems the roles have been reversed. Are you the minority there? If that is the case, you are still a minority being treated unequally. One can easily be white and be a minority.

Then I am very sorry if there was some slighty poor miscommunication from my side, I am not the best with words, but I do try to voice my opinoin as best I can. My bad every one sorry about this.

I just wish we could all get along ... it is a very strange thing racism...

I don't even know why some people are racist, that is the true definition of madness.

If you are racist then you are truly lost.

I am sorry if I misunderstood and got upset...I really did not mean to.


If only there was a way to test if some one was a hard worker or not... then welfare would be an awesome idea!... But sadly I don't think there is a way to do this

I am not thinking too clearly so I really do apologize

I hope I did not hurt any one.

Sorry about the mess

 

[EarlyMon]

I think as long as you do your best, no need to over-apologize.

 

[lordofthereef]

If only there was a way to test if some one was a hard worker or not... then welfare would be an awesome idea!

Amen! In that case, we actually wouldn't even need wellfare since employers would hire all of the hard workers straight up and the only ones left jobless would be the ones that don't want to work!

FWIW you didn't hurt me or offend me at all.

 

[Member243850]

I think as long as you do your best, no need to over-apologize.

ha ja you are right EarlyMon dude ha lol,

Thanx EarlyMon... you are very cool dude!

Even my dad says I apologize too much lol you remind me of my dad! haha!

 

[Member243850]

Amen! In that case, we actually wouldn't even need wellfare since employers would hire all of the hard workers straight up and the only ones left jobless would be the ones that don't want to work!

FWIW you didn't hurt me or offend me at all.

Haha lol thanx man,

+ 1

I totally agree... if only there was a "honesty meter" of some kind or what ever to test people but I don't think there is anything like this lol.

Thanx lordofthereef dude we cool man and I am glad i did not offend you, but for RiverOfIce... I think she might get upset.

But I hope she does not.

Keep well dude!

Regards

Stinky Slinky

 

[ParishL31]

Ok, scholarships are certainly an acception, but the only place race came into this thread thus far was regarding some jobs, and more specifically, pay rates at these jobs.

I like this idea. The problem with it is forcing the person to prove what is actually theirs. What if I am on wellfare living with a friend who graciously offered a room in his house. Said friend has the big screens, the stereos, etc. It's going to look pretty bad for me even though I am not spending a dime on these luxury items.

I feel the pay discrimination is more on the side of blue collar jobs, and to that I do not have an answer. It simply is wrong and unjustified. Once you move towards higher end jobs and white collar and such, I feel there is less discrimination as that is when they begin to look into your education and all that. And that's when the scholarships come into play, allowing most poor/minorities to get into college. In theory poor and minorities have no excuse as why they couldn't get into college and get that white collar job. Yes there are a lot of other factors, but in theory with a hard work ethic and drive, minority and gender shouldn't be a factor there. There are a number of women minorities that are CEOs in the Fortune 500 companies.

While my solution to the welfare test is obviously flawed, it's just a small step in the right direction. For your example, you just check the accounts and billing statements to see whether or not those items were purchased by the recipient. But then that leaves the loophole of simply paying cash and leaving no trail. Also, when is too much luxury? I'm by no means saying that welfare recipients aren't allowed to buy their kids toys, buy a movie here and there, or the occasional six pack of beer. There's a lot of gray areas, but it's definately better than just handing over a bunch of welfare and hoping for the best.

One topic I did forget to mention is the way foodstamps work. I don't know about other states, but in Colorado you can buy anything that is considered food and has no sales tax with food stamps. This includes some energy drinks, lobster, steak, organic foods, and many other expensive items. I'm not saying welfare recipients should be forced to eat the worst food available, but they certainly shouldn't be allowed to eat like kings. But again there's not really a way to monitor that. Other than having certain items be qualified to buy, but then again whose to say what is too good and what isn't good enough? The idea that many people not on welfare budget themselves and rarely buy steak and lobster, while those items are freely open to those on welfare is a bit unfair.

 

[lordofthereef]

Earlier on in the thread we touched a bit on food stamps and what they can and cannot be used for. I was raised in California and am in Iowa for school. I am not for certain on the situation here in Iowa, but I know that it is very close to the same in California as it is in Colorado, in that anything that is not taxed as a food is fair game.

