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A good place to start restoring community values:
#34
Hi all,

First answer. If hair is more important than learning a trade, there are other trades where hair is more valuable. I don't want any potentially horrible injuries. I've seen 'em, and working around tools is dangerous enough without taking unnecessary risks. It doesn't need to be buzz cut, but not long enough to get caught in anything.

Secondly, Damon is right, I will start a teenage kid with no skills at 15 to 18 depending on level of hustle. That's a training wage for green help. It will be expected to learn quickly, but one isn't going to need to show up knowing anything much, except learning to read a tape measure, and that can happen on your own time before you show up. I don't think that's asking much, but what I'd ask, and it's evidence of a certain amount of willingness to learn.

I agree with others who have made comments about the quality of labor one finds. True, but as far as I'm concerned someone who cannot work is worth zero an hour and I wouldn't hire at all. Someone who can work, I'd like to pay a living wage.

I understand fully that wages have not kept up with living expenses for many. Of course that is the fundamental point of this post.

I think it's simply a mark of good business to run your activities in a sensible, efficient, and profitable manner that one keeps busy, and can afford to hire real help. I don't think it's insurmountable at all. I'm not in a position to offer a kid full time work, but of the time I can offer, it will be well paid and profitable.

A lot of it comes down to the details, but certainly, in many of the cases I'm aware of where some claim to not be able to "afford" to pay living wages, there is a reason. And the reason is often, even typically, an expensive lifestyle, a very large home, a new expensive car, vacations, large properties, and on down the line. Listen, we can all see through all that. It's friggen obvious it has nothing to do about being able to afford, because one is picking and choosing what is and is not being payed and where that money goes. Of course, I can't make anybody care, and many simply don't. But on the other hand, if some of us are actually semi-serious in easing the burdens that come from poverty and lack of opportunity, with simmering resentment, of racism, etc., making the personal choice and inevitable personal sacrifice to free up that personal cash to pay a living wage: I hardly thing there's a better way to start, and near nothing I could see to be more effective to start bringing community back together.

So really, it's all up to us and what we value. I'm full aware one can present and win an argument--the hard thing is to get people to care. Some here proclaim to care, and I take that on faith. In a friendly manner I'd like to suggest perhaps fine tuning a bit some of that is offered up.

Ultimately, of course, there are no secrets. What we really value is always evident in our personal actions.
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RE: A good place to start restoring community values: - by JWFITZ - 07-03-2008, 12:13 PM

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