Herman Cain: It's Your Fault if You're Unemployed

[Seth]

Not to mention there are some cheapskates who don't tip no matter what (or will give, for example, $20 on a $19.59 bill and say "keep the change" even for great service.)

And the next time they come in, they get shitty service. Them's the breaks.

[charlou]

Seth, there is a whole world of political issues outside of 'workers should be grateful for work and shut up' politics. I thought you'd been kidnapped, but then I find you living it up in here!

I don't care if workers want to complain, but it's the boss's money and the boss's business and he doesn't have to have anybody working for him he doesn't want, and he only has to pay them what he's willing to pay them. If they don't like the terms of the employment contract, they can go work somewhere else.

Where does the boss get his ... or her ... money from?

[Seth]

Well, here's the thing about capitalism, if you're in the "not rich" class, nothing keeps you there but your own inadequacies and fears. You can improvise, adapt, overcome and join the "rich" class any time you want.

Seriously, you might as well tell someone in a wheelchair to get up and walk.

If you're an incompetent putz, you're doomed to the lifestyle of incompetent putzes unless you can overcome your incompetence. That's just how it is. Nobody else owes you any other lifestyle, and you certainly have no right to take from others to provide the lifestyle to which you'd like to become accustomed. Might suck to be you, but that's what you get for being an incompetent, selfish, inadequate putz.

So, change your life or resign yourself to it.

[Seth]

Seth, there is a whole world of political issues outside of 'workers should be grateful for work and shut up' politics. I thought you'd been kidnapped, but then I find you living it up in here!

I don't care if workers want to complain, but it's the boss's money and the boss's business and he doesn't have to have anybody working for him he doesn't want, and he only has to pay them what he's willing to pay them. If they don't like the terms of the employment contract, they can go work somewhere else.

Where does the boss get his ... or her ... money from?

People who find his products or services valuable and useful. If nobody does, then he goes out of business. That's the risk he takes.

[charlou]

Well, here's the thing about capitalism, if you're in the "not rich" class, nothing keeps you there but your own inadequacies and fears. You can improvise, adapt, overcome and join the "rich" class any time you want.

Seriously, you might as well tell someone in a wheelchair to get up and walk.

If you're an incompetent putz, you're doomed to the lifestyle of incompetent putzes unless you can overcome your incompetence. That's just how it is. Nobody else owes you any other lifestyle, and you certainly have no right to take from others to provide the lifestyle to which you'd like to become accustomed. Might suck to be you, but that's what you get for being an incompetent, selfish, inadequate putz.

So, change your life or resign yourself to it.

Incompetent putz? Is this a personal attack on those who've already stated they have ability issues wrt finding work? Looks like it to me.

You really are not opining here from an understanding of living in the real world, Seth. Here's a gratuitous observation from me: Deluded, arrogant cunts don't get this.

[JimC]

Workers need a counterweight to rapacious employers.

It's called a union...

From what I gather, US unions have become complete wusses. Not so in Oz...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You folks should read the "Cult of the Boss" in the November Playboy. Just sayin'.

Might have to get a copy of that ..

Edit ... actually not sure I can here ... Can you paraphrase what it's about, please, zilla.

Look for "PB 2011-11" in NSFW. It's the last two images in the OP.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Not to mention there are some cheapskates who don't tip no matter what (or will give, for example, $20 on a $19.59 bill and say "keep the change" even for great service.)

And the next time they come in, they get shitty service. Them's the breaks.

And the server is short on gas money, or something else. And you don't know that the guilty parties will be back at all, or that they'll get the same server, and even if they do get the same server she has to carry a grudge and risk a complaint to management about her service. AND other people may note her poor service to the guilty party and get a bad impression of the restaurant as a whole from that.

In other words, you fail again, Seeth.

[Coito ergo sum]

I don't know what it's like where you are, Coito, but I suspect it's not that different to Australia, wherein personally negotiating pay rates is not possible for most employment positions. The types of jobs where it is possible to do so are fewer than those where it isn't possible.

The situation in the U.S. is different from what you describe. I think that in most job types here, the pay rate is negotiable. Government jobs and perhaps some jobs with large, calcified corporations would be the exception, but frankly that's not where most jobs are.

Further, even jobs with large, calcified corporations tend to have "ranges" of pay available for different jobs/levels. Like a large company might have a customer service department with CS1, CS2 and CS3 levels of customer service reps. The first level, CS1, is often "entry level" and has a pays scale of say $25,000 to $32,000, and CS2 would be, say 28,000 to 35,000, and CS3 would be say, $33,000 to $40,000. The numbers there are picked arbitrarily just to illustrate an overlapping range.

What this allows is a manager some flexibility in hiring people. A manager may offer a particularly desirable candidate a bit more, in order to lure him or her in. Or, maybe the market at the time seems to have a dearth of viable candidates around and the manager wants to make sure he fills a much needed spot, so he may offer a bit more. Or, maybe CS reps are a dime a dozen at the moment, and he really doesn't need anybody all that bad, so if he can get someone at the low end of the scale, then great, if not, the manager is o.k. waiting.