You mentioned energy drinks. I know this is probably for another topic, but why on earth are energy drinks NOT taxed? It seems to me that the only beverages that shouldn't be taxed are milk and perhaps fruit juices (although this is already pushing it IMO).

I made mention of staple foods like eggs, milk, bread, and more basic cuts of meat. As an example, a rump roast (cheaper cut) is just as nutritious as a rib eye (more expensive cut). I sure know that I never find myself buying rib eyes and I am not even using food stamps here. There needs to be a breakdown of what cuts of meat (and other products) can be purchased with these food stamps.

I think what most people tend to at least hit on is that the issues with wellfare lie in the gross lack of regulation, rather than the idea behind the program itself. This is why I have such a tough time when people say it's best to just get rid of it alltogether. In my eyes, if one in every 100 people legitimately need the program to get over a hump, then that is proof enough that it is necessary. However, if numbers are near that dismal, it also shows that there needs to be reform to provide the RIGHT people with that money.

 

[ParishL31]

I'd be willing to say that a majority of the people on it really do need it and are good people. At least with my experience when I worked at Walmart, I ran into a large amount of people on foodstamps. A majority of them were very kind and pleasant to chat with. Some were very embarassed and ashamed to be on it. Even with being allowed to buy anything considered food, I still saw many people budget their food stamp allowances and still buy store brand foods and nothing brand name. I have no problem at all with helping those kinds of people.

It's the few extremely rude people and jerks that abuse it that ruin it for everyone. And of course those few ones are the ones that I remember the most unfortunately. There were a few people that asked if they could buy beer with it.

I think the energy drinks that passed at the store I worked at was more the store's fault of classifying it under the wrong category. But it's still a shame that they can buy lobster and steak, let alone energy drinks, junk food and other crap that has zero nutritional value.

The "cash account" I mentioned earlier is even worst regulated. In Colorado the "cash account" is for money for supplies and stuff that aren't food, but you still need. It's supposed to be for laundry detergent, blankets, and stuff like that. The essentials. But you can buy anything with it. Some guy bought fishing stuff, another bought DVDs, that one lady I mentioned bought cigarettes. That kind of behavior is just gross and ridiculous. The worst part is you can even cash it out for cash money. That could easily lead to liquor, drugs, hookers, guns, who knows what.

I do agree though that it is unfortunate that some people are ignorant enough to think welfare is a bad idea overall. It's a great idea, and no one deserves to be put in the position to have to even need welfare in the first place. However, the few people that do abuse it just ruin it for everyone.

 

[Dark Jedi]

To an exptent I agree with you. On the other hand, there may not be another job in the area. Or the other job may pay less. So what is better. Working at McDonald's for equal (crappy) pay, or working at a larger company where you are paid much more than you would be at McD's, but still a bit less than your white male counterpart (all other things between the two of you equal)? I think I would rather take the higher paying job, even though my pay rate is decided unfairly. Bottom line is race should never play into any sort of decision making whatsoever, but sadly it does. That said, I think people paint this to be a much mor frequent occurance than it actually is.

Well if you stay at the larger company that discriminates against you. Then you have no reason to complain. As your willing to accept their terms and your rights dont mean squat to you.

As they say you cant have your cake and eat it to.

 

[Dark Jedi]

I feel the pay discrimination is more on the side of blue collar jobs, and to that I do not have an answer. It simply is wrong and unjustified. Once you move towards higher end jobs and white collar and such, I feel there is less discrimination as that is when they begin to look into your education and all that. And that's when the scholarships come into play, allowing most poor/minorities to get into college. In theory poor and minorities have no excuse as why they couldn't get into college and get that white collar job. Yes there are a lot of other factors, but in theory with a hard work ethic and drive, minority and gender shouldn't be a factor there. There are a number of women minorities that are CEOs in the Fortune 500 companies.

While my solution to the welfare test is obviously flawed, it's just a small step in the right direction. For your example, you just check the accounts and billing statements to see whether or not those items were purchased by the recipient. But then that leaves the loophole of simply paying cash and leaving no trail. Also, when is too much luxury? I'm by no means saying that welfare recipients aren't allowed to buy their kids toys, buy a movie here and there, or the occasional six pack of beer. There's a lot of gray areas, but it's definately better than just handing over a bunch of welfare and hoping for the best.

