Women Who Do Housework Should be Paid For It.

[JimC]

Now I know that someone like Seth will trot out the well-worn canard about "farmers desperate for fruit and vegetable pickers". Often, these jobs are poorly paid, thousands of km away, and involve back-breaking physical labour that simply is not an option for many.

They are also seasonal. Not much happening for fruit and vegetable pickers outside autumn. You can't survive a year when most of the pittance you earn comes from three months of work.

If vegetable pickers had to be paid a year's "living wage" for 3 months work, then fucking sign me up. I'll pick bushels like wildfire. Everyone will pay $12 for a tomato, too, and then we can complain that the annual "living wage" is insufficient to allow people to eat fruits and vegetables.

You've missed the point, really. The real argument was whether unemployed people should be forced to take such jobs, with all the downsides mentioned, or lose their unemployment benefits.

Such seasonal work suits some people, but not others.

[Seth]

Now I know that someone like Seth will trot out the well-worn canard about "farmers desperate for fruit and vegetable pickers". Often, these jobs are poorly paid, thousands of km away, and involve back-breaking physical labour that simply is not an option for many.

They are also seasonal. Not much happening for fruit and vegetable pickers outside autumn. You can't survive a year when most of the pittance you earn comes from three months of work.

If vegetable pickers had to be paid a year's "living wage" for 3 months work, then fucking sign me up. I'll pick bushels like wildfire. Everyone will pay $12 for a tomato, too, and then we can complain that the annual "living wage" is insufficient to allow people to eat fruits and vegetables.

You've missed the point, really. The real argument was whether unemployed people should be forced to take such jobs, with all the downsides mentioned, or lose their unemployment benefits.

Such seasonal work suits some people, but not others.

If you don't have a job and take public welfare money, then I don't give a damn whether it "suits" you or not. So long as you are physically capable of performing the work, to any degree at all, then you perform whatever work we assign to you or you don't get public money. And if seasonal fruit-picking is seasonal, then during the off season you can shovel snow, dig ditches, haul garbage, paint curbs, scrub toilets or any of a hundred thousand other things there are to do in our society that need doing.

[piscator]

That's what those assholes in Oregon are going to be doing before long, on the prison farm.

[JimC]

Now I know that someone like Seth will trot out the well-worn canard about "farmers desperate for fruit and vegetable pickers". Often, these jobs are poorly paid, thousands of km away, and involve back-breaking physical labour that simply is not an option for many.

They are also seasonal. Not much happening for fruit and vegetable pickers outside autumn. You can't survive a year when most of the pittance you earn comes from three months of work.

If vegetable pickers had to be paid a year's "living wage" for 3 months work, then fucking sign me up. I'll pick bushels like wildfire. Everyone will pay $12 for a tomato, too, and then we can complain that the annual "living wage" is insufficient to allow people to eat fruits and vegetables.

You've missed the point, really. The real argument was whether unemployed people should be forced to take such jobs, with all the downsides mentioned, or lose their unemployment benefits.

Such seasonal work suits some people, but not others.

If you don't have a job and take public welfare money, then I don't give a damn whether it "suits" you or not. So long as you are physically capable of performing the work, to any degree at all, then you perform whatever work we assign to you or you don't get public money. And if seasonal fruit-picking is seasonal, then during the off season you can shovel snow, dig ditches, haul garbage, paint curbs, scrub toilets or any of a hundred thousand other things there are to do in our society that need doing.

You can treat your unemployed as nastily as you like in your barbaric nation, with its obscene disparity of wealth and its legions of homeless. Back in the civilised world, we will treat our people with compassion and dignity.

[Seth]

You can treat your unemployed as nastily as you like in your barbaric nation, with its obscene disparity of wealth and its legions of homeless. Back in the civilised world, we will treat our people with compassion and dignity.

Those who are deserving of compassion and dignity get compassion and dignity. Those who choose to steal from others using the expedient of government force and who do so without apology, without humility, without a word of thanks because they think they are entitled to the labor of others are deserving of neither and should get only disdain and rejection.

If you want help, then ASK for help and be grateful for what you get because nobody owes you anything.

The attitude that one can demand others to labor on your behalf to provide for your needs and wants without either asking permission. giving thanks, or even offering an apology for being a burden to others distinguishes socialism from fair, rational, compassionate and dignified societies.

[Seth]

That's what those assholes in Oregon are going to be doing before long, on the prison farm.

Just build a fence around the area and declare it to be a federal prison and don't let them leave. Problem solved without incinerating women and children like the government did at Waco.

Waco was a prime opportunity for Combat Engineers to get some experience putting up those modular walls under fire. But the feds wanted a spectacle and they got one.