The idea "equal pay for equal work" is not particularly helpful. I've given examples before of times in my life where I've done the same job as someone else and made more than that other person (male) did. That's not abnormal - that's quite normal in the world. The only way to solve that is to have a rule that if an employer hires someone at position X, that he must pay wage Y. To me, that makes no sense, and stifles flexibility in compensation. What about the small business that wants to offer someone a lower salary, but add a performance incentive opportunity where if the business succeeds, a person will have an equity or bonus interest in the enterprise? (a gamble that less money now would result in more money later...)

What a lot of people fail to recognize is that many businesses are run on a shoestring and are just as "paycheck to paycheck" as many individuals are. My father retired from a multi-billion dollar company, for example. However, in the 1970's the company was on the edge of bankruptcy and dad was laid off due to the company just not having the money to survive. He came back after a period of time. The founder of the company filed bankruptcy twice in his life, and came back and finally succeeded, after gaining, losing and gaining millions - in the process employing 10s of thousands of people along the way.

[Coito ergo sum]

Not to mention there are some cheapskates who don't tip no matter what (or will give, for example, $20 on a $19.59 bill and say "keep the change" even for great service.)

And the next time they come in, they get shitty service. Them's the breaks.

And the server is short on gas money, or something else. And you don't know that the guilty parties will be back at all, or that they'll get the same server, and even if they do get the same server she has to carry a grudge and risk a complaint to management about her service. AND other people may note her poor service to the guilty party and get a bad impression of the restaurant as a whole from that.

In other words, you fail again, Seeth.

It's all in how it averages out. Good servers make better money than bad servers, and yes, everyone will face cheapskates who don't tip. The average tip at a restaurant is 16%, statistically speaking. So, that's not bad. The two most popular tipping amounts are 15%, named by 37% of Americans, and 20%, named by 34%. Another 15% is on the stingy side when it comes to tipping, saying the appropriate amount is less than 15%. On the other extreme, only 2% believe a tip in excess of 20% is appropriate.

By way of example, we ate a very nice dinner on on Saturday night, and the server was excellent, and the food was phenomenal, and everything from beginning to end was perfect. I left about 25% for a tip.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2009 - Waiters and waitresses, who held 2,302,070 jobs in the United States in May 2009, made average wages of $9.80 hourly or $20,380 per year, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey conducted at that time. Hourly wages ranged from $7.17 or less for the lowest-paid 10 percent to $14.48 and higher for the best-paid 10 percent. A PayScale.com survey of 1,628 waiters and waitresses updated in September 2010 found hourly wages ranged from $3.29 to $7.81, while tips amounted to $5.01 to $12.62 per hour. Read more: The Average Salary of a Waiter | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/facts_7243687_avera ... z1b2SCQjZv

Full-service restaurants are the biggest employer of waiters and waitress, according to the BLS, employing 1,735,260 as food servers at an average hourly wage of $9.69 in May 2009. Other industries in the top five were limited-service eating places, traveler accommodation, drinking places and other amusement and recreation industries. Read more: The Average Salary of a Waiter | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/facts_7243687_avera ... z1b2SOZxGy

[Coito ergo sum]

I think if you put the matter up for a vote in the US, a referendum on tipping, and let those who wait tables and tend bar for tips in my State, Florida, and asked them if they would rather get $7.31 an hour minimum wage, or keep the same system we have now where they get tips, I would bet dollars to donuts that the present system would win by an overwhelming landslide.

Frankly, I've known myriad servers in my life, and they are a highly mobile bunch, and they never would continue working in a place where they can't make far more than minimum wage. They just won't do it - they go to some other, busier restaurant and blow away the minimum wage.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I don't mind paying for service, and I appreciate the option of being the one who decides what that service was worth to me. In places where the service cost is built into the price one doesn't have that choice.

[Tyrannical]

Cain said, “The people who spend more money on new goods. The sales tax only applies to people who buy new goods, not used goods. That’s a big difference that doesn’t come out.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/16/herma ... z1b2hi1FB5

So as long as the poor and middle class just shop at thrift stores and garage sales

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Cain said, “The people who spend more money on new goods. The sales tax only applies to people who buy new goods, not used goods. That’s a big difference that doesn’t come out.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/16/herma ... z1b2hi1FB5

So as long as the poor and middle class just shop at thrift stores and garage sales

They could always steal from the rich.

[Tyrannical]

Cain said, “The people who spend more money on new goods. The sales tax only applies to people who buy new goods, not used goods. That’s a big difference that doesn’t come out.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/16/herma ... z1b2hi1FB5

So as long as the poor and middle class just shop at thrift stores and garage sales

They could always steal from the rich.

That still might count as taxable income.