One topic I did forget to mention is the way foodstamps work. I don't know about other states, but in Colorado you can buy anything that is considered food and has no sales tax with food stamps. This includes some energy drinks, lobster, steak, organic foods, and many other expensive items. I'm not saying welfare recipients should be forced to eat the worst food available, but they certainly shouldn't be allowed to eat like kings. But again there's not really a way to monitor that. Other than having certain items be qualified to buy, but then again whose to say what is too good and what isn't good enough? The idea that many people not on welfare budget themselves and rarely buy steak and lobster, while those items are freely open to those on welfare is a bit unfair.

Guess you dont watch the news. Its a known fact that white collar jobs they tend to try and pay women less. Not saying all do but most will try.

 

[ParishL31]

Ehhh, I think it's more the news just blowing things out of proportions like they do with every story. White collar jobs are almost always salary, which is determined by negotiations. It's natural for the employer to lowball and offer something lower than what they're willing to pay. They'll do that to anyone, regardless of race and gender.

If there's a correlation of the extent they're willing to lowball a man vs a woman, it just depends on that person which wouldn't be surprising if they did do that. There has been studies that show men are more persistent with negotiations, which may lead to that figure that women get less for salaries as they don't go through as much in negotiations and kind of just settle on what's offered (according to stats).

 

[RiverOfIce]

I work so damn hard because I don't have a life. I also know if we miss a contract we will have to fire someone. So I step up an take care of it.

As for stinky, you are not in the united states so unless you worked here you have zero idea what you are talking about.

But actually look at the facts.

First we where talking over all that men and women earn the same, but since that did not work because and I quote
Equal Pay for Women - Why Equal Pay for Women Would Benefit the U.S. Economy
Gender Wage Gap -- Male-Female Pay Difference

• In 2006, all women combined earned only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.
• African American women earn only 63 cents on the dollar earned by men.
• Hispanic American women earn only 52 cents on the dollar earned by men.

You really cant argue that over all it is different. but let us look at same jobs. Lets go to the map.

Interactive Map: The Persistent Career Wage Gap

Select a random state, less say iowa.

If I am a woman with a high school diplomia, I will near about 399,000 dollars less in 40 years then if I was a male.

If I have some college, I will earn 407,000 dollars less in 40 years compared to males at the same level.

If I have a phd, like I do, I will earn 514,000 dollars less over 40 years.

Now that is just with education. I have the same education but earn 514,000 dollars less just because I am a girl.

Let us look at occupation:

If I am in management, I will earn about 475,000 dollars less then a male at 40 years.

At professional level, which I am, I will learn 421,000 dollars less.

No matter how you cut it, for equal work, I will learn about 77 cents for every dollar. I will sit where I am at in the company for 3-5 years longer, then male.


Stinky stinky points out something that needs to be talked about.

Woman do about 3/4 of all of the work in the world, but earn only about 10% the income and own less then 1% of the property.

If you guys really want to talk about this, you have to do something.

PROVE IT. No more talking about feelings and opinions.

If you think a professional woman earns equal or more then a man, do what I did prove it.

If you think race does not matter, prove it.

And please dont get some blog or forum post, everything I have posted is backed up from the US taxes and US census.

 

[lordofthereef]

River,
Statistically you are absolutely right. In practice, not so much. Statements like

"Select a random state, less say iowa. If I am a woman with a high school diplomia, I will near about 399,000 dollars less in 40 years then if I was a male."

are absolutes, and these situations are not absolutes. It's like saying 1/3 of Americans are obese, therefor my baby has 1/3 chance of being obese, as if the odds are that of rolling a 3 sided die, and if it lands on "obese", well tough luck kid. There are absolutely options to not fall into said statistics as a minority, so I will argue that just by being a woman working in Iowa, you are NOT condemned to earn less than your male counterpart. There is simply a higher liklihood, statistically, of this happening.

 

[lordofthereef]

Well if you stay at the larger company that discriminates against you. Then you have no reason to complain. As your willing to accept their terms and your rights dont mean squat to you.

As they say you cant have your cake and eat it to.

I'd like to think that we should leave it up to legally NOT allowing employers to do this. After all, it may be the difference between me working at a company, or going hungry, right? I think you are assuming that it is easy to just up and work someplace else. With many specialised degrees, this is not the case. What if you have a family where you AND your spouse are working professionals. The worker should in no way be punished here. Equal opportunity should not be up to the employee to fish around for. The employer should simply not be allowed/able to descriminate.

