pdxfed

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pdxfed , (edited )

  • Unemployment insurance payouts are at or below poverty level at best, short in duration (normally 12-24 weeks at most) despite complete wildcard on how long finding a job may take, and aggressively restricted or even denied in many states(remember Republican controlled states refused free federal funding to bolster their unemployment payouts because they wanted people back working during a global pandemic without a vaccine at that point).

  • Unions and organizing and employees thinking of organizing are aggressively and illegally attacked, discriminated and retaliated against while the enforcement mechanisms to hold powerful companies to law are so underfunded the laws nearly don't exist

  • OSHA, FLSA and other cornerstone pieces of workplace law are so routinely broken and have been by so long and enforcement so underfunded and penalties so trivial the laws don't exist in practice. Injuries at work, minimum wage, overtime are so commonly violated, suing through the courts has been the only recourse for employees. With the court system now captured, even that menial disincentive is gone for companies to comply.

  • Companies systematically underpay and are able to collude on wages thanks to market salary tools to suppress wages. Switching companies is the only way to get a raise.

pdxfed ,

We practiced fucking check writing and balancing a checkbook even though online checking and computers existed already ok? At least something you learned was still relevant.

pdxfed ,

You commie prick, why are you putting a limit on the hours? I'm promoting you to exempt, congrats, no OT.

pdxfed ,

Or, as my omniscient relatives and neighbors who have on countless occasions provided unsolicited commentary on my career would say, "a nice stable job, why don't you ever stay in one place?"

This has been well documented for at least a decade.

Meanwhile, employers feign concern over turnover but know it's a better bottom line and their bonus to let employees with standards leave than to do the right thing.

pdxfed ,

Man, Fortune running articles they would have never 10 years ago, they were like the WSJ in my recollection, what pivoted?

pdxfed ,

Warms the Enron heart to remember such gouging.

pdxfed ,

Why are the feds subsidizing an independent State, isn't that oppression of its rights?

pdxfed , (edited )

Willing to come to the table, now, to delay for a few hundred locations after being mandated to by NLRB, while suing that NLRB is unconstitutional in a separate suit hoping to have supreme Court rule on it. Classic

pdxfed ,

…puzzling engagement scores…if only something could be done

pdxfed , (edited )

Unsurprising there hasn’t been much change when their survey methodology doesn’t capture most of the relevant data.

From interviews and citations by female academics and economists who study and write on it, the Freakonomics podcast hosts interview these experts on why the often quoted stat of national mean is an oversimplification of a complex issue. freakonomics.com/…/the-true-story-of-the-gender-p…

Just like the commonly quoted unemployment statistic is a poor measure of employment in the country, a simple national mean leaves out almost all meaningful analysis, and actual deliberate or systematic pay discrimination is much more rare than headlines would have you believe.

pdxfed ,

Super hard to establish a base for unions in places that often need them the most due to self-reinforcing high turnover due to poor conditions, wages and benefits and job quality. Makes the work the unions have accomplished in the last 4 years laudable.

pdxfed ,

if the firm managing your 401k makes a bad investment

The administrator of your accounts has zero control over most of the funds available in them, their rise or fall, and your funds are separate from any investments that financial institution may or may not have made.

If you have a 401k with fidelity, or ADP or Schwab or Trowe Price or whoever, some of those are banks, soke finance companies, some payroll, anyway, the point is for each, the money in your account is yours to allot and invest as you wish based on yhe invesrment options your company chose or negotiating with them to administer your company’s plan. The admin makes money by admin fees, not by taking your money and reinvesting it in something you don’t know about. Granted, yes if there is a stock market crash, most financial companies will similarly overall struggle, but they have lots of arms and operations (mortgage loans, commercial, consumer banking, investment banking, etc.) and they are 100% all disconnected from the money in your 401k.

That said, 401ks are awful and a sham that were pushed on an uninformed public and we’ve only just begun to see the effects as the first generation reaches end of work age…and can’t stop working. It’ll continue. Props to anyone fighting and organizing against it or trying to avoid as much as possible. System fully bought and broken by greed.

pdxfed ,

The point was is the plan administrator has no control over whether the value of his account goes up and down, which Op said they did. I agree with everything else Op said but think it’s important since most people don’t understand the mechanics to learn about them so added the correct info.

pdxfed ,

The portion of the comment I replied to, which I highlighted at the top of my response was that Op had said that “if the company managing your 4401k makes a bad investment”, concerned that (among Ops other accurate concerns) your 401k funds could be used elsewhere without your knowledge or permission by the plan administrator, which they can’t. So I corrected it.

