I can't believe a teacher friend put this on Facebook

[Courtesy Flush]

Last edited Mon Sep 3, 2012, 02:41 PM - Edit history (1)

If you're a teacher and you support lower wages, look over your shoulder. There are hordes demanding that teachers receive lower wages. If we all demand that fellow Americans be taken down a notch, we are playing the 1%ers game.

[Scuba]

1. Demonizing the poor, denying reality.

[roguevalley]

15. all manner of reasons motivate people to teach including the idea

of a nine to five inside, summers off and steady pay. most teach because its a calling. but among us are always the dweebs that actually fit that description but don't know it.

[central scrutinizer]

19. when I was a substitute teacher

there was one math department office (where all of the regular teachers had their desks) where the radio was always on to Rush, Hannity, etc.

[gollygee]

2. I know and have known incredibly hard working people who make minimum wage

They might have minimum skills and minimum education, or they might have lost their better job and there might not be anything else available at the moment.

But there is no doubt that minimum wage earners make a real contribution to the workplace. Some of the hardest, most labor-intensive jobs are minimum wage. Some of the ickiest jobs are minimum wage. Some of the jobs that require the most care and compassion and the most reigning in of bad tempers are minimum wage.

[Freddie]

11. And thanks to the corporations that run this country

Minimum wage tends to be the prevailing wage as corporate retail refuses to pay more to their staff-level employees, even though the parent company maybe making huge profits. In the days of "mom and pop" businesses the owners could reward good workers with good pay, but corporate retail puts tremendous pressure on managers to keep wages as low as possible.

[dkf]

22. 1.7 million out of 73.9 million are paid the minimum wage.

In 2011, 73.9 million American workers age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.1 percent of all wage and salary workers.1 Among those paid by the hour, 1.7 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm

[slampoet]

26. Deceptive stat. There are plenty more earning their state minimum wage.

[dkf]

28. And you think the assertion the minimum wage is the prevailing wage is less deceptive?

[slampoet]

53. You don't know what I think. So don't operate that way, please.

[Freddie]

27. And many millions more earning just over minimum

Around here retail jobs pay like $8/hr. still garbage.

[dkf]

29. I hardly think that even $8 is the prevailing wage.

[jtuck004]

42. Let's say $8 - $14 is becoming a WHOLE lot more prevalent, in an economy...

which is still structured as if the incomes were closer to double that.

Not that it makes a flying rat's ass to a kid who won't eat until they get back to school Monday because there is no food in the house., and what everyone might eventually pay for that outcome.



Report, here, at National Employment Law Project

That's barely a living wage for a single person, and they drop much nearer poverty with a child. 64% increase in food stamps in last 3 1/2 years. Whole cities going bankrupt. 10 million home loans still in trouble, where they can mostly expect to stay over a year before the bank ever gives them their first foreclosure notice. Perhaps near 30 million people who are applying for 3 1/2 million jobs. Steve Keen said something the other day about "Recovery, one funeral at a time". Although he was talking about economists, it strikes me as the plan du jour. Well, except for the perpetrators of fraud our government is propping up.


The world should tremble at our name. We are powerful. And may be coming to your neighborhood.

H/T

[1monster]

46. Depends on the region. I know tour company guide/drivers start at $8.00 per hour

around here. The highest wage they can make is currently $11.50 per hour (after seventeen years!) Supposedly, top wage is $12.00 (no one has gotten that yet) and $15.00 in other areas with branches owned by the same company.

This job requires a class C or B license with a passenger endorsement.

[SunSeeker]

36. And ANOTHER 2.2 million earned BELOW the $7.25 minimum wage

According to the very BLS link you cite, together, these 3.8 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 5.2 percent of all hourly-paid workers. Nice truncating there, dfk.

And of course many millions more make more than $7.25 but less than a living wage. If the minimum wage that was set in the 1960s had kept up with inflation, the minimum wage would be about $15 right now. What percentage of workers make $15/hour or less? Can you answer me that dfk?