All that said, we are taking this thread about wellfare on a bit of a tangent talking about minority worker's wages. If people would like to continue a discussion on that, let this be a formal request from a mod to mvoe the appropriate posts over to a new thread.

 

[EarlyMon]

In this case tho, don't you think that's indicative rather than merely reporting?

 

[lordofthereef]

In this case tho, don't you think that's indicative rather than merely reporting?

I am not sure I understnad the question?

 

[esthernrob]

pardon me but, welfare... ..... can you imagine this... here i am, waiting out side a US post office, early in the am, waiting to get in for an inveriew... chance of a lifetime, i'm thinking to myself... "me and my self have been wrong many times....)... nervous as all get out... quoting... MEGADETH... "SWEATING BULLETS"... and, here it is ..... 7 in the AM, and i'm sitting in my car, on the curb... this "family walks by... "7 in the morning...."..... mom + dad + baby + stroller... and, low and behold.... doesn't the "dad", male, whatever, ... pull out a crack pipe and toke up..... 7 am... monday morning....... there's my incentive... welfare is missing two letters... the T and F... but, then again, it's just a guess...

 

[EarlyMon]

About to board a plane, sorry for shorthand, will arrange threads later today unless other mod gets here first.

 

[lordofthereef]

About to board a plane, sorry for shorthand, will arrange threads later today unless other mod gets here first.

Oh, no worries. Safe flight to you.

 

[lordofthereef]

pardon me but, welfare... ..... can you imagine this... here i am, waiting out side a US post office, early in the am, waiting to get in for an inveriew... chance of a lifetime, i'm thinking to myself... "me and my self have been wrong many times....)... nervous as all get out... quoting... MEGADETH... "SWEATING BULLETS"... and, here it is ..... 7 in the AM, and i'm sitting in my car, on the curb... this "family walks by... "7 in the morning...."..... mom + dad + baby + stroller... and, low and behold.... doesn't the "dad", male, whatever, ... pull out a crack pipe and toke up..... 7 am... monday morning....... there's my incentive... welfare is missing two letters... the T and F... but, then again, it's just a guess...

I'm not sure I follow. You assume they are on wellfare because they aren't working at 7am Monday morning? I am just trying to follow your logic here.

 

[RiverOfIce]

There is simply a higher liklihood, statistically, of this happening.

Yea, you are right.

I really did look for it, but I will have to pull out numbers for the uk on this one, you can look it up, women get paid more in the uk then in the usa. So you can probably equal out of the number with into 5%.

40 years since the Equal Pay Act, equality remains a dream | Society | The Guardian

90% of all women earn less then men doing the same job.

Now, if I told you that you have a 90% chance of dying tomorrow, what would you do?

 

[lordofthereef]

Yea, you are right.

I really did look for it, but I will have to pull out numbers for the uk on this one, you can look it up, women get paid more in the uk then in the usa. So you can probably equal out of the number with into 5%.

40 years since the Equal Pay Act, equality remains a dream | Society | The Guardian

90% of all women earn less then men doing the same job.

Now, if I told you that you have a 90% chance of dying tomorrow, what would you do?

You could tell me I had a 100% chance of dying tomorrow. I would do the same thing. Nothing. I mean what are my options? /sarcasm

I am also not sure why you are providing UK links/numbers here? I was never arguing for or against any system in the UK because, frankly, I am ignorant of it. I am personally only talking about the US situation here.

Here is a link to a nice article that is about a year old:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1983185,00.html
From it:

Some say 77% is overly grim. One reason: it doesn't account for individual differences between workers. Once you control for factors like education and experience, notes Francine Blau — who, along with fellow Cornell economist Lawrence Kahn, published a study on the 1998 wage gap — women's earnings rise to 81% of men's. Factor in occupation, industry and whether they belong to a union, and they jump to 91%. That's partly because women tend to cluster in lower-paying fields. The most-educated swath of women, for example, gravitates toward the teaching and nursing fields. Men with comparable education become business executives, scientists, doctors and lawyers — jobs that pay significantly more.

Now, again, I don't disagree that this is a problem. If I had my way, it would be equal across the board, no questions asked. Sincerely, it would. Nothing is more rediculous than being paid less SOULY because of you gender or the color of your skin. All I am trying to point out is that one must include all other factors when making this comparison. Without that, we are hurting the cause more than helping it.