Lazy people immediately REEE when someone doesn’t immediately jump on the tribal circle jerk and agree even when parts of a statement are incorrect. Ops point was overall correct and a good one and correcting something that was wrong doesn’t mean I disagree with the rest of it. Lookup false dichotomy.

pdxfed ,

To the contrary, 52/46 is not a state you bail on. Look at GA turning blue. 2024 will be interesting to see what the CA migration makes as far as a dent in the ~5% vote difference. Texas will turn blue eventually, it’s a matter of when and if it’s too late to turn the ship around at that point.

pdxfed ,

Scoot scoot

pdxfed ,

Randy Johnson enters the chat.

pdxfed ,

Could have replaced bill Walton, magic, Mark Jackson and would have been an improvement. Also, nearly every small market local cable “commentary team” who calls every call against their home squad a conspiracy.

Good commentary enriches the viewing experience. For the other 90% though, [mute].

pdxfed ,

I’ve worked in HR across a number of industries and I’m seeing a crossing of projections when it comes to comp, I’ve been looking at it for a number of years.

Anecdote: saw an HR Coordinator job, pretty standard entry level role last week posted for $23/HR. Required 4 year degree, preferences for major, 58 bullet points in job description, etc.

Saw a Dave’s Hot Chicken Shift Supervisor role that’s been posted for over a year now for $23.00/hr. I think it’s a newer chain. Anyway, they’re being aggressive with the rate as many f&b places have been to try to hire and retain coming out of the pandemic. No previous experience, no education required.

Overall I think the scam of the structure of “higher ed” is well exposed at this point, while of course a college degree and different path give you the potential of maybe having a good job mostly after having waded through a decade or two of corporate insanity, politics, and layoffs. Had a sandwich at a Jersey Mike’s a few days ago and the employee was an accounting associates student who had no plans on any education after he finished as he saw it as junk debt.

It was 15 years ago in the great recession that I predicted trade schools would come back with a bang but we aren’t there still for some reason.

pdxfed , (edited )

Wish they would have pulled stats on which percent of their employees get state sponsored benefits as they aren’t paid above poverty levels. Not a single stock grant or option should be allowed to be awarded under erisa if a company has a single employee on state welfare.

pdxfed ,

It’s the analog to how the industry lobbies to get preferential tax treatments for these accounts. 99% of the time your employer or the insurer keeps money at the end of the year. If you’re smart about when you leave your employer though(leave after exhausting your FSA early in the year), or have advance notice of it, you can walk away and beat the game.

pdxfed ,

Fella who cheated and jumped the fence on the first turn 🥓🥓🥓

pdxfed ,

The main issue with any of it is format; because there isn’t a standardized format for wages, bonus, benefits, perqs, equity, etc., it’s easy to make claims and time consuming to compare, e.g. shop employers. This is mostly by design. It’s the same with hiring/job applications. Honestly I think that blockchain is the silver bullet for hiring; universally verifiable information, credentials, job requirements, etc.

Luckily, transparency in pay is inevitable, but it will of course be left up to private employees to get aboard so most won’t and we’ll be stuck decades behind outher countries in the US.

pdxfed , (edited )

I read Flying Blind and am sorry for what must have been a long, painful, soul-crushing journey for you folks.

pdxfed OP ,

Like most of whatever parent company or crappy site interface some mid-tier cities have, if you reload the page a few times it should give you the option to view? Maybe you got the adock popup, same thing, there is usually an option out. I’m not a subscriber.

On Retirement Savings

I’m almost 40 and according to the wisdom found everywhere on the internet, I don’t have enough saved for retirement. Which worries me because I’ve been saving for as long as I’ve had a proper job with access to a retirement vehicle. But also because the internet wisdom doesn’t make sense or sound feasible....

pdxfed ,

You omitted post-college affordability and post housing affordability.

The housing issue is actually so bad it’s making things simpler; people will just save for retirement instead as housing isn’t even in the same galaxy as most people’s wages.