And $15/hr ($20K a year) itself is not a living wage. It is not enough to buy a house or raise kids on. It is just subsistence living.

What percentage of workers make what we would consider middle class wages?

[1monster]

44. I remember when garbage collectors (an icky, labor intensive job) were among the

highest paid workers in our area simply because it was such a disgusting job. The owners of the company had to pay high wages just to get enough workers. People were willing to do the icky job because they were getting paid good wages.

Then the Reagan/Bush years set in. The locally owned garbage collection company (due to divorce and subsequent finacial obligations) sold out to BIG garbage collection companies. Now, garbage collectors start at minimum wage. The big garbage collections companies can do this because jobs are super hard to come by and desperate people will take anything to help keep food on their tables and a roof over their heads.

[reformist2]

3. Exactly. Give them a taste of their own medicine. See how they like it!

Obviously we don't want to say such nonsense in a public setting, but trashing such a person's profession to his/her face might make them wake up. Unfortunately, some people don't see the big picture until they see how it can affect themselves.

[Iris]

5. Not surprising. A lot of K-12 teachers are very conservative.

Also, this might come from someone who is burnt out and disillusioned by the educational system. It is likely she has students who sit in her class and do not apply themselves and parents who think their kids are exceptional and should always make A's. To top it off, SHE'S being judged based on how students perform on the test, even though, as I mentioned before, they may never apply themselves at all.

[Freddie]

6. Republican Teachers

Make me want to scream!!
Don't they realize that ALL they have accomplished as a profession is thanks to unions?? If the Repugs had their way teachers would be making $10/hr working for a for-profit company with no benefits or pension. Teachers are the #1 enemy, those "greedy government leeches feeding off the trough of your tax dollars." etc, etc.
I'm a payroll/benefits administrator for a school district and I know there's plenty of Repug teachers and it's simply mind-boggling. I had a teacher approach me to put his young-adult son on his insurance because "now I can with this Obama crap." I held my tongue.

[Aeroette]

51. I know a SCIENCE teacher who doesn't believe in evolution.

And of course, is a republican. It just amazes me.

[titaniumsalute]

7. Your friend is a horse's ass

My wife is a teacher and I just her her this post. Talk about getting pissed off.

My wife has 8 years of education costing somewhere around $65,000 to be a fucking HS Choir teacher making about $37,000 in her 5th year. If you break down the hours she works each year (lots of after school stuff) it is below minimum wage.

[rbrnmw]

8. I know a woman who took her College Education off of her Resume'

She did it so she could at least get a minimum wage job. Many people now have their Professional Resume' and the Redacted Resume' because lower paying jobs aren't given to people with degrees .

[CJCRANE]

9. Love your $5M bonus?

Congratulations!

You're probably one of the bankers who crashed the global economy and nearly destroyed the world's financial system.

But lucky for you the taxpayers bailed you out so you could carry on as though nothing had happened.

The least you could do is pay a little more in taxes to pay back the favor.

[asjr]

10. I must be missing something here. When I read that I see an anti-Republican

message. I see that if you like Republicans that is what you will get. Someone straighten me out.

[CJCRANE]

12. I think it's saying that if you get paid minimum wage

then that's all you deserve because you're lazy, feckless and uneducated. If you deserved more you would be paid more.

[reformist2]

13. The reader is supposed to identify with the mean-spirited guy in the poster.

He's clearly bashing uneducated and lazy people and implicitly saying that he isn't like that.

[vankuria]

14. What most people don't realize

is how essential most low wage jobs are. Those minimum wage jobs keep businesses going, I mean what would they do without, cashiers, warehouse workers, restuarant workers, cleaners, etc.? At a glance these jobs may not seem important but they serve the public in a very important way and without them businesses would fold. In a nutshell businesses could not survive without the "little people" who make it run.

[KurtNYC]

16. The 50s guy in a white suit with his left hand making a toy gun

while he looks stoned is the perfect icon for that text.