 

[lordofthereef]

Another good link:
Carrie Lukas: There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap - WSJ.com
From the wall street journal.

There is a surprising statistic that actually has women of a certain age group (20's-30's roughly) consistently making more money than their male counterparts. I would make a direct quote, but my work computer is being a giant POS and locking up I think due to the flash content (yes, these babies are circa 1999!)

I think it's clear that I don't necessarily share the author's views (especially if you look at the title of the article) , but I found some of the statistics he was stating to be remarkable. I also thought it would be nice to show that there are, apparently, credible articles written that this desparity is much smaller than most people think, or even nonexistant.

 

[ParishL31]

Now, again, I don't disagree that this is a problem. If I had my way, it would be equal across the board, no questions asked. Sincerely, it would. Nothing is more rediculous than being paid less SOULY because of you gender or the color of your skin. All I am trying to point out is that one must include all other factors when making this comparison. Without that, we are hurting the cause more than helping it.

I completely agree with this statement. I'm not disagreeing that stats do point to discrimination, but stats are just that. You can easily twist stats to favor either side of the argument. Stats can also be skewed with other factors that prove huge in deciding pay rate, but the stats simply show "man vs woman".

There are a number of things that stats leave out:

All degrees are not equal. A community college degree is nowhere near equal to a Yale degree. With generic stats like this, you can't determine if it's really discrimination. The Yale student deserves more than the community college student at entry level. Whether the Yale student is a woman or a man, they deserve more. Stats could be of a study where the Yale student was a man when the community college student was a woman, we don't know because the stats simply don't show things like that. It could be the other way around, but we'd never know.

Also, a degree doesn't necessarily translate into a good job or not. There could be a PHD woman who gave up her successful career to be a stay at home mom with a part time job on the side. Or there could be a high school drop out professional athlete making millions. Stats don't show those things, and those things clearly skew the stats.

Out of the Fortune 500 companies, only 15 have women that are CEOs. Say you did a study with 500 men and 500 women. Say we included all 500 CEOs from the Fortune 500 companies. So you got 15 men and 485 women that aren't CEOs, they could range from being a burger flipper to a professional athlete, we don't know. Stats from that pool would lead to a huge "discrimination". Shoot you could use those 485 male CEOs and put them against 1,000,000 average women and the numbers would still show the men made more.

I feel it'd be acceptable to compare CEOs within the Fortune 500 and consider them on an equal level. It shows Patricia Woertz of Archer Daniels Midland as the highest on the list at rank 27, her compensation is $17.5 million a year. Ranked 1 is Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobile and he makes $27.1 million a year. Considering these two equal, this shows a clear salary gap. You can spin the stats and say it's because she's a woman. Clearly this isn't the case as she's CEO of her company. The explanation for this is simply because Exxon probably makes much more than ADM and is able to pay their CEO more, not because he's a man.

Fortune 500 2010: Top Women CEOs - FORTUNE on CNNMoney.com

With the overall 77 cents for a dollar stat, as you said River you cannot use that as a valid point since it's overall jobs. In those numbers it includes comparing a burger flipping woman against Bill Gates.

I'm just making the point you can spin stats to go either way. Yes stats are great to get an overall picture, but there are tons more factors in this than just gender.

Also, River, your first two sources are from "Womens Media" and "Women In Business". While I'm not discrediting the sources, I am willing to bet that I know their stance on the issue and which way they tried to spin it.

Again, I feel there's much more behind this argument than just gender. No one is equal in every way. Even if you talk credentials wise and somehow they're exactly the same from the same school and took all the same classes and same teachers and everything, their personalities will still be different and that alone could be a reason to pay someone more than the other.

*edit* Just wanted to make it clear. River, I respect your opinion and definately that you went through the trouble of pulling up sources to back it. Not bashing anyone or anything, just simply stating my opinion on the issue. Please do not take it as being hostile but just as a debate.

 

[cipher6]

I completely agree with this statement. I'm not disagreeing that stats do point to discrimination, but stats are just that. You can easily twist stats to favor either side of the argument. Stats can also be skewed with other factors that prove huge in deciding pay rate, but the stats simply show "man vs woman".

I've got to agree. For example, if your polling 100 women and 100 men about their salary, theres a good chance, a portion of those 100 women might be working less hours, spending more time with their children, decreasing their salary and skewing the statistics.