[pErvinalia]

Now I know that someone like Seth will trot out the well-worn canard about "farmers desperate for fruit and vegetable pickers". Often, these jobs are poorly paid, thousands of km away, and involve back-breaking physical labour that simply is not an option for many.

They are also seasonal. Not much happening for fruit and vegetable pickers outside autumn. You can't survive a year when most of the pittance you earn comes from three months of work.

If vegetable pickers had to be paid a year's "living wage" for 3 months work, then fucking sign me up. I'll pick bushels like wildfire. Everyone will pay $12 for a tomato, too, and then we can complain that the annual "living wage" is insufficient to allow people to eat fruits and vegetables.

You've missed the point, really. The real argument was whether unemployed people should be forced to take such jobs, with all the downsides mentioned, or lose their unemployment benefits.

Such seasonal work suits some people, but not others.

If you don't have a job and take public welfare money, then I don't give a damn whether it "suits" you or not.

Who cares whether you give a Damn or not? We certainly don't.

[pErvinalia]

If vegetable pickers had to be paid a year's "living wage" for 3 months work, then fucking sign me up. I'll pick bushels like wildfire. Everyone will pay $12 for a tomato, too, and then we can complain that the annual "living wage" is insufficient to allow people to eat fruits and vegetables.

You've missed the point, really. The real argument was whether unemployed people should be forced to take such jobs, with all the downsides mentioned, or lose their unemployment benefits.

Such seasonal work suits some people, but not others.

If you don't have a job and take public welfare money, then I don't give a damn whether it "suits" you or not. So long as you are physically capable of performing the work, to any degree at all, then you perform whatever work we assign to you or you don't get public money. And if seasonal fruit-picking is seasonal, then during the off season you can shovel snow, dig ditches, haul garbage, paint curbs, scrub toilets or any of a hundred thousand other things there are to do in our society that need doing.

You can treat your unemployed as nastily as you like in your barbaric nation, with its obscene disparity of wealth and its legions of homeless. Back in the civilised world, we will treat our people with compassion and dignity.

(in theory. In practice we don't treat the poor and disadvantaged with dignity)

[pErvinalia]

Now I know that someone like Seth will trot out the well-worn canard about "farmers desperate for fruit and vegetable pickers". Often, these jobs are poorly paid, thousands of km away, and involve back-breaking physical labour that simply is not an option for many.

They are also seasonal. Not much happening for fruit and vegetable pickers outside autumn. You can't survive a year when most of the pittance you earn comes from three months of work.

If vegetable pickers had to be paid a year's "living wage" for 3 months work, then fucking sign me up.

No one is saying they should get a year's living wage from 3 months work.

[JimC]

If vegetable pickers had to be paid a year's "living wage" for 3 months work, then fucking sign me up. I'll pick bushels like wildfire. Everyone will pay $12 for a tomato, too, and then we can complain that the annual "living wage" is insufficient to allow people to eat fruits and vegetables.

You've missed the point, really. The real argument was whether unemployed people should be forced to take such jobs, with all the downsides mentioned, or lose their unemployment benefits.

Such seasonal work suits some people, but not others.

If you don't have a job and take public welfare money, then I don't give a damn whether it "suits" you or not. So long as you are physically capable of performing the work, to any degree at all, then you perform whatever work we assign to you or you don't get public money. And if seasonal fruit-picking is seasonal, then during the off season you can shovel snow, dig ditches, haul garbage, paint curbs, scrub toilets or any of a hundred thousand other things there are to do in our society that need doing.

You can treat your unemployed as nastily as you like in your barbaric nation, with its obscene disparity of wealth and its legions of homeless. Back in the civilised world, we will treat our people with compassion and dignity.

(in theory. In practice we don't treat the poor and disadvantaged with dignity)

In comparison to the Yanks we do, but I agree we could do better...

[pErvinalia]

Yeah. The Yanks are a third world country when it comes to treating disadvantaged people with compassion and dignity.

[laklak]

Nah, not quite, never saw any lepers crawling through raw sewage here.

[pErvinalia]

I've not seen that in South Africa, Turkey, or Thailand either (actually, India is the only place I've seen that).

[laklak]

Egypt had a fair number, but Nigeria took the prize in my experience. Though some of the old expats said the Congo was the model for all other leper infested third world shitholes.

[pErvinalia]

I'm sure parts of Africa are a fucking disaster. It doesn't change the fact that you treat your poor and disadvantaged terribly. I don't know your culture, so I don't know where it comes from. Is it a long ingrained libertarian/bootstraps streak? Or is it something else? Why does such a (on the surface of it) rich country care for its poor and disadvantaged so terribly?