[mother earth]

17. Your teacher friend is a "good German", sadly with young minds in his/her care. nt

[Onlooker]

18. That sounds ambiguous

I think if someone doesn't read it carefully, they could see it as a message to motivate kids to get more skills, get more education, and work hard. Perhaps your teacher friend did not quite understand the message?

[Dustlawyer]

20. Dead on! They want us fighting and blaming each other. What we need to tell Republicans we

know is this, "let's fight about abortions, gays, ... After we work together to get campaign finance reform so that when we vote, the candidates who win will be beholden to us the people, and not billionaire donors and corporations. We should be able to agree with some of them on this. We will need a bipartisan movement to be able to do this! For awhile let's not be D's or R's, but just Americans trying to save our Democracy!

[VPStoltz]

21. What is completely STUPID about this is...

this message assumes somehow an employer is FORCED to employ someone fitting that description.
What the poster assumes is that most of America is made up of those described in the post and thus deserve the lowest pay possible.'
What a negative, cynical, depraved assessment - and SO typically Republican.
The middle class is worthless and not deserving.
When Robbedme said, "We deserve better" he was talking about the 1%.

[dkf]

24. Only 2.3% of the population is paid the minimum wage.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm

[abelenkpe]

37. So 2.3 percent of the population is OK with you?

Minimum wage isnt enough to afford rent in most areas.

[slampoet]

23. So by that logic I should have been GIVEN five buisinesses, because I had more skills than the owner

[HughBeaumont]

25. I don't think there's any ambiguity to it.

Most libertarians I've come across think the minimum wage should be abolished and companies should be able to pay you whatever they feel suited to pay you . . . be that 4, 3 or even 2 dollars an hour. Hell, one of them once said "The minimum wage should be 2 dollars an hour. Anything beyond that is charity". It's kind of an extension of their "Taxation is THEFT" horseshit . . . that companies are being forced at gunpoint to pay their workers less-than-poverty level wages.

[gollygee]

31. I think that's exactly what it is about

I have heard a lot of people say that the minimum wage should be abolished, that the minimum wage makes us a socialist state, that it ruins the economy, all sorts of things like that. What a lot of people want is "pure capitalism", although I put that in quotation marks because a lot of they seem to be OK with concessions to businesses.

[TBF]

33. I think a lot of people who say this are brainwashed.

Seriously, who is "pure capitalism" benefiting? Unless they are a Romney and flying from place to place on their personal Jet this economy is not benefiting them. The 1% has become very adept at using marketing that pits poor people against each other. And make no mistake, if you need that paycheck that is coming every 2 weeks, you are not part of the 1%.

[abelenkpe]

41. I've never understood why it's ok for businesses to pay workers so little

And not provide health insurance so that those same workers then have to rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Aren't these businesses being subsidized by taxpayers when they pay their workers so little? It seems cruel that libertarians/republicans would want to allow businesses to pay workers even less while simultaneously doing away with the programs that feed and provide healthcare for the workers they utilize. That they also insult the same low wage workers is disgusting.

[Bigmack]

30. Taught 30 years ...

... and saw this stuff all the time.

We negotiated like crazy for class size restrictions, better pay, benefits....

And some teachers would NOT join the Association (an Association is something like a union, but without the Balls)

They took all the benefits and raises, tho.

One told me one time that he'd be glad to negotiate with the administration by and for himself.

We had strikes, and people crossed the line... one told me her husband made her do it. Another told me that she thought striking was "tackey".

Stupid transcends education.

[RVN VET]

32. I don't know if it's ambiguous

It seems to say "Hey, minimum wage earner, you're gettin' paid more than enough to compensate you for your status as a useless eater. So shut up and stop complaining."

If it's intended to be motivational, maybe it could begin with "Hey, kids . . ."

But i don't think the intent is to motivate. I think the intent is to malign.

[brewens]

34. When I was a minimum wage person we were expected to be nose to the grindstone at

all times. At a Skippers we used to joke about the morning crew. Sometimes we evening people got to fill in mornings. They would do their morning prep work and then sit out front and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. I had a nickname for them, "the coffee and cigarette r@&s"!