“Higher ed” will probably go the same direction and just be reserved for a few elites. Since degrees don’t guarantee you much over experience the equation of self/vocational education will become the model (my nightmare is public education disappears and you have to go to your corporate “college” program.

pdxfed ,

Totally agree with the nihilistic take, that is happening for folks too.

pdxfed ,

Allowed unless specifically spelled out in CBA. Hope not many unions would agree to that.

pdxfed ,

When I started learning about 7i it blew my mind being from the West Coast. Incredibly horrific piece of law.

pdxfed ,

Music is as subjective as photography but I always liked the shots in this music video of Vancouver and think the song is fun. youtu.be/z-ChuHPPk14?si=krDU4wHTnTArlpkB

pdxfed ,

You’re incredibly lucky to live there, gotta be one of the most amazing places on earth other than COL.

pdxfed ,

Man, if the DNC wasn’t a bunch of corporate shills and had let Bernie actually run a campain and supported his groundswell we wouldn’t have to have Biden in the whiplash-inducing position he’s been in:

  1. break railworker strike, then work behind closed doors to get them their demands
  2. appoint very pro-labor NLRB member who has done good work
  3. now join an actual labor protest against an industry our government bailed out to the tune of ~50b in 08/09 and gives massive tax subsidies to

TLDR; it’s good to see from someone who claims to represent the everyman, but until elected officials get more left than the democrats and start showing what they can do for poor white folks (minimum wage, visible labor protection, childcare, healthcare, etc.) they’re going to continue to lose them to TV crazies.

pdxfed ,

Oh, well sure, obviously not mechanical engineering, I’m a cocktail engineer! Wouldn’t lie on an application, right?

pdxfed ,

Oh, our apologies, we’re in AK, you must have assumed we were in one of the other 7 Anchorages in the lower 48:


<span style="color:#323232;">Kentucky
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Louisiana
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Maryland
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Mississippi
</span><span style="color:#323232;">New Jersey
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Texas
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Utah
</span>

We’ve never had this happen before, how strange.

pdxfed ,

I’m sure most of their employees will still draw public assistance to supplement their basic needs. Fuck these companies.

pdxfed ,

And you think your credit card without benefits isn’t selling your aggregated purchase history data? Might as well get the rewards or use cash.

pdxfed ,

More specifically, !fucksubscriptions

pdxfed ,

Credit card points can be used for many things, depending on the program, and the top things to consider are redemption options that fit your needs, existing wants, and budgets…air miles, hotel points, student loans, mortgage payments, and the biggest, cash. It’s a long term game, and if you can plan ahead a year or two as far as what you need miles and points for, and strategically get cards in certain programs/airlines/hotels you can get free access to otherwise unaffordable experiences.Having a partner/spouse you 100% trust you can play with doubles your effect, I mention the trust because ID theft is all too common as is financial fraud within the family. You also need to be flexible about where and when you travel to get more out of your points, if you’re using points for that

I’ve been in the churning game for 10 years and paid off the last $13k of my school loans, and didn’t pay for an airplane ticket or hotel for 10 years while flying around the world several times and taking many trips(miles redemptions are so bad after COVID and dynamic lricing for awards I bought a plane ticket with cash last month and just felt dirty.

pdxfed ,

It shouldn’t be on anyone’s list of ways to save or make money if they’re not capable of organizing a basic spreadsheet, and if you don’t have a solid understanding of the world of credit and finance, as well as the willingness to learn the ropes of how to get higher returns for your time and credit score, yes the juice is not worth the squeeze.

My returns have been anything but marginal, but I devoted a lot of time early on to reading it as a hobby and curiosity. Like everything else, if it were super easy everyone would do it–but I’ll say it’s not THAT hard to get really decent results for marginal organization. 20 hours of startup reading and you’re looking at free flight and hotel vacation in perpetuity most places on the globe every year once you get going, on-going time is an hour or two a quarter at most.

pdxfed , (edited )

New to Lemmy and still waiting for my preferred app to be available which will help my availability and use but am passionate about the topic and work well in applying frameworks objectively.

pdxfed ,

I’ve never had a budget. I’ve worked and studied hard and lived far, far below my means which allowed me to get a bit ahead 20 years ago when it was more possible and a choice. I see people doing some of the things now I did and it’s not as effective because of corporate price gouging.

I like saving money and loathe accumulating stuff I know is only a fleeting want. I enjoy buying quality things if they are lasting and fit into what I want my life to be. I enjoy things where I don’t have to repeatedly spend money to enjoy them. Some sports work for this, some don’t. Outdoor activities can be very cheap or free if you aren’t convinced you need something with a motor to make it fun. Libraries are a blessing.

Because of the above, I’ve never had a budget. At times I’ve worried that I don’t when so many people talk about them so much but I’ve slowly come to trust myself to not need a budget with the realization a budget just helps others achieve what I’m lucky enough to have, organization and self control.

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