The policy of the owners were to hire older married people for those shifts. Understandable because they had family lives and kids couldn't be out of school in time. Other than the manager it was all married women.

Though they didn't make big money, they made more than most of the evening people and we did most of the business. We also had to do the clean-up which was more difficult than any of their opening tasks. That didn't stop them from feeling superior and being real nasty to us given the opportunity. I suppose just like a house slave or an upstairs servant, some people will look down on anyone they can.

The bosses son and I pushed for rotating shifts around during the summer months. That didn't go over well, especially since the bosses son ( the best of any family business relative I ever worked with) was behind it and they thought they might get stuck working late shifts. In the end one single woman on mornings was made to rotate for "training purposes" and she took it out on anyone she could. A couple years later I was applying at the company her husband worked for and he trashed me to all the guys there on his wifes word. You really need to know who you are messing with in a situation like that. It cost him his job. He wasn't aware that two of my friends there were trying to get me hired. One was the big bosses nephew, the other his son-in-law! Oops!

[Chorophyll]

35. There's a boatload of bigotry stuffed into this "clever" little graphic.

I can't even.

[1monster]

38. Teachers have already taken pay cuts. In some states, teachers are now being forced to

give up 3% of their wages to put into their retirement funds. The retirement funds were, contractually, part of their wages in the past. So they have effectively lost 3% of their wages already.

Also, new teachers are being hired at lower wages, and new categories of teachers have be created, called "associate teachers" who start at $10,000 less per year.

Meanwhile, that little meme is seriously off. How is a requirement for a minimum wage being forced to pay more than minimum?

[patrice]

39. Parents are at the nexus of this problem. How can they foster motives that they don't

recognize themselves and "the cat is out of the bag" because the kids know that the parents don't know, so they're working it. Is it any wonder that teachers can't solve, that nothing they do is enough, so they get vindictive and mean? or just surrender to the bullshit?

[alc]

40. it would be a fine poster IF

doing more than the minimum in any of those areas got you more than the minimum wage.

if you have skills, are educated, are motivated, or contribute to the workplace why should someone only pay you minimum wage?

[lunatica]

43. From a teacher's point of view that message can actually be positive

It's sending the message to learn stuff that will raise your knowledge above minimum wage levels.

[The Midway Rebel]

45. Post this comment in reply:

"Welfare and food stamps are taxpayer funded subsidies for corporations who chose not to pay a living wage."

It would be cool if you use the same background, picture and font as the original poster so that the message was received.

[Heather MC]

47. Minimum wage means 1 thing if I could pay you less I would

[Iwillnevergiveup]

48. Last week

was chatting with 2 young people who finally found jobs. One female, divorced with 2 kids, had been searching for months for a dental ass't. position. She was seeking $13 an hour and finally ended up working at a bicycle place where the guy offered her $10 an hour. They settled on $11.50 "off the books." The second young single guy was offered $8 an hour as a restaurant cook, but was then told they could go $8.50 again, "off the books."

This benefits mostly employers and cuts back a revenue stream for taxes.

[Sirveri]

54. It also short shrifts their payroll taxes so they get lower UI and Social Security payouts.

Then again there are employers who are so stingy they don't bother to pay either of those things, and then when the worker leaves the cheapskate and tries to get their rightful due they are truly screwed.

[coalition_unwilling]

49. FB does allow you to 'unfriend' people and even block them (sort of like 'Ignore'

function here, I suppose).

I guess my question is why this person is still your FB 'friend'? I'd have unfriended and blocked him or her for this immediately, no questions asked nor quarter given.

[Zoeisright]

50. Why would you be friends with someone like that?

I'd unfriend and block that person in a heartbeat.

[tsuki]

52. Can you imagine being the student of this

teacher? Not all people are college material. And what constitutes a minimum contribution? We need people who work at minimum jobs as well as college educated teachers. That person needs to be fired.

[mykpart]

55. If Romney and Ryan have their way

there will be plenty of teachers working for minimum wage!

[NYC Liberal]

56. And here's the response: